For Trump, justice means vengeance
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
President Donald Trump is celebrating the anniversary of his return to power by accelerating his attack on the rule of law. He has spent the week leading up to Jan. 20 using the mighty powers of the Justice Department as an extension of his personal and political interests. The department has started a fabricated criminal investigation of the Federal Reserve chair, searched the home of a Washington Post reporter and created a White House-controlled fraud unit that would streamline partisan prosecution.
Trump does not attempt to hide his use of law enforcement powers for vengeance. He glories in it. This month, The Wall Street Journal reported, he hosted federal prosecutors at the White House and complained that they were not moving fast enough to punish the rivals, critics and truth tellers he wished to target. This followed months of pressure by the president on his attorney general to do more to prosecute those who oppose his actions and those who tried to hold him accountable under the law in the past.
These efforts have become a defining feature of Trump’s second term, and it can be easy to become numb to them. We urge you not to. His usurpation of law enforcement power threatens us all. His meddling with the independence of the Fed undermines the economy. His attacks on members of Congress and the news media threaten people’s right to speak freely and hold the government accountable. His move to control investigation and prosecution from the White House portends an America where the state uses force to promote the political interests of its leaders, rather than uphold the laws passed by our representatives.
One year into his second term, America risks losing a central feature of our democracy: that we are a country ruled by laws, not by one man.
Among the many corrosive consequences of Trump’s actions is a loss of faith in almost anything that his Justice Department does. Consider the situation in Minnesota that attracted so much of the nation’s attention in recent days. On Jan. 7, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot to death Renee Good, who was protesting ICE’s raids in Minneapolis. Under any other modern president, the next steps would have been clear. The government would have conducted a sober-minded inquiry about whether the agent had acted appropriately.
Under Trump, the verdict was preordained. The ICE agents on the scene prevented a bystander who identified himself as a doctor from treating Good as she sat slumped and bleeding in her car. The ICE agent who shot her sped away shortly afterward, videos suggest. Trump quickly posted a misleading description of the confrontation on social media. Later that day, the FBI barred state investigators from joining them in collecting and analyzing evidence from the scene.
Senior Trump officials accused Good of “domestic terrorism,” and the Justice Department made a mockery of itself by opening an investigation into Good and her partner for their political activism. At least 10 federal lawyers in Washington and Minnesota have since resigned or retired. Their response is honorable, although it leaves even fewer principled officials to stand up to future abuses.
Last Sunday, Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, said the Justice Department had served him with subpoenas in a bogus criminal investigation. The department claimed it was looking into whether he had misled Congress about the cost of renovations to the Fed’s headquarters, but he said he had provided exhaustive details to Congress and had the bank’s internal watchdog examine the construction costs. Trump’s real motive is obvious. He wants to replace the Fed’s leadership with officials who betray its tradition of independence from partisan politics and rapidly cut interest rates to goose the economy before midterm elections this year. The targeting of Powell, who will leave his role in May, serves to remind his successor that there is a cost to independence.
Three days after Powell’s announcement, federal agents took the extraordinary step of searching the home of Hannah Natanson, a reporter for the Post, and seizing her phone as part of a leak investigation. This violates traditional government policy and appears designed to chill valuable reporting by making sources nervous about talking to journalists. Natanson had helped expose some of the negative consequences of the Trump administration’s policies.
The list of Trump critics and opponents who face or have faced legal action by the administration also includes a Fed governor, Lisa Cook; former FBI Director James Comey; Attorney General Letitia James of New York; Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.; and Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif. This month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he would begin administrative proceedings against Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz. — which could result in the reduction of Kelly’s military retirement rank and pension — after the senator participated in a video urging military service members to resist illegal orders. The five other Democratic lawmakers who participated in the video said they are also under federal investigation. On Monday, Kelly sued Hegseth and the Pentagon on free speech grounds.
The administration crossed another line this month when Vice President JD Vance announced that the White House would run an unnecessary new Justice Department division on fraud. The department already has an anti-fraud section, but it has been depleted by administration cutbacks; what’s different about this new division is that the White House controls it directly. The new outpost is particularly suspicious, given Trump’s loose and expedient definition of fraudulent behavior as occurring only in states run by Democrats. The announcement suggests it will be another piece of his partisan use of legal powers. For now, the new division is centered on the social service fraud that has occurred in Minnesota, though he has his eyes on other Democratic states as well.
The Minnesota fraud is real, and the people who perpetrated it deserve to face charges. Many already have; one of the prosecutors who resigned Tuesday over the response to the ICE shooting had overseen the sprawling investigation. But Trump’s interest in fraud is selective, applying exclusively in jurisdictions that have opposed him. As KFF Health News reported, he gave pardons or commutations to at least 68 people convicted of fraud-related crimes during his first and second terms. And he fired or demoted more than 20 inspectors general responsible for rooting out fraud.
As the second year of Trump’s second term begins this coming week, there are some modestly encouraging signs of resistance — but not nearly enough. Several Republicans in the House and Senate have said they do not believe Powell is a criminal, and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he would oppose the confirmation of any Fed governor until the investigation is concluded.
But the Republican Party has largely been a silent partner as its leader removes all sense of justice from the Justice Department. Some seem to grasp the danger to the economy of having Trump control the Fed, but they need to see the larger picture and grasp the danger to democracy of controlling law enforcement, too. On behalf of Americans who are now living without a functioning system of federal law and order, Congress should step up and end this self-interested destruction.
You accuse Trump of vengeance. By definition, vengeance is retribution for a wrong or an attack. By calling his actions vengeance, you admit he was wronged by the previous administration.