This text is a part of HuffPost’s biweekly politics e-newsletter. Click on right here to subscribe.
“You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.”
Practically a decade in the past, Donald Trump learn this line from a poem generally known as “The Snake” to rallygoers with fervor, utilizing it as a metaphor about immigration and unsecured borders.
Actually, the poem is an allegory of the risks of gullibility within the face of an apparent risk. Within the story, a kindly lady takes a frozen, half-dead venomous snake into her house to resuscitate it, ignoring the animal’s inherent nature to strike her useless with a single chew as soon as restored to full power.
His as soon as favored poem is now extra prescient than ever: Trump instructed Individuals for years he would go after his political enemies as quickly as he was in a position, and, 9 months into his second time period, basking within the fealty of the loyalists he has put in on the nation’s highest legislation enforcement authority — the U.S. Justice Division — Trump is now that half-frozen snake all thawed out and right here to remind the nation: He instructed you who he was earlier than you took him in.
This actuality was placed on bald show Thursday after the Justice Division introduced it had secured the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey on one depend of constructing false statements and one depend of obstruction of justice.
Comey — whom Trump has lengthy sought to punish for his involvement in investigations into the president throughout Trump’s first time period — is likely one of the highest-profile foes of the president that Trump has pursued. However his indictment represents only a fraction of the weaponization that has been unfolding on the Justice Division, more and more beneath Trump’s direct bidding, for months.
Solely six days in the past, Trump posted a message on Fact Social demanding that Lawyer Basic Pam Bondi safe indictments towards his political enemies. He named Comey particularly, in addition to New York State Lawyer Basic Letitia James, who efficiently prosecuted Trump for falsifying enterprise data, and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who led an impeachment inquiry towards Trump in his first time period.
Mark Zaid, a nationwide safety lawyer whose safety clearance was yanked by the administration together with 37 different former and present authorities officers, instructed HuffPost that Comey’s indictment “further undermines the norms we know as the rule of law with the obvious politicization and weaponization of the very institution we expect to protect all of us.”
“But no one should be surprised that the Trump Administration is pursuing political vengeance against his perceived enemies. They telegraphed their intentions from the outset, and it is time for America to wake up,” Zaid mentioned Friday.
Trump has dismantled and remade the DOJ with a view to have his approach. Comey was solely indicted within the Jap District of Virginia after the unique federal prosecutor in that district, Erik Siebert, stepped down and was changed by Lindsey Halligan. Siebert, whom Trump had nominated to the place in Might, had reportedly been pressured out as a result of he was unable to seek out credible proof to cost the previous FBI director or the New York legal professional basic.
Like Bondi, Deputy Lawyer Basic Todd Blanche, and Emil Bove, who’s now a lifetime-appointed decide on the U.S. Court docket of Appeals for the third U.S. Circuit, Halligan, a former magnificence pageant contestant, was once certainly one of Trump’s private attorneys. (She represented Trump when he was charged in Florida with unlawful retention of labeled paperwork.)
Halligan has zero expertise prosecuting prison circumstances. She is, nonetheless, skilled on find out how to comply with orders from the administration: Earlier than being elevated to interim U.S. legal professional in Virginia’s Jap District — actually generally known as the “rocket docket” because it is likely one of the busiest courts within the nation — she was tasked with ridding the Smithsonian Establishment of “improper ideology” that didn’t align with Trump’s imaginative and prescient of American historical past.
“I saw how we were pushed in the first Trump administration to do things that crossed ethical lines,” mentioned a former trial legal professional for the Justice Division’s civil division who spoke anonymously with HuffPost Friday out of concern of retribution.
The legal professional dealt with delicate political circumstances throughout the first Trump administration and President Joe Biden’s administration, and resigned simply earlier than Trump was inaugurated once more.
“After watching everything that happened with Jan. 6, I knew there was no way I could go in and, in good conscience, defend Trump,” they mentioned. “Not because of my policy positions, but in my office, you had to be willing to sign up and defend the president’s policies. I knew it would be a lawless era. But I didn’t anticipate anything like this.”
Trump’s weaponization of the Justice Division has been shifting full steam forward since January, when he formally introduced that he would pardon or commute Jan. 6 rioters. That alternative in the end unwound years of labor put in by the Justice Division to safe convictions, together with for these charged with essentially the most critical crimes to emerge from the Jan. 6 riot: seditious conspiracy towards america.
“I don’t think Americans are as informed as they should be about how dangerous this is.”
– Former DOJ civil legal professional
Trump has positioned the blame for Jan. 6 on Democrats, suggesting it was former Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) who needs to be prosecuted for safety failures on the Capitol. A particular Republican-led committee investigating Trump’s model of Jan. 6 was fashioned simply weeks in the past.
And final month, the Workplace of Particular Counsel — led by former right-wing podcaster and 2020 election denier Paul Ingrassia after Trump fired OSC particular counsel Hampton Dellinger — confirmed that it was investigating former particular counsel Jack Smith, who oversaw Trump’s prison prosecutions, for alleged violations of the 1939 Hatch Act. (The legislation — which Trump and administration officers have seemingly run roughshod over — says federal employees can’t interact in partisan actions when working of their official capability.)
Attorneys and FBI brokers who labored Jan. 6 circumstances had been fired en masse, and attorneys who labored on prosecutions towards Trump had been purged or demoted. Trump’s former private lawyer Alina Habba plowed forward with the trumped-up prosecution of Rep. LaMonica McIver and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka for alleged assault of a federal agent at an ICE facility in Newark this summer season. (Costs towards Baraka had been dropped, and he’s now suing; in the meantime, discovery hasn’t even begun in McIver’s case, 4 months after the preliminary cost.)
Ed Martin, a Jan. 6 conspiracy theorist Trump put in command of the Justice Division’s so-called “Weaponization Working Group” has been lurking outdoors of Letitia James’ Brooklyn townhouse, sending her letters telling her to resign because the president publicly accuses her of mortgage fraud. The DOJ abruptly closed a Biden-era probe of Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, for allegedly accepting $50,000 from FBI brokers posing as enterprise executives. The FBI, beneath the management of unabashed Trump ally Kash Patel, raided the house and workplace of John Bolton, Trump’s former nationwide safety adviser who later turned an outspoken critic of the president, as he’s investigated for retention of labeled supplies.
The previous DOJ civil legal professional described the overlap between politics and prosecution as “completely unheard of in recent decades and really devastating” to the work of division employees, in addition to to morale.
When defending the president towards a civil case, the legal professional mentioned, there have been “really clear boundaries” for what trial attorneys might or couldn’t do by way of their communications with the White Home.
“Trial attorneys weren’t allowed to have direct communication with the White House absent a lot of safeguards or with a lot of protocols put in place. Even feedback on briefs – there were all kinds of firewalls put up,” they mentioned. “There might have been some erosion of those boundaries then [under the first Trump administration], but they are completely gone now.”
Mates and colleagues nonetheless on the division inform the previous trial lawyer that they’re “devastated” to see the Justice Division utilized in such a politically motivated and “inappropriate” approach, they mentioned.
“Morale is as low as I can imagine it being,” they mentioned. “That’s by design, not by accident.”
Even pals of theirs who don’t work in “the most politically sensitive areas,” like within the division’s antitrust division or environmental division, have expressed profound emotions of disrespect and frustration.
“The personnel actions happening now make them feel like they are the enemy, like they are disrespected by management, like the things being done are retributive rather than trying to foster and appreciate a workforce, and that the work they are doing is going to be twisted and politicized,” they mentioned.
The Comey indictment is “completely unfathomable,” they added.
“I don’t think Americans are as informed as they should be about how dangerous this is,” they mentioned.
Whereas celebrating Comey’s indictment, Trump has been raging on the decide randomly assigned to the case just because Biden appointed them to the bench. Comey, Trump mentioned in a submit on Fact Social on Friday, is “off to a very good start” as a result of “he was just assigned a Crooked Joe Biden appointed judge.”
Calling Comey a “dirty cop,” Trump additionally mentioned a “very big price must be paid” by the previous FBI director.
The previous civil trial legal professional who spoke to HuffPost mentioned Trump’s style for retribution left them with many questions on what comes subsequent.
“I don’t know how we rebuild this level of devastation at the Justice Department. It’s such an important institution. It’s just hard for me to see how, post-Trump presidency, how we come back from the damage he’s done,” they mentioned. “I hope Americans are paying attention to what surely seems to be a purely vindictive prosecution of Comey — if he can do this here, this early into the administration, there’s no telling who’s going to be next.”
After Comey was indicted on Thursday, Trump recommended his subsequent goal could also be one other certainly one of his vocal critics: former CIA director John Brennan.
CORRECTION: This text has been amended to mirror that Virginia is inside the jurisdiction of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court docket of Appeals.
