“The cascade of election coverage, commentary, and speculation about how Donald Trump might use the power of the presidency to retaliate against his perceived political enemies has overlooked important context: Trump has done just that while he was president, at least a dozen times.” That is the opening statement by Adam Klasfeld and Ryan Goodman in their article, “Chronology of a Dozen Times Trump Pushed to Prosecute His Perceived Enemies.”
Klasfeld and Goodman discuss instances of Trump’s attempts to use the Department of Justice and other government agencies to target his so-called political adversaries. The following are nine of those instances.
1. In 2017, Trump asked then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to “un-recuse” himself to investigate and prosecute Hillary Clinton, which Sessions did not do.
2. Trump publicly scolds the Justice Department for not investigating Clinton.
3. By January 2018, Trump had Attorney General Sessions open an investigation of Hillary Clinton and the old Uranium One conspiracy allegation. Sessions engaged a special prosecutor, John Huber, to lead the inquiry. Huber Closed the case in January of 2000 with no “tangible results.”
4. The Department of Justice opened and kept open an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s family foundation for nearly all of President Trump’s administration, even though there were earlier reports that they had reached a dead end. Finding nothing of consequence, the Justice Department closed the investigation just days before the end of Trump’s term.
5. In a tweet in May of 2018, Trump demanded an investigation into his debunked “Spygate” conspiracy theory, “I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes – and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration?” There was never any evidence that former President Barack Obama ordered his FBI to infiltrate or surveil the Trump campaign.
6. In the Spring of 2018, Trump told the White House Counsel he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute James Comey and Hillary Clinton. The counsel, Donald F. McGahn, rebuffed the president, “saying he had no authority to order a prosecution. Mr. McGahn said that while he could request an investigation, that too could prompt accusations of abuse of power. To underscore his point, Mr. McGahn had White House lawyers write a memo warning Mr. Trump that if he asked law enforcement to investigate his rivals, he could face a range of consequences, including possible impeachment.”
7. In August of 2018, Trump publicly urged Attorney General Sessions to investigate a long list of perceived political enemies. The Mueller report recorded how Trump criticized Sessions for his refusal to take over the Russia investigation, and Sessions publicly responded that he would not let the Justice Department be “improperly influenced by political considerations.”
Trump fired Sessions later in 2018.
8. Trump got his wish with the Durham investigation. The new Attorney General, William Barr, was substantially more amenable to Trump’s abuse of power dictates than Sessions. He gave a highly misleading summary of the Mueller report on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Although the report details multiple episodes in which there is evidence that President Trump was guilty of obstruction, it did not call for an indictment of Trump. In his false summary, Barr conjured up Trump’s exoneration. Trump then called for an “investigation of the investigators,” which Barr did with the appointment of a special counsel, John Durham, to investigate the origins of the FBI’s investigation of the Russian interference. Of course, after four years, Durhan did not find such a conspiracy as Trump had alleged.
9. In 2019, Trump urged Ukrainian President Zelensky to open a criminal investigation into Joe Biden. This led to Trump’s first impeachment. He was acquitted, with only one Republican Senator, Mitt Romney, voting to convict.
During his presidency, Donald Trump was prevented from doing some of his “crimes and misdemeanors” by some of his appointees – notably Attorney General Jeff Sessions and White House Counsel Donald McGahn.
Undoubtedly, Trump learned his lesson from having appointees who were not loyal to him. Thus, he will do as he promises next time – have only loyal appointees, which will enable him to take a sledgehammer to our democracy and the rule of law.
