Dem
47
GOP
53
Tricky Dick Nixon tried to use the IRS to go after his political enemies. In retrospect, all we can say is: How come such a political genius just played small ball? Donald Trump is using the entire federal government to go after and punish his enemies. Samuel Buell, a professor of law at Duke University and former federal prosecutor, said it seems like Donald Trump and his top aides are saying to themselves every day: "We have this thing called the executive branch—what can we do with it?"
Until recently, nobody paid much attention to the obscure Federal Housing Finance Agency. But it has most of the mortgage data in the U.S. and Trump put a crony, Bill Pulte, in charge of it with the mission to dig up dirt on his rivals. For example, Pulte discovered that Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) claimed his home in California was a primary residence and made the same claim about the house in Maryland where he lives 10 months/year. Neither is a rental property. He lives in both alternately. Trump ordered the DoJ to indict Schiff, which it is working on. Schiff's situation probably holds for most of the 535 members of Congress (excepting the ones who rent, of course, and the ones who are lucky enough to represent states near D.C.).
The Department of Commerce is working to take patents that Harvard owns—and which are worth millions of dollars—away from it because some of the research was funded by the government, even though the contracts allow universities to patent inventions funded by federal research. In fact, the government wants universities to patent inventions so they can be licensed to commercial companies and be put to use to help the country.
Trump is also using the Dept. of HHS to block future research grants on medical research that might lead to treatments or cures for important diseases. This is primarily because some sizable portion of the MAGA base hates vaccines, or anything that might have been achieved with stem-cell research, or science in general.
Trump is using the FCC to threaten yanking broadcast licenses from media companies, so as to get them to stop broadcasting anything unfavorable to him and to pay him tribute. He is also using the FCC to block mergers of media companies he doesn't like.
Trump has used the Department of Defense to take away, or threaten to take away, security clearances from lawyers who routinely do cases involving national security. In some cases, losing their clearances would take away a substantial amount of their business. He is also using it to investigate Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) for telling service members that they have a legal right to disobey illegal orders, a rule that is embedded in the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Trump is using the office of the DNI and the CIA to persecute former officials in the Obama administration on bogus charges.
And, of course, he was turned the DoJ into a personal weapon to go after and indict anyone who has ever opposed him in any way. He will probably lose many of the cases, but that is beside the point to some extent. An indictment forces the target to spend a lot of money on lawyers and also causes reputational damage, even if the courts throw out the cases in the end. It also causes the target to undergo a lot of stress and makes them have to spend money on security to protect themselves from Trump's violent supporters.
Trump is a full-service bully, using every agency he can corrupt to go after his enemies. Since he has installed flunkies to run all departments and agencies, there is nothing to stop him. He probably assumes that even after he leaves what is left of the White House, he is immune to prosecution because the Supreme Court has ruled that the president is like a king and above the law. Trump is assuming that no future Democratic president would have the guts to order him arrested and shipped off to El Salvador and then say: "The Supreme Court said the president can commit any crime he wants to and it is fine with them, so I can do this to protect national security without worrying about whether or not it is legal."
Not all Republicans like what Trump is doing. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said: "If you take it at face value, the idea that calling your opponents 'traitors'—and then specifically saying that it warrants the death penalty—is reckless, inappropriate, and irresponsible."
When asked about Trump's comments, Sen. Susan Collins said: "Obviously, I don't agree with that." Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said that the Democrats' urging service members to disobey illegal orders to be "clearly provocative," but added: "But I certainly don't agree with the president's conclusion on how we ought to handle it." Nevertheless, the vast majority of Republicans in Congress are saying nothing and doing nothing to prevent Trump from subverting the entire government to his own ends. (V)