Benjamin Wittes is the editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. Yesterday, he decided to revisit a piece he wrote back in May 2016 warning of what a prospective President Donald Trump might do to the administration of justice in this country. With the benefit of hindsight, he concludes that his forebodings “could not—unfortunately—have been more spot-on.”
Wittes also produced a helpful list to demonstrate his prescience:
- He has demanded substantive outcomes from investigations.
- He has demanded investigations of political opponents.
- He has raged against the norms that prevent these wishes from being fulfilled.
- He has attacked—publicly and by name—people who have acted honorably to defend those norms.
- He fired the redoubtable FBI director whom I flagged as an inconvenient bulwark—for precisely the reason that James Comey was functioning as an inconvenient bulwark.
- He has harassed Comey’s management team and demanded publicly their replacement.
- He has made the environment for those assistant U.S. attorneys committed to their jobs so uncomfortable that one literally sat in my office and told me that he was going to resign because “I don’t want to stand up in court any more and say, I’m [his name] and I represent the United States.”
- He has appointed an attorney general he specifically intended to protect him and go after his opponents.
Predictably, Wittes is scathing in his assessment of the president’s performance.
This is banana-republic-type stuff. One year into Trump’s term in office, his character has not changed. The president of the United States—as John Bellinger warned as early as December 2015 and as I elaborated on in March of 2016—remains the principal threat in the world to the national security of the United States. His aspirations are as profoundly undemocratic and hostile to the institutions of democratic governance as they have ever been. He announces as much in interview after interview, in tweet after tweet. The president has not changed, and he will not change. Whether he has grown or will grow is not even an interesting question.
If you’re interested, Wittes goes on to find reasons for optimism as he assesses that Trump’s war on his own government has not succeeded.
Trump aspires to corrupt the Justice Department, but he has not yet managed to corrupt the Justice Department. He aspires to use the FBI to go after his political enemies, but he has not yet managed that either. He aspires to an intelligence community that will validate his premises, but he has not managed to get one. At the end of the day, Trump has not managed to shut down the Russia investigation. He has not managed to fire his attorney general or his deputy attorney general—both of whom he evidently hates. He has not even managed to rid himself of the lowly deputy FBI director, Andrew McCabe—though he so clearly wants that particular scalp—who will retire in March and not be removed before then.
In fairness, though, Wittes doesn’t sugarcoat the damage that has been done and that could easily be done in the near future. He’s written a very through and thoughtful article and I recommend that you take the time to read it.
I am much less hopeful. So far the courts and federal agencies have been trying to hold the line, but Trump is in the process of stuffing the courts and the agencies with unqualified and deeply biased appointees. Many high level agency personnel have quit in anger and disgust. The Departments of the Interior and of State are now trying to function with severely reduced staff, as well as newly appointed unqualified staff. And, as we all know, the Secretaries that oversee these departments do not ascribe to the public goals established for them.
Yesterday I was reading about Grand Staircase-Escalante NM in Utah, a place dear to me along with the broader issue of protecting and conserving public lands. It is estimated that the Kaiparowits Plateau contains 62 billion tons of coal, but perhaps only 5-10 billions are recoverable. The leases for new mines, held by a Canadian mining company, were purchased by our government for $14mil.
It also “…is the richest fossil trove of the Late Cretaceous period in the world.” according to the monument’s paleontologist, Alan Titus. At least 16 new dinosaur species have been discovered here since it became a monument, as well as whole assemblages of animals buried and fossilized together. There are also Native American treasures in the monument, and being Utah, incredible scenery as well.
Since the area was designated a national monument the two relevant Utah counties in the area have seen a 24% increase in jobs and a 32% increase in personal income, presumably due to greatly increased tourism. Two of the local coal mines already in the area have closed in recent years.
Rip it up for coal, says the Vandal-in-Chief. I am hoping this madness will stop before this and other irreversible actions take place.
Longwall (underground) coal mining is a barely economically viable business model nowadays and mountaintop removal is environmentally disastrous and not very efficient. So Western strip mining is the only real future for coal. Though economically viable, it has run into the inexorable workings of the market. New coal-powered generation plants cannot compete with any renewable form of energy or natural gas. The problem (just one of them) of starting up new coal mines in extremely remote settings is that the transport and distribution costs to the nearest coal-fired generation plant would be extremely costly. Of course, the coal mining company could try to attract an onsite generation plant but, then, see above (i.e. not economically viable). And this ignores all the environmental costs and where the workers would live, etc., etc. I would be surprised if any new leases for coal mining were awarded.
i am aware of the reasons you cite and how you are right.
Damned auto-correct. Hope not how.
Sometimes it changes as it posts. Happens on my phone as well.
Oops. Andalex is an American company.
Top priority for the next administration will have to be exposing and firing everyone in the federal government who made a personal pledge of loyalty to Trump, or signed a non-disclosure agreement with him.
If it is a Democratic Administration, the President can ask for all Presidential appointees to submit their letters of resignation. This is normal protocol anyway. Then the next President can choose who retain and whose resignations to accept. I expect almost no Trump appointees would be retained.
Any thoughts on why DT hasn’t been more successful in his efforts? I think career Washington are thwarting him in some way.
There are several reasons: 1) Trump is incapable of paying attention to any issue for more than a few minutes and, in any event, to lazy to follow through; 2) deregulation takes as long to accomplish as regulation-making does with the additional burden of lawsuits slowing the process; 3) many of Trump’s Cabinet appointees have no or little experience in government and this is true of many of their deputies too.
Arguably, Pruitt has been the most effective because of his viciousness towards EPA’s staff and scientific advisers, his open corruption and his overt undermining of regulatory enforcement. But even he has not (yet) managed to roll back many if any regs (as opposed to Executive Orders). In any event, I expect he will get bored and run for the Senate after a while.
Plus the fact that Trump, having absolutely no understanding of the basic mechanics of American government — quite literally thinks he can make things happen by decree (even if those “decrees” are tweets).
Occasionally someone explains to him that it doesn’t work that way, and he starts ranting about “so-called judges” etc.
Those are spot on. One other factor, although I’m not sure how much of a role it plays at this point, is that Dolt 45 lacked a popular mandate. His electoral vote win was a fluke given the way the popular vote shook down, and he had low favorables from day 1 of his regime. A more competent despot with a popular mandate may well have found it easy to run roughshod over our institutional defenses. That said, the damage that has been done and will be done once this idiot is out of office cannot be understated. The clean-up effort, to the extent it is possible, is going to be enormous.
I don’t have the sense that the ordinary schmoe has much real concern one way or the other about the maladministration of justice, and to the extent a member of the incompetent white electorate thinks about such things, they conclude that a racially unjust and unfair “enforcement” approach is proper, as their immediate blanket rejection of the protests of BLM made clear.
US Attorneys have a great deal of power to make the lives of political enemies very difficult, although these sort of Hilerian/Stalinist indictments have yet to occur. As the article details, Der Trumper is clearly calling for them and it would be remarkable if none of his appointees refuse to heed the call. Again, Trumper has already openly made these (traditionally improper) requests, which have been immediately transformed into the New Normal by the useless corporate media. One can rest assured that prosecutions for white collar crime will be rare in the next 3 years, so CEOs and CFOs should rob while they can. There obviously will be no federal enforcement of environmental, civil rights (traditionally understood as opposed to cake bakers’ religious “rights”), voting rights, consumer and commercial fraud laws in the coming years. Illegality will become the New Normal.
US Attorneys, of course, can be replaced at the will of the prez, so that element of Trumper’s maladministration of justice could be rectified quite quickly should a Dem somehow attain the WH in future. But it will likely be of little matter by 2020, as by then the federal courts will have been stuffed to bursting with vicious life-time tenured 50 year old white male conservative activists posing as “judges”.
And God knows in what shape the Supreme Court will be in by then, as the replacement of any of the ancients Kennedy, Ginsburg or Breyer will throw the Court further right than it was in the New Deal crisis. Obviously the Repub senate has been (and will continue) approving every rightwing hack that Trumper nominates to a judgeship. The odds are pretty strong the Supreme Court is completely lost by 2020.
The federal courts are the only bulwark against the sort of Totalitarian regimes that sprang up in the last century—we can see by the nauseating obeisance that all elected Repubs are now paying to their American Fuhrer that they would acclaim a rightwing totalitarian regime in a heartbeat, as would their voters. The Prime Directive of the American “conservative” movement is to politicize the courts so that “conservative”-endorsed policies are ruled legal, and progressive ones illegal. As 2016 made clear, that is precisely what the incompetent white electorate desires. The Trumper/GoOPer overhang (hangover?) will last another generation whatever the future may bring.
As the article details, Der Trumper is clearly calling for them and it would be remarkable if none of his appointees refuse to heed the call. Again, Trumper has already openly made these (traditionally improper) requests, which have been immediately transformed into the New Normal by the useless corporate media.
People sure flushed the C- Augustus years down the memory hole. Do people not remember the US Attorney scandal under C- Augustus?
One can rest assured that prosecutions for white collar crime will be rare in the next 3 years, so CEOs and CFOs should rob while they can.
They were close to non-existent for the last 8 years too.
There obviously will be no federal enforcement of environmental, civil rights (traditionally understood as opposed to cake bakers’ religious “rights”), voting rights, consumer and commercial fraud laws in the coming years.
Don’t kid yourself. This would have happened under President “Little” Marco Rubio or President Ted “The Zodiac Killer” Cruz too. It’s who the GOP is.
Best analysis I’ve read so far on the very real threat that Donald Trump is to our political institutions and our democracy itself, both in terms of assessing the risk and how well those institutions have borne up so far. Thank you Martin; a very worthwhile read.
With one year down and three to go, we are by no means out of the woods in a variety of ways. He could precipitate an international catastrophe or a constitutional crisis. But, as Mr. Wittes points out, his lack of respect for our governing institutions has been matched by his incompetence and slothfulness. I agree with the assertion that far more dangerous than Trump himself is the reality that a significant portion of the GOP is apparently willing to follow him anywhere. That’s truly scary.
Of course this has been obvious to all of us, and in fact to everyone who makes any effort to pay attention, for a very long time. Heck, even back in the 1940s a healthy number of Republicans were essentially terrorists. As a group they’re much worse now but the bulk of them have long been willing to destroy the country to get what they want. They were willing to appease the Soviets after WWII to get tax cuts. Then in the 1950s they jumped on the cold war as a means of inciting fear and holding power, at which point they were willing to 86 our Constitution for raw power.
Perhaps the scales are falling from the eyes of a few. Hopefully enough to make a difference. I’m hoping that the emasculation of the California GOP is what the rest of the party is looking forward to.