For months, much of the legacy media has treated Donald Trump’s promise to misuse the power of the federal government to go after his political enemies as an item of curiosity. Those of us who have been directly or indirectly threatened by Trump are routinely asked whether we are concerned about retribution.
For my part, I am concerned but not deterred. Having witnessed the awesome power of the government, with its unlimited resources and broad investigative powers, I would have to be an idiot not to be. That worry is heightened because of Trump’s past actions as well as his words.
We know that in 2018, Trump told his White House counsel that he wanted the Department of Justice to prosecute Hillary Clinton and James Comey. It has also been reported that on several occasions Trump told his aides he wanted John Kerry prosecuted.
These were not idle threats.
A U.S. attorney appointed by Donald Trump confirmed that an investigation into Kerry was opened because “the conduct that had annoyed the president was now a priority of the Department of Justice.” The fact that Kerry was not indicted should give no one comfort. Sure, he was innocent. But, more importantly, Trump’s own appointee had refused to go along with the political prosecution.
We won’t always be so lucky. One lawyer was not.
As president, Trump deflected from the damning findings of the Mueller investigation by, among other things, falsely claiming that the FBI “spied” on his 2016 campaign. To please his boss, in the spring of 2019, then Attorney General William Barr tapped John Durham — a Republican federal prosecutor from Connecticut — to investigate how the FBI came to investigate Donald Trump’s connection to Russia.
After three and a half years, it ended, but not before Durham had indicted a well-regarded national security lawyer. His alleged crime? Saying in that meeting with the FBI that he was not there on behalf of any client when — in Durham’s view — he was there on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The jury unanimously rejected Durham's case and acquitted the lawyer after a shockingly short deliberation.
These two cases — one involving a former secretary of state and the other of a lawyer caught between Trump’s pathology and his ultimate target, Hillary Clinton — are cautionary tales of what we can expect over the next four years.
There will be retribution. The incoming FBI director published a book that includes an enemies list. In a weird, backhanded compliment, he told Steve Bannon that I am an “enemy of the Republican Party.”
The new attorney general is an election denier who has talked about prosecuting those who investigated Donald Trump. She claims there will be no enemies list at the Department of Justice. That is because the list will be formulated and kept at the White House. She will just be asked to follow orders.
Across the country, across agencies and departments, political appointees and career officials will be asked to engage in the harassment of Donald Trump’s political opponents. It may take the form of denials of government contracts, delayed government services, IRS audits and — in the most sinister circumstances — criminal investigations and prosecutions.
Insisting government officials abide by their oaths and reject this pressure is an important but not sufficient response to the crisis we now face. It is incumbent on the media, civil society groups, judges and individual citizens to adopt a presumption of skepticism when it is told that a political opponent of Trump is under an ethical or legal cloud.
For the media, this means centering its reporting on the possible political motives of investigations, not the alleged details. It also means rejecting tips or leads unless the person providing the information is fully on the record from start to finish.
Civil society groups must guard against becoming propaganda tools for Trump’s agents and investigators. They must not legitimize unproven claims asserted by the administration, including the FBI and DOJ. They should not chase secondary stories aimed at discrediting those subjected to political investigations.
Judges must carefully and skeptically scrutinize applications to investigate people targeted by Trump. Courts must abandon the presumption of good faith when prosecutors are pursuing Trump’s critics. If the subject of an investigation or a defendant claims improper political motives or selective prosecution, it should be taken seriously.
The most important role is for the public. We need to destigmatize being attacked by Trump and the instruments of government he controls. When we hear that someone is under investigation, we should not assume they have done something wrong or even worth investigating. If they claim they are the victim of a political smear, we must believe them unless there is public evidence to the contrary.
