Yesterday I ended by saying the Trump regime is at a new level (in firing Erez Reuveni for admitting the deportation of Abrego Garcia was in error) and likely to go even lower. It just did.
In his April 10 substack
post Thom Hartmann wrote:
The highest form of
freedom in a democracy isn’t just the right to vote or protest — it’s the right
to speak truth to
power. To call out corruption. To
challenge lies. To stand firm when the powerful demand silence. This is the
freedom that sustains all others.
And it’s the one Donald Trump tried to crush
yesterday…
After the November 2024
election there was speculation that Trump would exact vengeance on his
political enemies with frivolous criminal charges. That is why President Biden
made all those preemptive pardons. But he hadn’t done so – until Wednesday.
Trump used other weapons at his disposal: revoking Secret Service protection and/or
security clearance for his political rivals; cutting off lawyers and law firms
from security clearance and access to federal buildings; withholding federal
grants to universities; detaining and deporting student protestors.
On Wednesday April 9
President Trump signed an executive order directing the DOJ to investigate two
civil servants from his first administration – Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs – whose
only crime was telling the truth.
Miles Taylor served as
Chief of Staff at the Department of Homeland Security. In 2028 while in office,
Taylor wrote an anonymous op-ed for the NYT criticizing the Trump
administration. In the October 2020 interview when Taylor revealed himself as
the author, he said that “many of the
senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within
to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. The country cannot
rely on well-intentioned, unelected bureaucrats around the President to steer
him towards what’s right. He has purged most of them anyway.” I would add
that this time Trump has purged them all.
In 2029 Taylor published
a book, anonymously, called “A Warning” with more details of the workings
inside the first Trump administration.
On Wednesday Trump
called Taylor a traitor who “wrote a book
and said all sorts of terrible things that were all lies.”
In response to the
executive order Taylor posted on X “I
said this would happen. Dissent isn’t unlawful. It certainly isn’t
treasonous. America is headed down a dark
path. Never has a man so inelegantly proved another man’s point.”
Chris Krebs was the top
cybersecurity official responsible for elections security. After Joe Biden’s
win in 2020 Krebs pushed back on the allegations of election fraud. He said “in every case of which we are aware, these
claims [of fraud] either have been
unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.” For disagreeing with the
MAGA position on election fraud, Krebs was fired by Trump. Later, as a witness
for the January 6 Select Committee, he said “Republican officials, senior officials, including the former President,
lied to the American people about the security of the 2020 election.”
As he was signing the
executive order Trump repeated his lies about the “rigged” 2020 election and called
Krebs “a significant bad-faith actor who
weaponized and abused his Government authority.”
The authors of an
article in Politico put the situation very mildly in writing:
A president ordering investigations of specific
individuals whom he considers to be his political enemies is a remarkable
breach of the traditional wall of separation between the White House and the
Justice Department. Under that norm of separation, criminal investigations are
supposed to be insulated from political pressure, but Trump has repeatedly
scorned the notion of DOJ independence. Making Wednesday’s action even more
remarkable, and perhaps unprecedented, is that Trump used the formal power of
executive orders to effectively brand two individuals as subjects of criminal
investigations.
There are two issues
here. One is the frivolous charges against two men for doing their job and
telling the truth. The more significant issue is the influence of the Executive
Branch on the Department of Justice. During Trump 1.0 he communicated almost
daily with his AG Bill Barr, pressuring him to go after certain people or to
speed up the process. In contrast Biden to my knowledge had no influence on Merrick
Garland after his appointment as AG. When Donald Trump announced his candidacy
for President in the 2024 election Garland removed himself one step farther
from Biden by appointing a special counsel, Jack Smith, to investigate Trump’s
cases. Now Trump is not just pressuring the DOJ he is issuing an executive
order demanding their investigation. Yet Trump and his followers still rave
about Biden’s weaponization of the Justice Department against him and swears
that he would never do such a thing.
At her Senate confirmation
hearing for Attorney General, Pam Bondi said
“Politics have got to be taken out of the system. This
Department has been weaponized for years and years and years. And it has to stop… So will everyone be held to an equal, fair system of
justice if I am the next Attorney General? Absolutely. And no one is above
the law.”
[If you follow the link below to this story you will note
that this page is from the Trump regime website and is titled “Following the Facts: Bondi Dispels Democrat
Myths During Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing”. You would never find such
blatant partisanship in the government website under Biden or any previous president.]
We will find out soon if
Bondi is true to her words or if this is just another example of Republican hypocrisy.
Sources:
https://hartmannreport.com/p/is-this-the-moment-american-democracy-345
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/09/donald-trump-retribution-miles-taylor-00007512
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/28/us/politics/miles-taylor-anonymous-trump.html
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