Proving that irony was long ago beaten to death with a shovel in a dimly lit corner of a Cracker Barrel parking lot, Donald Trump, who has frequently groused about the politicization of the DOJ and FBI because they’ve had the temerity to investigate him, is now hoping to install his own toadies in federal law enforcement so he can never be investigated. But don’t call that politicization! After all, how can a guy who knows virtually nothing about politics politicize something? This could be more accurately described as “greasing the skids for fascism with the freshly harvested ass tallow of Dear Leader’s enemies.”
A new report from Rolling Stone reveals that Trump is plotting behind the scenes to ensure that his second term (sorry, I should have said something in the lede, or maybe the headline, about fetching a vomit pail) will be free of irksome impediments like common decency and “the law.”
Indeed, he’s looking to compile an enemies list of FBI and Justice Department employees who, for some reason, still prefer to honor their constitutional oaths instead of a shambolic, constipated oaf. And, like Nixon before him, he’s not going to simply allow traitors to their country pumpkin-spiced poobah to run amok in government.
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In recent months, the former president has asked close advisers, including at least one of his personal attorneys, if “we know” all the names of senior FBI agents and Justice Department personnel who have worked on the federal probes into him. That’s according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter and another person briefed on it.
The former president has then privately discussed that should he return to the White House, it is imperative his new Department of Justice “quickly” and “immediately” purge the FBI and DOJ’s ranks of these officials and agents who’ve led the Trump-related criminal investigations, the sources recount. The ex-president has of course dubbed all such probes as illegitimate “witch hunts,” and is now campaigning for the White House on a platform of “retribution” and cleaning house.
Of course, Trump’s plans to purge everything but his musty McNugget warehouse of a colon are of a piece with earlier reports that he wants to make it easy to rid government agencies of anyone he doesn’t like. This way, he can install a phalanx of pliant appointees who won’t say “boo” if he wants to, I don’t know, stay an extra four or eight or 12 years before handing the reins to either his trained clone or Don Jr., depending on which one spots Waldo first.
Also, in the ancient Trumpian tradition of hiring people who later turn out to be total losers who had no business taking the jobs Trump freely offered them, Trump wants to 86 FBI director Chris Wray, whom Trump appointed in 2017. In fact, according to more than one source Rolling Stone spoke to, Trump has been saying for “many months” that he wants Wray out of the FBI on “day one” of his new administration. (You should really have a vomit pail handy anytime you see the name “Trump” in a headline; this isn’t on me.)
By the end of 2020, Trump was venting to senior administration officials that he would make it a top priority to replace Wray “next year,” blasting the director for not wholesale purging the FBI of non-Trump-loyalists. Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, and thus didn’t get his chance to fire Wray in 2021.
Meanwhile, Rolling Stone reports that some of Trump’s political cronies are “working on figuring out the identities of the FBI and DOJ staff and forming lists.” Because that’s not horribly disturbing or anything.
Also, the conservative nonprofit Judicial Watch has filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking for information on “all employees hired by or detailed to the office of Special Counsel Jack Smith.” Smith, of course, is investigating Trump’s alleged theft of classified government documents and his January 2021 coup attempt against the U.S. government. The same government that Trump wants to run again—this time like the world’s laziest mob boss.
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“One can only conclude, after seeing the uproar over the anti-Trump, partisan Mueller operation, that the Garland Justice Department has something to hide about Jack Smith and his prosecutors again targeting Trump and other Republicans with unprecedented investigations,” Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch president and a key Trump ally, said after the DOJ denied the request in April.
Of course, if there’s been an uproar over the “anti-Trump, partisan Mueller operation,” it could be because that operation so successfully identified wrongdoing on the part of Trump and his campaign. Ironically, the only thing that saved Trump from the Mueller report was his own highly politicized Justice Department, whose leader at the time, Attorney General Bill Barr, furiously spun the report’s conclusions to protect his boss.
In fact, the Mueller report flagged at least 10 incidences of likely obstruction and highlighted numerous contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russian operatives—and Robert Mueller himself explicitly stated that his report did not exonerate Trump. Meanwhile, a GOP-led Senate panel later concluded that the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia amounted to a “grave threat” and showed that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had shared internal polling data with likely Russian spy Konstantin Kilimnik, thereby proving collusion. (Trump would later corruptly pardon Manafort just before leaving office.)
Trump’s autocratic instincts—which were always rumbling just beneath the surface—are now out in the open, and he’s not even trying to conceal them anymore. The Rolling Stone report gives us one example, but it’s far from the only one. The Washington Post recently ran a chilling piece on the “deepening radicalization” of Trump, and it provides a fitting complement to Rolling Stone’s reporting:
In the storyline Trump presents, he is always the victim, but so are his supporters: The shared experience of suffering through conflicts brings them closer and strengthens their bond, according to Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian at New York University and the author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.”
“When authoritarian leaders lose office, they come back, like, 10 times worse — they never get less extreme, they always get more extreme,” Ben-Ghiat said. “January 6 was a profoundly radicalizing event for the base, for the GOP and for Trump himself, because even assaulting the Capitol you could get away with. His campaign events have to be seen as that of an extremist radicalizing people and emotionally reeducating people to hate people.”
Trump will never acknowledge that any investigation into his actions is legitimate. Because he thinks like a dictator, and he understands that dictators can’t be bothered with the opprobrium of pesky underlings. Needless to say, if we fall for his disgraceful dog and pony show again, we deserve what’s coming to us.
Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.
