Donald Trump's insatiable urge for payback has rapidly evolved into a methodical framework. During the past year, the chief executive's rage and whims have adopted the guise of administrative measures in ways analogous to past repressive governments. Government figures who fail to comply are immediately dismissed and succeeded by supporters. Critical figures who confront him face prosecution, trial and punishment. Opponents have been categorized under executive directives as “hostile to national interests”, “against faith communities” and “anti-capitalist”, and menaced with criminal charges as “security threats”.
Government Institutions Restructured
Every situation involving prosecution of political opponents and immunity for supporters demonstrates its own distinct qualities. However, notwithstanding their specific nature, they embody examples of what has developed as a deliberate approach. These events are anything but random. His cleansing of federal prosecutors and Federal Bureau of Investigation officials, coupled with his appointment of loyalists in key roles, started quickly, soon developed a pattern, and has now been formed into a system. The justice department and the law enforcement agency have been remade into ideological organizations under Trump's explicit direction to carry out his wishes. Injustice has been turned into standard. It constitutes the system of punishment.
Leadership is focused with targeting the leader's supposed adversaries than they are with safeguarding our public welfare.
Inside the Apparatus
The origin of this mechanism has been uncovered in the legal complaint of multiple ex- top law enforcement executives submitted in September in the US district court in DC against agency head Kash Patel and top lawyer Pam Bondi for wrongful dismissal in “a campaign of retribution against the officials for what the accused deemed to be a refusal to exhibit proper allegiance”. In the complaint that a former acting director, the previous acting FBI director, details a exchange in which he “freely confessed the unlawfulness of his behavior”.
Driscoll had tried to protect FBI agents from being fired, the lawsuit alleges. Patel advised him that “they” – interpreted by Driscoll to be the executive branch and federal prosecutors – had instructed him to fire anyone who they determined as having participated in a criminal investigation against the president. The document adds: “He explained that he had to terminate the personnel his leaders told him to dismiss, because his capacity to retain his own job was contingent on the removal of the personnel who handled cases involving the President. He explained that there was no option he or the official could do to stop these or any other terminations, because ‘the bureau tried to incarcerate the President in prison and he recalls it clearly.’” When Driscoll told Patel he was disregarding the bureau's own policies, Patel reportedly said “he understood that and he was aware the character of the immediate dismissals were probably improper”.
Widespread Consequences
After Patel's alleged admission to Driscoll, the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau have been gutted and repurposed for Trump's system of punishment. Multiple of the FBI's high-ranking agents were fired or compelled to leave in the initial period of the government. Roughly 4,500 professional attorneys at the department have agreed to a “early exit scheme”. No fewer than seven DoJ lawyers, including those in the New York office, stepped down in protest over what they viewed as political interference in dropping the legal action against the city leader, a political figure, in return for his collaboration with the administration's Immigration and Customs Enforcement detentions of immigrants. The ethics division of the justice department, which handles ethical violations, has been reduced to a handful of lawyers. The equality section has been severely reduced: seventy percent of its employees has resigned. A third of senior leaders at the justice department have left. The section enforcing environmental law has lost 50% its leadership.
Rewards and Penalties
Regarding the legal matter, the acting US attorney for the NY office, the official, resigned in protest against what she described as the “quid pro quo”. Tom Homan, the president's “border czar,” was present as the implementer with the mayor on a media outlet to declare: “Should he fail to deliver, I will return in New York City.”. And, another figure, formerly the acting deputy attorney general and a former Trump attorney, who arranged the agreement, was awarded an court role, a possible pathway to the supreme court.
Trump's immunity for crimes carried out while in government, provided by the extraordinary decision of the conservative on the supreme court, thus thwarting his prosecution over the political violence and preserving his public standing for the presidential race, is the foundation stone on which he relies to protect his stalwarts. Given this protection, he has been liberated to enable corruption. The consequence of the court judgment saturates his presidency and the Republican Party completely. Trump v United States has escalated. In the words of the former president's legal adviser John Dean said about the Watergate
