Donald Trump ran on a promise to use the powers of the government for revenge against those he believed wronged him. He now appears to be fulfilling that campaign promise while threatening to expand his powers well beyond Washington.
On Friday, the FBI searched the home of John Bolton, Trump’s first-term national security adviser-turned-critic, who last week in an interview called the administration “the retribution presidency.”
Trump’s team has opened investigations of Democrat Letitia James, the New York attorney general who sued Trump’s company over alleged fraud for falsifying records, and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who as a congressman led Trump’s first impeachment. The Republican administration has charged Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., over her actions at an immigration protest in Newark, New Jersey, after arresting Mayor Ras Baraka, also a Democrat. Under investigation, too, is former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a candidate for New York City mayor.
Trump has directed prosecutors to investigate two other members of his first administration: Miles Taylor, who wrote a book warning of what he said were Trump’s authoritarian tendencies, and Chris Krebs, who earned the president’s wrath for assuring voters that the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden, was secure.
The actions look like the payback Trump said he would pursue after being hit with four separate sets of criminal charges during his four years out of office. Those included an indictment for his effort to overturn the 2020 election that was gutted by the U.S. Supreme Court, which said presidents have broad immunity from prosecution for official acts while in office. “Joe Biden weaponized his administration to target political opponents – most famously, President Trump,” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said Saturday. Trump, she said, “is restoring law and order.”
In addition to making good on his promises of retribution, Trump has deployed the military into American cities to fight crime or help with immigration arrests. He has sent thousands of National Guard troops and federal law enforcement officers to patrol the streets in the nation’s capital, after activating the Guard and Marines in Los Angeles earlier this year.
Taken together, the actions have alarmed Democrats and others who fear Trump is wielding the authority of his office to intimidate his political opponents and consolidate power in a way that is unprecedented in American history.
“You combine the threat of prosecution with armed troops in the streets,” said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College. “The picture is pretty clear for anyone who’s read a history book what kind of administration we’re dealing with.”
