Trump's System of Retribution and Reward
Trump's intense urge for payback has quickly transformed into a methodical system. During the past year, the president's fury and whims have adopted the shape of government actions similar to comparable to past authoritarian systems. Federal officials who resist his demands are summarily fired and replaced by loyalists. Political leaders who confront him encounter prosecution, judicial process and sanctions. Opponents have been labeled under administration memoranda as “unpatriotic”, “opposed to religious values” and “opposing economic freedom”, and menaced with criminal charges as “terrorists”.
Government Institutions Remade
Each situation involving prosecution of critics and leniency for loyalists exhibits its own distinct features. Yet, regardless of their individual character, they represent expressions of what has developed as a systematic method. These episodes are anything but isolated. His purge of DoJ lawyers and Federal Bureau of Investigation personnel, accompanied by his placement of devotees in key roles, commenced swiftly, soon assumed a pattern, and has now been formed into a regime. DoJ and the Federal Bureau have been restructured into political organizations under Trump's direct direction to execute his demands. Unfairness has been made standard. This is the system of punishment.
Leadership is more concerned with punishing the President's supposed enemies than they are with safeguarding our national security.
Inside the System
The beginnings of this framework has been exposed in the lawsuit of several previous senior law enforcement executives lodged in September in the federal court in Washington against top official an administration figure and attorney general a key figure for wrongful dismissal in “a campaign of retribution against them for what administration figures deemed to be a refusal to show proper devotion”. In the complaint that Brian Driscoll, the previous acting FBI director, describes a exchange in which he “openly acknowledged the unlawfulness of his actions”.
He had sought to defend FBI agents from being terminated, the lawsuit claims. He advised him that “they” – interpreted by Driscoll to be the presidential administration and DoJ – had directed him to fire anyone who they determined as having participated in a legal probe against Trump. The complaint adds: “Patel clarified that he had to terminate the individuals his bosses told him to fire, because his ability to hold his own role was contingent on the ouster of the agents who handled cases involving the leader. He commented that there was no way he or the official could do to stop these or any other terminations, because ‘the FBI attempted to place the President in jail and he remembers.’” After he told Patel he was breaking the bureau's own policies, the director reportedly said “he understood that and he was aware the essence of the immediate dismissals were likely illegal”.
Widespread Impact
Since Patel's reported acknowledgment to him, the Department of Justice and the law enforcement agency have been dismantled and redirected for his system of punishment. Six of the bureau's high-ranking agents were fired or pushed out in the first days of the administration. Approximately 4,500 legal professionals at DoJ have taken a “early exit scheme”. A minimum of several government attorneys, including those in the southern district of New York, stepped down in protest over what they viewed as partisan influence in dropping the criminal prosecution against the local official, the mayor, in exchange for his cooperation with Trump's ICE arrests of immigrants. The public integrity section of the justice department, which handles misconduct investigations, has been diminished to two attorneys. The civil rights division has been severely reduced: the majority of its employees has departed. 33% of senior leaders at the department have quit. The division implementing environmental law has lost 50% its management.
Favors and Punishments
Regarding the mayor's situation, the acting US attorney for the federal division, Danielle Sassoon, quit in objection against what she labeled as the “quid pro quo”. A key figure, the president's “enforcement chief,” appeared as the enforcer with the mayor on Fox News to announce: “Unless he complies, I will return in the city.”. Meanwhile, Emil Bove, previously the acting deputy attorney general and a past legal representative, who brokered the arrangement, was awarded an court role, a possible springboard to the supreme court.
The president's protection for crimes perpetrated while in power, awarded by the unprecedented decision of the GOP-led on the supreme court, thus preventing his legal action over the January 6 insurrection and preserving his public standing for the presidential race, is the foundation stone on which he depends to defend his stalwarts. With such immunity, he has been empowered to enable corruption. The effect of the judicial ruling saturates his administration and the Republican Party thoroughly. The court matter has escalated. Similar to a past leader's White House counsel John Dean remarked about the Watergate
