The Anti-President

I don’t want to be an alarmist—I try to avoid that—but as I’m writing this, it looks like we are in the middle of a five-alarm fire. It’s day 13 of Trump 2.0. From day one, it was clear that Donald Trump was not playing by normal American constitutional rules. Of course, it has long been obvious that he didn’t intend to play by the rules, but any pretense of lawfulness was stripped away when he tried to cancel birthright citizenship with an executive order that ran afoul of the clear language in the Constitution, as confirmed in short order by two federal judges. In the following days, it became more clear that we were not okay, that nothing was right.

During his second week in office, Trump illegally fired 18 inspectors general, the people who ferret out corruption, waste, and fraud in federal agencies. It sounds like, under Trump, there will be no more of that. No independent inspectors general to poke around. Trump has made it clear that personal loyalty to him is more important than principle. Government employees, including those with civil service protections, now serve at his pleasure.

That message was driven home on January 31, when something commenters referred to as a “Friday night massacre” took place. But that historical reference to Watergate lacked resonance. In 1973, the Saturday Night Massacre took place when Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor investigating Richard Nixon, refused to drop a subpoena for the Nixon White House tapes, whose existence he had learned of when an aide, Alex Butterfield, revealed their existence during testimony before a Senate Committee investigating the Watergate break-in. Nixon sent out the order to Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox.

On October 20, 1973, Richardson refused the president’s order and resigned on the spot. Nixon turned to Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, ordering him to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus also refused and resigned. It fell to Solicitor General Robert Bork to fulfill Nixon’s order, but by then, the damage to Nixon was done. Nothing of that sort happened last night.

Archibald Cox issued a statement on his way out the door that included these memorable words, “Whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people.” Ten days later, on October 30, 1973, Nixon’s impeachment began, and a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, was appointed in November. Later that month, a federal judge ruled Cox’s dismissal violated the rules covering special counsels.

By comparison, there hasn’t been much of a furor this weekend. Trump’s now-former lawyer, Emil Bove, the acting deputy attorney general, issued the orders to remove FBI officials. Bove wrote in a memo, “The FBI — including the Bureau’s prior leadership — actively participated in what President Trump appropriately described as ‘a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated on the American people over the last four years’ with respect to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”

It’s outrageous. But, there hasn’t been much in the way of public outrage.

By the end of the day on Friday, the purge extended to senior FBI officials, including about a half-dozen executive assistant directors, some of the Bureau’s top managers who oversee criminal, national security, and cyber investigations. There were also reports of firings of senior FBI leaders, including the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s field office in Washington, D.C., and special agents in charge of field offices across the country, including Miami and Las Vegas. The special agent in charge of the Las Vegas FBI Office said, “I was given no rationale for this decision, which, as you might imagine, has come as a shock.”

This situation might seem reminiscent of the George W. Bush administration’s midterm firing of its own U.S. Attorneys, but there’s a big difference. The U.S. Attorneys were political appointees who served at the president’s pleasure. These FBI employees are career. They have civil service protections, and although they can be demoted, they cannot be fired without cause. Lawsuits might expose that, but so far, a number of the impacted FBI executives seem to be taking the option of retiring ahead of their firing date, which preserves their pensions and other retirement benefits.

DOJ’s acting leadership also instructed the FBI on Friday to turn over information about “all current and former bureau employees who ‘at any time’ worked on January 6 investigations,” according to an email acting FBI director Brian Driscoll sent out. The email included an attachment from Emil Bove suggesting those employees’ records would be reviewed to determine “whether any additional personnel actions”—i.e., more firings—“are necessary.” The FBI is one of the four law enforcement components of the Justice Department. Its director takes orders from the attorney general and the deputy attorney general.

You would have to be asleep at the switch to miss the fact that this looks like an effort to take revenge on every FBI employee involved in a Trump prosecution or a January 6-related prosecution. Prosecutors who worked on those cases were fired during the week as well. In the case of the Bush U.S. Attorneys, some, but not all of the firings allegedly involved either interfering with prosecutions of Republican politicians or failure to investigate Democratic politicians and efforts to protect the voting rights of Democratic-leaning voters. Even though these were employees who could be fired at will by the president without cause, the Justice Department Inspector General’s Report on the matter concluded that the dismissals were “arbitrary,” “fundamentally flawed,” and “raised doubts about the integrity of Department prosecution decisions.” Actions like this do more than just punish; they instill fear in the ranks of people who need to keep their jobs. And the last thing we need with Trump in charge of a Justice Department that is willing to do his bidding and let him use the power of prosecution as a political tool.

Friday night, there wasn’t much more than a whimper from the public. Americans didn’t take to the streets. Nothing like the pink pussy hats of 2016 was evident. Some people talked about how horrible it was, but for the most part Americans went about their business. It was a win for Donald Trump, or at least, it wasn’t the loss it should have been.

Presidents are supposed to follow the law and honor their oaths. Bill Clinton was investigated while in office and interviewed by Justice Department lawyers. He was impeached. But he didn’t fire the agents and the prosecutors. Not Donald Trump. He is an anti-president who does not uphold the law, and there is no telling where it will end.

Once disobedience to the law is on the table, even adherence to absolutes—like the two term limit on holding the office of the presidency—fall into question. As James Romoser, POLITICO’s legal editor wrote yesterday, “when rulers consolidate power through a cult of personality, they do not tend to surrender it willingly, even in the face of constitutional limits. And Trump, of course, already has a track record of trying to remain in office beyond his lawful tenure.” Romoser concludes, as did I earlier in the week, that the possibility Trump will seek and secure a third term shouldn’t be dismissed with a hand wave, as some commentators have. He’s the anti-president, after all.

During Kash Patel’s confirmation hearing to head the FBI this week, he testified under oath that he wasn’t aware of any plans to punish agents involved in the Trump cases. He said, “no one will be terminated for case assignments.” He also said that “All FBI employees will be protected against political retribution.” Donald Trump made a liar out of him. But it’s the American people who will end up paying for it.

We’re in this together,

Joyce