How an 'obedient DOJ' could 'exact revenge on' Trump’s enemies: legal experts

21 December 2023

Revenge and grievance have been prominent themes of GOP frontrunner Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign. During a March 4 rally in Maryland, the former president told supporters, "I am your retribution" — and he has repeatedly painted his legal problems as attacks on Americans who plan to vote for him.

Under the Project 2025 agenda that Trump's allies are pushing, the United States' federal government — from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — would be purged of anyone who isn't a total Trump loyalist. Trump's critics view Project 2025 as a blueprint for authoritarianism.

In an essay/op-ed published on December 21, the New York Times' Thomas B. Edsall interviews some major legal experts and describes the type of damage that Trump could cause during a second term if he wins the 2024 election and successfully carries out the Project 2025 agenda.

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Harvard University law professor Laurence Tribe told Edsall, "There is little doubt that Donald Trump could impose authoritarian policies that endanger dissent, erase the requirements that ensure at least a modicum of the consent of the governed, and are downright dictatorial while acting entirely within the literal scope of the law, although, needless to say, in flagrant defiance of its spirit. Neither the Constitution's text nor the language of the federal statutes and regulations in force create guardrails that Trump would need to crash through in a way that courts hewing to the text would feel an obligation to prevent or to redress."

During Trump's four years in the White House, he clashed with U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions as well as with someone who later held that position: Bill Barr, who pushed back against his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

But Jack Balkin, a law professor at Yale University in Connecticut, fears that the DOJ could be much more "obedient" during a second Trump presidency.

Balkin told Edsall, "A president giving orders to an obedient Justice Department can exact revenge on political enemies and chill political opposition. It is not even necessary to send anyone to prison. For many people and organizations, the costs of defending a criminal investigation and prosecution can be ruinous and a sufficient deterrent."

Balkin added, "Moreover, if the public merely believed that the president was using the intelligence services and the IRS to investigate political opponents, this could also chill opposition."

Thomas Edsall's full New York Times essay/op-ed is available at this link (subscription required).

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