President Donald Trump at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland on February 22, 2025 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
During the 2024 presidential race, many of Donald Trump's opponents warned that if he won the election, he would devote a lot of time and energy to taking revenge against political enemies. And President Trump, critics say, is now doing that in a variety of ways — from attacking major universities and law firms to calling for U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate foes like former Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs, former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)
In an article published by Salon May 20, Austin Sarat — a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College in Massachusetts — laments that that "vengeance" remains a high priority for Trump and his allies. But he cites Harvard University as a role mole for fighting back.
"The legal system in this country has long prided itself on supplying justice in a measured way," Sarat explains. "Government officials are required to abide by an elaborate set of procedures before they can impose penalties on anyone. But all that seems to have fallen by the wayside in the second Trump Administration."
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Sarat continues, "Nowhere has that been more evident than in its dealings with Harvard University…. The Justice Department is trying to determine whether Harvard's admissions process has been used 'to defraud the government' in violation of the False Claims Act. That act was never intended for such a purpose. The (Trump) Administration is using it as a tool of vengeance because Harvard has had the temerity to resist the Administration's various edicts. In return, Trump and his subordinates are using every lever at their disposal to make the university pay the steep price for doing so. That is revenge pure and simple"
According to Sarat, it "seems clear" that that the Trump Administration is using the False Claims Act "to harass Harvard and to continue Trump's vendetta" — but Harvard isn't taking it lying down.
"For a long time, legal scholars have warned that laws designed for one purpose can be used for others," Sarat observes. "But few of them could have imagined the way the Trump Administration is now using and abusing our nation's rules and regulations. Harvard spokesman Jonathan Swain got it right when he called the False Claims investigation 'yet another abusive and retaliatory action…. that the Administration has initiated against Harvard.'"
Sarat adds, "It is as if Trump is channeling God's Old Testament announcement, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay,' with Harvard being one of the president's most prominent targets."
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Austin Sarat's full article for Salon is available at this link.