'Path of autocracy': Ex-Trump officials condemn exec orders targeting national security experts
President Donald Trump on March 14, 2025 (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian/Flickr)
Although President Donald Trump often rails against "radical-left lunatics" — many of them center-left Democrats who are way to the right of leftist parties in Europe — he isn't shy about attacking right-wing conservatives and libertarians he regards as enemies. Trump, on April 9, issued executive orders asking the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate two of his foes on the right: former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) head Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) during Trump's first presidency.
In 2018, Taylor wrote an anonymous op-ed for the New York Times that was highly critical of Trump. The op-ed was famously headlined "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration."
Now, a bipartisan group of Trump critics — including some conservative Republicans who were part of his first administration — is circulating an open letter that wholeheartedly condemns Trump's call for an investigation of Krebs and Taylor.
The New York Times' Karoun Demirjian notes, "The letter was spearheaded by the State Democracy Defenders Fund, a group run by Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who served on the staff of the first team of House Democrats that worked to impeach Mr. Trump in 2019. The Brookings Institution is not involved in the fund, nor was it involved in the letter."
Those who signed the letter include attorney Ty Cobb, former DHS General Counsel John Mitnick, The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson (a former GOP strategist), Olivia Troye (who served as a national security adviser to former President Mike Pence), Harvard University law professor Laurence Tribe, former Rep. David Jolly (R-Florida), and political strategist Lucy Caldwell, among many others.
The letter reads, "We write with grave concern about the two presidential memoranda dated April 9, 2025, targeting Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor, respectively — two former national security officials who served the people of the United States. These executive actions represent a dangerous escalation in the abuse of presidential power: weaponizing federal agencies to carry out personalized retribution against named individuals."
Those who signed the letter don't mince words, attacking Trump's executive orders as dangerously "authoritarian."
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"Indeed, the President's actions not only evoke some of the worst moments in our history; they go even further," the letter warns. "For a president to personally and publicly direct the levers of the federal government against publicly named citizens for political reasons sets a new and perilous precedent in our republic. It brings to mind the abuses of power that characterize authoritarian nations, not the United States. No matter one's party or politics, every American should reject the notion that the awesome power of the presidency can be used to pursue individual vendettas. Behavior of this kind is more to be expected from a royal despot than the elected leader of a constitutional republic. This is the path of autocracy, not democracy."
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