'Worst type of corruption': Watergate lawyer rips Trump's 'Orwellian' weaponization of DOJ
A former council to a Watergate special prosecutor tells The Guardian that President Donald Trump's weaponization of the Justice Department to punish his political enemies is "the worst type of corruption of the rule of law."
As counsel to Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox (and later Leon Jaworski), Philip Lacovara played a significant role in the Watergate investigation and argued United States v. Nixon before the Supreme Court in 1974.
Lacovara, who successfully argued for the release of the "smoking gun" tapes in United States v. Nixon before the Supreme Court, is still active in the legal field, currently serving as an independent commercial arbitrator and as a legal adviser to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta's Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations.
He says that Trump's indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James are a dangerous precedent.
“The overt and explicit ‘weaponization’ of the justice department, in defiance of the professional judgment of career prosecutors that the criminal prosecutions are unwarranted, is the worst type of corruption of the rule of law,” he tells The Guardian.
Lacovara says that Trump's ignoring of the Department of Justice's principles of federal prosecution are especially dangerous.
“The department’s principles of federal prosecution explicitly prohibit federal prosecutors from considering partisan and political factors in deciding whether to pursue criminal charges," he says.
"But Trump has made these considerations a primary motive for bringing down the weight of the federal law enforcement apparatus on the heads of his political enemies," he adds.
Lacovara’s points, The Guardian says, are "underscored by how DoJ has seemed to move in lockstep with Trump’s suggestions that foes he’s publicly attacked on Truth Social and in other public and private ways should be prosecuted or investigated."
Trump's deployment of Attorney General Pam Bondi to bring charges against his political enemies, The Guardian says, is proof of the president's defiling of protocol, but Bondi isn't acting alone.
Ed Martin, "a combative lawyer with strong MAGA credentials including promoting bogus claims of election fraud in 2020 and legal work he did for some of the January 6 rioters," has emerged as "a key figure in pushing hard for charges against some of Trump’s avowed enemies," The Guardian notes.
Martin was put in charge of a “weaponization working group”, to go after alleged weaponization by DoJ under Democratic presidents, and former prosecutors are raising the alarm about him, too.
"“His chief value to the administration is to go after people Trump has identified as enemies by any means or tactics he can find, whether legally sound or not,” said Mike Gordon, a senior DoJ prosecutor on January 6 cases and one of about 20 prosecutors ousted by Trump’s DoJ.
“Ed Martin’s role as both the pardon attorney and head of the weaponization working group is concerning in light of a long list of public comments he has made,” said Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for eastern Michigan who now teaches law at the University of Michigan.
Lacovara agrees, calling the DoJ’s compliance with Trump’s demands to charge his enemies “a truly Orwellian shift in generations-long justice department tradition."
"Trump has managed to condemn investigations into his personal conduct by non-political professional prosecutors, while simultaneously and expressly commanding his political appointees in the justice department to prosecute his perceived political enemies," he says.
