Donald Trump's System of Consequences and Incentives
Trump's intense urge for payback has quickly morphed into a structured apparatus. Within the year since his election, the president's rage and whims have assumed the shape of administrative measures similar to reminiscent to past authoritarian governments. Justice department figures who resist his demands are summarily removed and substituted by devotees. Political figures who question him face prosecution, trial and punishment. Adversaries have been categorized under presidential memoranda as “hostile to national interests”, “opposed to religious values” and “anti-capitalist”, and warned with criminal charges as “security threats”.
Federal Agencies Transformed
Every situation involving legal action of Trump's enemies and immunity for his allies displays its own particular characteristics. But, despite their specific nature, they represent expressions of what has arisen as a systematic approach. These episodes are far from random. The administration's purge of federal lawyers and Federal Bureau of Investigation personnel, coupled with his placement of loyalists in key posts, started swiftly, promptly assumed a regularity, and has now been shaped into a system. The justice department and the FBI have been restructured into political agencies under his clear orders to carry out his demands. Wrongdoing has been turned into normal. It represents the retribution system.
Management is preoccupied with punishing the leader's supposed adversaries than they are with safeguarding our public welfare.
Inside the Structure
The origin of this framework has been exposed in the legal complaint of three previous high-ranking law enforcement agents filed in late summer in the federal court in DC against FBI director Kash Patel and justice department head a key figure for unlawful firing in “a campaign of payback against Plaintiffs for what the accused judged to be a refusal to demonstrate proper devotion”. According to the filing that one official, the ex- interim leader, describes a discussion in which he “freely acknowledged the impropriety of his conduct”.
The official had attempted to defend law enforcement officers from being fired, the filing states. Patel informed him that “they” – perceived by Driscoll to be the executive branch and federal prosecutors – had directed him to fire everyone who they determined as having participated in a criminal investigation against him. The document continues: “The director explained that he had to terminate the individuals his bosses told him to fire, because his capacity to keep his own role depended on the ouster of the officials who worked on matters involving the President. The director explained that there was nothing he or him could do to halt these or any other dismissals, because ‘the bureau tried to place the chief in detention and he recalls it clearly.’” After Driscoll advised him he was breaking the FBI's own policies, the director supposedly said “he knew that and he knew the nature of the summary firings were likely illegal”.
Extensive Effects
Since Patel's reported confession to the official, the justice department and the Federal Bureau have been gutted and redirected for his retribution system. Six of the agency's top officials were fired or forced out in the early weeks of the administration. Approximately 4,500 professional attorneys at the department have accepted a “voluntary departure plan”. At least seven federal prosecutors, including those in the southern district of New York, resigned in dissent over what they viewed as ideological pressure in abandoning the corruption case against the local official, the mayor, in return for his assistance with his ICE detentions of foreign nationals. The ethics division of the department, which oversees misconduct investigations, has been diminished to minimal staff. The civil rights division has been severely reduced: the majority of its personnel has departed. 33% of executives at the department have resigned. The unit upholding environmental law has experienced the exit of half its management.
Favors and Penalties
Regarding the Adams case, the acting US attorney for the southern district of New York, Danielle Sassoon, stepped down in protest against what she described as the “quid pro quo”. Tom Homan, the president's “immigration leader,” was present as the enforcer with Adams on Fox News to announce: “Should he fail to deliver, I'll reappear in New York City.”. And, Emil Bove, previously the senior DoJ official and a former Trump attorney, who arranged the agreement, was given an appellate federal judgeship, a potential stepping stone to the highest court.
His immunity for crimes committed while in government, awarded by the unprecedented decision of the conservative on the supreme court, thus thwarting his criminal case over the political violence and preserving his public standing for the presidential race, is the cornerstone on which he depends to defend his supporters. Under these circumstances, he has been empowered to authorize misconduct. The consequence of the court judgment saturates his administration and the political party down to its bones. The court matter has spread. Similar to the former president's legal adviser John Dean commented about the Watergate
