Writing history … Weaponize the Dept of Justice

Two weeks ago, in a post titled Writing history, I looked at the people Donald Trump has chosen for senior positions, the notion of ‘dismantling government’ which is task #1 according to the Project 2025 playbook, and used Hungary under Victor Orban as a model. (Apologies if these posts aren’t your cup of tea. I will continue to feature mainly historical fiction.)

Trump has announced many more picks since then and one or two of his earlier picks have been set aside. Talent does not seem to be the main criteria for any of his subsequent choices.

Let’s have a look at Weaponize the Department of Justice, #5 on the P2025 list. My first reaction – perhaps yours too – is to stumble over the word ‘weaponize’. The notion of justice as a weapon is scary. A weapon against whom? A weapon for what purpose? A weapon under whose control?

Some of you may have read an earlier post featuring two authors on the topic of fascism: Madeleine Albright – Fascism: A Warning – and Anne Applebaum – Twilight of Democracy. They write compellingly of the threat fascism represents to democracy and some of the indicators they see in today’s world that echo past and current fascist and/or authoritarian regimes. Although I have yet to read it, Ben Rhodes, a former White House Aide to President Obama, has written After The Fall which considers why democracy is so threatened in the U.S. and in other parts of the world.

Madeleine Albright, a former Secretary of State, writes that Trump “conceives of the world as a battlefield in which every country is intent on dominating every other; where nations compete like real estate developers to ruin rivals.” Later she says, “This was how twentieth-century Fascism began: with a magnetic leader exploiting widespread dissatisfaction by promising all things.”

Like Donald Trump who speaks of the “enemy within”, Albright says that Hitler “sought to incite hatred toward those he considered traitors.” Hitler’s “goal was to secure approval of a law authorizing him to ignore the constitution, bypass the Reichstag [parliament] and govern by decree.” Furthermore, Hitler “called dissent a threat to freedom and revoked the operating licenses of television and radio stations that failed to toe the line.”

If we look at Venezuela under the rule of Hugo Chavez (legitimately elected) who sought to suppressed the press, manipulated electoral laws, and arrested and exiled government critics, Albright writes that Chavez managed to “achieve power by democratic means, then kill democracy.” “[W]hen the courts later ruled against him, Chavez suspended the judges and packed the court with more compliant appointees” … “he stripped the bureaucracy of people who opposed his policies, then of those who were not sufficiently servile.”

Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey (legitimately elected) “proposed legislation to expand the courts and thereby his ability to appoint judges.” “[A]fter abolishing the office of Prime Minister through a referendum and transferring its powers to him, Erdogan now has a “broader ability to appoint judges and ministers, control budgets, and dictate security policy.”

In Hungary, Viktor Orban (legitimately elected) rewrote “the constitution in a way that expands the powers of the prime minister while diminishing those of parliament.” His “first step upon returning to office was to subvert the independence of the country’s constitutional tribunal, reducing it to a rubber stamp.” He then enacted a new civil service law that “made it easier to purge the bureaucracy.”

Toward the end of her book, Madeleine Albright reflects on Donald Trump who was president at the time she wrote. “Trump’s view of the United States is dark. Among his favourite mantras are that the U.S. courts are biased, the FBI is corrupt, the press almost always lies, and elections are rigged.” Sadly, Trump has convinced almost 50% of American voters to endorse him. According the Albright, “He flaunts his disdain for democratic institutions, the ideals of equality and social justice, civil discourse, civic virtues, and America itself.”

“We have learned from history,” Albright concludes, “that Fascists can reach high office via elections. When they do, the first step they attempt is to undermine the authority of competing power centers.” The courts and other judicial bodies are one of those – one might say the most influential of those ‘competing power centers’.

Anne Applebaum who lived in Poland for a number of years, writes about the party in power there: “The point was to make the government more partisan, the courts more pliable, more beholden to the party.”

Authoritarians, Applebaum says “need the people who can use sophisticated legal language, people who can argue that breaking the constitution or twisting the law is the right thing to do.”

In July, the US Supreme Court rendered a decision that the president has “absolute immunity for acts committed as president within their core constitutional purview,” and “at least presumptive immunity for official acts within the outer perimeter of their official responsibility.” The timing of this decision is suspicious. The number of meetings conducted by Trump loyalists with Viktor Orban and His representatives is also suspicious.

In an article titled The End of Judicial Independence, Anne Applebaum writes: “A recent Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity that appears designed to assist former [and now future] President Donald Trump; a Trump-appointed district-court judge who went against decades of legal precedent to shield the 45th president from the law—these must be taken seriously as signs that the independence of our courts is cracking, not because judges aren’t protected but because some judges are quite happy to serve ‘at the pleasure of the crown.'”

In that same article, Applebaum writes about Viktor Orban’s ruling party Law and Justice: “a government with a legitimate, democratically elected parliamentary majority decided, with the cooperation of the equally legitimate president, to bring judicial independence to an end. Unexpectedly, this turned out to be extremely easy.” They forced older high-court judges into immediate retirement, gave the party the ability to appoint a large number of new judges, and created a new, unconstitutional body that had the power to investigate and sanction judges whose rulings displeased the government.

Consider this – in the United States, the wife of one of the current Supreme Court justices played a role in seeking to overthrow the 2020 election results; two SC justices have accepted significant gifts from people with an interest in their decisions. Additionally, “more than one justice misled Congress during confirmation hearings about their intentions to overturn Roe v. Wade ; money and lobbyists have played an enormous role in the transformation of the Court; the Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell broke convention to block one nomination and then enable another; and now that Republican-dominated Court has extended immunity to a Republican ex-president who has broken the law.”

What if Trump appoints “to the courts—dozens more minimally qualified people who believe their role is to defend the president or avenge his enemies, not to defend the rule of law” or the constitution?

According to columnist Manish Tewari, in an article titled How judiciary helped Hitler and Stalin in destroying political opposition, “Hitler leveraged the authority conceded to him in terms of the Reichstag Fire Decree to set up his own judicial system, outside the hierarchical order of the German court system and even outside the ambit of German law. These were the Sondergerichte or the Nazi special courts. The remit of these special courts was extensive. Almost any crime that could be described as political opposition to the Nazi regime ended up before them … Judges in Nazi Germany were then instructed that in the event of any conflict between the Nazi Party and Law, the Nazi Party should always succeed as their objectives surmounted any notions of fair play.”

What does Donald Trump have to saw about the judicial system?

• He has used social media to call for the prosecutions of Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Barack Obama, James Comey, and members of Congress including Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff and Ilhan Omar; source Bloomberg.com
• Following his indictment on 34 charges, Trump  accused prosecutors, without evidence, of a politically motivated campaign to keep him from the White House; source Reuters
• Trump has publicly stated that he will go after Liz Cheney and other “crooked” political opponents and has vowed retribution for those who have wronged him; source Vanity Fair
• Trump has called his trials unfair; source Vanity Fair
• Trump has openly fantasized of imprisoning journalists; source Vanity Fair
• In Trump’s own words: “I mean, if somebody — if I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ Mostly what that would be, you know, they would be out of business. They’d be out, they’d be out of the election.” source CBSNews

Concerns have been expressed about some of the team members Donald Trump has selected to manage and oversee the justice department and its related portfolios.

• Pam Bondi for Attorney General – Bondi is a long time Trump loyalist. “In one radio appearance, she blasted [Jack] Smith and other prosecutors who have charged Trump as horrible people she said were trying to make names for themselves by “going after Donald Trump and weaponizing our legal system.” source: AP
  • Bondi has criticised the criminal cases against Trump and spoken out against Jack Smith, the justice department special counsel, and other prosecutors who charged the president-elect in two federal cases. source: BBC
  • When Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records, Bondi called it a “sad day for our justice system.” source BBC
• Todd Blanche for Deputy Attorney General – it’s hard to imagine Donald Trump’s criminal defense attorney standing up against changes to him when Trump is in office. One can always hope.
• Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence – a woman who has publicly expressed support for Putin and former Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad.
• Kash Patel for FBI Director – a man who has openly vowed to find ways to punish Trump’s perceived enemies and to shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and open it the next day as a museum of the Deep State.

So what do you think? Will the judicial system be able to withstand a call to weaponize it? Are there enough checks and blanches in place to avoid what has happened in the past – Hitler and Mussolini and Chavez – and what is going on right now in countries like Hungary, Poland and Turkey?

Back to historical fiction in the next post.

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M.K. Tod writes historical fiction. Her latest novel THAT WAS THEN is a contemporary thriller. Mary’s other novels, THE ADMIRAL’S WIFE, PARIS IN RUINS, TIME AND REGRET, LIES TOLD IN SILENCE and UNRAVELLED are available from Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Google Play and iTunes. She can be contacted on Facebook or on her website www.mktod.com.