So make it three for three (so far) on Donald Trump’s enemy list to be charged with federal crimes, as former National Security Advisor John Bolton has now been indicted.
While the Bolton charges might be more solid than those lodged against former FBI Director Jim Comey and New York Attorney General Tish James (of which there are no grounds) the real motivating factor in all these cases is “Lock Them Up!,” as Trump has chanted for years and he’s making the Department of Justice do just that.
The Magna Carta says that the king doesn’t have that power and the Constitution says that the president doesn’t have that power, but Trump and his DOJ stooges don’t care.
Still, to anyone giving federal prosecutors the benefit of the doubt, we have some advice: don’t. The administration wants you to consider this Bolton indictment as you would any other, a marker that the government has enough evidence to bring charges and that in its prosecutorial discretion — which always exists — determined that the alleged criminal activity is of such severity that it requires the time and resources of the federal government. That is, sadly, not how things work anymore.
Trump, asked about the Bolton case, once again did his classic dodge of claiming that he did not know about it but that it seemed right. There are two options here, both bad: on the one hand, Trump might be lying, something he’s well known to do reflexively for all occasions, especially if he sees some personal benefit for him. We certainly wouldn’t put it past the president to have ordered Bolton charged and then played the sucker when reporters asked him about this openly authoritarian move.
On the other hand, it’s also perfectly plausible that he really did not know, just as he does not seem to know a good deal of what happens in his whacky administration. Trump personally has never been all that interested in the nuts and bolts of management or policy or government. He likes to speak to the cameras and see himself on television, but as for the daily decision-making, he mostly seems content to toss it over to the group of grifters and ideologues that populate his government.
We would not be surprised if an immoral operator like Kash Patel atop the FBI took this sort of step without Trump‘s knowledge, hoping to impress the old man by helpfully pursuing his “lock them up” agenda.
Either way, the pattern here is clear. Those who have too publicly or forcefully criticized Trump or his administration are clear targets for political retribution in the form of weaponized justice, no actual wrongdoing needed. Whatever pretext the administration needs to invent, it will do so in order to punish these political transgressors and send a message to the rest.
There’s no reason to think this will stop, with Bolton now, at least until there are tangible repercussions for engaging in this autocratic targeting. These are not cases that are designed to win — any respectable federal judge will laugh them out of court, and we’re hoping they do so quickly — but designed to intimidate.
For this, we need a political solution, which by all rights should be oversight action by Congress. This Congress, under control by Trump sycophants, is not going to do it. Perhaps the next one will. In the meantime, these charges should be dismissed with prejudice, and these critics should keep speaking.
