Donald Trump’s effort at persecuting his political enemies has struck out again with the failed, spurious prosecution of New York Attorney General Tish James, with a Virginia federal grand jury returning a “no true bill” denial of the phony mortgage fraud case ginned up by Trump acolytes and already thrown out once by the disqualification of hand-picked purported U.S. Attorney Lindsay Halligan, an unqualified shill. Yet the Justice Department insists this is not the end of this overreach. It should be.
Double jeopardy doesn’t apply in the same way here given that the mortgage case has not even made it to the trial phase, but the principle still holds; the government should not have the ability to simply keep throwing malicious and vindictive prosecutions at the wall to see what will stick. That is not in service to enforcing the laws or protecting the public, it is transparently an intimidation campaign l directed at perceived antagonists that Trump wants to make an example out of.
It’s looking like Attorney General Pam Bondi is headed for further losses in this crusade against James, with a federal judge signaling that she would disqualify John Sarcone, who is purported to be acting as the U.S. attorney in Albany despite neither having been Senate confirmed nor received the legally-required sign-off of a panel of federal judges. Sarcone had attempted to issue subpoenas targeting James for the heinous crime of doing her job, bringing civil suits against Trump and the National Rifle Association, in cases that were very well-evidence and ultimately successful. No doubt that even if Sarcone is taken off his post, the administration will keep trying.
At least supposed New Jersey U.S. Attorney Alina Habba had not brought any action against James, as then the White House would be 0 for 3 on efforts to have Trump stooges try to take down our AG. Habba — Trump’s former personal attorney — this past week was also disqualified from her post. Prior administrations have generally not struggled with the notion that federal prosecutors must be Senate-confirmed or approved by local judges, but the Trump team wants to do things its way with no constraints or respect for the law.
That it seems stunningly, consistently incompetent in carrying out this attempted weaponization of the Justice Department doesn’t make its motivations any less sinister or the attempt any less concerning. The idea of using the awesome powers of a government prosecutor to pursue political opponents on trumped up charges is such a basic facet of authoritarian governments that we basically use it as shorthand to indicate a regime with no legitimacy globally. Left unchecked, Trump and his cronies will continue sapping at our own government’s legitimacy until we have no stronger a claim to liberal democracy than Putin or Maduro.
The way this stops is with the other branches reasserting their own power, as the courts have been doing (other than the top court, which seems happy to be subservient). Now it is Congress’ turn; the administration leapfrogging the Senate on appointments should be an affront to the body, which, in case senators have forgotten, has real power available to rein this in, ranging from dragging officials in for oversight hearings up to and including impeachment. It’s your responsibility to yourselves, to the public and to this country’s form of government and founding principles.
