“The people who did this, they need to feel the heat,” Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio said after he was granted clemency by Donald Trump. “They need to be put behind bars and they need to be prosecuted,” Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers said after his release from prison. By “they,” Tarrio and Rhodes were referring to the people whose efforts led both men to be charged, tried, convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms for seditious conspiracy for their roles in planning and organizing the Jan. 6 insurrection. They want the prosecutors who prosecuted them to be prosecuted themselves. And they might just get their wish.
On the day of his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order on “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government.” It serves as a declaration that this administration is looking to punish those Trump perceives as his enemies. And while much of the order focuses on federal law enforcement, including the Justice Department, there’s good reason to believe that Trump’s campaign of revenge will be felt throughout the federal government.
From the start, the document makes its target clear: Joe Biden and those who worked for him.
The result is Orwellian in both substance and rhetoric. Just as he plans to “drain the swamp” with the swampiest administration in history, and make government “efficient” by crippling its ability to perform its duties, Trump claims he will end “the weaponization of government” by weaponizing it against his foes.
From the start, the document makes its target clear: Joe Biden and those who worked for him. “The American people have witnessed the previous administration engage in a systematic campaign against its perceived political opponents,” it says in Section 1. “The prior administration and allies throughout the country engaged in an unprecedented, third-world weaponization of prosecutorial power to upend the democratic process,” it goes on, protesting that the insurrectionists who attempted a violent overthrow of the 2020 election on Trump’s behalf were “ruthlessly prosecuted.”
The order then instructs the attorney general to undertake a review of Justice Department activities “over the last 4 years and identify any instances where a department’s or agency’s conduct appears to have been contrary to the purposes and policies of this order.” Similarly, the director of national intelligence is ordered to “review the activities of the Intelligence Community over the last 4 years” to do the same.
These reviews could be ordinary bureaucratic busy work, or they could produce a list of targets for retaliation and even prosecution. As The New York Times’ Michael S. Schmidt and Mark Mazetti reported, the new order suggests a more organized version of Trump’s efforts at reprisals against the FBI for supposedly interfering with his 2016 campaign. That led to the appointment of a special counsel, John Durham, whose investigation petered out in 2023 without charges. But what was then impulsive and haphazard will now be carefully planned and systematic.
We know one person who arrives with a list of targets: Kash Patel, whom Trump has chosen to be the FBI’s director. In one of his books, Patel included a list of 60 ““Members of the Executive Branch Deep State” — the same “deep state” he elsewhere calls the “most dangerous threat to our democracy.”
“We will go out and find the conspirators,” he told a podcast in 2023, “not just in government, but in the media. We are coming after you.”
Prior administrations, including Biden’s, insisted that the White House should not influence Justice Department decisions.
When Patel appears for his Senate confirmation hearings, he may say that we should ignore everything he wrote and said about retaliating against Trump’s enemies. He may insist that he will not order the bureau to investigate anyone who doesn’t have it coming. In her confirmation hearing, Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi swore up and down that politics would play no part in her decisions; “The partisanship, the weaponization will be gone,” she said. But given their personal devotion to Trump and his whims — including his obsession with proving the lie that he was the true winner of the 2020 election, a lie to which Bondi is still committed — it’s awfully hard to believe.
Especially since the last thing either of them is likely to do is insulate their department from Trump’s desires.
To the contrary: While prior administrations, including Biden’s, insisted that the White House should not influence Justice Department decisions, Republicans now believe the department has been too independent of the president, and the cure is to give Trump more say in who should be investigated and prosecuted — or who should not be.
Consider this: For all the criticisms of Biden’s pardon of his son late last year, he allowed his attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor who investigated and charged Hunter Biden, a process that dragged on for years without interference. Could anyone believe that if there were allegations against one of Trump’s children, no matter how serious, Trump’s Justice Department would be permitted to go ahead with a prosecution? Of course not.
And when this executive order’s message is so clear, there’s ample reason to worry that the weaponization will spread throughout the federal government. Every Trump appointee will know that if they target, harass and purge civil servants they can say were too friendly to Biden, the White House will have their back.
It’s not as though Trump has hidden his intentions: During the campaign, he repeatedly said he would take revenge for what he claimed were unfair prosecutions and lawsuits. “When this election is over, based on what they’ve done, I would have every right to go after them,” he said. “Sometimes revenge can be justified.” Now that he has the power, he’s going to do exactly what he promised.
