By
As last week got underway, Donald Trump called for the prosecution of those who criticize judges and Supreme Court justices, despite the existence of the First Amendment and his own record of condemning judges and Supreme Court justices. A few days later, the former president held a bizarre news conference at which he, among other things, called for the prosecution of House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi.
He was, however, just getting started. On Friday, the Republican also called for Google to be criminally prosecuted, in response to some odd new conspiracy theory. On Saturday, Trump reiterated an earlier threat to prosecute anyone who “cheats” in the upcoming election. In a new twist, the GOP candidate added that he also wants to “go back” to the 2020 race and prosecute those he thinks cheated then, too.
All of that, naturally, set the stage for Trump declaring a day later that he wants to see Vice President Kamala Harris prosecuted, too. He never got around to identifying any crimes that the Democrat might’ve committed, but his Pennsylvania audience nevertheless responded in predictable fashion: The Republican’s followers chanted, “Lock her up!”
While all of this is wildly at odds with how American politics is supposed to work, especially at the national level, the speed and volume of Trump’s prosecutorial offensive might make it seem irrelevant, if not a little silly. Indeed, at first blush, we appear to be dealing with a White House hopeful who makes new calls for criminal charges against assorted foes on a nearly daily basis.
But it would be a mistake to simply shrug off the former president’s weird rhetoric as background noise — because as The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend, Trump and his team have ambitious plans for federal law enforcement.
Nothing has motivated or infuriated Trump more than his relationship with the agency. He is determined to remake it in ways that excite firebrands in his base — by replacing career employees with loyalists, by ordering investigations into those who have prosecuted him and by enlisting the Justice Department on the conservative side of the latest culture wars.
It’s not exactly a secret that Trump, during his White House tenure, went to scandalous lengths to weaponize the Justice Department, launching desperate attempts in the hopes of getting federal prosecutors to file charges against people he didn’t like.
But there’s every reason to believe a second Trump term would be vastly worse, in large because he and his team now know how and why their weaponization efforts fell short the first time.