The White House is justifying President Donald Trump’s more and more extreme retribution marketing campaign as turnabout that’s honest play. The Democrats did this, ipso facto, we should always do it proper again to them.
“It is not weaponizing the Department of Justice to demand accountability for those who weaponize the Department of Justice,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt advised reporters on Monday.
But the final week has epitomized how Trump has, in actual fact, gone a lot additional in leveraging the instruments of government in opposition to his perceived foes.
Trump pushing out the US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia is a working example.
Pressed on Trump going after his handpicked US lawyer as a result of he was unhappy with efforts to convey fees in opposition to New York Attorney General Letitia James, Leavitt doubled down on portraying James, a Democrat, as a politician “abusing their power” and shortly pivoted to the administration’s accusations of mortgage fraud in opposition to her.
It’s about retribution, sure. But it’s additionally clearly about escalation.
While Republicans usually speculated about President Joe Biden nefariously weaponizing the government, Trump is doing it proper out in the open – in methods not demonstrated in Biden’s time period.
US Attorney Erik Siebert announced Friday that he was stepping down after the president mentioned, “I want him out.” And Trump made it abundantly clear that the purpose he pushed Siebert out was that he had did not cost distinguished Democrats. (The president additionally advised reporters he disliked that Virginia’s two Democratic senators had permitted Siebert as half of a Senate customized.)
Trump went even additional on Saturday, publicly complaining that Attorney General Pam Bondi additionally hadn’t extra aggressively pursued fees in opposition to former FBI Director James Comey, Sen. Adam Schiff of California and James.
“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Trump has spent years pushing the bounds on this topic. He’s floated legal fees for his opponents and commented on pending investigations. Earlier this yr he ordered investigations of two first-term critics.
But even for him, that is taking issues to a different stage. He has mainly fired a US lawyer for not prosecuting his opponents. (Trump asserts he did, in actual fact, hearth Siebert, whereas Siebert advised employees he was resigning.) And now the president’s publicly pressuring Bondi over the similar problem.
These are issues presidents don’t typically do – and crucially, that there’s no proof Biden ever did.
Leavitt mentioned Monday that Trump was “rightfully frustrated” in opposition to those that prosecuted him.
“It was Joe Biden and his attorney general who weaponized the DOJ,” Leavitt mentioned.
Indeed, Republicans have spent years accusing Biden of being behind Trump’s indictments. But there may be no real proof that he played any role. He repeatedly averted publicly commenting on the instances, citing the want for Justice Department independence. About the finest proof Republicans had was a 2022 New York Times report that said Biden had privately advised his internal circle that Trump ought to be prosecuted. But the report famous that the Democratic president hadn’t communicated these ideas to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, and Garland mentioned he didn’t really feel pressured.
Biden mentioned in 2023 that he “never once, not one single time, suggested to the Justice Department what they should do or not do relative to bringing a charge or not bringing a charge.”
There can also be no proof Garland was instrumental in the resolution to convey fees. He appointed particular counsel Jack Smith, who introduced the federal instances in opposition to Trump.
“No one has told me to indict,” Garland mentioned in 2023. “And in this case, the decision to indict was made by the special counsel.”
Late in 2024, Biden briefly alluded to the have to “lock him up” – referring to Trump – however shortly certified that he meant “politically.”
Leavitt and Trump are on considerably firmer floor in relation to James. The New York lawyer common earned criticism even from some Democrats for taking part in up her intention to scrutinize Trump whereas she was campaigning for workplace. She mentioned at one level mentioned, “Donald Trump’s days of defrauding Americans are coming to an end.”
But James’ civil fraud case in opposition to Trump was finally profitable (the $500 million judgment was later thrown out by an appeals courtroom, however the judges mentioned Trump remained answerable for the fraud). By distinction, prosecutors seem to have struggled to build a case against James in relation to accusations of mortgage fraud, as NCS has reported.
The different large instance final week was the Trump administration publicly pressuring ABC News to suspend Jimmy Kimmel over his feedback on Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Republicans have usually in contrast this to the Biden administration urging social media firms to censor misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic.
But once more, the comparability isn’t apples to apples.
In the Kimmel case, Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, publicly threatened ABC if it didn’t push Kimmel out. He mentioned ABC may do it “easy way or the hard way” and laid out almost exactly how native broadcasters would quickly power ABC’s hand.
Trump himself has additionally celebrated his function in pushing out late-night hosts he didn’t like, and he even predicted two months in the past that Kimmel would meet the similar destiny as CBS’ Stephen Colbert.
The stress was overt, and it was somewhat express – in a means it by no means was with the Biden administration and social media firms.
The criticism of Biden again then was that, when the administration privately flagged Covid misinformation to social media firms, it was in impact utilizing government energy to censor folks.
Meta chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a letter final yr mentioned his teams felt “pressured” by the Biden administration and that the administration “expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree.” He known as the stress “wrong.”
But there isn’t any proof of express threats.
And the Supreme Court in a 6-3 resolution final yr cast doubt on the connection between the Biden administration’s communications and the selections to censor particular plaintiffs.
The resolution, which was selected a technicality and never on the substance, was restricted to the plaintiffs concerned and wasn’t a full-scale endorsement of the Biden administration’s conduct. But the courtroom, in an opinion written by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, famous that the platforms censored such content material each earlier than and lengthy after the Biden administration obtained concerned.
About the closest the administration got here to one thing that may very well be interpreted as a risk was when then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki in April 2022 talked about participating with platforms and talked about how the administration supported reforming Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and “enacting antitrust reforms.”
The Supreme Court mentioned this was used “perhaps as motivation,” however famous Psaki “did not mention content moderation or COVID–19 misinformation” in her reply.
The courtroom concluded by saying the plaintiffs confirmed no “concrete link between their injuries and the defendants’ ” – i.e. the Biden administration’s – “conduct.”
The story has aligned with a quantity of Trump administration strikes in current weeks and months.
While the president and his allies often cite Democrats’ alleged sins, the administration is usually conducting uneven warfare.
They’ve justified their brazen efforts to redistrict extra seats for Republicans forward of the 2026 midterm elections by pointing to brutal Democratic gerrymanders. But each events gerrymander extensively once they can. Where the GOP effort differs is the proven fact that it’s occurring in the center of the decade with out being ordered by a courtroom – that has virtually all the time been a Republican factor – and the proven fact that Trump says expressly that it’s for partisan achieve.
They have additionally justified their clashes with the courts – and potential flouting of courtroom orders – by pointing to Biden supposedly ignoring a Supreme Court ruling on pupil loans. But Biden didn’t disobey the court; he as an alternative pursued different means the courtroom hadn’t addressed to attempt to obtain his objectives.
And lastly is one other side of the administration’s concentrating on of its foes.
The administration has repeatedly gone to extraordinary lengths to publicize mere allegations in opposition to folks like James and Schiff, neither of whom have been charged with any crimes – strikes that clearly disregard legal ethics.
By distinction, the Biden administration typically abided by the norm that you just don’t touch upon pending investigations and also you communicate by means of courtroom filings.
An excellent instance of the asymmetry was the reporting over the weekend that the Justice Department beneath Biden had caught Trump border czar Tom Homan on tape accepting a bag with $50,000 in cash simply weeks earlier than the 2024 election. (The cost arose from a probe that was not concentrating on Homan, The New York Times reported, and the DOJ beneath Trump shut down the case as a result of it “found no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing.”)
Leavitt on Monday defended Homan, saying he by no means took the cash, and once more lobbed weaponization accusations at the earlier administration. “This was another example of the weaponization of the Biden Department of Justice against one of President Trump’s strongest and most vocal supporters,” she mentioned.
Trump has usually urged that if the Biden Justice Department had derogatory info on him and his allies, they might merely have launched it forward of the election.
But in distinction to how the Trump administration has dealt with allegations in opposition to its foes, that didn’t occur with a reasonably gorgeous piece of details about a prime Trump ally.