Who could have foreseen putting a convicted felon in the White House would turn out like this?
In fact, both the scale and audaciousness of Trump’s
corruption, and of his regime’s assault on the criminal justice system, was
eminently predictable.
As House Speaker Mike Johnson recently pointed out, Trump’s
corruption is “out in the open.” The same is true of his use of criminal
justice system and other levers of government as weapons against his
ever-growing list of enemies.
But even the most cynical have been surprised by the
Trumpist effort to portray the provision of healthcare to children, veterans,
and the elderly as “waste” and “fraud,” as well as Trump’s effort to render
those who follow the laws into criminals.
The most vulnerable among us, including immigrants and the
sick, are currently among Trump’s primary victims. But the entire nation will
soon pay a heavy price for his systematic assault on the rule of law in service
of his bottomless desire for corrupt wealth and self-aggrandizement.
Retroactive criminalization
During the campaign, Trump and his cronies declared they
would deport the allegedly massive numbers of “criminal aliens.” When Trump
came into office, however, he faced a problem: The vast majority of
undocumented immigrants are law abiding.
Trumpists, however, came up with an answer: Create fake
crimes and thereby turn the law abiding into criminals.
Trump announced the US is “under invasion” by a foreign
power in order to invoke the rarely used Alien Enemies Act and justify the
summary deportation of supposed gang members to foreign prisons, this despite a
US intelligence
report concluding there is no such invasion. Then, when courts caught
the administration deporting migrants who are not gang members, or in violation
of existing immigration laws, Trumpists have prevaricated and outright lied,
transforming their purported law enforcement initiative into a fraud.
The administration has also attacked judges and elected
officials who have the temerity to question their illegal conduct.
Alina Habba (the parking garage lawyer Trump installed as
New Jersey’s acting US attorney) ordered the arrest of Ras Baraka, the Mayor of
Newark, on bogus charges arising from his participation in a protest at a
private DHS jail, leading to what a federal magistrate judge called an “embarrassing
retraction.” After that gambit failed, Habba brought equally flimsy charges
against a member of Congress who accompanied Baraka at the protest, asserting
that she “assaulted” armed ICE thugs.
Similarly, last month in New York City, an ICE gangster
terrorized and handcuffed
a crying staffer of Rep. Jerry Nadler after armed agents invaded his
office without a warrant.
Trumpists have resorted to inventing new offenses so as to
transform law-abiding immigrants into criminals. For example, Trump has
declared slivers of land along the border to be “military zones” for the sole
purpose of charging migrants with trespassing.
The administration has also declared that undocumented immigrants have an
obligation to “register”
with the government so they can be indicted for failing to do so. They’re
jailing immigrants who legally entered the United States under a Biden-era
asylum law by retroactively
declaring the program to be “illegal.”
Most tellingly, and insidiously, ICE agents desperate to
meet the increasing quotas the White House has set for deporting “illegals”
have taken to targeting the most vulnerable immigrants: Those intent on
following the law and engaging in productive work.
As Sen. Markwayne Mullin put it on CNN yesterday,
“regardless of what they may be doing right now” — including whether they are
abiding by the law and are gainfully employed — undocumented persons “are
illegal and they are criminals.”
In one recent case, armed thugs dragged into
an elevator an immigrant who had fainted after they had swooped in to grab her
while her attorney was in the restroom.
State courts have also become favored hunting zones for ICE.
Judges who have the temerity to point out that this tactic discourages
immigrants from complying with court orders, and thus the law, are being
threatened. Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan, for example, was jailed and indicted
on the flimsiest of criminal charges for allegedly helping a man evade ICE. Her
indictment has been decried
by other jurists as a "threat [to] public trust in the judicial
system and the ability of the public to avail themselves of courthouses without
fear of reprisal.”
ICE gangs are also now routinely assembling in restaurants
and other places of work, often bearing submachine guns, cuffing everyone in
sight, and jailing some, simply on suspicion of being “illegals.” Recently, a
gang of armed and masked ICE officers terrified patrons and workers in a San
Diego restaurant, and even
cuffed the manager. The rifle-toting “law enforcement” officers retreated
from the scene by shooting flash bang grenades into a crowd of citizens
distressed by their misconduct. (They only managed to arrest two “illegals.”)
Despite the fact that Trump has had to resort to fabricating
new crimes to turn law-abiding immigrants into targets for deportation, the GOP
is now about to make ICE the largest federal law enforcement agency. Trump’s
“Big Beautiful Bill” includes over $150
billion for immigration enforcement and seeks to make ICE the most
highly funded law enforcement agency in the United States.
And as Trump’s threats about a military invasion of Los
Angeles County, which appeared to be commencing through the use of federalized
National Guard units as this piece was being prepared for publication Sunday
evening, demonstrate that his administration is intent on using its growing
immigration “law enforcement” apparatus to wreak havoc in America’s cities, and
to threaten to make peaceful protest a crime.
Redefining fraud
During his last presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly pledged
he would not allow Congress to cut Medicaid or Medicare, a promise that has
been echoed by Speaker Johnson and his other stooges.
But as it turned out, Republicans felt the need to make a
pretense of attacking the “deficit” even as they pursued a budget-busting
package of tax cuts weighed overwhelmingly in favor of the wealthiest
Americans. So of course, Trump and the party he controls decided to harm the
most vulnerable Americans — including children, the elderly, veterans, and the
working poor — by targeting Medicaid for cuts.
Trump’s solemn “pledge” to protect Medicaid proved to be no
barrier at all, given his ever-flexible definition of “crime.” Trump declared
that 10 million or more Americans Republicans will be leaving without
healthcare — resulting in tens
of thousands of avoidable deaths a year — are engaged in “fraud”,
“waste,” or “abuse.” Johnson, meanwhile, falsely announced that the people
Republicans will be cutting off from live saving care are “illegals,” despite the
fact that undocumented immigrants don’t receive federal dollars for coverage.
Trumpists have become so comfortable with their inverted
definition of “fraud” that they are turning it into the subject of morbid
humor. During a town hall, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst replied to a question about the
many people who will die prematurely as a result of the GOP’s massive Medicaid
cuts by declaring with a smirk that “we are all going to die.”
After Ernst was widely criticized for her callousness, she
taped a video in a cemetery in which she offered a sarcastic “apology” and
urged those facing premature death due to her cruelty to find faith in Jesus.
Predictably, Republican senators have indicated they are
planning to add
Medicare to the targets of their “cost cutting” efforts by defining
seniors’ need for healthcare to be a “fraud.”
Even as they have redefined the poor, sick and elderly as
“fraudsters,” Trumpers have embarked on a campaign to make actual fraud and
other financial crimes legal.
The administration is systematically dismantling the
Department of Justice’s mechanisms for preventing, investigating, and
prosecuting securities and other actual crimes. The DOJ has, to date,
terminated over $800
million in grants, including for programs that combat human
trafficking and gun violence and provide support to local police. The DOJ has
also shut down, or crippled, its enforcement of whole categories of the most
serious federal crimes, including those involving
the cryptocurrencies Trump is brazenly using to enrich himself and his
family.
Meanwhile, under the dysfunctional leadership of Kash Patel,
the FBI has been engaged in wholesale firing of career agents, including as
many as 4,000 personnel charged with investigating terrorism threats
inside and outside the United States. Patel appears determined to place Trump’s
goals of rooting out “disloyal” law enforcement personnel — and targeting
immigrants — far above the agency’s statutory mandate to investigate
serious crimes.
And Trump’s first major law enforcement action was to
terminate the strong public corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric
Adams — who has been assiduously stooging for Trump and his immigration
“crackdown” — thereby loudly declaring that the DOJ will be adjusting its
historical focus on combatting public corruption to excuse corruption among
those favored by the Leader.
‘When the president does it, that means it is not
illegal"
It is not mere happenstance that Trump’s DOJ and SEC have
set out to effectively legalize whole categories of financial fraud and
corruption. Trump himself has, very publicly, turned the presidency into what
amounts to a criminal financial enterprise, enriching himself and his family by
billions of dollars through various “business” deals (many of them
transparently corrupt).
Trump’s most lucrative “deals” have — surprise, surprise — included cryptocurrency transactions in which he and his own children (as well as the offspring of cronies including Steve Witkoff and Howard Lutnick) have yielded massive profits for themselves while causing huge losses for others.
His inner circle is not just leaping headfirst into the crypto
“business,” but are doing so with many of the sleaziest participants in the
market, some of whom have been the subjects of
investigations and SEC enforcement proceedings. Trump has even welcomed some of
these ripoff artists into the White House, where it is now a matter of near
public record that a large payoff can get nearly anyone an audience with him
regardless of their criminal background.
Trump has also regularized the sale of pardons that began
during his first term, with Trump hangers-on reportedly charging
millions to get wealthy criminals out of jail. Paying third parties is
rapidly becoming an outmoded way of currying favor with Trump, given that there
are now many ways to line his pockets directly for favors. Nonetheless, Trump
recently pardoned a tax
cheat after his mother donated large sums to his campaign.
In a fashion familiar to observers of systemically corrupt
regimes, Trump (sheltered by the Supreme Court’s assurance that he can freely
engage in corruption) has made bribe solicitation an integral element of
governance. For example, the FCC, headed by a notorious Trump stooge, has made
it plain that Paramount’s planned merger transaction will not be
approved until that company pays a huge bribe to Trump, in the form of a
“settlement” payment for a bogus lawsuit Trump brought against 60 Minutes over
the editing of a segment about Kamala Harris.
Despite what Mike Johnson claims, the fact that Trump’s
undermining of the rule of law is being done openly and brazenly does not make
it any less corrosive. In fact, the opposite is true.
There has been much (accurate) discussion of how Trump’s
systemic attacks on the rule of law are destroying our democracy. But the
destruction will not end there. The United States’ longstanding status as a
nation of laws is also a foundation of our economic success. Investors in and
outside the US have long felt confident placing their wealth in this country
because, unlike so many other places in the world, laws are usually enforced
predictably, not according to the wishes of a despotic or authoritarian leader.
Trump’s scheme to upend the rule of law in this country —
and install himself as a quasi-dictator, who gets a “taste” of whatever
business he chooses — is going to induce many investors to look elsewhere to
make their investments. A nation where investors must pay bribes and possibly
risk later being charged with crimes as a routine “cost of doing business”
cannot remain the thriving financial center of the world for long. The question
is whether the United States can rid itself of this budding despotism before
even more grave and irreparable damage is done.
