WASHINGTON—In a display of raw power over the once-impartial Justice Department, dictatorial and criminal Republican President Donald Trump, on camera, signed an executive order to the agency to investigate two people who he did not like during his first administration—-and then listened to his sycophantic Cabinet cheer him on.
President Richard Nixon, in the 1970s, ordered investigations by the IRS and the Justice Department of his political opponents but, fearing impeachment, he issued those orders in secret. Trump, however, threw that precaution out the window and issued his orders live on national television. Nixon’s secret orders were exposed, however, because they were caught on tapes the Supreme Court ordered him to release.
Trump’s public glee wasn’t enough, though. His staff and the Cabinet got in on the act, too.
The sequence of events on April 11 didn’t stop with Trump ordering the DOJ probes of first-term Trump officials Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor. He also revoked their security clearances, and, employing guilt by association reminiscent of the Joe McCarthy era, yanked the security clearances of anyone who works where they do.
Trump called Krebs “a traitor” for publicly saying the 2020 presidential election wasn’t stolen. Trump yanked his security clearance and clearances for 10 colleagues at the cybersecurity company where Krebs now works. Krebs was a top political appointee on cybersecurity during Trump’s first term. Cowed company officials promised cooperation with the federal probe of their own workers.
The U.S. Constitution, not the president, defines who is and who is not a traitor. The last time that designation was used against an individual in the U.S. was during World War II. Trump’s indication that he considered Krebs, who simply told the truth about the election, a traitor is deadly serious because the crime of being a traitor is punishable by death. The liar Trump is essentially calling for the death of the truth-teller Krebs.
And Trump not only ordered the investigation of a second person, Taylor, now a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania but yanked his security clearance—and any others at Penn. Trump alleged, with no evidence, that Taylor, the former chief of staff at Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security, violated the Espionage Act through statements in an op-ed and a book he later published.
“I think he’s guilty of treason if you want to know the truth,” Trump also said of Taylor, on camera. “And this guy Krebs was saying, oh, the election was great. It was great. That was a very corrupt election. They used Covid to cheat. And we’re going to find out about this guy too,” he declared, also on camera.
A Penn spokesman had no comment, not even to say how many other people at Penn have security clearances and were penalized strictly because Taylor teaches there. But Penn law school professor Tobias Wolf wrote on Instagram that “every security clearance held by someone at the University of Pennsylvania has now apparently been suspended because the current occupant of the Oval Office is angry at a public critic named Miles Taylor,” the Daily Pennsylvanian reported.
Trump’s press secretary got in on the act of praising the president and twisting other important truth so that it bore no resemblance to actual fact. She claimed the boss “won” when the Supreme Court, backing a federal judge’s order, declared the U.S. must “facilitate” the release of Marylander Kilmer Abrego Garcia from a hellhole prison in El Salvador. Trump’s agents had arrested Garcia on wrong accusations, which they admitted were incorrect. They had wrongly claimed that he was a notorious gang member and shipped him to prison in the Latin American nation.
Then Trump officials claimed they couldn’t return him, despite the judge’s order, because he was now beyond U.S. jurisdiction. The justices said otherwise and ordered Trump to fly Garcia back.
The press secretary falsely claimed the president won the Supreme Court decision because it implies that the president has “hegemony” over foreign affairs and that what happens to Garcia is entirely up to El Salvador now. It remains to be seen how the Supreme Court will react to its 9 to 0 decision against Trump.
Joyce Vance, former federal prosecutor in Alabama and co-leader of the Sisters-in-Law Podcast said on MSNBC that “it would be a sad day indeed in this country if the Supreme Court had ruled by anything less than 9 to 0 in a case that could not have been clearer as an example of the administration flouting the law and the constitution.” She expressed no confidence that the Trump administration would obey the order, however.
The chants of praise in the first Cabinet meeting of Trump’s first term, in 2017, involved officials circling the table and pronouncing him essentially as the greatest thing since sliced bread. Then-Vice President Mike Pence led off by calling serving under Trump “the greatest privilege of my life.” By the Jan. 6, 2021, Trump-incited U.S. Capitol invasion and insurrection, Pence had changed his mind.
Lauded by sycophants in Cabinet
Then and now, however, Trump’s sycophantic Cabinet lauded him, in front of swinging TV boom mikes. This time, multibillionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s puppeteer whom the president turned loose to chainsaw the federal government, people, and programs, led the praise—a day after a Trump flip-flop on high tariffs on all nations overseas and even an island off Antarctica inhabited only by penguins.
Trump had announced the high tariffs, but then the markets tanked. He declared a 90-day pause in the tariffs, except on China, where he raised them to 125% and now even higher. China retaliated with 84% tariffs on U.S. goods, setting off a trade war between the world’s two largest economic powers. Musk praised Trump’s “fantastic leadership.”
Other countries came to Trump “with offers that they never, ever, ever would have come with but for the moves that the president has made, demanding that people treat the United States with respect. We’re getting the respect we deserve now,” gushed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, previously a cryptocurrency promoter and multimillionaire investment banker. Other Cabinet praise was equally extravagant:
“I think that what you have assembled in your vision is a turning point and an inflection point in American history. And so just being a part of that is the greatest honor,” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said.
Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security, thanked Trump for his “leadership at the border.” As a right-wing GOP North Dakota Governor, Noem became famous for two actions: Summarily shooting her dog when it irked her, and sending hundreds of armed Dakota National Guards to the Texas border to counter an alleged migrant “invasion” from Mexico.
Attorney General Pam Bondi publicly misquoted the Constitution, by saying Trump should control the U.S. budget and spending, not Congress. Article I of the Constitution gives lawmakers the power of the purse. Article II mandates the president “shall faithfully execute” the laws passed by Congress.
“You were overwhelmingly elected by the biggest majority,” Bondi said on camera. Trump received a plurality of the vote, slightly over 49%, but she repeated his lie about a big majority.
“Americans want you to be president because of your agenda, and the courts are ruling you have the authority to determine how the money of this country will be spent. That’s what the American citizens wanted, and that’s what they’re getting,” Bondi said.
Small Business Administration chief Kelly Loeffler, a former Georgia Republican senator, did not discuss small businesses about to go broke due to Trump’s tariff chaos, wire service reporters pointed out later. Instead, she gushed, “Mr. President, on behalf of America’s manufacturers, I want to thank you for standing up to the Chinese Communist Party and fighting for our main streets, for our workers. Main Street is grateful for you,” she said.
Trump is about to reward Loeffler and the SBA, news reports say. He plans to turn over administration of the multibillion-dollar federal college student loan program—a big moneymaker for big banks–to her shop, as he dismantles the Education Department. SBA has no experience with student loans.
Two weeks ago, the non-partisan Government Accountability Office reported SBA had, in Trump’s first term, botched its system to trace fraudulent loans it distributed to businesses during the coronavirus pandemic. SBA didn’t put a tracing system in place until $525 billion of the $800 billion in paycheck protection loans were approved and out the door. And when GAO sampled three million loan applications for documentation of the businesses’ needs, it found two million of them lacked proof.
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