The Trump administration goes out of its way to arrest people on camera and then makes crude and mean memes out of the images. Rather than focusing on justice, like building a case, arresting when appropriate, and then trying to convince a jury of guilt, justice department resources are wasted on unnecessarily arresting people who don’t even get indicted and making sure to get sweet propaganda images. They’ve even edited some of them to make the arrestee look more pathetic. Lying to the public with false images is the opposite of justice.
In one example, the Trump administration is misusing federal laws to arrest obnoxious protestors in order to make propaganda memes when the people are likely guilty of local trespassing laws, which is for local law enforcement to deal with.
“”Observing, following, and recording law enforcement are unambiguously protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution,” Bier tells Reason. “They are not obstruction of justice. The right to record helps guarantee justice by ensuring accountability and an accurate record of events.”
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The guiding First Amendment principle behind these court decisions was most memorably expressed in the 1987 Supreme Court ruling in Houston v. Hill, which struck down a Houston ordinance that made it unlawful to oppose or interrupt a police officer: “The freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state,” Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. wrote.”
“The legal rationales for prosecuting James Comey, Adam Schiff, and Letitia James suggest the president is determined to punish them one way or another.
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Trump fired Comey in 2017 out of anger at the FBI investigation of alleged ties between his 2016 campaign and the Russian government. In the years since, Trump has made no secret of his desire to punish Comey for that “witch hunt,” which Patel cited as a justification for the charges against Comey.
Those charges, however, seem to stem from an entirely different investigation: the FBI’s 2016 probe of the Clinton Foundation. Although the skimpy indictment is hazy on this point, it implicitly alleges that Comey authorized the disclosure of information about that investigation and then falsely denied doing so during a 2020 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
That claim is highly doubtful for several reasons, as former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy notes in a National Review essay that describes the indictment as “so ill-conceived and incompetently drafted” that Comey “should be able to get it thrown out on a pretrial motion to dismiss.” McCarthy’s take is especially notable because he wrote a book-length critique of the Russia probe that concurs with Trump’s chief complaints about it.
In other words, even if you think that investigation epitomized the “politicization of law enforcement” (as Patel puts it), that does not necessarily mean the charges against Comey are factually or legally sound. In fact, the case is so shaky that neither career prosecutors nor Erik Siebert, the former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, thought it was worth pursuing.
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Schiff, a longtime thorn in Trump’s side, spearheaded his first impeachment and served on the House select committee that investigated the 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol. James sued Trump for business fraud in New York, obtaining a jaw-dropping “disgorgement” order that was later overturned by a state appeals court, which nevertheless thought she had proven her claims.
Although Trump has averred that Schiff’s conduct as a legislator amounted to “treason,” it plainly does not fit the statutory definition of that crime. And whatever you think about the merits of James’ lawsuit, the fact that both a judge and an appeals court agreed Trump had committed fraud by overvaluing his assets suggests her claims were at least colorable.
Casting about for a legal pretext to prosecute Schiff and James, the Justice Department is mulling allegations that both committed mortgage fraud by claiming more than one home as a primary residence. Although it’s not clear there is enough evidence to convict either of them, that is beside the point as far as Trump is concerned.
As the president sees it, Schiff and James, like Comey, deserve to suffer because they wronged him. “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” he told Bondi.
Judging from the Comey case, Bondi probably will follow the president’s marching orders, to the cheers of his most enthusiastic supporters. But the rest of us have ample cause to conclude that Trump has conflated justice with revenge.”
And revenge for actions that were much more appropriate in the first place.
Over the 20th century, the U.S. developed norms that separated the justice system from the whims of the president. Trump is breaking that down and weakening the United States as a strong democracy.
Trump is demanding that the Justice Department make unjust, political prosecutions. This is yet another dent in U.S. democracy hammered in by Donald Trump.
“President Donald Trump publicly vented at Attorney General Pam Bondi.., saying the lack of criminal charges against top adversaries was “killing our reputation and credibility.”
“We can’t delay any longer,” Trump posted on Truth Social in a message directed to “Pam.” “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” He specifically lamented the lack of criminal charges against Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, three of his most prominent political antagonists.”
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“Trump capped his message to Bondi by accusing Democrats of impeaching him twice and indicting him five times “over nothing.” In 2023, Trump was charged in criminal cases that accused him of seeking to subvert the 2020 presidential election, corrupt Georgia’s election process, hoard classified information at Mar-a-Lago after his first term and cover up a hush money payment scheme.
Only the hush money case, brought by Manhattan prosecutors, reached a jury, which found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts. Two of the cases, brought by special counsel Jack Smith, were dropped after Trump won the 2024 election. And the Georgia case remains mired in pretrial dysfunction, with lead prosecutor Fani Willis recently disqualified over a conflict of interest.”
“Navarro was indicted in June 2022 after the House held him in contempt of Congress. He was convicted by a jury a year later.
The Justice Department separately sued Navarro to recover emails he sent on private accounts but related to government business. The Justice Department similarly abandoned that effort after Trump took office earlier this year.”
Trump administration ruins an FBI agent’s career because he’s friends with the wrong guy. Every other agent now has to worry that if they do something that bothers Trump, even something that is legal and legitimate!, they might lose their job.
This is not the way to retain the best employees for our government! Nor how a democratic country operates.
Trump removes people with great experience for bad reasons, then puts in shills he thinks are loyal. The remaining underlings see that the way to keep their jobs is to shut up, and do what they’re told, even if the shills at the top don’t know what they’re doing.
If fired for appropriately investigating the president or his allies, then this is a great degradation of the rule of law. The U.S. cannot call itself a strong democracy when administrations can punish people for proper legal investigations. Future prosecutors and investigators will have to think twice before investigating any potential crimes by Trump or his friends.
“At least three federal prosecutors who worked on cases against Jan. 6 rioters were fired Friday by the Justice Department, according to more than half a dozen current and former officials familiar with the dismissals.
A copy of one of the dismissal letters seen by NBC News was signed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, notifying the recipient that they were “removed from federal service effective immediately.” No reason for the removal was stated in the letter.”…”The Trump administration in late January fired probationary federal prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases and prosecutors who worked on former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Donald Trump. The administration also demoted some career prosecutors who worked on the Capitol siege investigation.Probationary workers are either recent hires or have taken new positions.The firings on Friday, though, marked the first time that career prosecutors who had worked Jan. 6 cases and who were past their probationary period of federal employment had been fired.”
“Newly uncovered guidance from the Justice Department claims the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) allows federal law enforcement officers to enter the houses of suspected gang members without a warrant and remove them from the country without any judicial review.”
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“The Trump administration has refused to disclose many of the operational details of its unprecedented invocation of the 1798 wartime law to send alleged TDA members to a prison in El Salvador under an agreement with that country’s president, Nayib Bukele. The memo is one of the first public glimpses at the Trump administration’s claims that it can identify, pursue, arrest, and deport migrants, unconstrained by the Fourth Amendment or due process.”
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“”The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order,” Wilkinson warned. “Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.””