The Trump DOJ Falsely Brands Democratic Lawmakers' Speech as Threatening and Targets them for Investigation

As the Trump administration drops a bribery case against New York Mayor Eric Adams, it threatens investigations of Democratic congressmen for using strongly worded metaphors in press appearances and campaign speeches—implying very different standards for political supporters versus opponents.

Cato Institute’s Walter Olson, a regular contributor to The UnPopulist, explains:

Trump’s pick for federal prosecutor in Washington, DC, Edward R. Martin Jr., has sent a threat/​investigation letter to Rep. Robert Garcia (D‑Calif.) over comments that Garcia made during a live CNN interview on Feb. 12. Asked about Democrats’ response to Elon Musk, Garcia evoked a hackneyed trope about political hardball: “What the American public wants is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight. This is an actual fight for democracy.” Martin sees fit to pretend that these remarks somehow constitute an actual physical threat to Musk. ...

Under longstanding Supreme Court doctrine, antagonistic speech, very much including speech antagonistic toward a public official, is ordinarily constitutionally protected by the First Amendment unless it falls into one of several narrow exceptions. Most relevant here is whether it is a “true threat,” which the Court said in the 2003 case of Virginia v. Black must involve “a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals.” Nothing of the sort is present in either case here.

This is a naked attempt to interpret any strong rhetoric by politicians and the press as a threat of violence, giving the administration the pretext to jail its critics—even as Trump springs from jail the Jan. 6 rioters who committed actual acts of violence against the government.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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