The Nov. 3 Bluenami was a resounding rebuke to the Trump administration, and this White House’s flagrant and unremitting corruption was a big part of why. On Election Day, 90% of voters called corruption a crucial or major problem, at least as important as inflation. Voters understandably expect action. And yet as soon as a few Democrats started floating ways to deliver it, including impeaching Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump ordered the DOJ, which is not supposed to take direction from the president this way, to investigate those calling for accountability.
On one level it makes sense: To a president who has spent years tearing down every guardrail he can find, a call for accountability must sound like a grievous threat. Politico has the details:
President Donald Trump on Saturday said he had ordered the Justice Department to look into “threats” by Democrats against Republicans in the wake of the GOP’s midterm electoral defeat, adding that those responsible should be imprisoned. ... “The imprisonment should be against these EXTORTIONISTS, and Republicans should get smart, fast! Threatening letters have been sent to many people, all innocent, from Democrat Political Leaders,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “By copy of this statement, I am ordering the Department of Justice to look into this criminal act, immediately!”
Trump’s characterization of the Democrats’ actions and statements as “extortion” misrepresents what lawmakers have actually said. ... Recent letters from Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s (D-Conn.) to White House ballroom donors, for example, sought records about their contributions and warned of possible subpoenas if they failed to comply, not imprisonment.
The idea that a call for impeachment, a constitutionally provided mechanism to address serious misbehavior by federal officials, is tantamount to extortion worthy of imprisonment is farcical.
The next day, Blanche declined to rule out prosecuting the lawmakers, then reassured Trump’s aides: “If you work in this administration, you have a lawyer: It’s me.”
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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