Trump's Executive Orders Target His Own Former Aides for Challenging His 'Stolen Election' Conspiracy Theories

Apr 10, 2025

Donald Trump formally and publicly ordered top officials to investigate his own former aides to punish them for criticizing him and contradicting his claims when they were in his own administration.

According to The New York Times:

Two executive orders targeted Christopher Krebs, who as a senior cybersecurity official oversaw the securing of the 2020 presidential election, and Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security during Mr. Trump’s first termand anonymously wrote a high-profile opinion article for The New York Times in 2018. Among other measures, the orders directed Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, to investigate the former officials and report their findings to the White House. …
The executive orders reflected Mr. Trump’s desire for political payback. Mr. Trump has fixated on punishing—among others—elected Republicans and officials in his administration who have defied him or later opposed him.
Mr. Trump has also sought to rewrite the history of his defeat in 2020 and has continued to repeat his lie that the election was stolen from him. Mr. Krebs, leading the agency tasked with protecting election machinery from foreign interference, shot down many of Mr. Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud, and Mr. Trump fired Mr. Krebs days after his loss. Mr. Trump has continued to harbor deep resentments against the agency.

Trump did this by executive order precisely because he wants to “send a message” to all of his opponents that no one is safe. He can go after anyone who opposes him.

Philip Bump notes that this also is an attempt to criminalize opposition to Trump’s “stolen election” claims: “It is a statement from the most powerful person in the country that the federal government will be deployed to monitor compliance with his worldview.”

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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