Trump is changing the name of the Department of Justice to the Department of Revenge. First, he granted pardons to all the criminals who had been found guilty or pled guilty to invading the halls of Congress on January 6th, 2020. They were protesting the outcome of the presidential election and trying to overturn the results in favor of Trump. These were people who assaulted policeman and vandalized offices of members of Congress, stealing documents and souvenirs on their rampage. One of the policemen subsequently died. As the mob rioted through the halls and Congressional offices, they were searching for vice-President Mike Pence to try and have him change the results of the election which he had refused to do. It was clear that Pence was intent on upholding the Constitution and not caving to Trump’s demands. The rioters’ mission was to hang Pence which they chanted off and on. The January 6th rioters were following the defeated president’s orders which he had outlined in a speech just before the attack on Congress. Trump should have also been brought up on federal charges of promoting insurrection, but he evaded justice because of fears that more rioting or even civil war would be incited.
Ultimately, after his re-election in November 2024, Trump gave clemency to almost 1600 rioters who had been charged and convicted by the Justice Department during President Biden’s term in office. Trump labeled these violent criminals as patriots, calling their prosecutors in the Justice Department villains and possibly traitors. But that was not enough for Trump. All the prosecutors and their assistants who were involved in the January 6th cases were fired by Trump through Pam Bondi, his Attorney-General. Many of the individuals who were terminated at the Justice Department had worked there for years or even decades and some had received accolades and commendations for their fine work. People were notified by email or telephone and never face to face that they were being fired. They had worked during both Republican and Democratic regimes in Washington and were believed to be competent and non-partisan. The cases they prosecuted went before judges who were appointed by presidents of both parties who sentenced the January 6th insurrectionists.
Trump’s acolytes claimed that the police officers had been the aggressors in the riots and that the convicted individuals had been entrapped by law enforcement. They insisted that Pam Bondi was “restoring the integrity of the department” (NYT) by getting rid of the anti-Trump prosecutors. In the past, the Justice Department had generally been independent and did not follow the inclinations of the president to prosecute political foes. But with Trump, everything is different. He wants revenge on those who opposed him or criticized him in the past or are doing so now. And that means having the Justice Department, the FBI and other government agencies investigating them, getting dirt on them, and prosecuting or suing them if possible. Revenge, not justice is what Trump wants. And that means justice in reverse.
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Posted at 08:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: DOJ, firing prosecutors, Pam Bondi, revenge, revenge, reverse justice, Trump
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Political junkie, Vietnam vet, neurologist- three books on aging and dementia. Book on health care reform in 2009- Shock Therapy for the American Health Care System. Book on the need for a centrist third party- Resurrecting Democracy- A Citizen’s Call for a Centrist Third Party published in 2011. Aging Wisely, published in August 2014 by Rowman and Littlefield. Latest book- The Uninformed Voter published May 2020