Trump's System of Retribution and Reward
Trump's voracious desire for retribution has quickly morphed into a structured system. Within the year since his election, the chief executive's fury and impulses have taken on the form of official policies in a manner analogous to earlier authoritarian regimes. Federal figures who resist his demands are immediately dismissed and substituted by loyalists. Opposing officials who challenge him face indictment, judicial process and penalties. Critics have been designated under presidential memoranda as “anti-American”, “opposed to religious values” and “anti-capitalist”, and threatened with legal action as “extremists”.
The Justice System Remade
Each situation involving prosecution of political opponents and protection for his allies exhibits its own distinct features. Yet, despite their specific form, they embody examples of what has developed as a deliberate method. Such episodes are not isolated. Trump's cleansing of Department of Justice prosecutors and law enforcement agents, alongside his installation of supporters in high-level roles, started rapidly, promptly developed a regularity, and has now been molded into a system. DoJ and the FBI have been transformed into ideological agencies under the president's explicit command to execute his wishes. Wrongdoing has been turned into standard. It constitutes the retribution system.
Leadership is more concerned with punishing the chief's supposed adversaries than they are with defending our national security.
Internal the Structure
The foundation of this mechanism has been uncovered in the legal complaint of multiple former top Federal Bureau agents submitted in September in the US district court in DC against agency head a senior appointee and justice department head Pam Bondi for wrongful dismissal in “a campaign of payback against the officials for what Defendants deemed to be a failure to show proper allegiance”. The document states that a former acting director, the ex- interim leader, details a exchange in which he “publicly acknowledged the impropriety of his behavior”.
The official had tried to protect agency personnel from being fired, the complaint states. The director told him that “administration officials” – interpreted by him to be the presidential administration and justice department – had ordered him to dismiss all those who they identified as having worked on a legal probe against the president. The document adds: “Patel explained that he had to dismiss the people his bosses told him to fire, because his ability to retain his own job depended on the removal of the personnel who were involved in investigations involving the leader. Patel commented that there was nothing he or Driscoll could do to halt these or any other firings, because ‘the FBI attempted to place the chief in prison and he hasn't forgotten it.’” When he informed Patel he was breaking the FBI's own internal rules, Patel supposedly said “he recognized that and he was aware the character of the summary firings were probably illegal”.
Broad Impact
Following Patel's reported confession to him, the justice department and the Federal Bureau have been dismantled and reorganized for Trump's retribution system. Several of the agency's top officials were terminated or pushed out in the early weeks of the government. About 4,500 lawyers at the department have taken a “voluntary departure plan”. A minimum of seven federal prosecutors, among them those in the Manhattan division, resigned in objection over what they viewed as partisan influence in dropping the criminal prosecution against the New York City mayor, the mayor, in as a trade for his cooperation with his ICE roundups of foreign nationals. The public integrity section of DoJ, which manages ethical violations, has been reduced to minimal staff. The civil rights division has been severely reduced: seventy percent of its staff has departed. A third of senior leaders at DoJ have left. The division upholding environmental law has lost 50% its supervisors.
Favors and Punishments
In the Adams case, the interim prosecutor for the NY office, the official, stepped down in protest against what she characterized as the “quid pro quo”. A key figure, Trump's “immigration leader,” appeared as the enforcer with him on a media outlet to state: “Should he fail to deliver, I will return in New York City.”. Meanwhile, a former official, earlier the justice department figure and a past legal representative, who negotiated the arrangement, was awarded an appellate federal judgeship, a possible stepping stone to the judicial branch.
The president's exemption for wrongdoings committed while in office, awarded by the unprecedented judgment of the Republican majority on the highest court, thus preventing his criminal case over the January 6 insurrection and safeguarding his electoral prospects for the national vote, is the foundation stone on which he depends to shield his stalwarts. Given this protection, he has been freed to permit wrongdoing. The consequence of the court judgment saturates his administration and the Republican Party thoroughly. Trump v United States has escalated. In the words of Richard Nixon's White House counsel the figure commented about the Watergate
