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Trump's voracious appetite for revenge has rapidly morphed into a methodical apparatus. Within the year since his election, the president's anger and whims have assumed the guise of official policies in a manner comparable to historical dictatorial governments. Federal personnel who do not cooperate are summarily dismissed and replaced by devotees. Critical figures who question him face legal action, trial and sanctions. Critics have been categorized under executive memoranda as “hostile to national interests”, “against faith communities” and “opposing economic freedom”, and menaced with prosecution as “security threats”.

Government Institutions Transformed

Every case involving legal action of political opponents and leniency for loyalists exhibits its own particular characteristics. However, despite their specific nature, they embody manifestations of what has developed as a calculated method. Those episodes are anything but random. Trump's removal of federal prosecutors and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, alongside his appointment of loyalists in senior posts, started quickly, promptly developed a pattern, and has now been shaped into a structure. The justice department and the law enforcement agency have been restructured into partisan organizations under Trump's clear direction to carry out his directives. Wrongdoing has been rendered normal. This is the apparatus of revenge.

Leadership is more concerned with penalizing the chief's perceived opponents than they are with protecting our country's safety.

Within the System

The origin of this mechanism has been uncovered in the court filing of three previous top FBI officials submitted in late summer in the judicial system in the capital against agency head Kash Patel and attorney general Pam Bondi for illegal termination in “a campaign of retribution against Plaintiffs for what Defendants considered to be a refusal to show adequate devotion”. The document states that one official, the previous interim leader, recounts a discussion in which the director “publicly admitted the impropriety of his actions”.

He had attempted to shield FBI agents from being terminated, the filing alleges. The director told him that “they” – understood by Driscoll to be the presidential administration and DoJ – had instructed him to remove all those who they considered as having participated in a legal probe against him. The document goes on: “The director explained that he had to terminate the people his leaders told him to remove, because his chance to hold his own role depended on the removal of the officials who were involved in matters involving the chief executive. Patel explained that there was nothing he or Driscoll could do to halt these or any other firings, because ‘the agency sought to place the chief in prison and he recalls it clearly.’” After Driscoll told Patel he was disregarding the FBI's own policies, the director reportedly said “he knew that and he realized the character of the summary firings were probably unlawful”.

Widespread Impact

Since the director's reported confession to the official, the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau have been weakened and repurposed for the administration's revenge apparatus. Several of the FBI's high-ranking agents were fired or forced out in the first days of the presidency. Roughly thousands of legal professionals at DoJ have taken a “deferred resignation program”. At least seven government attorneys, such as those in the Manhattan division, resigned in protest over what they regarded as political interference in abandoning the criminal prosecution against the local official, the mayor, in return for his cooperation with his federal agency roundups of migrants. The public integrity section of the department, which oversees misconduct investigations, has been diminished to two attorneys. The civil rights division has been devastated: 70% of its employees has departed. A third of executives at the justice department have quit. The section enforcing environmental law has lost a majority its supervisors.

Favors and Penalties

Concerning the Adams case, the temporary lawyer for the NY office, Danielle Sassoon, quit in protest against what she labeled as the “trade-off”. A key figure, his “immigration leader,” appeared as the enforcer with the mayor on television to announce: “Unless he complies, I will return in the city.”. Additionally, a former official, formerly the senior DoJ official and a ex-lawyer, who brokered the deal, was granted an judicial position, a potential pathway to the judicial branch.

The president's protection for crimes committed while in power, awarded by the remarkable ruling of the Republican majority on the judicial body, thus thwarting his criminal case over the political violence and maintaining his public standing for the presidential race, is the basis on which he stands to shield his loyalists. Given this protection, he has been empowered to permit wrongdoing. The consequence of the court judgment permeates his presidency and the GOP completely. The legal case has spread. Similar to the former president's administration lawyer John Dean said about the Watergate