Former acting attorney trumps efforts subvert
Adam Kinzinger explained the basic principles of Justice Department independence. That’s essentially what Donald Trump was trying to do with the election for president of the United States. I want you to tell the Board of Elections not to certify the results. Imagine if your mayor lost a reelection bid, but instead of conceding the race, they picked up the phone, called the district attorney, and said I want you to say this election was stolen. There’s also an official responsible for enforcing the laws, a district attorney, or local prosecutor. Wherever you live in the United States, there’s probably a local government executive, a mayor, or a county commissioner.
#Former acting attorney trumps efforts subvert how to
Bennie Thompson began the hearing by walking viewers through how to understand Trump’s predations, comparing them to local political institutions with which Americans might be more familiar than the august halls of the Justice Department: In a last-ditch effort, he considered appointing Jeffrey Clark, the lawyer behind the Georgia letter and the acting head of the department’s civil division, as attorney general-abandoning the plan only when the rest of the Justice Department’s leadership informed him that they would quit in protest if Clark were to take that role.Ĭommittee Chairman Rep. He pushed for the department to somehow file a lawsuit with the Supreme Court over those allegations-on what legal basis, it’s not clear appoint a special counsel to investigate election fraud and send a letter to the Georgia state legislature encouraging lawmakers to throw out the state’s electoral votes for Joe Biden and appoint pro-Trump electors instead. As documented by the panel, Trump sought to pressure the Justice Department into investigating baseless allegations of voter fraud after the election. Will it be any more successful?ĭuring the committee’s fifth hearing, which focused on Trump’s efforts to enlist the Justice Department in his attempt to overturn the election, committee members took time to ask the witnesses-all former department officials-to explain how the department typically functions and how Trump upended that to his own advantage. Now, the House select committee investigating Jan. His efforts to use the department to help him hold on to power after the 2020 election were one more instance of that long-running trend.Īnd yet, for all the danger that Trump’s efforts to turn the Justice Department into his personal muscle posed to democracy, it’s proved strikingly difficult to communicate to Americans the crucial role of that independence as a check against authoritarianism. Donald Trump attacked this norm again and again during his presidency-asking the FBI to back off its investigation into his national security adviser, Michael Flynn working to undermine the Mueller investigation demanding that the Justice Department investigate Hillary Clinton and on and on. Again and again in recent years, current and former Justice Department officials-along with academics, journalists, and other commentators-have struggled to explain to the public the importance of Justice Department independence: the idea that the powers of law enforcement should not be wielded as a tool of political power.