Consider This from NPR - Trump's Authoritarian Impulses and the Justice Department

Episode Date: December 10, 2023

If Donald Trump is elected next November, he's promising to use the power of the presidency to go after political enemies and perceived rivals.In a recent interview with Fox's Sean Hannity, the former President said he'd only be a dictator on "day one." At other moments, he's pledged to "root out the communists," and said he'd have his Attorney General go after people who run against him. Consider This host Scott Detrow and NPR Justice Correspondent Carrie Johnson breakdown what a second Trump term would mean for the Justice Department.Email us at [e-mail] Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

You are promising America tonight. You would never abuse power as retribution against anybody. The other day, one of former President Donald Trump's top allies in the media, Sean Hannity, tried to give Trump a break. Hannity was interviewing Trump on a Fox News town hall, and he fed him a layup question aimed at letting Trump respond to the mounting concerns about just how authoritarian the former president sounds as he runs for a second term. Hannity gave Trump two chances to

walk back some of the startling rhetoric, and Trump didn't really leap at the opportunity. We love this guy. He says, you're not going to be a dictator, are you? I said, no, no, no, other than day one. Trump is facing 91 felony charges across four criminal cases. But he's leading his Republican primary opponents

by double digits. And he's tied or ahead of President Biden in most early polls. So the idea of a Trump return to the White House is very real. And many people who worked in Trump's first administration are very alarmed at what he's promising to do. Here's former Defense

Secretary Mark Esper speaking to MSNBC. He'll be able to, you know, enact his policy of revenge that he's been talking about and retribution. And look, it's quite a dangerous time for our democracy if that were to happen. Revenge, retribution. That's how Trump himself is talking about his White House priorities. Like in the September campaign rally in South Dakota. That means that if I win and somebody wants to run against me, I call my attorney general, I say, listen, indict him. Well, he hasn't done anything wrong that we know of.

I don't know. Indict him on income tax evasion. You'll figure it out. In an interview with Univision, a Spanish-language news outlet, Trump said he would try to get his opponents out of the election entirely, influencing election outcomes. If I happen to be president and I see somebody who's doing well and beating me very badly, I say, go down and indict them. Mostly, that would be, you know, they would be out of business. They'd be out. They'd be out of the election.

Trump has increasingly been painting his political opponents as subhuman in ways that mirror authoritarian leaders of the past. We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country. On social media, Trump recently said that former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, who stood up to Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election, should be executed. It all paints a pretty clear picture of what a second Trump administration would look like. Former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney told NPR's Layla Fadl that Americans shouldn't count

on the system of checks and balances. What's the stake here for the country? It couldn't be higher. It really couldn't. And sometimes you hear people say, there was an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal recently where they suggested that even if Donald Trump were elected, it wouldn't be that bad because, of course, we have these institutions and we have these traditions and we have the separation of powers and that people could somehow count on that to restrain him. And one of the main messages of my book is, no, you can't. You cannot count on those institutions to restrain him. Consider this.

Donald Trump is openly laying out his agenda for a second term. So just how authoritarian would it be? In the coming weeks, we're going to take a close look at the different ways it could play out. And today, we will start with a branch of the federal government where that campaign of retribution would likely be focused. The Department of Justice. From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow. It's Sunday, December 10th. It's Consider This from NPR. NPR Justice Correspondent Kerry Johnson covered nearly every moment of Donald Trump's first four years in the White House and has been looking into what

a second term could mean at the Department of Justice. Hey, Kerry. Hey, Scott. So you've been talking to people about this, about what might be possible when it terms to actual policy, when it comes to actual decisions being made. Trump has talked so often about retribution and revenge. What could that actually look like? You know, the first person I reached out to is civil rights leader Sherrilyn Ifill, who's now at Harvard University about to start a new job at Howard. And this is what she had to say about a second Trump Justice Department. We would be looking at something catastrophic and unprecedented in this country, which is the takeover of the United States

Department of Justice, the most important legal entity, certainly in this country, but perhaps maybe even in the world, by an autocratic leader. One of the things that came up over and over again in my reporting this week was concern about trump possibly prosecuting his political adversaries he said he wants to do that to prosecute members of the biden family people who have criticized him like former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff mark milley and others who may be in line to testify against him in federal court trials next year. I also spoke with former Justice Department lawyer Carrie Cordero. She's now at the Center for a New American Security. She says it would

take a lot of people inside the Justice Department to drum up a prosecution that's out of bounds or not supported by the facts and the law. But with enough time and enough personnel, it is possible. And is personnel the main thing to think about here? Because I'm thinking back to the first time around and a lot of the people who had long careers inside the Justice Department who were in key positions, who often kind of pushed back or didn't follow the Twitter demands to do X or Y. Very different situation by the end of that first term when there were people in the Justice Department who were taking serious part in these conversations about the election results. I mean, what's the right way to think about the types of people Trump would be staffing a second go-round with? Yes, Scott. Remember, Donald Trump tried to make a man named Jeffrey Clark the acting attorney general at the end of his first term.

Clark backed these phony voter fraud claims and wanted the DOJ to send letters to state authorities talking about election fraud. That was actually averted by a threat of mass resignations near the end of Trump's term. But people inside and outside the Justice Department worry the people Trump might want to run the Justice Department next time around will be more compliant. There's really a lot of concern about upending the norms that have been in place since Watergate that erect some kinds of boundaries between the DOJ and the White House. This year, Jeff Clark actually wrote a white paper saying the Justice Department is not independent of the White House. Now, the Trump campaign says only it is responsible for policy if he wins again. But already names of

possible cabinet members are emerging. And people like Stephen Miller, Mike Davis, senators like Mike Lee or J.D. Vance, they're all mentioned as possible DOJ appointees in a Trump Justice Department. And they're by and large not people with DOJ or prosecutorial experience. And they're also pretty vocal on behalf of some of Donald Trump's most extreme policy positions. So if people are being put into place in these key positions early on who are on the same wavelength as Trump, who have the same norm breaking approach, who don't think of the DOJ as an independent agency, what are some of the ways that they could shape the Justice Department or what law and order looks like? You know, Trump mostly avoided the

Justice Department and its role in the clemency process at the end of his first term. This time around, some of Trump's appointees potentially could embrace Trump's use of clemency, pardon power, which is virtually unlimited, and power to commute sentences, make certain kinds of criminal cases go away that have already been brought. But even more than that, Trump's overall approach to crime and punishment might turn out to be pretty brutal. Here's again, civil rights leader Sherrilyn Eiffel. One of the things Trump has talked about is, you know, shoplifters being executed. You know, if you're caught stealing something from a store, you should be shot. And we shouldn't underestimate the way Trump's vision of law, to the extent he thinks

of it even as law, will permeate throughout the country. You know, it's not lost on me that in his first term, Trump said it would be okay if police roughed up suspects when they put them in the back of patrol cars. And the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration actually resigned after that statement. Sherrilyn Ifill's worried that some people in law enforcement may be emboldened by it in a potential Trump second term. We're talking about a lot of these things that, again,

Trump, if he didn't fully try to do it the first time around, he voiced support for that type of thing, right? And we're talking about a lot of things that didn't ultimately end up happening for one way or another. Why do you think that could be different a second time around? One is because a former President Trump was really a novice at running a government last time around. Now he knows some of where those lines are. In fact, one example that came up in my reporting was Trump was not aware when Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate election interference by Russia in the 2016 election. And Trump was not aware of a Justice Department policy that basically said you cannot indict a sitting president. He certainly is aware of that, very aware of that right now. And some of that knowledge and some of the new people he may put in place could help him effectuate some of his policy goals. You've talked about the broad powers of clemency and pardoning that a president has. This is a president who is currently charged with

federal criminal crimes. There are two different cases currently against Trump in the federal system, one in Florida related to classified documents, one in Washington, D.C. related to his attempt to overturn the election. What powers would Trump have to shape those cases against him if they haven't gone to trial by the time he would take office? You know, Donald Trump could try to pardon himself in one or both of those cases if he wins the White House. It's an unsettled legal question whether he has that authority, but he certainly might try. Or he could just direct his new attorney general or somebody at the top of the Justice Department on an acting basis to get rid of those cases. And we know from recent history, courts are really reluctant to tell prosecutors who they can and can't charge with crimes, how to use that important discretion they have.

That issue came up when Bill Barr ran the Justice Department, and he tried to back away from prosecuting Trump's former National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn. The courts came down and said, you know, we can't tell the Justice Department who to prosecute and who not to prosecute. And the DOJ did not go ahead with that case against Flynn. That's NPR Justice Correspondent Kerry Johnson. Kerry, thank you for your reporting on this. I feel like we will talk about it again soon. Oh, happy to be here always. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. Scott Detrow, NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. Scott Detrow, NPR.

I'm Scott Detrow. Scott Detrow, NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. Scott Detrow, NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. Scott Detrow, NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. Scott Detrow, NPR.

I'm Scott Detrow. Scott Detrow, NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. Scott Detrow, NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. Scott Detrow, NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. Scott Detrow, NPR.

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