Trump's Regime of Consequences and Incentives

The ex-president's insatiable appetite for revenge has rapidly evolved into a structured system. Within the past year, the leader's fury and whims have taken on the guise of administrative measures in a manner comparable to past dictatorial regimes. Justice department figures who do not cooperate are summarily dismissed and substituted by loyalists. Critical officials who question him encounter indictment, court proceedings and sanctions. Adversaries have been labeled under executive memoranda as “hostile to national interests”, “anti-Christian” and “against free markets”, and menaced with legal action as “terrorists”.

The Justice System Restructured

Every case involving legal action of critics and leniency for supporters exhibits its own distinct characteristics. But, regardless of their particular nature, they represent examples of what has emerged as a deliberate method. Those events are anything but isolated. Trump's cleansing of federal lawyers and Federal Bureau of Investigation personnel, accompanied by his placement of loyalists in key roles, commenced swiftly, quickly assumed a regularity, and has now been molded into a regime. The justice department and the FBI have been remade into partisan organizations under his direct command to carry out his demands. Unfairness has been turned into normal. It represents the system of punishment.

Administration is focused with penalizing the leader's alleged enemies than they are with safeguarding our national security.

Inside the System

The foundation of this framework has been uncovered in the lawsuit of multiple former top FBI officials submitted in the ninth month in the judicial system in DC against FBI director Kash Patel and top lawyer Pam Bondi for wrongful dismissal in “a campaign of payback against them for what Defendants deemed to be a inability to show sufficient devotion”. The document states that one official, the ex- temporary head, details a conversation in which the director “openly admitted the illegality of his behavior”.

He had sought to defend agency personnel from being dismissed, the filing claims. Patel informed him that “they” – understood by him to be the presidential administration and federal prosecutors – had ordered him to dismiss anyone who they identified as having participated in a legal probe against him. The complaint goes on: “Patel clarified that he had to dismiss the people his bosses told him to remove, because his chance to keep his own position relied on the removal of the agents who handled investigations involving the President. He commented that there was no option he or Driscoll could do to stop these or any other firings, because ‘the bureau attempted to put the leader in prison and he remembers.’” After the official advised the director he was breaking the FBI's own policies, he reportedly said “he knew that and he was aware the character of the summary firings were probably improper”.

Widespread Effects

Following the director's reported admission to the official, the DoJ and the FBI have been gutted and reorganized for Trump's revenge apparatus. Six of the bureau's top officials were terminated or forced out in the initial period of the presidency. About 4,500 professional attorneys at the justice department have agreed to a “voluntary departure plan”. At least multiple DoJ lawyers, such as those in the New York office, stepped down in protest over what they considered as political interference in dropping the legal action against the New York City mayor, a political figure, in return for his cooperation with his Immigration and Customs Enforcement roundups of immigrants. The public integrity section of the justice department, which manages ethical violations, has been diminished to two attorneys. The civil rights division has been severely reduced: seventy percent of its employees has departed. 33% of senior leaders at DoJ have quit. The section enforcing environmental law has seen departures of half its leadership.

Incentives and Penalties

In the Adams case, the temporary lawyer for the NY office, she, quit in dissent against what she characterized as the “exchange”. Tom Homan, his “border czar,” showed up as the enforcer with Adams on a media outlet to state: “Should he fail to deliver, I'll be back in New York City.”. Meanwhile, Emil Bove, earlier the senior DoJ official and a former Trump attorney, who brokered the arrangement, was granted an appellate federal judgeship, a likely springboard to the supreme court.

His protection for wrongdoings committed while in government, awarded by the extraordinary judgment of the GOP-led on the supreme court, thus preventing his legal action over the Capitol riot and preserving his public standing for the presidential race, is the basis on which he stands to protect his stalwarts. Given this protection, he has been empowered to permit misconduct. The consequence of the supreme court decision saturates his government and the GOP down to its bones. The legal case has metastasized. As a past leader's White House counsel John Dean commented about the Watergate