One of the great ironies of the last few years is that Donald Trump and his party have repeatedly accused the Biden administration of weaponizing the Justice Department and federal law enforcement. To date, there is literally no evidence to support the claims — and unambiguous evidence pointing in the opposite direction — but Republicans have eagerly replaced reality with their preferred counternarrative.
Indeed, as we’ve discussed, Republicans don’t just want their conspiracy theory to be true; they need it to be true. This simple, ridiculous idea is at the center of the party’s Trump criminal defense, fundraising, stump speeches, cable news segments, and even legislative campaigns on Capitol Hill.
In 2024, assertions about a “two-tiered” justice system are foundational to Republican politics. They’re also routinely discredited by real-world events.
If, however, GOP voices are looking for a president who actually tried to weaponize law enforcement to target his perceived political foes, I have some good news for them: They don’t have to look very hard.
Though Republicans tend to forget, it was in October 2020 when Trump publicly called on federal prosecutors to charge Joe Biden, accusing him of undefined crimes. That said week, Politico published an especially memorable headline: “‘Where are all of the arrests?’: Trump demands Barr lock up his foes.”
The next day, the then-Republican incumbent spoke with Fox Business and called on the Justice Department to “indict” his perceived Democratic foes — including the presidential candidate who proceeded to defeat him a month later.
But while Trump’s lobbying for prosecutions against his opponents was dramatic and scandalous in public, his efforts in private were apparently even worse. The New York Times reported over the weekend:
It was the spring of 2018 and President Donald J. Trump, faced with an accelerating inquiry into his campaign’s ties to Russia, was furious that the Justice Department was reluctant to strike back at those he saw as his enemies. In an Oval Office meeting, Mr. Trump told startled aides that if Attorney General Jeff Sessions would not order the department to go after Hillary Clinton and James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, Mr. Trump would prosecute them himself.
Trump, of course, has spent the last several months boasting that he, in a demonstration of endless benevolence, went to extraordinary lengths to protect Clinton and shield her from prosecution. In reality, he was reportedly prepared to prosecute her on his own, as far back as the spring of 2018, unless the Justice Department agreed to indict his 2016 rival.
We now know, of course, that Trump did not succeed on this front, but the Times report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, didn’t just shine a light on the Republican’s efforts to abuse the levers of power during his term, it also noted the consequences of those attempts. “[A] look back at the cases of 10 individuals brings a pattern into clearer focus: After Mr. Trump made repeated public or private demands for them to be targeted by the government, they faced federal pressure of one kind or another,” the article explained.
Imagine that.
Making matters worse, these tactics reportedly became a staple of the former president’s term. “Mr. Trump’s efforts were so sustained and troubling to top West Wing aides that at least two of them took from the White House notes they had written that memorialized how he said he wanted to use the powers of the federal government against his rivals,” the Times added.
Those were notes, it’s worth emphasizing for context, that weren’t supposed to exist — because Trump gave “repeated instructions not to take notes,” which suggests that the Republican was aware, at least on some level, that he was engaged in improper conduct. The Times’ report went on to note that at least two White House officials not only documented Trump’s demands about targeting his perceived enemies, they took their notes “from the White House as well to ensure there was documentation.” In other words, if the reporting is accurate, we’re dealing with a dynamic in which a sitting president tried to weaponize federal prosecutions, told his team not to take notes, and put White House officials in a position in which they believed it was necessary to smuggle memo drafts out of the West Wing so they could help prove what Trump did. When the Times asked about Trump’s use of threats against his perceived foes, a spokesperson for his campaign called the accounts “propaganda” before claiming that it’s Democrats who are “carrying out illegal, weaponized lawfare against their political opponents.” Or put another way, in response to evidence of Trump’s apparent abuses, his campaign team stuck to its discredited counternarrative, apparently hoping the public won’t know the difference between fact and fiction. In a normal and healthy political environment, this would be the defining scandal of the era. In our political environment, Republicans not only pretend the scandal isn’t real, they also falsely accuse Democrats of doing precisely what Trump was caught doing.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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