When Donald Trump won a second term, it marked the beginning of the end of then-special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal cases. Almost immediately after Election Day, the prosecutor and his team grudgingly wrapped up their work — not because they wanted to or because they lacked compelling evidence, but because of Justice Department guidelines related to prosecuting a sitting president.
Left without options, Smith resigned and his criminal indictments against the president effectively evaporated.
In theory, Trump could’ve celebrated and moved on. In practice, the Republican has preferred to go after those associated with the special counsel.
The week after Inauguration Day, for example, the president ousted lawyers, including career Justice Department officials who worked on Smith’s team. There was no evidence they’d done anything wrong or failed to do their jobs effectively, but it didn’t matter: Trump saw their affiliations with the man who tried to hold him accountable, so they had to go.
It was first of many salvos. Attorney General Pam Bondi, a Trump loyalist, created a ridiculous “weaponization” panel, which will apparently be responsible for, among other things, investigating Smith’s investigations. Interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, another Trump loyalist and appointee, kicked off an unnecessary investigation into Smith and a law firm that gave the former special counsel pro bono legal services.
It was against this backdrop that NBC News reported:
Trump signed an executive order [Tuesday] directing Attorney General Pam Bondi and other agency heads to suspend any active security clearances held by a law firm that assisted former special counsel Jack Smith in his investigations of Trump. The order targets the Washington-based law firm Covington & Burling LLP, naming a firm partner and ‘all members, partners, and employees’ who assisted Smith, ‘pending a review and determination of their roles and responsibilities, if any, in the weaponization of the judicial process.’
The same presidential order directed the White House Office of Management and Budget to issue a memo asking all federal agencies to review contracts with the same law firm.
The New York Times described the move as “a breathtaking escalation of Mr. Trump’s effort to employ the vast powers of the presidency against Mr. Smith and the team of prosecutors and federal law enforcement officials who worked for him, extending that campaign to those who have provided Mr. Smith pro bono legal representation.”
I can appreciate why many have grown inured — to Trump’s pettiness, to his abuses, to his fixation on retaliatory revenge, etc. — but it’s worth pausing to appreciate that steps like these aren’t supposed to be part of politics in the United States. The president is using the power of his office to punish a private law firm, not because it did something improper or illegal, but because he disapproves of the firm having cooperated with a federal prosecution that affected him personally. Mark Zaid, a Washington lawyer who also had his security clearance revoked by Trump, told the Times that the executive order “is a disgraceful affront to the entire legal and national security system.” When a reporter asked the president specifically if he was targeting the law firm, Trump replied, “I’ve been targeted for four years, longer than that, so … don’t talk to me about targeting.” Whether the president understands this or not, he was targeted because prosecutors assembled voluminous evidence that he committed a variety of alleged felonies. Trump’s motivation for targeting a prominent law firm is qualitatively and fundamentally different. Nevertheless, the underlying message to other firms is obvious: Those who work on cases the president doesn’t like should expect to face official administrative punishment.
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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