Dem
50
GOP
50
Ankush Khardori, a former federal prosecutor and now a writer for Politico, has written a piece describing what a President Trump could do to punish his enemies in a new term. It is positively scary. Armed with the Supreme Court's affirmation of Richard Nixon's motto that when the president does it, it is not illegal, Trump could actually do next time what he threatened to do last time and didn't (e.g., lock her up).
In addition to the Supreme Court decision giving the president free rein, two things would be different in Trump v2.0 from Trump v1.0. First, Trump has been indicted on almost 90 counts of criminal behavior and has been convicted on 34 on them. He is clearly very, very angry about them and his drive to seek revenge will be massive if he gets the power. And while he could make the federal cases go away, he probably can't make the state cases vanish and he could be sentenced to a state prison starting at the end of his term as president.
Second, he has learned that installing people who have at least some respect for the law can be a hindrance. People like former White House Counsel Don McGahn, who threatened to quit when Trump tried to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, are not going to be part of a second Trump administration. Trump's only hard requirement for being appointed to any high position will be a blind obedience to his orders, the Constitution and the law be damned. In particular, Trump's next attorney general will make Jeff Sessions look like Elliot Richardson. Trump will nominate an AG who will take his enemies list, dream up charges for each one, and indict them all. Even if juries eventually refuse to convict them, putting them through the wringer and forcing them to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on top lawyers will be a punishment by itself.
Jeff Clark is a possible AG, even though he is facing disbarment. However, even a Republican Senate might refuse to confirm him. One route Trump might use to punish his enemies is through the office of the White House counsel. The White House counsel does not require Senate confirmation, so Trump could pick the most loyal lawyer he knows and have him do all the dirty work. Our guess—but this is just a guess—is that it will not be Michael Cohen, even though he has some experience in blindly following Trump's orders. The deputy AG would also have to be a total loyalist, since the deputy does a lot of the day-to-day routine work, including supervising the U.S. attorneys. Needless to say, Trump would fire all the U.S. attorneys on Day 1, and install pliant replacements, especially in D.C., Virginia, Maryland, and Manhattan, where many of his enemies live. He would give them their marching orders and tell them that if they haven't indicted his enemies in their jurisdictions within, say, 3 months, they will be fired.
Trump could also direct his AG to appoint special counsels to pursue his targets. He would probably avoid any in Southern Florida, lest they get Aileen Cannon—who doesn't believe special counsels are legal—as the judge in any of their cases. Of course, if he appoints any special counsels, that would undermine Cannon's ruling, so he is more likely to keep prosecutions within the Justice Dept., which allows his handpicked AG to monitor them all closely and keep them on track.
Another person who would be a dead man walking in Trump v2.0 is FBI Director Christopher Wray, whom he himself appointed. Unfortunately for Trump, Wray took his job seriously and is not Trump's stooge. Even though his 10-year term will not run out until Aug. 1, 2027, Trump will surely can him on Day 1 and replace him with an obedient flunky who will use all of the FBI's resources to dig up evidence to be used to prosecute Trump's enemies.
The list of Trump's enemies is no doubt long and growing. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are surely near the top of the list, along with AG Merrick Garland, Deputy AG Lisa Monaco, and other top DoJ officials. Maybe even Hillary Clinton, although she is a bit of a distraction. In addition to current and former politicians, many journalists and Democratic donors are probably on the list.
This all said, getting convictions may not be so easy. Line prosecutors are normally free of political interference but if pressured to take bogus cases, many of them may resign and go for better-paying jobs at criminal-defense law firms. These are the people who do the actual work of prosecuting cases, and if they quit en masse, they won't be easy to replace, especially if candidates for the jobs know in advance what is expected of them. Judges have also been known to throw out cases that have no merit. Getting 12 members of a jury to convict high-profile people in cases without any real evidence will be a steep hill to climb. If some of the targets are brought to trial and then acquitted, Trump will feel defeated and become furious. That may inhibit him going forward, since he doesn't want to have jury after jury to declare innocent someone he claimed was guilty. That said, he kept pushing election lawsuits, even as he ran his record to 0-60, so who knows?
Finally, even if the Republicans get control of the Senate, probably not by a margin bigger than 51-49, some of Trump's more outrageous nominees may not be confirmed. One could imagine Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME) simply drawing the line and refusing to confirm incompetent hacks. Since the vast majority of Republican senators actually secretly despise Trump, the two women Senators probably wouldn't be punished for doing so, especially if they threatened to become independents and caucus with the Democrats, like the four current independents in the Senate. (V)