The following is presented as part of The Columbian’s Opinion content, which offers a point of view in order to provoke thought and debate of civic issues. Opinions represent the viewpoint of the author. Unsigned editorials represent the consensus opinion of The Columbian’s editorial board, which operates independently of the news department.
Republicans’ claims of weaponized FBI, DOJ dangerous
By Carl P. Leubsdorf
Published: July 10, 2023, 6:01am
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Despite differences on abortion and Ukraine, most members of the large Republican presidential field have generally followed former President Donald Trump’s lead in roundly condemning President Joe Biden.
While some of that criticism is justified — his difficulty in taming inflation, or his mishandling of Afghanistan, for example — other is not. And the most dangerous example of mistaken GOP condemnation of Biden is the continuing assertion — seconded by most congressional Republicans — that the current administration is guilty of “weaponizing” the Justice Department and the FBI for political purposes.
The irony is that, not only are these GOP allegations false, but it was Trump who repeatedly sought to make his Justice Department a political arm of the White House.
Current allegations are largely based on the contention that current investigations of Trump — including the FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate — are inherently political efforts to tear down the 2024 GOP presidential front-runner, rather than legitimate probes and prosecutions based on Trump’s own questionable actions.
“Joe Biden has weaponized law enforcement to interfere in our elections,” Trump told an audience soon after his indictment for improper possession of classified documents. “I’m being indicted for you.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s main GOP challenger, agreed. “The weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society,” he wrote on Twitter.
(To be fair, there are exceptions. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie rejected the weaponization allegation, noting that, in Trump’s indictment, “This evidence was pretty damning.”)
Trump often sought to use his Justice Department for political purposes.
He attacked his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for recusing himself from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of reputed ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russians — and for resisting White House efforts to interfere.
Two top former White House officials, Donald McGahn and John Kelly, said Trump wanted the Justice Department to investigate his 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton, and former FBI officials James Comey and Andrew McCabe, both of whom he ousted.
Trump’s second attorney general, William Barr, held up release of Mueller’s report and issued a statement suggesting its conclusions were less damning than they were. He also acceded to Trump’s demands to investigate the Russia investigators by naming U.S. attorney John Durham to do so. Later, Barr separated himself from Trump, rejecting his post-election assertions of widespread fraud and resigning.
Meanwhile, Trump vowed that, if elected next year, he will seek to curb the Justice Department’s independence from the White House.
“I will appoint a real special ‘prosecutor’ to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the USA, Joe Biden, the entire Biden crime family, & all others involved with the destruction of our elections, borders, & country itself!” Trump posted on Truth Social, claiming authority he wouldn’t have.
“Republicans in Congress should defund the DOJ and FBI until they come to their senses,” he wrote another time. “The Democrats have totally weaponized law enforcement in our country.”
By contrast, the Biden administration set a very different course by reaffirming the department’s prior independence. The president left decisions on investigating Trump and his son, Hunter Biden, to his attorney general, former federal appeals judge Merrick Garland.
Garland, in turn, left the Hunter Biden investigation with the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for Delaware, David Weiss, and named special counsels to examine allegations of improper possession of classified documents by Trump, Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence.
President Biden has declined to comment on either the charges against Trump or his son’s plea bargain with prosecutors.
To some extent, GOP allegations probably represent political calculations about the danger of crossing Trump because of his popularity among Republican voters. If anything, the indictments have strengthened his standing with them.
More serious is the degree to which they believe their own false statements.
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