A felon in the White House is making crime legal

Meanwhile, he's creating fake crimes to punish the law abiding.

Trump during a White House event last month. (Andrew Harnik/Getty)

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After the Supreme Court declared Donald Trump largely immune from prosecution for turning the office of the presidency into a criminal enterprise, and the nation’s voters then chose to reinstall the freshly convicted felon in the White House, who could have predicted he would use his office to punish the law abiding and protect the corrupt?

In fact, both the scale and audaciousness of Trump’s corruption, and of his regime’s assault on the criminal justice system, was eminently predictable.

As House Speaker Mike Johnson recently pointed out, Trump’s corruption is “out in the open.” The same is true of his use of criminal justice system and other levers of government as weapons against his ever-growing list of enemies.

But even the most cynical have been surprised by the Trumpist effort to portray the provision of healthcare to children, veterans, and the elderly as “waste” and “fraud,” as well as Trump’s effort to render those who follow the laws into criminals.

The most vulnerable among us, including immigrants and the sick, are currently among Trump’s primary victims. But the entire nation will soon pay a heavy price for his systematic assault on the rule of law in service of his bottomless desire for corrupt wealth and self-aggrandizement.

Retroactive criminalization

During the campaign, Trump and his cronies declared they would deport the allegedly massive numbers of “criminal aliens.” When Trump came into office, however, he faced a problem: The vast majority of undocumented immigrants are law abiding.

Trumpists, however, came up with an answer: Create fake crimes and thereby turn the law abiding into criminals.

Trump announced the US is “under invasion” by a foreign power in order to invoke the rarely used Alien Enemies Act and justify the summary deportation of supposed gang members to foreign prisons, this despite a US intelligence report concluding there is no such invasion. Then, when courts caught the administration deporting migrants who are not gang members, or in violation of existing immigration laws, Trumpists have prevaricated and outright lied, transforming their purported law enforcement initiative into a fraud.

The administration has also attacked judges and elected officials who have the temerity to question their illegal conduct.

Alina Habba (the parking garage lawyer Trump installed as New Jersey’s acting US attorney) ordered the arrest of Ras Baraka, the Mayor of Newark, on bogus charges arising from his participation in a protest at a private DHS jail, leading to what a federal magistrate judge called an “embarrassing retraction.” After that gambit failed, Habba brought equally flimsy charges against a member of Congress who accompanied Baraka at the protest, asserting that she “assaulted” armed ICE thugs.

DOJ politicization escalates with bogus arrest of congresswoman

Similarly, last month in New York City, an ICE gangster terrorized and handcuffed a crying staffer of Rep. Jerry Nadler after armed agents invaded his office without a warrant.

Trumpists have resorted to inventing new offenses so as to transform law-abiding immigrants into criminals. For example, Trump has declared slivers of land along the border to be “military zones” for the sole purpose of charging migrants with trespassing. The administration has also declared that undocumented immigrants have an obligation to “register” with the government so they can be indicted for failing to do so. They’re jailing immigrants who legally entered the United States under a Biden-era asylum law by retroactively declaring the program to be “illegal.”

Most tellingly, and insidiously, ICE agents desperate to meet the increasing quotas the White House has set for deporting “illegals” have taken to targeting the most vulnerable immigrants: Those intent on following the law and engaging in productive work.

As Sen. Markwayne Mullin put it on CNN yesterday, “regardless of what they may be doing right now” — including whether they are abiding by the law and are gainfully employed — undocumented persons “are illegal and they are criminals.”

It’s become routine for gangs of ICE goons to gather at immigration courts and arrest immigrants who are following the law by showing up for hearings. Immigration judges, cowed into facilitating Trump’s mass deportation schemes, have been dutifully dismissing cases so as to allow the immigrants to be immediately jailed as “illegals.” In one recent case, armed thugs dragged into an elevator an immigrant who had fainted after they had swooped in to grab her while her attorney was in the restroom.

State courts have also become favored hunting zones for ICE. Judges who have the temerity to point out that this tactic discourages immigrants from complying with court orders, and thus the law, are being threatened. Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan, for example, was jailed and indicted on the flimsiest of criminal charges for allegedly helping a man evade ICE. Her indictment has been decried by other jurists as a "threat [to] public trust in the judicial system and the ability of the public to avail themselves of courthouses without fear of reprisal.”

Adam Serwer on America's "new dark age"

ICE gangs are also now routinely assembling in restaurants and other places of work, often bearing submachine guns, cuffing everyone in sight, and jailing some, simply on suspicion of being “illegals.” Recently, a gang of armed and masked ICE officers terrified patrons and workers in a San Diego restaurant, and even cuffed the manager. The rifle-toting “law enforcement” officers retreated from the scene by shooting flash bang grenades into a crowd of citizens distressed by their misconduct. (They only managed to arrest two “illegals.”)

Despite the fact that Trump has had to resort to fabricating new crimes to turn law-abiding immigrants into targets for deportation, the GOP is now about to make ICE the largest federal law enforcement agency. Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” includes over $150 billion for immigration enforcement and seeks to make ICE the most highly funded law enforcement agency in the United States.

And as Trump’s threats about a military invasion of Los Angeles County, which appeared to be commencing through the use of federalized National Guard units as this piece was being prepared for publication Sunday evening, demonstrate that his administration is intent on using its growing immigration “law enforcement” apparatus to wreak havoc in America’s cities, and to threaten to make peaceful protest a crime.

Redefining fraud

During his last presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly pledged he would not allow Congress to cut Medicaid or Medicare, a promise that has been echoed by Speaker Johnson and his other stooges.

But as it turned out, Republicans felt the need to make a pretense of attacking the “deficit” even as they pursued a budget-busting package of tax cuts weighed overwhelmingly in favor of the wealthiest Americans. So of course, Trump and the party he controls decided to harm the most vulnerable Americans — including children, the elderly, veterans, and the working poor — by targeting Medicaid for cuts.

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Trump’s solemn “pledge” to protect Medicaid proved to be no barrier at all, given his ever-flexible definition of “crime.” Trump declared that 10 million or more Americans Republicans will be leaving without healthcare — resulting in tens of thousands of avoidable deaths a year — are engaged in “fraud”, “waste,” or “abuse.” Johnson, meanwhile, falsely announced that the people Republicans will be cutting off from live saving care are “illegals,” despite the fact that undocumented immigrants don’t receive federal dollars for coverage.

Trumpists have become so comfortable with their inverted definition of “fraud” that they are turning it into the subject of morbid humor. During a town hall, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst replied to a question about the many people who will die prematurely as a result of the GOP’s massive Medicaid cuts by declaring with a smirk that “we are all going to die.”

After Ernst was widely criticized for her callousness, she taped a video in a cemetery in which she offered a sarcastic “apology” and urged those facing premature death due to her cruelty to find faith in Jesus.

Predictably, Republican senators have indicated they are planning to add Medicare to the targets of their “cost cutting” efforts by defining seniors’ need for healthcare to be a “fraud.”

Even as they have redefined the poor, sick and elderly as “fraudsters,” Trumpers have embarked on a campaign to make actual fraud and other financial crimes legal.

The administration is systematically dismantling the Department of Justice’s mechanisms for preventing, investigating, and prosecuting securities and other actual crimes. The DOJ has, to date, terminated over $800 million in grants, including for programs that combat human trafficking and gun violence and provide support to local police. The DOJ has also shut down, or crippled, its enforcement of whole categories of the most serious federal crimes, including those involving the cryptocurrencies Trump is brazenly using to enrich himself and his family.

Meanwhile, under the dysfunctional leadership of Kash Patel, the FBI has been engaged in wholesale firing of career agents, including as many as 4,000 personnel charged with investigating terrorism threats inside and outside the United States. Patel appears determined to place Trump’s goals of rooting out “disloyal” law enforcement personnel — and targeting immigrants — far above the agency’s statutory mandate to investigate serious crimes.

And Trump’s first major law enforcement action was to terminate the strong public corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams — who has been assiduously stooging for Trump and his immigration “crackdown” — thereby loudly declaring that the DOJ will be adjusting its historical focus on combatting public corruption to excuse corruption among those favored by the Leader.

‘When the president does it, that means it is not illegal"

When Richard Nixon uttered those words in 1977 three years after being driven out of the White House for his crimes, he was mocked and repudiated. But now Trump, with the cover of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, has set out to make Nixon’s declaration a reality.

It is not mere happenstance that Trump’s DOJ and SEC have set out to effectively legalize whole categories of financial fraud and corruption. Trump himself has, very publicly, turned the presidency into what amounts to a criminal financial enterprise, enriching himself and his family by billions of dollars through various “business” deals (many of them transparently corrupt).

Trump’s most lucrative “deals” have — surprise, surprise — included cryptocurrency transactions in which he and his own children (as well as the offspring of cronies including Steve Witkoff and Howard Lutnick) have yielded massive profits for themselves while causing huge losses for others. His inner circle is not just leaping headfirst into the crypto “business,” but are doing so with many of the sleaziest participants in the market, some of whom have been the subjects of investigations and SEC enforcement proceedings. Trump has even welcomed some of these ripoff artists into the White House, where it is now a matter of near public record that a large payoff can get nearly anyone an audience with him regardless of their criminal background.

Trump is assaulting his own legitimacy

Trump has also regularized the sale of pardons that began during his first term, with Trump hangers-on reportedly charging millions to get wealthy criminals out of jail. Paying third parties is rapidly becoming an outmoded way of currying favor with Trump, given that there are now many ways to line his pockets directly for favors. Nonetheless, Trump recently pardoned a tax cheat after his mother donated large sums to his campaign.

In a fashion familiar to observers of systemically corrupt regimes, Trump (sheltered by the Supreme Court’s assurance that he can freely engage in corruption) has made bribe solicitation an integral element of governance. For example, the FCC, headed by a notorious Trump stooge, has made it plain that Paramount’s planned merger transaction will not be approved until that company pays a huge bribe to Trump, in the form of a “settlement” payment for a bogus lawsuit Trump brought against 60 Minutes over the editing of a segment about Kamala Harris.

Despite what Mike Johnson claims, the fact that Trump’s undermining of the rule of law is being done openly and brazenly does not make it any less corrosive. In fact, the opposite is true.

There has been much (accurate) discussion of how Trump’s systemic attacks on the rule of law are destroying our democracy. But the destruction will not end there. The United States’ longstanding status as a nation of laws is also a foundation of our economic success. Investors in and outside the US have long felt confident placing their wealth in this country because, unlike so many other places in the world, laws are usually enforced predictably, not according to the wishes of a despotic or authoritarian leader.

Trump’s scheme to upend the rule of law in this country — and install himself as a quasi-dictator, who gets a “taste” of whatever business he chooses — is going to induce many investors to look elsewhere to make their investments. A nation where investors must pay bribes and possibly risk later being charged with crimes as a routine “cost of doing business” cannot remain the thriving financial center of the world for long. The question is whether the United States can rid itself of this budding despotism before even more grave and irreparable damage is done.

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