Constitutional Crisis Cabal, Part III
Our "Federal Correspondent" describes Trump's vendetta-and-coercion machine.
(Read Part 1 of this series here. Part II is here.)
Imagine an F.B.I agent who spent their career tracking, investigating and busting the horrible people who create child sexual abuse material. Suddenly, once Donald Trump takes office, they get fired because (on orders from their boss) they had arrested a J6-er who punched a cop during the Capitol insurrection. Or consider a crooked mayor, indicted for corruption. His case gets dropped because he promised to help Trump deport asylum seekers. Or imagine white supremacist thugs bragging that Trump will pardon them after they attack his enemies. Or picture this: your church or synagogue’s social justice group is infiltrated by undercover informants trying to foment violence to facilitate a crackdown on local activists.
None of these dystopian scenarios are out-of-reach today. They’re all dangerously close to our current situation and reminiscent of the worst parts of our American past. The third element of the constitutional crisis cabal is how Trump is intentionally working to create an autocratic authoritarian state, fueled by a mobster-like agenda of undermining our freedom. He and his cronies are building an investigative and prosecutorial apparatus loyal to him instead of focused on catching criminals. Trump’s goal is to unshackle the Department of Justice, the FBI and the CIA from the laws preventing a president from deploying federal police to hurt (or help) whomever he pleases. In other words, Trump wants taxpayers to pay for his personal vendetta-and-coercion machine.
Just weeks after his inauguration, we’ve already experienced a modern replication of the trifecta of the most disgraceful political overreaches of the twentieth century. It took just a month for Trump’s henchmen to combine the worst parts of McCarthyism, the reign of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon’s enemies’ lists and Saturday Night Massacre – all to require security agencies into serving Trump-Musk Inc. without regard to law or norms.
McCarthyism involved a reign of terror starting in the late 1940s. While it’s associated with Wisconsin Sen. Joe McCarthy, he wasn’t alone in investigating and blacklisting anti-fascists, anyone ever involved in the Communist Party, leftists and other critics of U.S. foreign policy. With no evidence of communist associations, McCarthy went after employees of the State Department, the Government Printing Office and the U.S. Army.
Here’s another example of McCarthyism: Lots of Americans opposed the Spanish fascist leader Francisco Franco in the late 1930s, but those who opposed him after the defeat of fascists and Nazis in World War II were often called a “premature anti-fascist.” Anti-Francoism was seen as evidence of communist leanings and many times meant job loss.
Then consider what happened in 1955 when folk singer Pete Seeger (a supporter of the anti-Franco “republican” forces in the Spanish Civil War) was hauled before the House Un-American Committee and asked to inform on others. He refused, citing his First Amendment rights, which was different than the rest of the witnesses who pled the Fifth.
That move, and his other activism, started decades of trouble for Seeger, including a 1957 indictment and 1961 conviction on contempt charges for refusing to answer Congressional inquisitors. While many perceive McCarthyism ended in the 1950s, as Seeger proved, it didn’t. His popular quartet, The Weavers, were banned from performing on NBC in 1962 when they refused to sign a loyalty oath. And it wasn’t until 1967’s Keyishian v. Board of Regents of Univ. of State of N. Y. that the Supreme Court ruled loyalty oaths for teachers were an unconstitutional infringement of free speech. (Two excellent books on the period are A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy by David M. Oshinsky and Naming Names by Victor Navasky.)
McCarthyism damaged so many people and our nation. What’s happening now, though, is much worse because Trump’s goal is personal, not nationalist, fealty. Consider the loyalty tests being posed to Trump admin job seekers. According to the Washington Post, applicants for top intel and law enforcement jobs were asked these questions:
Was Jan. 6 ‘an inside job?’
Was the 2020 presidential election ‘stolen?’
Who were the ‘real patriots on Jan. 6?’
Who won the 2020 election?
Who is your ‘real boss?’
Obviously, in a democracy, individuals holding these jobs should be committed to the truth and America, not the convicted felon living in the White House.
Consider the case of “Stop the Steal” organizer Ed Martin. Trump appointed the MAGA loyalist to be the interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and has nominated him for the permanent job. It’s lunacy that Trump put a J-6er in any sort of position of power. As the New York Times and others have reported, Martin spread many lies claiming the 2020 election was stolen. Martin also raised money for insurrectionists and defended them in court. In addition, he refused to comply with a congressional subpoena from the committee investigating the Capitol riots. And, like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Martin – by any measure – is grossly unqualified for his job. More of a political operative than lawyer, Martin, the former chair of the Missouri Republican Party, also worked at the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis and for long-time conservative hothead Phyllis Schlafly. His whole career has been in right-wing activism and the man has never worked as a prosecutor.
Even before officially getting the permanent job, Martin was already threatening critics of Elon Musk and his teenage minions. “Let me assure you of this,” Martin tweeted in a letter to Musk, “we will pursue any and all legal action against anyone who impedes your work.”
And Musk thanked him on Twitter, which has apparently become MAGA’s official media outlet. Another battle victory won in Trump’s war on journalism.
Martin isn’t the only election denier getting a sweet job, thanks to blind loyalty to Trump. Consider Attorney General Pam Bondi, another “Stop the Steal” fanatic. Right after being sworn in as Attorney General, Bondi issued a memo launching probes of the scores of state and federal prosecutors who investigated Trump for his many crimes, including election obstruction, stealing unclassified documents and faking business records. Bondi is a demolitionist, tearing down the wall of separation between the Department of Justice and the president. Especially by ordering that quarterly reports about these investigations go directly to White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller. Bondi also warned DoJ lawyers to “zealously” support Trump’s views. Those that don’t follow orders will be disciplined or fired. As Politico points out, Bondi is going against all the “civil service protections and legal ethics rules [which] make it difficult to take action against a government lawyer who says he or she thinks a particular argument is improper, unjustified or unethical.”
In conjunction with the DOJ purge, Trump began targeting the 4,000 career staffers at the FBI who were involved in the Jan. 6 investigations, especially going after lawyers and agents who worked on cases connected to the insurrection. Some FBI staffers were fired almost instantly after the inauguration. Others won a temporary reprieve, thanks to the courts, but thousands could still be fired. At least two lawsuits from FBI agents were brought anonymously because “they’re fearful that Justice Department leadership intends to publicly identify them and make them targets of threats and harassment.”
Trump’s misdeeds and mass firings are almost starting to make J. Edgar Hoover’s bad old days look tame. And that’s saying a lot.
Under Hoover’s leadership, for instance, the agency attempted to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr. and tried to convince him to commit suicide. Also, the FBI infiltrated the anti-Vietnam War and student democracy movement and built COINTELPRO, the domestic spying project trying to discredit and divide those leading the struggles for peace and civil rights. And while Hoover’s actions were terrible and illegal, they seem less damaging than Trump’s multi-faceted agenda of thuggery and personal retribution. Especially since Trump is using taxpayer money to mutate the law enforcement apparatus intended to protect and prosecute the criminals among us.
As Q-anon influencer Kash Patel becomes its director, the FBI’s future gets even more frightening. Patel seeks revenge against anyone he calls “members of the executive branch deep state.” His list includes Republicans in Trump’s first administration who tried to stop lawbreaking.
Patel testified to Congress that he knew nothing of retribution purges but whistleblowers say he has been “personally directing” it. In a democratic America, FBI agents and leaders should be pursuing and punishing criminals. Instead, in Trump-land, Patel commits perjury multiple times while pursuing revenge against all of MAGA’s enemies.
Simultaneously, when alleged criminals back Trump, they get special treatment. That’s the case with NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ indictment for corruption. Emil Bove III, the acting deputy attorney general at the Department of Justice, ordered prosecutors in the New York Southern Division to, temporarily, drop all charges. In exchange for a free “keep-out-of-jail” card, Bove made it clear that Adams was expected to do Trump’s bidding on an unrelated policy matter. And this came after Adams backed Trump on immigration and ordered top city officials to not criticize Trump. As Rep. Richie Torres observed, “The fear of a renewed federal prosecution after the 2025 election keeps [Adams] perpetually under the thumb of Donald Trump.”
Bove, by the way, defended Trump – and lost – in the hush money case involving porn star Stormy Daniels. Seems like ancient history, back in May 2024, when a jury found Trump guilty of 34 felonies. Bove also participated in the purge of prosecutors involved in the Jan. 6 cases while calling the legal efforts against the insurrectionists, “a grave national injustice.”
This quid pro quo was so outrageous that it led to a wave of resignations akin to the so-called Saturday Night Massacre of October 1973. Nixon was under investigation by Congress and by Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox for his Watergate crimes. This scandal included spying on the Democratic party, dirty tricks to harm candidates (most famously, Maine Sen. Ed Muskie), kidnapping the wife of the Attorney General to prevent her from talking to the press, hiding campaign donations, siccing the federal government on Nixon’s enemies, trying to stop the FBI’s investigation and paying hush money to keep criminal collaborators quiet. Nixon wanted to stop Cox from subpoenaing the White House tapes, so he ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refused and resigned in protest. Richardson’s replacement, William Ruckelshaus, also wouldn’t fire Cox and resigned in protest. Then Nixon ordered Solicitor General Robert Bork to fire Cox and he did so. This whole incident created a political firestorm.
When the White House tapes were ultimately released in August 1974, they showed that Nixon was personally involved in paying hush money to the so-called White House plumbers who were paid by a secret Nixon campaign operation called The Committee to Re-elect the President (aka CREEP.) Nixon’s burglars broke into the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate complex. Many in CREEP, including Attorney General John Mitchell, and others working in the administration, were convicted of crimes and went to prison. Nixon resigned soon after the tapes became public.
The first DOJ employee to resign over the deal to dismiss charges against current Mayor Eric Adams was Danielle Sassoon, a Trump-appointee slated to be interim U.S. Attorney for the SDNY. Writing to AG Bondi, Sassoon explained that the quid pro quo with Adams conflicted with DOJ rules against prosecuting for any political or policy reason, calling it “a breathtaking and dangerous precedent.” Importantly, Sasson isn’t a “woke” liberal. In fact, she’s a member of the conservative Federalist Society and clerked for ultra-conservative Catholic Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. After Sassoon said no, the DOJ moved the case to the control of the Public Integrity Section in Washington, D.C. There, multiple attorneys also refused to comply with Bove’s direction and submitted resignation letters.
Hagan Scotten, the lead prosecutor of Adams, wrote a remarkable letter to Bove, telling him that any federal prosecutor “would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials.” And as a former clerk for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, he’s no lib, either. “If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.”
So far, eight prosecutors have resigned. Four deputy mayors have also quit, refusing to work under Adams.
Another example of a government attorney quitting instead of taking unethical actions involves Denise Cheung, the top criminal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Washington D.C. office. During her almost 25 years in the DOJ, Cheung supervised national security cases, violent crimes prosecutions and other major investigations, including many of J-6 cases. But she quit on Feb. 18, after telling Trump toady Martin she wasn’t going to open a grand jury investigation into a Biden-era EPA funding decision without probable cause.
Obviously, it’s bad for America when prosecutors with a history of going after criminals step down because of presidential interference. As I’ve shown in this series, the actions and intentions of the Constitutional Crisis Cabal are deeply illegal, undemocratic and just plain wrong.
The words “Where Law Ends, Tyranny Begins” are engraved above a window on the Pennsylvania Ave. side of the “Robert F. Kennedy Building,” the DOJ headquarters in Washington D.C. Every student of U.S. history knows that the founders feared demagogues. Those revolutionaries understood what life was like under the rule of a despotic king. That’s why government officials take oaths of office to the Constitution, not to the president. As Sen. Angus King put it, “We’re experiencing in real time exactly what the framers most feared.”
Trump, though, vehemently rejects the rules of our legal system. Especially when it interferes with his aspirations. Last weekend, the autocrat suggested he is above legal reproach. “He who saves his Country, does not violate any Law” screamed his and the White House’s social media account.
(Some historians, by the way, attribute that motto to Napoleon. The slogan was also used by Anders Breivik, the neo-Nazi Norwegian terrorist who killed 77 people in two attacks in 2011.)
It’s easy to see that Trump’s coercive regime is well down the path to authoritarianism. And while that should be the nightmare of every anti-big government conservative, most GOPers – including Maine’s Susan Collins, who voted for Bondi but against Patel -- remain strangely quiet. Their silence, sadly, means they are complicit and have officially become part of the cabal.
In Part IV of The Constitutional Crisis Cabal, I’ll explain some tactics, strategies and actions that we, as American citizens, can take to disrupt any further descent into the abyss.
Amy Fried spent many years as a political scientist at the University of Maine, teaching and mentoring, earning multiple awards and her current title of Professor Emerita, and publishing research in numerous academic books and articles. At various times, she served as the faculty advisor for the College Republicans, College Democrats and the Young Americans for Liberty. She is probably best known in Maine for her biweekly column in the Bangor Daily News, which ran from fall 2011 to early 2025. Fried also publishes outside of academia in national venues and is interviewed widely for her political analysis. Fried has helped other professors develop skills for engaging with the public, press, community groups and elected officials. She loves to kayak, box and travel. You can find her on Bluesky at @asfried.bsky.socia
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