Trump Is Weaponizing DOJ. It's Part of an Authoritarian Pattern.
Trump is now using legal threats to push a Federal Reserve member to resign.
One trademark of an authoritarian regime is the use of the legal system to target political opponents and forgive friends. This has the effect of undermining our basic conception of the law as a set of rules that is fairly and consistently applied. It also centralizes authority and undermines government capacity.
Trump’s call for Federal Reserve member Lisa Cook to resign, under the threat of a DOJ investigation, is a clear example of this type of authoritarianism.
The Trump administration has already aggressively weaponized the legal system. He has pardoned the January 6th rioters. His personal defense lawyers now hold the top positions in the DOJ. One of them, Todd Blanche, has provided more favorable treatment for Ghislaine Maxwell in the search for exculpatory information about Trump, and is also alleged to have personally ordered the arrest of the Mayor of Newark.
In the federal government, DOJ officials involved in Trump investigations have been fired. The DOJ has opened mortgage fraud investigations into a prosecutor who has continued to dog Trump, New York Attorney General Letitia James, as well as one of his chief critics in Congress, Adam Schiff.
Now it is not just Trump’s opponents who are potential targets. It is anyone who is in his way. Trump has fired career bureaucrats, and the heads of independent agencies, with the acquiescence of the Supreme Court. But the Supreme Court explicitly identified one exception to Trump’s purges: The Federal Reserve. But if more members of the Fed resigned, Trump would control the most powerful federal agency not currently under his influence. If he cannot fire them, Trump might be able to force their resignation, assaulting central bank independence via threats and intimidation.
Recently, Biden appointee Adriana Kugler resigned from the Federal Reserve, giving Trump the chance to replace her with a critic of Chair Jay Powell. Kugler is a former colleague of mine at Georgetown, and I have no insight into the reason for her unexpected resignation. But I do worry about the pressures existing Fed members are under and how they might play out.
Now a Trump official, Bill Pulte, has called for the DOJ to investigate another Federal Reserve member, Lisa Cook. Again, the proposed crime is mortgage fraud — that she declared residency in two properties, but ultimately rented out one — and the proposed penalty is criminal prosecution.
Cook has said she will respond to the accusations but that she will not be intimidated into resigning: “I have no intention of being bullied to step down from my position because of some questions raised in a tweet.”
Given the scale of lawlessness around financial improprieties occurring in the Trump administration, to call this hypocrisy is an understatement. If Trump supporters found mortgage fraud to be disqualifying for high public office, they would not be Trump supporters! As the New York Times notes:
Mr. Trump has himself been found liable for lying to lenders to secure more favorable interest rates. A judge in New York last year found that Mr. Trump had inflated his net worth on loan applications, and imposed a fine of about $450 million, including interest.
Cook is in the early stages of a 14 year term that ends in 2038, so pushing her off the board would represent a huge win for Trump. Cook was confirmed by the Senate, twice, but that is not good enough for Trump’s supporters.
One reason Cook might be targeted is because she is willing to acknowledge what is becoming increasingly obvious: The economy is slowing. While Trump can fire the head of the BLS for reporting the numbers, he has to look for other ways to force Cook out.
Of course, there are other reasons why Cook may be targeted. Cook was the first Black woman at the Fed. She is a respected economist, but faced an unusual degree of hostility when she was nominated, with conservative voices labeling her unqualified. Tucker Carlson called her “economically illiterate” and “unqualified to teach junior college econ 101.” (You can read Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Romer on why Cook’s work is worthy of her position).
The vitriolic attacks included the Chris Rufo accusations of plagiarism that appear to be standard for any prominent Black female academic. The questions about Cook’s qualifications looked bizarre given Trump’s nomination of Stephen Moore for the Federal Reserve, or the potential nomination of Kevin Hassett, individuals who have long given up on basic economic theory in favor of advocacy. Trump’s pick of EJ Antoni to replace a respected economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that being a respected economist is actually something of a disadvantage in Trumpworld.
To understand the moment we are in, it is also important to understand her accuser, Bill Pulte. What qualifies Pulte to be in his position, as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency? He is the heir to a home-building fortune and an-online right-wing troll with millions of followers. On that basis, and his enthusiastic advocacy for Trump, he was put in charge of a federal agency.
Pulte has used his position to launch an all-out assault on the Fed, calling for Powell’s removal. Pulte was the chief source of the claim that Powell could and should be fired because of cost overruns for a Federal Reserve building project. The fact that Pulte is unqualified for his position, that there are massive conflicts of interest between his personal business and the policies of the Fed does not seem to matter. Pulte uses public resources, including the name of his public office, to promote conspiracy and target the Fed.
Trump has praised Pulte, and encouraged the attacks on the Fed, seeing the sort of amoral loyalist happy to pursue his opponents. He even brought him along on his visit to the Fed. Pulte is to the far left of Trump in the striped tie.
One wonders how much digging into Cook’s financial records, and those of other Federal Reserve members, was made to come up with the charges. Pulte is also the source of the complaints against Schiff and James. His primary activities appear to be to use weaponize public power to lead harassment and intimidation campaigns against public officials. Greg Sargent has been writing about how unusual and dubious Pulte’s practices have been in targeting Schiff.
Even if the accused are ultimately absolved of any wrongdoing, the legal threats of investigation by the DOJ are potentially ruinous. Adam Schiff started a legal defense fund to deal with the accusations. Guilt or innocence matters less than the inherent vulnerability that comes from an unethical government doing all it can to destroy you.
It is only in the Trumpworld where trolls and hacks who are manifestly unsuited to their position by virtue of both qualification and temperament can chase others who are qualified out of a job. With Trump calling on Cook to resign we are going to witness once more the same sorry debate about whether she was a DEI hire from such people. The smearing of Cook was bad enough in the past, but now it is accompanied by intimidation and legal threats from the government.
Does anyone doubt that the investigation threats would disappear if Cook resigned and became a private citizen once more?
This is one more basic test for the media. Are they going to focus on the pretextual attacks to discredit Cook — the mortgage allegations, or her qualifications — or will they recognize the pattern of a government using its powers to crush any independent sources of power?
Will they recognize the moment that we are in?
University of Michigan Professor Don Moynihan is the author of the Can We Still Govern? Substack. Read the original article here.
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I keep hoping (probably naively) that there will ultimately, be SOME red line that his idiotic sycophants just won't cross. Is it Epstein - maybe, but doubtful. The blatant weaponization of the DOJ against political opponents, prob not. The moronic and self-destructive tariffs & economic chaos, possibly, but only in the longer term. Unfortunately, I think it's going to have to be the tanking of the economy, hitting the pocketbooks of the MAGAT crowd (and dragging the rest with them), before they MIGHT quit drinking the KoolAid. And even then - who knows. The brainwashing that occurs in cults is incredibly powerful. It could take decades to rid us of this filthy, destructive scourge.
The damage done to the trust and cooperation with our EU and other world allies built since WWII could take a generation to repair. I believe this will soon have significantly negative consequences for our economy, our future growth and our national security. The world looks at the US and knows that, at any time, it's only 4 years away from the idiocracy empowering another lying, moronic despot. I have never been more embarrassed by, or ashamed of, my country. If we're going to keep democracy alive, the Dems better stop playing by the rules and do whatever's necessary. The gloves are off - or they should be!
Crash of 1929 will have nothing on what Trump is doing to our economy if he succeeds in remaking the Fed.