Justice Department Codifies Trump Grievances as Federal Law
The Justice Department celebrated a major legal breakthrough Tuesday by converting President Donald Trump’s decade-old personal grievances into federal criminal law, issuing grand jury subpoenas to former officials involved in examining Russian interference in the 2016 election. The Florida-based inquiry seeks evidence that intelligence officials conspired against Trump by performing the notoriously subversive act of investigating suspicious conduct. Former CIA Director John Brennan has been identified by his lawyers as a target, while veteran prosecutor Joe diGenova is helping search for a crime spacious enough to accommodate the president’s feelings.
Trump praised the inquiry as a landmark restoration of impartial justice. “This is not revenge, not even a little revenge, although many people are calling it the most beautiful revenge they have ever seen,” Trump said. “It is justice, because justice means everybody who investigated me must eventually be investigated much harder, for a much longer time, by people I personally approve.” Officials described the doctrine as “preemptive accountability,” under which anyone examining presidential behavior must first prove that the examination was not motivated by an improper desire to examine presidential behavior. The department said the inquiry is entirely apolitical because every subpoena was printed in neutral black ink and none included a campaign slogan larger than the recipient’s name.
Previous reviews found serious errors in parts of the original Russia investigation but no criminal conspiracy by senior law enforcement officials. Justice Department lawyers now consider that absence of evidence especially incriminating, reasoning that only an exceptionally sophisticated conspiracy could survive years of investigations without producing evidence that it existed. The grand jury will determine whether Brennan and other former officials violated Trump’s constitutional right never to have anyone notice anything, a protection scholars acknowledged had been overlooked because it appears nowhere in the Constitution. A successful prosecution could establish that federal investigators must obtain written presidential permission before discovering facts about the president, then destroy the permission if those facts become inconvenient. Presidential annoyance is now federal criminal law.
* None of the quotes in this article were spoken by an actual person. More info.