The authoritarian aspirations of Donald Trump have hardly been kept hidden. To the contrary, he brags about it, even celebrates it, on a daily basis. His brazen attacks on everything from universities, to law firms, to independent federal agencies that he is expressly prohibited from interacting with, are naked attempts to unlawfully expand and abuse his position as president.
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Among the institutions that Trump regularly persecutes is the one profession that is explicitly protected in the Constitution by name: Freedom of the Press. For many years Trump has maligned the media in Stalinist terms as "the enemy of the people." But more recently he has taken to filing ludicrous lawsuits and banishing those who are insufficiently worshipful from presidential events.
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However, if you thought that it couldn't get any worse, you don't know Trump. On Friday, Trump assigned his lickspittle Attorney Genuflect, Pam Bondi, to issue an official Justice Department memo aimed at threatening journalists with legal consequences - including arrest and potentially much worse - for merely doing their job.
Journalists have long been shielded from these sort of government threats by the First Amendment of the Constitution, along with Justice Department policy to refrain from imposing pressure on them to disclose their sources or other work product. But now Trump and Bondi are exacerbating their bullying by rescinding a Biden administration policy that prohibited such oppressive conduct.
What follows are a couple of the most harrowing portions of the Bondi memo, wherein she advocates for "the use of subpoenas, court orders, and search warrants to compel production of information and testimony by and relating to members of the news media." As reported by Ken Dilanian, NBC News justice and intelligence correspondent...
"I have concluded that it is necessary to rescind Merrick Garland's policies precluding the Department of Justice from seeking records and compelling testimony from members of the news media in order to identify and punish the source of improper leaks."
Translation: Bondi is permitting Trump's Justice Department to demand that journalists give up their confidential sources, including personal communications (texts, phone records, emails, etc.), under threat of subpoena, incarceration, and criminal prosecution if they refuse to comply. That is flagrantly unconstitutional. What's more, it would hamper the ability of reporters to gather information from government sources who would be too afraid to talk if they knew the reporters could be coerced into revealing their identity. And leaks are not "improper" unless they include classified data. The memo continued...
"This Justice Department will not tolerate unauthorized disclosures that undermine President Trump's policies, victimize government agencies, and cause harm to the American people. 'Where a Government employee improperly discloses sensitive information for the purposes of personal enrichment and undermining our foreign policy, national security, and Government effectiveness— all ultimately designed to sow chaos and distrust in Government- this conduct could properly be characterized as treasonous.'"
Translation: Bondi is improperly assuming the role of policing the media's disclosures of presidential activities. That is not remotely within the jurisdiction of the Justice Department. And it is especially improper if the intent is to avoid what it regards as "undermining" the president's policies. The public has a right to know what the president is up to, whether the president or the Justice Department likes it or not.
Even worse, Bondi is overtly threatening journalists with the capitol crime of treason. She is actually advocating for the execution of a reporter who might tell the truth about some malfeasance by the president. Which the public also has a right to know about.
For the record, that portion of Bondi's memo was lifted verbatim from Trump's prior executive order instructing the Justice Department to conduct a punitive investigation of Miles Taylor, the former Chief of Staff to Trump's Secretary of Homeland Security, whose only crime was writing an honest book about Trump's scandalous first term in office.
Trump's fondness for threatening to execute his political foes is well documented. He has made a habit of calling his critics "treasonous." Some of those he has targeted in the past include, Barack Obama, Liz Cheney, Nancy Pelosi, James Comey, Adam Schiff, the New York Times, and Google.
Now Trump has had his Attorney General codify his bloodlust so that he can begin to carry out his campaign of vengeance. This must not be allowed to proceed. And since his Justice Department cannot be relied on to do the right thing, it is left to Congress to find the courage to impeach him before he gets away with any more of his monarchal madness.
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