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Donald Trump's voracious appetite for revenge has swiftly morphed into a structured system. Over the past year, the leader's fury and whims have taken on the form of administrative measures similar to analogous to historical dictatorial systems. Justice department figures who resist his demands are immediately removed and succeeded by loyalists. Political leaders who question him face legal action, judicial process and sanctions. Adversaries have been labeled under executive directives as “hostile to national interests”, “against faith communities” and “anti-capitalist”, and threatened with prosecution as “security threats”.

The Justice System Transformed

Each situation involving prosecution of Trump's enemies and leniency for his allies demonstrates its own unique qualities. However, notwithstanding their specific character, they exemplify expressions of what has emerged as a deliberate technique. Such incidents are anything but isolated. The administration's purge of federal prosecutors and FBI agents, alongside his appointment of loyalists in high-level positions, commenced swiftly, quickly took on a regularity, and has now been molded into a regime. Federal prosecutors and the FBI have been restructured into ideological organizations under the president's direct orders to implement his demands. Unfairness has been rendered normal. It represents the retribution system.

Administration is more concerned with penalizing the President's alleged enemies than they are with protecting our public welfare.

Inside the Structure

The beginnings of this mechanism has been exposed in the lawsuit of three ex- senior law enforcement officials filed in the ninth month in the US district court in Washington against FBI director a senior appointee and attorney general Pam Bondi for wrongful dismissal in “a effort of payback against Plaintiffs for what the accused judged to be a failure to exhibit proper political loyalty”. According to the filing that a former acting director, the former temporary head, describes a discussion in which the director “openly confessed the impropriety of his behavior”.

The official had sought to shield agency personnel from being dismissed, the complaint alleges. He informed him that “White House figures” – interpreted by him to be the executive branch and justice department – had instructed him to remove anyone who they determined as having been involved in a law enforcement case against him. The complaint goes on: “The director stated that he had to terminate the individuals his bosses told him to remove, because his ability to retain his own role was contingent on the removal of the agents who worked on matters involving the leader. The director explained that there was no way he or the official could do to prevent these or any other dismissals, because ‘the FBI sought to put the President in detention and he hasn't forgotten it.’” When the official advised Patel he was breaking the bureau's own regulations, the director allegedly said “he knew that and he realized the nature of the immediate dismissals were almost certainly improper”.

Broad Impact

Following Patel's alleged acknowledgment to him, the Department of Justice and the law enforcement agency have been gutted and reorganized for Trump's revenge apparatus. Several of the bureau's senior executives were fired or forced out in the first days of the government. About 4,500 lawyers at the justice department have agreed to a “deferred resignation program”. A minimum of several government attorneys, among them those in the Manhattan division, resigned in objection over what they considered as political interference in dropping the corruption case against the local official, the mayor, in return for his assistance with his federal agency arrests of foreign nationals. The public integrity section of the justice department, which manages ethical violations, has been diminished to minimal staff. The equality section has been severely reduced: the majority of its personnel has departed. One-third of top officials at DoJ have quit. The division enforcing ecological regulations has seen departures of 50% its leadership.

Favors and Sanctions

In the legal matter, the temporary lawyer for the federal division, Danielle Sassoon, stepped down in dissent against what she described as the “exchange”. A key figure, the president's “enforcement chief,” was present as the enforcer with the mayor on television to declare: “Should he fail to deliver, I'll be back in NYC.”. And, Emil Bove, earlier the acting deputy attorney general and a past legal representative, who brokered the arrangement, was given an court role, a possible pathway to the supreme court.

The president's protection for offenses perpetrated while in government, awarded by the remarkable ruling of the conservative on the highest court, thus blocking his legal action over the political violence and maintaining his public standing for the presidential race, is the cornerstone on which he depends to protect his loyalists. Under these circumstances, he has been freed to enable misconduct. The consequence of the supreme court decision saturates his administration and the political party down to its bones. The court matter has metastasized. In the words of the former president's legal adviser John Dean said about the Watergate