Trump’s executive order lays out a possible roadmap for the response

Since his election victory, President Trump has said he will not seek revenge against his perceived enemies. “I’m not looking to go to the past,” he said last month on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Revenge is through success.”

But in an executive order he signed on Monday night, Mr. Trump made clear that he had every intention of finding and punishing officials at the Justice Department and the U.S. intelligence agencies as a way to “correct the regime- it used to be very bad” to him and his. sponsor.

It would be fair, the order said, against officials in the Biden administration who have made “unprecedented use of prosecutorial power to upend the democratic process.”

This is what retaliation might look like during Trump’s second term: payback dressed in the language of victimhood.

That executive order, titled “Ending the Arms of the Federal Government,” came amid a flurry of other actions late Monday.

It included a separate highly unusual order that revoked the security clearances of dozens of former officials whom Mr. Trump considered his political enemies. Another order gave the White House the authority to immediately grant secret security clearances to all officials for six months, bypassing the traditional process run by the FBI and intelligence community.

Taken together, the moves signal the beginning of Mr. Trump’s more far-reaching approach to removing his perceived enemies in government than he did in his first term. Mr. Trump even used his inaugural address to raise the issue, saying the judicial scales would once again “balance” after the “brutal, brutal and unjust weaponry of the Department of Justice and our government”.

Charles Kupperman, Mr. Trump’s deputy national security adviser during his first term, said he viewed the executive order as the first step in an effort that could lead to a criminal investigation.

“It looks like the beginning of a retaliation campaign because it’s looking back,” Mr. Kupperman said. “He’s still struggling from the last four years, and that’s not the right way for him to play. It plays to their MAGA base, but it’s not country friendly. “

Even if internal investigations ordered by Mr. Trump do not lead to investigations or prosecutions, they could provide information he can use to publicly criticize or harass federal employees or officials he deems hostile — a practice he has done regularly throughout his term. -his first job. seems to continue.

Within hours of taking office on Monday, Mr. Trump revoked Secret Service protection for one of his most vocal critics, former national security adviser John R. Bolton. who is the target of death threats from Iran, Mr Bolton said on Tuesday. .

Mr. Trump has long used the complaint as a political tool, portraying himself as a victim of what he says is a powerful and faceless “deep state.”

During his first administration, he took many steps, often without meaning to, to seek returns. In March 2017, he dismissed unsubstantiated social media posts about how the FBI had infiltrated his presidential campaign, and then called out congressional allies such as Devin Nunes, Republican of California, to investigate the board’s actions.

Finally, Mr. Trump’s attorney general appointed a special prosecutor, John H. Durham, to investigate the FBI’s actions during the 2016 campaign and its handling of the investigation into Russia’s ties to the Trump campaign. . Mr. Trump has pushed Mr. Durham to complete his work before the 2020 election, but the investigation won’t end until 2023.

His investigation ended with complaints: The report criticized the bureau for confirmation bias and a lack of analytical rigor during the Russia probe, but found no evidence of “deep state ties” and did not accuse the FBI or other high-ranking officials of the crime.

Mr. Trump’s new executive order directs the attorney general and director of national intelligence to investigate the actions of previous administrations with the goal of rooting out political bias in those regulatory agencies as well as others such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. . They will then return to the White House “with recommendations for appropriate remedial action.”

Mr. Trump’s public statements, and the language of the order itself, leave little doubt about what he believes the investigation should conclude. He argued that many of the actions taken by the Biden administration against political opponents “appear inconsistent with the Constitution and/or the laws of the United States.”

The executive order is in stark contrast to how the administration of Joseph R. Biden Jr. at first the investigation of Mr. Trump’s first term. When Mr. Biden took office, his top officials kept insisting that they were focused on the future, and that looking back was a waste of time and energy.

Ultimately, the Biden administration appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, who took the extraordinary step of criminally indicting Mr. Trump in two cases. But Democrats and Republicans who oppose Trump say the administration took too long to investigate Mr. Trump, allowing him to take office before he goes to trial.

The repeated failure of Democrats and the Justice Department to hold Mr. Trump accountable — both during his first term and when he was impeached twice while out of office — has some believe that the Democrats need to use tactics similar to those Mr. Trump began to work on Monday.

Alex Aronson, executive director of Judicial Accountability, an advocacy group, said Mr. Biden should have made clear on his first day in office that his administration would aggressively pursue accountability. criminal liability. But Mr. Aronson said Mr. Biden and the rest of his administration, including Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, were too focused on restoring standards than trying to keep Mr. Trump and the administration He is responsible.

“Trump will accuse President Biden of weaponizing the Justice Department against him no matter how the DOJ prosecutes Trump for these crimes,” Mr. Aronson said. “Garland’s reluctance to seek accountability for fear of Trump’s inevitable baseless accusations has helped Trump delay accountability until it is completely out of the question.”