In explaining why he pardoned his son, President Joe Biden leveled a withering critique of the motivations and tactics of those responsible for prosecuting Hunter. He said that Hunter had been “selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted.”
Biden pointed out that people who did what his son did “are almost never brought to trial on felony charge…[or] are typically given non-criminal resolutions.” “It is clear, “Biden said, “that Hunter was treated differently.”
The President also accused “several of my political opponents in Congress” of instigating the prosecution “to attack me and oppose my election….” Biden charged those who prosecuted Hunter “with an effort to break” him.” “In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”
Biden’s statement was both a review of past actions and a prediction of the future. He did not name names, but his prediction of more politically instigated prosecutions was clearly aimed at the Justice Department team that President-Elect Donald Trump hopes will take over on January 20.
If Trump gets his way, what happened to Hunter Biden will become an everyday occurrence not just for members of what Trump and his allies regularly call “the Biden Crime Family.” It will become a sad fact of life for anyone who has dared to challenge the leader of the MAGA movement.
If his nominations of Pam Bondi to be Attorney General and Kash Patel to be Director of the FBI succeed, the line between politics and law will be obliterated in unprecedented ways . If prosecutors and investigators can use their vast discretion and power to make life miserable for a Biden, they can do it to anyone.
As former Attorney General Robert Jackson said more than eighty years ago, “The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America…. He can have citizens investigated and if he is that kind of person, he can have this done to the tune of public statements and veiled or unveiled intimations.”
Jackson continued:
Or the prosecutor may choose a more subtle course and simply have a citizen’s friends interviewed. The prosecutor can order arrests, present cases to the grand jury in secret session, and on the basis of his one-sided presentation of the facts, can cause the citizen to be indicted and held for trial. He may dismiss the case before trial, in which case the defense never has a chance to be heard…. If he obtains a conviction, the prosecutor can still make recommendations as to sentence, as to whether the prisoner should get probation or a suspended sentence, and after he is put away, as to whether he is a fit subject for parole.
“While the prosecutor at his best,” Jackson claimed, “is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst.”
Enter Bondi and Patel.
They are the “kind of person(s)” to whom acting from “base motives” comes easily. That is why Trump chose them.
And, as anyone who is a fan of the television series Law and Order knows, they will throw a potent one-two punch at anyone Trump directs them to go after.
Each threatens the long-held belief that crimes, as Jackson notes, not particular people, are investigated and prosecuted. Together, their force field expands geometrically.
Let me be clear, as I wrote in 2017 about Trump’s selection of Jeff Sessions to be attorney general in his first administration, “Nominating a crony, loyalist or old buddy for attorney general is a US presidential tradition.” And at that time, Trump did not try to hide the ball about why he chose Sessions.
“The only reason I gave [Sessions] the job,” Trump said, “was because I felt loyalty.” Sessions, Trump said, “was an original supporter. He was on the campaign.”
We all know how that turned out.
The office of attorney general,” as I wrote, “is not mentioned in the Constitution. It was created when the First Congress passed the Judiciary Act of 1789. That act called for the appointment of a person “learned in the law, to act as attorney general for the United States.”
Beyond that, all it said was that the attorney general “shall…prosecute and conduct all suits in the Supreme Court in which the United States shall be concerned, and…give his advice and opinion upon questions of law when required by the President of the United States, or when requested by the heads of any of the departments.”
The first attorney general, Edmund Randolph, was George Washington’s “confidante and close political ally, having served as the general’s chief of staff and personal secretary in 1775.” Like Washington, Trump hoped to get a close ally in his first attorney general.
But, as the saying goes, disappointment is a great teacher. And Trump has learned from his experience with Sessions.
No more establishment figures who will flinch when Trump asks them to do his bidding. If other presidents could appoint their political allies as attorney general, he could do them one better. That is why Trump is doubling down on the loyalty test as he staffs his administration.
Trump learned the lessons conservatives learned after being disappointed by the on-the-bench performance of Supreme Court Justices Harry Blackmun, Anthony Kennedy, Sandra Day O’Connor, and David Souter. Contrary to the warnings mandated for people licensed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, he believes that “past performance is indicative of future results.”
Trump is determined to take no chances with the Department of Justice and FBI. After all the trouble they made for him—searching his home in Mar a Lago, prosecuting him for taking classified documents and concealing them, and indicting him for his role in the January 6 insurrection—Trump seems determined to get revenge not just against his political opponents but against the institutions that tormented him.
What could be sweeter for him than showing the upright people who work for the Justice Department and the FBI that none of their rectitude will save them or those institutions? And who would be better middle fingers to the people who serve the rule of law and believe in the professions they practice than Pam Bondi and Kash Patel?
As Sam Maxwell wrote in the Orlando Sentinel on December 3, “Pam Bondi’s tenure as Florida’s attorney general shows she is ambitious, transactional and ethically challenged.” Sounds a lot like the person who wants her to be Attorney General of the United States.
Bondi showed her loyalty by sticking with Trump through all his travails. She promises that in her Department of Justice, “The prosecutors [who went after Trump] will be prosecuted…[and] the investigators will be investigated.”
As for Patel, like Bondi, he is also a proven Trump loyalist. MSNBC commentator Frank Figliuzzi writes about Patel, “His record shows no devotion to the Constitution, but blind allegiance to Trump.”
He wouldn’t be the first FBI Director, Figliuzzi says, to “blindly pursue…perceived enemies and threats in the absence of all-important evidence.” But none of them held the FBI, which they directed, in contempt.
Patel’s contempt explains why he says that the agency’s “footprint has gotten so freakin’ big” and why he promises to transform the FBI by putting “in all-American patriots top to bottom.”
He warns those “who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you.” In fact, Patel seems eager to do exactly what Robert Jackson feared.
Patel “will pick people that he thinks he should get.” Then, as Jackson put it, he will go about “searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him.”
Welcome to the world of law and justice, Bondi and Patel style. In their world, what Joe Biden criticized about his son’s treatment soon will be the bread and butter for the Justice Department and the FBI led by Donald Trump and his acolytes.