According to NBC News, it’s not too surprising that Trump’s lawyers are concerned over his threats to fire the BFI Director. After all, Trump is still doing the things he was impeached for earlier this year.
People may remember Trump was impeached for abusing the powers and privileges of his office, for his personal gain, and for subverting national interests in favor of his own personal interests. To be specific, Trump implied that he might withhold American aid to Ukraine — a vulnerable ally — if Ukraine didn’t open an investigation into the son of Trump’s political rival, Joe Biden.
Testimony by both U.S. and Ukrainian officials established that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy understood that if he didn’t open the investigation Trump wanted, his country risked losing its American aid. And this “understanding” by the Ukranian president is at the core of what is still happening in Trump’s world.
Trump, as president, doesn’t give a damned if a government employee or lawmaker, or governor has sworn loyalty to the United States Constitution. If they want to be on his good side, they had better swear loyalty to him. Take for example what happened recently to Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp and its secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, also a Republican.
Trump demanded that Kemp and Raffensperger invalidate the state’s election results, which both refused to do. Trump was so angry that he used Twitter in a vicious attack that ended in them receiving death threats from irate Trump supporters.
Trump’s temper has spilled over on Attorney General William Barr, and even though he has been a staunch Trump supporter, even going so far as to allow the use of the Justice Department as Trump’s very own law firm, he has resigned before getting fired, simply because he publicly acknowledged that Joe Biden had won the election last month.
Then-FBI Director James Comey was fired in 2017, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions retired, rather than letting Trump fire him. Both these men went against Trump and paid for their indiscretions.
Trump’s autocratic leanings
In October, The Washington Post reported that Trump was considering firing Wray – while expressing “disappointment” in both Wray and Attorney General William Barr that they didn’t “indicate that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden or other Biden associates are under investigation” before the 2020 election.
In Trump’s distorted view, the FBI is insufficiently loyal, suggesting the agency may have helped rig the election against him in an interview last Sunday. It further infuriated Trump that Wray warned about Russian election interference before the November election, and then later after the election, said there’s been no evidence of widespread vote-rigging.
Our government is based on the rule of law, with prosecutors and law enforcement working independently of each other. This is just one of the principles that make us a Democracy. In an autocracy, the autocrat decides who should be investigated and prosecuted.
Trump is an autocrat. And the biggest problem with an autocrat ruling a country is that they will persecute and prosecute their rivals, using whatever means possible. Trump’s attempts to force the Justice Department and the FBI to do his bidding are some of his most blatant and dangerous assaults on the rule of law.
And this is the very reason why the White House counsel’s office warned Trump not to fire Wray, because to do so “”could put him in potential legal jeopardy.” The lawyers counseled Trump, saying that it would “risk creating the perception that a ‘loyalty test’ was being imposed” on the position or that Trump was firing him out of “retaliation” for not taking investigative actions he wanted.
