Trump Is Expanding His Dangerous Cult of Impunity
Other public figures ensnared in public corruption probes have sought to curry Trump’s favor as well. Bob Menendez, a former U.S. senator from New Jersey, was sentenced to 11 years in prison last month for his role in a foreign bribery scheme. Though Menendez was a longtime Democrat, he sang a different tune after sentencing and complained that the Biden Justice Department had targeted him. “President Trump was right,” he claimed. “This process is political, and it’s corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores the integrity to the system.”
That prosecutorial power can be used as a sword as well as a shield. Shortly after taking office, Trump appointed Ed Martin, a lawyer who was on Capitol Hill with rioters on January 6, as the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Martin has spent the last five weeks purging the federal prosecutor’s office of Trump’s perceived enemies and mounting a highly publicized effort to dissuade critics of Trump and South African billionaire Elon Musk, who wields vague but significant influence in the administration.
At a House hearing on the so-called Department of Government Efficiency earlier this month, for example, California Representative Robert Garcia sharply criticized Musk’s actions and urged his fellow lawmakers to push back against them. “What the American public wants is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight,” he said, according to The Washington Post. “This is an actual fight for democracy.” Martin, in turn, sent a letter to Garcia claiming that those metaphorical remarks “sounds to some like a threat to Mr. Musk” and urging him to “clarify” his comments. It would be hard to take Martin’s letter as anything but an attempt to intimidate Democratic lawmakers.
