I have found, much to my surprise, a point of agreement with JD Vance. The Republican vice-presidential nominee said the other day that “the most important job after president of the United States,” in a Trump-Vance administration, is “who we select as attorney general.”
By Ruth Marcus
Vance was asked about this comment Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” and his answer was Trumpian gaslighting with a coating of Yale Law School sophistry. “We really want the American people to believe that we have a fair and equitable administration of justice,” Vance said, with an impressively straight face. “If not, the entire sort of system falls apart. You need people to believe that if the attorney general prosecutes somebody, it’s motivated by justice and law, and not by politics.”
Yes, you do. And no one has done more than Vance’s running mate, Donald Trump, to undermine that essential public confidence in the rule of law.
Trump did his best to politicize the Justice Department in his first term; he has vowed to more than double down if he wins a second. But that hasn’t stopped him — dutifully amplified by Vance — from accusing the Biden administration of “weaponizing” the criminal justice system against its opponents.
Vance said Vice President Kamala Harris “has tried to arrest everything from pro-life activists to her political opponents … and used the Department of Justice as a weapon against people. … Look, under the last three and a half years, we have seen politically motivated after politically motivated prosecution.” Vance also smeared Attorney General Merrick Garland as “one of the most corrupt AG’s we’ve ever had in this country.”
Let’s examine the Biden administration’s performance. Garland named Jack Smith as special counsel to investigate Trump, and Smith has brought two sets of indictments, one involving Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and the other concerning his mishandling of classified information. Garland also named a special counsel, former Trump Justice Department official Robert K. Hur, to investigate President Joe Biden’s handling of classified information (Hur declined to bring charges), and another special counsel, David Weiss, to investigate Hunter Biden, the president’s son, on gun and tax charges.
The Biden Justice Department prosecuted — and persuaded a jury to convict — a sitting senator, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, for bribery, extortion and obstruction of justice. It brought an indictment against Rep. Henry Cuellar (Tex.) and his wife, Imelda, on charges of accepting bribes from Azerbaijan and a Mexican bank. It just secured the indictment of New York Mayor Eric Adams for allegedly taking bribes and accepting illegal campaign contributions.
What do all these politicians have in common?
They’re Democrats, and not the only ones the department has gone after. Meanwhile, Justice prosecuted Trump allies Stephen K. Bannon and Peter Navarro for contempt of Congress, but it declined congressional Democrats’ request to charge former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino. Politically motivated after politically motivated prosecution? Hardly.
Now, let’s do Trump past — and Trump future. On the past: “Martha, Trump was president for four years and he didn’t go after his political opponents,” Vance protested to ABC’s Martha Raddatz.
You’ve heard of sane-washing? This is power-sane-washing, with an accompanying blast of amnesia.
If his political enemies weren’t locked up, it wasn’t because Trump didn’t want to see that happen. “These people should be indicted. This was the greatest political crime in the history of our country — and that includes Obama, and it includes Biden,” Trump told Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo in October 2020, referring to allegations of spying on his campaign. And he asked, for good measure, “Why isn’t Hillary Clinton being indicted?”
Trump demanded that FBI Director James B. Comey pledge loyalty to him, pressed Comey to shut down the criminal investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn and eventually fired Comey.
After special counsel Robert S. Mueller III was appointed to investigate Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 election, Trump tried to get White House counsel Donald McGahn to fire Mueller; instructed his former campaign manager (and current campaign adviser) Corey Lewandowski to tell Attorney General Jeff Sessions to limit Mueller’s investigation; and pressured Sessions, whom he also eventually fired, to rescind his decision to recuse himself from the probe.
Trump’s presidency ended in a desperate attempt to enlist senior Justice Department officials to back his baseless claims that he had won the 2020 election. He tried to install as attorney general Jeffrey Clark, who pushed to send to Georgia officials falsely asserting that the department had identified “significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states.” Trump backed down from this plan only after other Justice officials threatened to resign en masse.
What would Trump do in a second term? No guessing is required. He’s told us, sometimes coyly, sometimes straight out.
“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of America, Joe Biden, and go after the Biden crime family,” he vowed in June 2023, after his first federal indictment.
He made similar threats against Democrats after his May 2024 conviction on 34 felony counts in a New York prosecution: “It’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us to, and it’s very possible that it’s going to have to happen to them,” Trump told the conservative network Newsmax.
In Trump’s second term, criminal probes could extend beyond his immediate enemies. “Playing the ref with our judges and our justices should be punishable by very serious fines and beyond that,” Trump said in August of those who criticize the Supreme Court and other judges. He said Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) “frankly should have been put in jail” for seeming to threaten conservative justices.
Vance’s response to all this? Legalistic sentence-parsing and brazen assertions about Trump’s supposed commitment to free speech.
“I’d like us to just get back to a system of law and order where we try to arrest people when they break the law, not because they disagree with the prevailing opinion of the day, and there’s a fundamental difference here between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris,” Vance said. “Donald Trump may … agree or disagree on a particular issue, but he will fight for your right to speak your mind without the government trying to silence you.”
Vance’s role is clear here. His job is to translate what anyone can see is another clear threat by Trump to our constitutional rights and long-standing norms, and try to package Trump as both victim of partisan Democrats and savior of the very thing he is seeking to destroy. That takes some nerve.
Imagine the next Trump Justice Department — headed by an attorney general and staffed by political appointees more pliant than even those in the first term. Some names I’m hearing range from concerning to alarming: Clark, even though a D.C. Bar disciplinary committee has recommended that his law license be suspended for two years; Mark Paoletta, general counsel of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget and a close ally of Justice Clarence Thomas; former director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe; Sen. Mike Lee(R-Utah), who once was a leading Trump critic but has become a loyal acolyte; and Mike Davis, a former Senate staffer who has been vocal about the “lawfare” being waged against Trump. “This guy is tough as hell,” Trump said of Davis last week. “We want him in a very high capacity.”
So, yes, Vance is right. In another Trump administration, if it comes to that, the attorney general will wield enormous power. If you believe that official will be chosen to do anything other than follow Trump’s bidding, you haven’t been paying attention for the past nine years.
