Now Trump wants Americans to pay for his defense in a rape-related defamation case
In its latest shocking but not surprising move, the Department of Justice, funded by you, the American taxpayer, is now trying to intervene in journalist E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against President Donald Trump. You may recall that last year he denied he had raped Carroll in the 1990s and said she was “not my type.”
The DOJ move was shocking because it went well beyond the legal standard to argue that the president’s statements about Carroll were official actions and entitled Trump to be defended by the Justice Department at taxpayers’ expense.
But it was thoroughly unsurprising because this president has consistently hijacked the federal government, and the Justice Department in particular, to advance his own personal interests. He sees the government as serving him over the country, and Attorney General William Barr has been only too glad to oblige.
Unprecedented and suspect
Barr’s Justice Department inserting itself in a lawsuit about alleged personal misconduct by the president long before he took office is both the most egregious act in and logical conclusion of his campaign to remake the Justice Department into the president’s personal, taxpayer-funded legal service. Experts agree that the DOJ’s intervention here is unprecedented and suspect. But it is yet one more piece of the president’s plan to turn the federal government into the world’s largest Trump business.
When I served as a corruption prosecutor at the Justice Department under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the principle was drummed into me that, no matter what might be swirling around outside the department’s doors, any political influence on investigations or litigation decisions was unacceptable. That principle went out the window when Barr entered the building.
Barr auditioned for his job with an unsolicited memo arguing against any finding that the president obstructed justice in connection with the investigation of Russian election interference, and he has acted accordingly ever since. He undermined special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation with a misleading public summary weeks before the actual report was released. He ginned up a new investigation into the origins of the Russia probe despite multiple investigations and courts finding legitimate bases for that probe.
Most devastating has been Barr’s willingness to insert himself into prosecutions, and now a civil lawsuit, to help the president. Barr and his lieutenants pushed for a lower sentence for the president’s ally Roger Stone. They sought to drop the case against the president’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn despite Flynn having admitted to the criminal conduct twice under oath. In both cases, Barr acted against the judgment of respected career prosecutors. In both cases this politicization was unprecedented and dangerous.
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Barr and the Justice Department are far from the only offenders.
Trump’s ally and donor Louis DeJoy became postmaster general in June and quickly took steps that have already served to undermine the U.S. Postal Service, which the president has long denigrated, and voting by mail, which the president has said will hurt his chance of reelection.
The National Park Service spent money and changed rules to facilitate Fourth of July celebrations and a Mount Rushmore event for the ego of the president, and approved the use of the Washington Monument for a fireworks display at the Republican National Convention.
Trump believes he's above the law
The use of federal officials and resources for the president’s political benefit, in violation of an important ethics law called the Hatch Act, has become a regular feature of this presidency, with dozens of violations by top aides and the disturbing spectacle of the White House itself serving as the backdrop for the president’s speech at his nominating convention.
Our foreign policy apparatus has been marshaled to help the president personally, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo giving a convention speech during a taxpayer-funded official trip to the Middle East and, far more consequentially, government officials pushing the president of Ukraine to announce an investigation into President Trump’s political rival.
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Meanwhile, the Trump administration has at every turn supported the president’s businesses, whether it is the hundreds of thousands the Secret Service has paid for the president’s many visits to his resorts or the scores of officials who have appeared at events at his hotels.
The bedrock principle of our democracy rests on John Adams’ ideal that ours is a “government of laws and not of men.” Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox chose those words to remind America what was at stake after President Richard Nixon fired him during the Saturday Night Massacre. Once again, a president who believes he’s above the law has put that principle into jeopardy. Once again, we must choose to defend our democracy. Or sink into despotism.
Noah Bookbinder, a former criminal prosecutor for the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section, is the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Follow him on Twitter: @NoahBookbinder
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Taxpayers should not fund Trump defense in rape-related defamation case
