Trump’s campaigns have been lined with lawsuits and felony charges, and many political scientists as well as legal scholars have outlined the potential consequences of electing a convicted felon to serve as the chief executive of the primary global hegemon. The idea of the president of the United States serving from a jail cell or leveraging his authority to commit further illegal acts in the future is troubling, and this has been a focus of much of the Harris campaign. What is often overlooked, though, is the extent to which Trump is willing to exploit this legal system to meet his political ends, silencing opposition in a way that could threaten the core principles of our republic should he be reelected.
In an article for the New York Times, journalists Michael S. Schmidt and Matthew Cullen reported several cases in which Trump placed pressure on the Justice Department to conduct investigations on his rivals, leading to invasive breaches of privacy and the destruction of these figures’ reputations. In one instance, Schmidt and Cullen report that Trump sought revenge on James Comey, the former director of the FBI, for investigating his campaign’s ties to Russia and for refusing to encourage the prosecution of Hillary Clinton. Trump threatened to take action against Comey for leaking classified information, saying that if the Attorney General would not comply with his orders, Trump would prosecute Comey himself—something that the president does not have the authority to do. He also encouraged the IRS to conduct a highly invasive tax audit of Comey’s taxes for the year, alleging that he had underpaid. But even after this investigation and unusually extensive audit, Comey was not found guilty. In fact, it was found that Comey had actually overpaid his taxes, and thus he received a reimbursement from the IRS.
Nonetheless, Comey had to spend tens of thousands of dollars on legal representation to defend him against Trump’s allegations—allegations that were made out of sheer pettiness, but were still seriously damaging to his reputation.
Trump’s accusations did not stop at Comey, though. Rather, they led to investigations against other innocent officials at the FBI. Both Peter Strzok, the lead agent for the investigation into Clinton’s involvement with Russia, and Andrew McCabe, Comey’s deputy, lost their jobs after investigations that were instigated by Trump. Schmidt and Cullen report that both men also lost their ability to collect pension funds, with McCabe being days away from retirement at the time. Both men spent millions on legal fees to defend themselves, with Strzok filing a lawsuit to be reinstated at the FBI and provided with his pension.
McCabe’s job and pension were later restored by the Biden administration, and Strzock settled the lawsuit and received payment for damages. While both men ultimately succeeded, however, they still experienced—at least temporarily—damage to their reputations and careers, as well as expensive legal battles.
Outside of law enforcement, Trump also targeted politicians who opposed him. When the former Secretary of State, John Kerry, spoke out against Trump for seeking to eliminate the nuclear deal that Kerry had negotiated with Iran, Trump argued that Kerry ought to be prosecuted for his sustained relationships with Iranian officials after he left office. While Trump repeatedly spoke negatively of Kerry and pressured multiple attorneys general to prosecute him for more than a year, all of these prosecutors came to the same conclusion that there was not a reasonable case to be made against Kerry, and thus declined to prosecute him.
The New York Times investigation by Schmidt and Cullen offers ten other concrete examples of Trump’s leveraging of power against political targets, including his White House aide, journalists, his lawyer, authors, and his national security advisor, all of whom faced legal battles as a result of Trump’s allegations against them.
Journalism from CNN, NBC, and Politico has reached conclusions similar to those of Schmidt and Cullen, reporting on Trump’s readiness to use his authority to target his opponents. If a president of a democratic country is willing to leverage executive power to target opponents or members of his staff who openly disagree with him on something, it becomes evident that anyone who expresses their opinion on a matter concerning the president risks facing legal consequences. Such a reality violates the freedom of speech and expression guaranteed in the First Amendment.
While many of Trump’s past efforts failed, the ruling in Trump v. United States (2024) could allow him to take much more drastic actions against opponents in the future. In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that a president is immune from prosecution for all “official acts” taken while in office—a ruling that potentially shields Trump from legal consequences for encouraging rioters to siege the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Based on this, presidents are allowed to break any law, as long as they are doing it as part of an official act. (Notably, what constitutes an “official act” was not defined.) If Trump was willing to take action against his opponents during his first term by pressuring people to leverage their power within the bounds of federal bureaucracy and law enforcement, this ruling now authorizes illegal actions against his opponents. A reelected Trump would have the legal capacity to break laws that protect people from political consequences for dissent, and it seems likely that he’d do so—this time with no guardrails.
While the detriment of First Amendment rights may seem tyrannical, and while one might assume that Americans would fear the potential consequences of electing someone who seeks to undermine such a core value of democracy, many Americans do not view the former president as a threat. In a Pew Research poll conducted ahead of the 2020 election, the people who said that they strongly approved of Trump were the most likely to distrust the media and to think that journalists would not act in the best interest of the public, with many stating that they were more inclined to trust family and friends as sources of information. According to the Economist, this is attributable to Trump’s propagation of the concept of “fake news.” If journalism and media outlets are no longer seen as reputable, these voters will likely not believe said outlets, such as the New York Times, that publish factual information surrounding Trump’s claims against certain individuals. As a result, these claims could have an even more negative impact on the reputation of his opponents.
Historically, many voters were willing to recognize corruption, acknowledging its negative impact regardless of partisan affiliation. After Watergate, for example, Nixon’s approval rating decreased dramatically, even among Republicans. Although voters may have agreed with his policy objectives, American society could collectively recognize that his behavior was unacceptable. In a contemporary setting, though, Americans are unwilling to trust the sources that inform them of these instances of corruption, allowing Trump to leverage his authority against his enemies, threatening a fundamental element of American democracy.
