CNN
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A new criminal investigation into Andrew Cuomo will fuel concerns that President Donald Trump is living up to his promise to use the Justice Department to target his political enemies.
The probe follows a referral from Republicans in Congress who accused the former New York governor of lying in an investigation over his response to the Covid-19 pandemic, a person briefed on the matter said. The testimony covered a period in which Cuomo frequently clashed with Trump, whose chaotic handling of the health emergency contributed to his 2020 election defeat.
The veteran Democrat is now seeking a return to the political spotlight as he runs for mayor of New York City. His spokesman Rich Azzopardi said that Cuomo had not been informed of any investigation and suggested its existence had been leaked for political reasons.
Cuomo is just the latest Trump critic to attract attention from the Justice Department.
Prosecutors just charged a Democratic lawmaker with assault after an alleged incident outside an immigrant detention center. And Trump has ordered investigations into several of his first-term aides turned critics.
In an unrelated matter that intersects with one of the country’s most emotive current political debates, federal officials are prosecuting a Wisconsin judge accused of obstructing immigration agents.
There is thus far no evidence that the wave of investigations is part of a coordinated political campaign. And the veracity of each case would be tested in courts of law prior to any convictions.
But Trump has threatened multiple times to use the law to avenge what he regards as his own past persecution. He’s referred to himself as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, and in his first four months back in office has obliterated the firewall between the DOJ and the White House.
Critics warn that while Trump claims he’s de-weaponizing law enforcement, he’s weaponizing it as never before.
The ramifications are not limited to the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where Trump has installed luminaries of his MAGA movement and his personal lawyers on whom he can depend for total loyalty.
Suggestions that Trump is leveraging the legal system for political gain need to be seen against the backdrop of a broader constitutional challenge.
The White House is considering whether to suspend the bedrock basic right of habeas corpus to deal with what it questionably claims is an immigrant “invasion.” Trump has declared national emergencies to unlock vast executive powers. And he’s used one of history’s most notorious laws, the Alien Enemies Act, to speed up mass deportations.
The escalating power grabs of a president who lashed out at “the enemy within” on the campaign trail and the enforcement actions of his willing subordinates are taking on an authoritarian cast.
“We will expel the rogue actors and corrupt forces from our government,” Trump said during an address to Justice Department staff in March. “We will … very much expose their egregious crimes and severe misconduct of … levels you’ve never seen anything like it. It’s going to be legendary for the people that are able to seek it out and bring justice.”
Barely a day goes by without the DOJ diving into another politically sensitive area.
The Cuomo investigation, first reported by the New York Times, is one of the highest-profile moves yet by the department against one of the president’s foes. The inquiry follows an earlier request by congressional Republicans to the Biden administration that didn’t result in an investigation, CNN’s Evan Perez reported. The DOJ did not immediately comment.
Adding to the intrigue, the DOJ earlier this year ended a separate investigation into current New York Mayor Eric Adams, who has vowed to help Trump’s hardline immigration policy.
Azzopardi said that Cuomo testified truthfully to the best of his recollection about the pandemic. “This is lawfare and election interference plain and simple — something President Trump and his top Department of Justice officials say they are against,” he said in a statement.
On Monday, New Jersey’s acting US Attorney Alina Habba, a former Trump lawyer and White House aide, charged Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver with assaulting law enforcement in connection with an incident involving ICE and Homeland Security officers in Newark, New Jersey.
The Secret Service is investigating James Comey, the fired former FBI director and Trump foe, after he posted a picture of shells spelling out “86 47” — a social media code implying Trump should be removed from the presidency. The nation’s top intelligence officer Tulsi Gabbard told Fox he should be put “behind bars.”
Federal prosecutors in April charged Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan with obstructing and concealing an individual to prevent arrest. This was the latest occasion when the administration criticized a judge as it seeks to roll out its mass deportation program. Dugan pleaded not guilty.
In yet another politically charged move, FBI Director Kash Patel on Sunday confirmed an investigation into whether New York State Attorney General Letitia James committed fraud on a mortgage application. James won a civil case against Trump and his firm last year alleging fraudulent business practices.
The DOJ has also been intimately involved in Trump’s political priorities.
The president pardoned nearly all the more than 1,400 people convicted of taking part in the mob riot and invasion of the Capitol by his supporters in January 2021. He also commuted the sentences of leaders of far-right groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.
The administration has agreed to pay nearly $5 million to the family of Ashli Babbitt, a pro-Donald Trump rioter who was shot and killed after breaching the Capitol, a person familiar with the matter told CNN. Once approved in court, the settlement will end a $30 million wrongful death lawsuit.
As scrutiny mounted this month over former President Joe Biden’s mental acuity while he was still in office, the DOJ, under Attorney General Pam Bondi, poured fuel on the political flames by releasing tapes of an interview with the former special counsel Robert Hur that appeared to show the former president’s memory lapses.
Trump has meanwhile issued a series of demands for action.
He issued a memorandum earlier this year calling on Bondi and Gabbard to investigate Chris Krebs, who led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency during his first term. Krebs angered the president by refuting his false claims about 2020 vote fraud.
The president called for a major investigation into Bruce Springsteen and other celebrities who backed former Vice President Kamala Harris’ election campaign after the Boss criticized him at the start of his European tour.
Trump also reposted a social media post to his followers that suggested that former President Barack Obama should face a military tribunal.
Some of these suggestions are more serious than others, and there’s always a sense that Trump is creating extreme content to fire up his base. But since the Justice Department seems to act as his personal law enforcement arm, no case seems too frivolous for its attention.
The quality of any of the above cases will be tested if they appear in court. And the full details of the most serious examples are not yet fully clear, so it’s hard to make definitive judgments.
There is some ambiguity in the video footage of McIver and government agents in the incident at the immigration facility. CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams said the applicable law is open-ended and does at least support a charge, though a case might have a hard time standing up in court. McIver told CNN on Tuesday the charges were “absurd”; that she was doing her job to provide oversight of a detention facility and that the tensions had been created by government agents. The American Civil Liberties Union slammed the administration’s “political charges” against McIver as a “method more suited for authoritarianism than American democracy.”
Meanwhile, some might question Comey’s wisdom in posting what some critics regard as a threat against a president who survived two assassination attempts. But a successful prosecution seems unlikely.
And the full circumstances of the investigation into James — a Trump political opponent who has made no secret of her antipathy for the president for years — aren’t public. Her lawyers, however, described the allegations of mortgage fraud as threadbare.
But critics of Trump’s approach worry about politized decision-making at the department.
One reason is that oversight of FBI probes may rest with two of Trump’s personal lawyers, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and his deputy, Emil Bove. (The latter is now being considered by the president for a vacancy on the US Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit in New Jersey.)
If politics are not at play in these matters, it would be an extraordinary coincidence, since the president has reason to hold a grudge against most of the people involved.
And given Trump’s own threats and use of presidential power to target any institution or individual that seeks to check him, the implications for the rule of law and the health of America’s democracy are grave. Using prosecutorial powers for unwarranted probes against political foes would be a clear abuse of power
Corey Brettschneider, a political science professor who specializes in constitutional law at Brown University, said the cascade of probes can be best understood as a unified strategy.
“Taken together, all of these cases are an attempt to do nothing less than to shut down an opposition,” said Brettschneider, co-host of the “Oath and the Office” podcast. A fundamental threat highlighted by the past four months, he said, is that “supposed norms of independence can just be wiped away by an attorney general who has no regard for them, and as people leave the Department of Justice — career civil servants — and are replaced by loyalists.” Brettschneider added, “The rule of law turns out to not be that stable.”
Trump justifies his overhaul of the Department of Justice and the FBI by arguing that he was politically victimized, especially with regard to his four criminal indictments after leaving office at the end of this first term.
While internal watchdog investigations have highlighted some errors, for instance in Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant applications over a former Trump 2016 foreign policy aide, the bulk of the evidence suggests that investigations into the former president were justified.
Trump’s charge in a federal election interference case, for example, arose from his attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential result and his false claims of voter fraud, which fired up the crowd that ransacked the Capitol and tried to halt the certification of Biden’s presidency.
But the building legal storm is renewing scrutiny on the decision of the Justice Department under former Attorney General Merrick Garland to go after Trump. This was always a political minefield. And given the then-ex-president’s vengeful instincts, prosecutions always carried the risk that he’d try to return the favor many times over if they failed to yield convictions and he returned to power. But if a president cannot face justice for trying to violate the will of voters — the most fundamental pillar of democracy — what hope would there be for the republic?
Trump’s supreme talent at reinventing reality and the huge influence of the conservative media meant he was able to turn his criminal woes into a persecution narrative and reelection rationale.
That’s now settling into a desire for revenge and a blueprint for his second term that threatens to rule of law and democratic governance.
“There could be no more heinous betrayal of American values than to use the law to terrorize the innocent and reward the wicked,” Trump said in that Justice Department speech, bemoaning his treatment by “really bad people” and “thugs.”
But the last four months mean his opponents may be justified in turning his warning back against him.
