Among the large packet of executive orders signed by President Donald Trump following his inauguration is one entitled “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government,” which already is proving justifiably controversial. The Executive Order cites for its authority a section of the United States Code (3 U.S.C. § 301) that empowers the President to delegate to executive department and agency heads, and other officers confirmable by the Senate, the performance without further presidential approval or other action, of functions vested in the presidency by law, or that otherwise would have required presidential approval. Taken in context, including his nomination of the unqualified zealot, Kash Patel, to be FBI Director, it is clear Trump is attempting hypocritically to weaponize federal law enforcement to seek retribution from those he claims weaponized the law against him and his allies.
It doesn’t take much to understand how this weaponization project will negatively affect members of Congress who sign onto it. To know what lies ahead one need only understand the structure created by this Executive Order in conjunction with the president’s personnel choices and his own vengeful utterances.
Those personnel choices include the astonishingly unqualified Matt Gaetz as Trump’s first choice for attorney general (now replaced by Pam Bondi) and Kash Patel, who would bring with him an extensive “enemies list” (which includes former senior Republican and Democratic officials on it) for director of the FBI. Those choices come with a Justice Department that is already suffering under purges of nonpartisan civil servants and the installment of an outlandish January 6th defense lawyer in a position of power to oversee probes involving the prosecution of their former clients. Trump’s recent return to the option of recess appointments suggests an even more radical agenda than even elected Republicans may be able to tolerate.
The weaponization order, among other things, tasks the attorney general with conducting a review of DOJ activities “over the last 4 years and identify[ing] any instances where a department’s or agency’s conduct appears to have been contrary to the purposes and policies of this order.” The director of national intelligence (presumably the clearly unqualified and compromised nominee, Tulsi Gabbard) is ordered to conduct a similar review of the activities of the Intelligence Community.
Given the fact that, for example, Trump’s nominees for the three top posts at the Department of Justice – Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, and Solicitor General, as well as the current Acting Deputy Attorney General – have represented Trump as his personal attorneys, challenging the government conduct that was alleged to have been the product of weaponization, and given the threats of vengeance uttered by the President himself and by others of his appointees, particularly for Director of the FBI, there should be little question what the consequences of these reviews will be. Indeed, it is outcome determined. What’s more, repeated executive intervention in criminal cases in his first administration and the creation of the fruitless Durham investigation provide ample evidence that President Trump views the Department of Justice as his attorneys, not the people’s.
“Weaponization” is a slangy term adopted by both major parties, and which the Executive Order describes, with dubious factual bases, as one administration’s systematic employment of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies to investigate, prosecute, or undertake civil actions against its political opponents. Among the targeting allegations cited by the President is what he characterizes as the Department of Justice’s having “ruthlessly prosecuted more than 1,500 individuals associated with January 6,” while purportedly dropping most, but not all, cases against Black Lives Matter protesters who took to the streets following the killing of George Floyd.
As to the stated predicate for the Executive Order – the Jan. 6 prosecutions – the President fails to mention that while the Biden administration’s Department of Justice brought the cases that Trump criticizes, the defendants were convicted by the independent judicial branch of government, sometimes upon their own pleas of guilty, or by the decisions of judges and juries.
Unstated in the order, but no doubt on the mind of the President, are the criminal investigations and potential prosecutions directed by former Special Counsel Jack Smith implicating Trump himself. Now that Trump is again a sitting President, the Justice Department’s longstanding view of the constitution forestalls his prosecution by the federal government. He has even broader immunity under the Supreme Court’s holding in Trump v. United States. As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote: a President is always and forever criminally immune even for allegations that they “requested investigations [that] were ‘sham[s]’ or proposed for an improper purpose” (p. 21). In sum, Trump stands upon a peak from which he can hurl rocks at his political opponents without any fear of return fire.
As early as August 2023, Trump posted on his platform Truth Social that “If you go after me, I’m coming after you.” In a recent interview with Sean Hannity, Trump reaffirmed his thirst for vengeance. “I spent millions of dollars in legal fees, and I won. But I did it the hard way. It’s really hard to say that they shouldn’t have to go through it also. It is very hard to say it.” While his formal inaugural address was relatively moderate in tone, his later speech delivered to his supporters in the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall (Bloomberg News called it an “animated rant”) left little doubt that he was clearly focused on retribution. He even joked that he had left the controversial stuff out of the formal address but was restoring it in the more intimate setting for his MAGA friends.
Accordingly, it should be unsurprising that President Trump has nominated Patel to be the Director of the FBI. Though he would enter the office with relatively negligible law enforcement experience, Patel would arrive with a list of 60 members of the “deep state,” whom he has threatened to “come after.”
As noted, read in the context of repeated statements made by Trump himself, and by his appointees, the weaponization edict is thus best read, not as an assurance of good government somehow benefiting his populist audience, but as a “victor’s” exercise in Orwellian double-speak. Empowering actions against his political opponents to be undertaken by a partisan Attorney General, and a possible Director of National Intelligence lacking professional competence and experience and compromised by disqualifying relationships with U.S. adversaries, Trump’s weaponization Executive Order should be understood as the instruction to subordinates to initiate investigations and to take resultant actions of the same kind for which he (erroneously) condemns the former President and members of the prior administration. The difference is that the previous administration acted lawfully. The Trump administration is being given a license, indeed instructed, to do otherwise.
Editor’s note: This piece is part of the Collection: Just Security’s Coverage of the Trump Administration’s Executive Actions