vox--2020-08-29--Lock them up: The danger of political prosecutions in a second Trump term

Share All sharing options for : Lock them up : The danger of political prosecutions in a second Trump term President Donald Trump wants his enemies locked up — he says so all the time .
He told Hillary Clinton that once he won , she ’ d be “ in jail.
” He wants foreign countries to investigate the Bidens .
He said that John Kerry “ should be prosecuted.
” He wants Adam Schiff “ questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason.
” John Bolton , he says , should be “ in jail , money @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years in jail.
” The list goes on .
This isn ’ t just empty political rhetoric — Trump says similar things to officials in private , and grows angry when his demands aren ’ t carried out .
And so far , they haven ’ t been carried out .
Yet the Department of Justice under Attorney General Bill Barr has already become increasingly responsive to Trump ’ s preferences in criminal cases involving Trump ’ s friends .
So the question is whether , if Trump wins in November , his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more than just talk .
I spoke to more than a dozen former Justice Department officials about Trump ’ s increasingly tight grip on an agency that has long prided itself on independence when it comes to criminal matters .
“ There ’ s the fear of the attorney general intervening in cases to benefit presidents ’ allies , ” said former US Attorney Barbara McQuade .
“ And you can also use that power to harm the president ’ s enemies.
” Already , since Barr took over , he has acted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump and his friends , from pre-spinning special counsel Robert Mueller ’ s findings to intervening in Roger Stone ’ s sentencing and trying to throw out Michael Flynn ’ s prosecution .
“ In sensitive cases , there ’ s been a systematic disregard of procedures and norms of behavior , many of which were put in place after Watergate , ” says Donald Ayer , who was deputy attorney general under George H.W .
Bush ( and was succeeded by Barr back then ) .
“ These things have been rent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of all the people Trump has so often said he wants prosecuted , none have actually been charged with anything .
( Instead , it ’ s Trump ’ s associates who keep getting charged , most recently Steve Bannon . )
All this can be viewed as encouraging — that the Justice Department , despite so much political pressure coming from the top , maintains standards and won ’ t bring bogus charges to please the president .
Yet it ’ s too simple to say the department has fully ignored Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to indictment .
News broke of another probe focusing on Comey earlier this year .
Top Justice officials set up special processes to review allegations from conservatives about the Clintons and the Bidens .
And Barr has given other prosecutors he trusts special , politically charged assignments — most notably , John Durham ’ s investigation of the handling of the Russia probe , an ongoing matter Barr often discusses publicly .
Despite all that Barr has done , there remain lines he hasn ’ t crossed .
And this is increasingly trying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Barr can go down as the greatest attorney general in the history of our country , ” the president said in a recent Fox Business interview .
“ Or he can go down as just an average guy .
We ’ ll see what happens.
” When Trump took office , there was a dam , preventing the president ’ s corrupt or political pressures from crashing through and flooding the Justice Department .
Since then , that dam has sprung a great many leaks .
And there ’ s a real question @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a second Trump term , with the president no longer needing to constrain himself for reelection .
For Trump ’ s first two years as president , the Justice Department maintained its independence to a great extent under Attorney General Jeff Sessions , and earned Trump ’ s fury as a result .
Sessions ’ s biggest mistake in Trump ’ s eyes was that he recused himself from involvement in the Russia investigation — standard operating procedure in criminal cases to protect against conflict of interest — and put Rod Rosenstein in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ really powerful norm in the Justice Department that you never wanted to be perceived as a political arm for the president personally , ” says Asha Rangappa , a former FBI agent who is now a senior lecturer at Yale .
“ And there was a sense that if you violate it , there ’ s going to be criticism and pushback and consequences.
” Sessions was a staunch Trump supporter , but he felt he simply had to recuse — because he couldn ’ t effectively lead the Justice Department if he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the department ’ s norms .
Barr had no such qualms .
He had been attorney general before , and he took the job again in part because he thought the department needed a firmer hand at the top .
Again and again , he ’ s proven unafraid of criticism that he ’ s acting politically to help the president or his friends .
“ I think the message has come through loud and clear that if you do anything to cross the president and the attorney general , your career @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a month after Barr was sworn in , he released his misleading spin on special counsel Robert Mueller ’ s findings a month before the report itself .
His Justice Department decided Trump ’ s request that Ukraine ’ s president investigate the Bidens wasn ’ t worth investigating , and other federal investigations into Trumpworld appear to have fizzled out .
Barr personally instructed prosecutors to weaken their sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone , and he is trying to have the case against Michael Flynn dismissed entirely .
He instituted a new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ investigations into presidential candidates or campaigns .
And he ’ s attempted to place loyalists into key US attorney posts , such as the Southern District of New York and the District of Columbia .
Yet even through all this , the Justice Department has not become a well-oiled machine that does President Trump ’ s bidding immediately at all times — far from it .
Rather , the change has been more subtle and insidious .
“ I think the message has come through loud and clear that if you do anything @ @ @ @ @ @ @ general , your career will be put at risk , ” says Matt Miller , who directed the Justice Department ’ s Office of Public Affairs under Eric Holder .
Aaron Zelinsky , a prosecutor who had worked on Mueller ’ s team , made that explicit in congressional testimony this June .
The newly installed acting US attorney for the District of Columbia , Tim Shea ( a close Barr associate ) , wanted to lighten prosecutors ’ sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone .
Zelinsky testified that a supervisor agreed this was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ told him to go along , because “ this case was ‘ not the hill worth dying on ’ ” and that we could “ ‘ lose our jobs ’ if we did not toe the line.
” All this is worrying enough — but , of course , Trump wants more .
Much more .
To assess just how likely it is that Trump could turn the Justice Department against his enemies in his second term , we have to understand why it largely hasn ’ t happened so far .
Up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ usually dealt with Trump ’ s demands for prosecutions by either blatantly ignoring them or assigning a US attorney to review the matter .
Ignoring Trump is easiest when his demands are completely absurd .
Take his demand to have Rep. Adam Schiff investigated for treason because Schiff paraphrased Trump ’ s comments during his call with the Ukrainian president during a congressional hearing .
This bears not even the faintest resemblance to treason .
Accordingly , there ’ s no indication that the Justice Department has taken any action .
Trump can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ demand .
According to John Bolton ’ s book The Room Where It Happened , Trump became “ obsessed ” with the idea of prosecuting former Secretary of State John Kerry under the Logan Act ( an obscure law banning private citizens from conducting US foreign policy ) because Kerry had contacts with Iran ’ s foreign minister .
Trump would mention this idea “ in meeting after meeting in the Oval ” to Barr “ or anybody listening , ” Bolton writes .
Trump ’ s tweets about it have continued this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wants Sen. Chris Murphy ( D-CT ) investigated for it too .
The law was last used in 1852 ; some legal experts now view it as a “ dead letter ” and question its constitutionality .
But the idea of a modern Logan Act investigation is not entirely far-fetched .
While investigators under the Obama administration were probing Michael Flynn ’ s links to Russia , they researched whether the act would apply to Flynn ’ s conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the transition .
The Logan Act was never @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they never came close to bringing charges under it .
Still , there is recent precedent to look at it .
As far as we know , Barr ’ s Justice Department has not done so .
There are reasons to doubt whether “ just ignore the president ” is a sound long-term strategy .
A second-term Trump might get tired of taking no for an answer .
If he really wants action , he could outright order the Justice Department to open some investigation and fire anyone who refuses to carry out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ someone sycophantic enough to do it .
For the Logan Act , recall also that it was during the Obama administration that investigators explored using the law regarding Flynn .
Is it so implausible that in a second term , Trump could find his own appointees who are willing to push the envelope further , against Kerry or other Democrats ?
That he could order them to do so ?
Jonathan Adler , a law professor at Case Western Reserve University argued that the president has broad authority over the Justice Department , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ powers for ill. “ The Justice Department is certainly under the control of the president .
It is part of the executive branch , so it is certainly legal for the president to dictate to the Justice Department how it should operate or what its priorities should be , ” says Adler .
But , he continues , “ We have long placed a value on the Justice Department being able to make judgments and prosecutorial decisions based on traditional legal criteria and with an eye toward attempting to do equal justice.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Take the example of James Comey .
The fired FBI director had written memos chronicling his interactions with President Trump .
Inspector General Michael Horowitz criticized him for having the unclassified contents of one memo leaked to a reporter , but that wasn ’ t a criminal matter .
There were , however , very small amounts of retroactively classified information in some other memos that Horowitz dinged Comey for improperly handling .
This was very thin gruel for a potential prosecution , and indeed , the Justice Department quickly determined not to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ willing to let things lie there .
The Washington Post reported that after he learned of the decision not to prosecute Comey , he “ complained so loudly and swore so frequently in the Oval Office that some of his aides discussed it for days.
” A few months later , in December 2019 , Trump accused Comey of “ unlawful conduct ” and suggested he could face “ years in jail.
” Finally , in January 2020 , the New York Times reported that Comey was again facing investigative scrutiny related to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about a Russian intelligence document.
” The current state of this investigation , including whether it ’ s in response to a presidential demand , is unknown .
But it is quite clear that the president has not forgotten his desire to see Comey prosecuted .
Another way the Justice Department has lately responded to political demands for investigations — coming from the president or his allies in Congress — is by assigning someone to do the job .
Jeff Sessions started this trend in late 2017 when he announced that John Huber @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would review the handling of an investigation into the Clinton Foundation and other Clinton-related matters .
This special effort aimed at Trump ’ s 2016 opponent worried some .
But in practice , it was clearly not the “ Get Hoffa ” squad ( which Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy assembled to take down union leader Jimmy Hoffa however they could ) .
The Washington Post reported this January that Huber ’ s review had “ effectively ended ” and that officials “ said they never expected the effort to produce much of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ special assignment seems mainly aimed at quieting conservatives ’ complaints , rather than locking up Clinton .
A second-term Trump might get tired of taking no for an answer Yet the practice of special assignments has continued under Barr .
Barr tasked US Attorney for Connecticut John Durham with investigating the origins of the Russia investigation .
He got John Bash , US attorney for the Western District of Texas , to look into Obama officials ’ use of “ unmasking.
” And Scott Brady , US attorney for the Western District of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into information Rudy Giuliani collected about the Bidens and Ukraine .
This is a process that , if approached in bad faith , can be very open to abuse .
Are these US attorneys being chosen because of their professionalism , or because Barr thinks they ’ re politically simpatico ?
To take an example involving one of the president ’ s friends , Barr asked Jeff Jensen , US attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri , to review the case against Michael Flynn , more than two years after Flynn had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about his contacts with the Russian ambassador .
And indeed , the Justice Department soon moved to have Flynn ’ s case withdrawn , claiming that Jensen has found new information meriting that move .
( The judge overseeing the case , Emmet Sullivan , sounds deeply skeptical of these assertions , and hasn ’ t allowed Flynn ’ s case to be thrown out just yet , sp the matter is tied up in court . )
The larger point is that Jensen could not have been unaware of what Trump was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — a reason to get Flynn off the hook .
He delivered .
By contrast , look what happened with Huber , the US attorney who didn ’ t find any new Clinton-related information justifying action .
President Trump publicly attacked him for this supposed failure , tweeting that Huber “ did absolutely NOTHING .
He was a garbage disposal unit for important documents & then , tap , tap , tap , just drag it along & run out of time.
” This , too , sent an unmistakable message to prosecutors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ president can and will attack them if they don ’ t deliver what he wants .
One check against utterly baseless charges , though , is that they almost surely couldn ’ t hold up in court .
Bringing a very high-profile case means you ’ ll be embarrassed in a very high-profile way if it falls apart .
And already , as CNN ’ s Katelyn Polantz and Kara Scannell have argued , judges have begun showing more skepticism to the Trump Justice Department ’ s representations in these matters .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ way that courts are reacting to the Justice Department ’ s positions , ” says Mary McCord , who served as the acting assistant attorney general for national security in the late Obama and early Trump administrations .
“ That built-in credibility and trust that the department had with judges is eroding .
They ’ re not just willing to accept at face value that their representations are fully accurate and correct and not the product of political pressure.
” All this is why Rangappa is skeptical that outright prosecutions of Trump ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lies.
” Trump ’ s Justice Department “ can ’ t make up evidence and go after somebody in a court of law , because the defense lawyers would tear that apart and it would get exposed , ” she says .
But there ’ s another danger , which to some extent has already manifested .
Even if an investigation ends in no charges , its mere existence — if it leaks — can hang over someone , make them afraid , and have a political impact .
Trump understands this dynamic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over Hillary Clinton ’ s 2016 campaign , and then the Russia investigation loomed over President Trump .
Indeed , Trump told James Comey that it was a “ cloud ” hanging over his presidency , and asked the then-FBI director “ what he could do to lift the cloud , ” per Comey ’ s memos .
More recently , Trump held up military aid to Ukraine in an effort to get that country to investigate the energy company Burisma and the Bidens ( a move that , once it was discovered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) .
But Trump didn ’ t just want an investigation .
He was insistent that Ukraine ’ s president publicly announce that investigation , according to his aides ’ testimony .
That is : He wanted to put a cloud over Joe Biden ’ s presidential campaign , with the ominous phrase “ under investigation.
” “ Politically , I think it is to their benefit to not actually bring charges , ” Rangappa says .
“ What ’ s good for them is to have an ongoing perception of criminality and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at large , that it ’ s the Democrats who are doing it.
” The most prominent example of this so far is in Barr ’ s highly unusual handling of the Durham investigation .
Shortly after Mueller finished his work , Barr assigned Durham to examine whether there was misconduct around the opening of the Russia probe .
At some point in the following months , Durham ’ s probe became a criminal investigation , and its scope widened .
We have no idea what Durham found ; his sole charge so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ misconduct ( altering an email ) was revealed last year by the inspector general .
Durham ’ s investigation is ongoing .
That ’ s why it ’ s so odd that Barr has repeatedly made public comments , often to Fox hosts , always with the gist that he thinks the Russia investigation was deeply corrupt and riddled with malfeasance .
“ No contemporary attorney general has , like Barr in the Durham investigation , offered such extended , opinionated , factually unsupported and damning public commentary , naming names and drawing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is at least in part a criminal investigation , ” Jack Goldsmith and Nathaniel Sobel recently wrote while reviewing what we know of the Durham probe .
‘ In my time , when something was before the grand jury or otherwise was a pending investigation , you didn ’ t talk about it , ” says Stuart Gerson , who was a Justice Department appointee under George H.W .
Bush and served as acting attorney general in the early Clinton administration .
“ And if there was no indictment , you didn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ again.
” But if the point is just to cast a cloud over someone — or to help the president politically — rather than win in a court of law , you might take a different approach .
Actually bringing charges , of course , is more difficult .
It is hard to imagine US federal prosecutors in the modern day being so far gone that they ’ d fabricate charges against a political enemy of the president out of whole cloth .
“ We are not yet in a banana republic where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and have a show trial and bring people into a soccer stadium , thank God , ” says Rangappa .
Instead , they need something to work with .
Conservative activists , media outlets , and politicians have gotten very adept at coming up with possible somethings — at generating unproven scandals that they then demand be investigated .
“ It ’ s critically important that what the Justice Department does has legitimacy ” For instance , anything involving money , which the political system is awash in , can generate cries of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Foundation , or Hunter Biden ’ s work in Ukraine .
It ’ s not illegal to raise money for charity or to be paid a lot to sit on the board of a foreign company , but in both cases , conservatives alleged quid pro quos that do not seem to have really existed : Uranium One for Clinton , and the firing of Ukraine ’ s prosecutor general for Biden .
Furthermore , the law can be a malleable thing .
Famously overbroad classification laws could likely imperil many government employees @ @ @ @ @ @ @ letter .
Questioning can produce false statements charges .
Of course , if an enemy of Trump ’ s truly did break the law , and there ’ s evidence to prove it , they may merit prosecution .
The problem is that Trump and Barr ’ s behavior has created deep doubt about whether any such assessment at DOJ would in fact be fair — or would instead be aimed at pleasing the president .
“ It ’ s critically important that what the Justice Department does has legitimacy , ” says @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years as a Miami federal prosecutor and then at the Justice Department , under the George W. Bush and Obama administrations .
“ The whole foundation of convicting people of crimes and putting them in jail has to be based on the law .
Basing it on politics would be abhorrent to the rule of law.
” But the law can be a malleable thing , and in politics especially , there are often gray areas .
Imagine , for instance , a situation where there really might be some underlying violation — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sort of matter the federal government would usually bring charges about , Perhaps the offense isn ’ t that serious , the law is rarely enforced , or there are weaknesses in the evidence .
If a person implicated in something like this is an enemy of Donald Trump , prosecutors may have an extra incentive to pursue a case when they ordinarily wouldn ’ t .
That ’ s what some argue happened to Andrew McCabe , the former deputy FBI director .
“ It was one extended crazy nightmare where they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we understand , to getting an indictment , ” says Michael Bromwich , McCabe ’ s lawyer and a former Justice Department inspector general .
Trump came into office distrusting McCabe because of reports that a Clinton ally , Gov .
Terry McAuliffe ( D-VA ) , helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for McCabe ’ s wife when she ran for state Senate .
This distrust deepened when the Russia investigation intensified , with Trump viewing McCabe as a Comey ally .
He accused McCabe of using his FBI position for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( accusations that internal investigators found to be baseless ) .
However , McCabe also became embroiled in a leak investigation , the gist of which is that when he felt his reputation was being unfairly maligned , he leaked an anecdote that made him look good .
( His defenders point out that he was authorized to disclose information to the press , and argue that he was protecting the FBI ’ s reputation , not just his own . )
The anecdote portrayed McCabe as standing up for an investigation into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Justice Department higher-ups .
This disclosure of internal deliberations about an investigation into a 2016 presidential candidate came shortly before that election .
And when investigators asked him about it months later , McCabe initially claimed ignorance .
The inspector general concluded McCabe lacked candor , and he was fired .
Trump ’ s grudge against McCabe had nothing to do with the leak , which didn ’ t involve him at all ( and , if anything , hurt Clinton ) .
But he continued to publicly attack and taunt McCabe , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And , as this was going on , the US Attorney ’ s Office for the District of Columbia began investigating whether McCabe made false statements to internal investigators .
By September 2019 , Justice officials rejected his lawyers ’ appeals , signaling his indictment was imminent .
All this set off alarm bells for Lawfare ’ s Benjamin Wittes .
“ Criminal dispositions on false statements matters in internal investigations are exceptionally rare , ” he wrote .
“ Absent some gross aggravating factor , I struggle to think of any other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ handled through internal disciplinary means , not criminal charges.
” Wittes wrote that his point was “ not to suggest that McCabe did nothing wrong , ” but instead to argue that criminal prosecution of such a matter was highly unusual .
“ It was very clear to us that they were straining to make a case against him where there was no case to be made , and that he was being singled out for exceptionally harsh , politically motivated treatment , ” Bromwich told me .
“ We had heard for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ political pressure being put on that office.
” The New York Times ’ s Katie Benner and Adam Goldman reported that the two main prosecutors on the case “ came to believe that they could not get a jury to convict ” McCabe and “ were worried about the appearance of a vindictive prosecution ” — and so one quit the case and the other left government entirely .
Two other prosecutors pushed forward , and reconvened a grand jury .
But then nothing happened — the expected indictment didn ’ t materialize @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voted against the indictment ( which would be extremely unusual ) , but that has never been officially confirmed .
Another possibility is that prosecutors foresaw defeat and backed down .
Finally , after radio silence for several months , and pressure from a judge overseeing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit about the matter , Justice officials told McCabe ’ s team this February that he would not be charged after all .
As far as we know , McCabe came the closest of any of Trump ’ s targets to actually @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but it wasn ’ t guaranteed to turn out that way .
And without the judge pressuring prosecutors to come to a decision , the cloud could still be hanging over McCabe .
Or a different grand jury or prosecutorial team could have produced a different outcome .
( Barr replaced the US attorney overseeing it with his loyalist Tim Shea while this drama was winding down . )
Another key takeaway is that there was a gray area here .
McCabe was not the perfect victim — he really was behind an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ partisan , disclosure to the press shortly before the election .
Trump ’ s enemies will not always be saints , but they will deserve equal justice under the law , rather than unfair treatment because of their political views .
But good lawyers can take advantage of gray areas and ambiguities to advance their client ’ s case , as Barr has done so often for Trump .
To tie a lot of this together , Trump and Barr have so degraded the norm against political interference in criminal cases that a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Justice Department and will grow dramatically worse if Trump wins a second term .
Career officials will face what Zelinsky described — pressure to either go with the tide on politically controversial cases or risk jeopardizing their jobs .
And those hoping to advance their careers in the department would be keenly aware of these pressures .
“ People of a right-of-center orientation may in some cases be basically rolling the dice , ” Ayer , the former deputy attorney general , told me .
“ They may know that what they are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right , but they also know that to prosper , they ’ ve got to please the authority figure they answer to , who for some of them is Bill Barr.
” Though Trump has achieved little legislatively , if Republicans hold on to the Senate , he will be able to keep the judge-confirmation factory working .
And for an ambitious Republican lawyer , Ayer said , “ The ultimate brass ring is a judgeship.
” Particularly ambitious GOP lawyers are probably well aware that prosecuting Trump ’ s enemies would thrill @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conservative media .
The trick , of course , would be to build a case that would hold up in court .
“ I actually think the damage is done , whether he gets reelected or not ” Then there are Trump ’ s incentives if he wins this fall .
It ’ s worth remembering that everything we ’ ve seen so far has been from a Trump who ’ s restrained by reelection calculations .
Recall that the day after the 2018 midterms , he finally fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s congressional testimony , he asked Ukraine ’ s president for a favor during a phone call .
Perhaps the fear of a historically unprecedented second impeachment would constrain him somewhat , but he ’ s already learned that as long as he can maintain the support of 34 senators , he can ’ t be removed .
A Trump reelection would make him even more powerful within the Republican Party .
In theory , he ’ ll be a lame duck — but so long as he remains widely popular among Republican @ @ @ @ @ @ @ continue to depend on maintaining Trump ’ s favor and defending him .
Overall , there ’ s little evidence to suggest he ’ ll be chastened , and much to suggest that he ’ ll go even further .
While most of the former DOJ officials I interviewed were deeply troubled by what ’ s happened to the department , most professed optimism that if Trump were defeated , these trends could quickly be reversed .
Yet the most pessimistic person I interviewed was Matt Miller , the former public affairs chief @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the damage is done , whether he gets reelected or not , ” Miller said .
As Miller diagnosed matters , the problem wasn ’ t just that Trump wanted to politicize the administration of justice and that Barr was willing to help him .
The even more worrying trend was that much of the Republican Party — from members of Congress to conservative media commentators to the voters who were part of his base — was either defending Trump or egging him on to go further .
I spoke to Miller shortly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Zelinsky testified about Barr ’ s interference in Roger Stone ’ s sentencing — and what he saw from the Republican side troubled him .
Whistleblowers had made accusations of misconduct , he said , and they “ were treated as combatants , as instruments of the Democratic Party that were there to get Donald Trump and Bill Barr.
” Things weren ’ t always this way .
Back in May 2017 , when Trump fired Comey , there was widespread hesitancy among the congressional GOP to defend the firing .
But gradually @ @ @ @ @ @ @ probe , constructing his alternative narrative that the real crimes were on the “ other side.
” Republican politicians have realized that they wouldn ’ t be struck down if they defended potentially corrupt behavior by Trump .
Indeed , for many of them , quite the opposite happens .
Those who most vocally defend Trump from accusations of scandal become stars in the party — and would often be rewarded with top jobs from Trump himself , like Chief of Staff Mark Meadows or Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe .
Lately @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Trump ’ s efforts to interfere with the Justice Department , with Fox News commentators urging Trump to give clemency to Roger Stone and hyping the possibility that some former Obama officials will be indicted in the Durham investigation .
They are , it ’ s quite clear , catering to their audience — voters who believe Trump ’ s conspiracy theories and claims of Democratic crimes , and who want him to move harder against them .
The next Democratic president , Miller predicted , would genuinely try to restore norms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , because the party truly believes in those norms .
But Republicans have learned that they no longer do — and that lesson will be applied in future Republican presidencies .
“ The post-Watergate norm that the department should operate independently of the White House when it comes to criminal matters , and without consideration to politics , has completely broken down in the Republican Party , ” Miller said .
“ And I just don ’ t know why anyone thinks it would just snap back.
” In the spring , we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contributions to help keep Vox free for everyone , and last week , we set a goal of reaching 20,000 contributors .
Well , you helped us blow past that .
Today , we are extending that goal to 25,000 .
Millions turn to Vox each month to understand an increasingly chaotic world — from what is happening with the USPS to the coronavirus crisis to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sustaining our resource-intensive work — and helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world .
Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

Share All sharing options for: Lock them up: The danger of political prosecutions in a second Trump term
President Donald Trump wants his enemies locked up — he says so all the time.
He told Hillary Clinton that once he won, she’d be “in jail.” He wants foreign countries to investigate the Bidens. He said that John Kerry “should be prosecuted.” He wants Adam Schiff “questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason.” John Bolton, he says, should be “in jail, money seized.” James Comey should face “years in jail.” The list goes on. This isn’t just empty political rhetoric — Trump says similar things to officials in private, and grows angry when his demands aren’t carried out.
And so far, they haven’t been carried out. Yet the Department of Justice under Attorney General Bill Barr has already become increasingly responsive to Trump’s preferences in criminal cases involving Trump’s friends. So the question is whether, if Trump wins in November, his talk of investigations and prosecutions will become more than just talk.
I spoke to more than a dozen former Justice Department officials about Trump’s increasingly tight grip on an agency that has long prided itself on independence when it comes to criminal matters.
“There’s the fear of the attorney general intervening in cases to benefit presidents’ allies,” said former US Attorney Barbara McQuade. “And you can also use that power to harm the president’s enemies.”
Already, since Barr took over, he has acted in unusual ways to try to help Trump and his friends, from pre-spinning special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings to intervening in Roger Stone’s sentencing and trying to throw out Michael Flynn’s prosecution.
“In sensitive cases, there’s been a systematic disregard of procedures and norms of behavior, many of which were put in place after Watergate,” says Donald Ayer, who was deputy attorney general under George H.W. Bush (and was succeeded by Barr back then). “These things have been rent asunder by Bill Barr.”
Still, of all the people Trump has so often said he wants prosecuted, none have actually been charged with anything. (Instead, it’s Trump’s associates who keep getting charged, most recently Steve Bannon.) All this can be viewed as encouraging — that the Justice Department, despite so much political pressure coming from the top, maintains standards and won’t bring bogus charges to please the president.
Yet it’s too simple to say the department has fully ignored Trump. Andrew McCabe reportedly came quite close to indictment. News broke of another probe focusing on Comey earlier this year. Top Justice officials set up special processes to review allegations from conservatives about the Clintons and the Bidens. And Barr has given other prosecutors he trusts special, politically charged assignments — most notably, John Durham’s investigation of the handling of the Russia probe, an ongoing matter Barr often discusses publicly.
Despite all that Barr has done, there remain lines he hasn’t crossed. And this is increasingly trying Trump’s patience. “Bill Barr can go down as the greatest attorney general in the history of our country,” the president said in a recent Fox Business interview. “Or he can go down as just an average guy. We’ll see what happens.”
When Trump took office, there was a dam, preventing the president’s corrupt or political pressures from crashing through and flooding the Justice Department. Since then, that dam has sprung a great many leaks. And there’s a real question of whether it would burst entirely in a second Trump term, with the president no longer needing to constrain himself for reelection.
Barr brought big changes
For Trump’s first two years as president, the Justice Department maintained its independence to a great extent under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and earned Trump’s fury as a result.
Sessions’s biggest mistake in Trump’s eyes was that he recused himself from involvement in the Russia investigation — standard operating procedure in criminal cases to protect against conflict of interest — and put Rod Rosenstein in charge instead.
“There was a really powerful norm in the Justice Department that you never wanted to be perceived as a political arm for the president personally,” says Asha Rangappa, a former FBI agent who is now a senior lecturer at Yale. “And there was a sense that if you violate it, there’s going to be criticism and pushback and consequences.”
Sessions was a staunch Trump supporter, but he felt he simply had to recuse — because he couldn’t effectively lead the Justice Department if he didn’t. He was constrained by the department’s norms.
Barr had no such qualms. He had been attorney general before, and he took the job again in part because he thought the department needed a firmer hand at the top. Again and again, he’s proven unafraid of criticism that he’s acting politically to help the president or his friends.
“I think the message has come through loud and clear that if you do anything to cross the president and the attorney general, your career will be put at risk”
Barely a month after Barr was sworn in, he released his misleading spin on special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings a month before the report itself. His Justice Department decided Trump’s request that Ukraine’s president investigate the Bidens wasn’t worth investigating, and other federal investigations into Trumpworld appear to have fizzled out. Barr personally instructed prosecutors to weaken their sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, and he is trying to have the case against Michael Flynn dismissed entirely. He instituted a new rule requiring his personal approval for any investigations into presidential candidates or campaigns. And he’s attempted to place loyalists into key US attorney posts, such as the Southern District of New York and the District of Columbia.
Yet even through all this, the Justice Department has not become a well-oiled machine that does President Trump’s bidding immediately at all times — far from it. Rather, the change has been more subtle and insidious.
“I think the message has come through loud and clear that if you do anything to cross the president and the attorney general, your career will be put at risk,” says Matt Miller, who directed the Justice Department’s Office of Public Affairs under Eric Holder.
Aaron Zelinsky, a prosecutor who had worked on Mueller’s team, made that explicit in congressional testimony this June. The newly installed acting US attorney for the District of Columbia, Tim Shea (a close Barr associate), wanted to lighten prosecutors’ sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone. Zelinsky testified that a supervisor agreed this was “unethical and wrong,” but told him to go along, because “this case was ‘not the hill worth dying on’” and that we could “‘lose our jobs’ if we did not toe the line.”
All this is worrying enough — but, of course, Trump wants more. Much more.
Averting their eyes
To assess just how likely it is that Trump could turn the Justice Department against his enemies in his second term, we have to understand why it largely hasn’t happened so far.
Up to this point, Justice officials have usually dealt with Trump’s demands for prosecutions by either blatantly ignoring them or assigning a US attorney to review the matter.
Ignoring Trump is easiest when his demands are completely absurd. Take his demand to have Rep. Adam Schiff investigated for treason because Schiff paraphrased Trump’s comments during his call with the Ukrainian president during a congressional hearing. This bears not even the faintest resemblance to treason. Accordingly, there’s no indication that the Justice Department has taken any action.
Trump can sometimes become fixated on a legally dubious demand. According to John Bolton’s book The Room Where It Happened, Trump became “obsessed” with the idea of prosecuting former Secretary of State John Kerry under the Logan Act (an obscure law banning private citizens from conducting US foreign policy) because Kerry had contacts with Iran’s foreign minister. Trump would mention this idea “in meeting after meeting in the Oval” to Barr “or anybody listening,” Bolton writes. Trump’s tweets about it have continued this year, and now he says he wants Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) investigated for it too.
Related The Senator of State
The law was last used in 1852; some legal experts now view it as a “dead letter” and question its constitutionality. But the idea of a modern Logan Act investigation is not entirely far-fetched. While investigators under the Obama administration were probing Michael Flynn’s links to Russia, they researched whether the act would apply to Flynn’s conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the transition. The Logan Act was never the focus of their investigation, and they never came close to bringing charges under it. Still, there is recent precedent to look at it. As far as we know, Barr’s Justice Department has not done so.
There are reasons to doubt whether “just ignore the president” is a sound long-term strategy. A second-term Trump might get tired of taking no for an answer. If he really wants action, he could outright order the Justice Department to open some investigation and fire anyone who refuses to carry out that order. He may eventually find someone sycophantic enough to do it.
For the Logan Act, recall also that it was during the Obama administration that investigators explored using the law regarding Flynn. Is it so implausible that in a second term, Trump could find his own appointees who are willing to push the envelope further, against Kerry or other Democrats? That he could order them to do so?
Jonathan Adler, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University, argued that the president has broad authority over the Justice Department, but that he should not use those powers for ill. “The Justice Department is certainly under the control of the president. It is part of the executive branch, so it is certainly legal for the president to dictate to the Justice Department how it should operate or what its priorities should be,” says Adler.
But, he continues, “We have long placed a value on the Justice Department being able to make judgments and prosecutorial decisions based on traditional legal criteria and with an eye toward attempting to do equal justice.”
The president may have other ideas. Take the example of James Comey. The fired FBI director had written memos chronicling his interactions with President Trump. Inspector General Michael Horowitz criticized him for having the unclassified contents of one memo leaked to a reporter, but that wasn’t a criminal matter. There were, however, small amounts of retroactively classified information in some other memos that Horowitz dinged Comey for improperly handling. This was very thin gruel for a potential prosecution, and indeed, the Justice Department quickly determined not to charge Comey.
Trump wasn’t willing to let things lie there. The Washington Post reported that after he learned of the decision not to prosecute Comey, he “complained so loudly and swore so frequently in the Oval Office that some of his aides discussed it for days.” A few months later, in December 2019, Trump accused Comey of “unlawful conduct” and suggested he could face “years in jail.”
Finally, in January 2020, the New York Times reported that Comey was again facing investigative scrutiny related to “a years-old leak of classified information about a Russian intelligence document.” The current state of this investigation, including whether it’s in response to a presidential demand, is unknown. But it is quite clear that the president has not forgotten his desire to see Comey prosecuted.
Handpicked investigators
Another way the Justice Department has lately responded to political demands for investigations — coming from the president or his allies in Congress — is by assigning someone to do the job.
Jeff Sessions started this trend in late 2017 when he announced that John Huber, the US attorney for Utah, would review the handling of an investigation into the Clinton Foundation and other Clinton-related matters.
This special effort aimed at Trump’s 2016 opponent worried some. But in practice, it was clearly not the “Get Hoffa” squad (which Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy assembled to take down union leader Jimmy Hoffa however they could). The Washington Post reported this January that Huber’s review had “effectively ended” and that officials “said they never expected the effort to produce much of anything.” In retrospect, this particular special assignment seems mainly aimed at quieting conservatives’ complaints, rather than locking up Clinton.
A second-term Trump might get tired of taking no for an answer
Yet the practice of special assignments has continued under Barr. Barr tasked US Attorney for Connecticut John Durham with investigating the origins of the Russia investigation. He got John Bash, US attorney for the Western District of Texas, to look into Obama officials’ use of “unmasking.” And Scott Brady, US attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, got the job of looking into information Rudy Giuliani collected about the Bidens and Ukraine.
This is a process that, if approached in bad faith, can be very open to abuse. Are these US attorneys being chosen because of their professionalism, or because Barr thinks they’re politically simpatico?
To take an example involving one of the president’s friends, Barr asked Jeff Jensen, US attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, to review the case against Michael Flynn, more than two years after Flynn had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador. And indeed, the Justice Department soon moved to have Flynn’s case withdrawn, claiming that Jensen has found new information meriting that move. (The judge overseeing the case, Emmet Sullivan, sounds deeply skeptical of these assertions, and hasn’t allowed Flynn’s case to be thrown out just yet, so the matter is tied up in court.)
The larger point is that Jensen could not have been unaware of what Trump was hoping he’d come up with — a reason to get Flynn off the hook. He delivered.
By contrast, look what happened with Huber, the US attorney who didn’t find any new Clinton-related information justifying action. President Trump publicly attacked him for this supposed failure, tweeting that Huber “did absolutely NOTHING. He was a garbage disposal unit for important documents & then, tap, tap, tap, just drag it along & run out of time.”
This, too, sent an unmistakable message to prosecutors who score such high-profile assignments — the president can and will attack them if they don’t deliver what he wants.
Casting clouds
One check against utterly baseless charges, though, is that they almost surely couldn’t hold up in court. Bringing a very high-profile case means you’ll be embarrassed in a very high-profile way if it falls apart. And already, as CNN’s Katelyn Polantz and Kara Scannell have argued, judges have begun showing more skepticism to the Trump Justice Department’s representations in these matters.
“You can see it already in the way that courts are reacting to the Justice Department’s positions,” says Mary McCord, who served as the acting assistant attorney general for national security in the late Obama and early Trump administrations. “That built-in credibility and trust that the department had with judges is eroding. They’re not just willing to accept at face value that their representations are fully accurate and correct and not the product of political pressure.”
All this is why Rangappa is skeptical that outright prosecutions of Trump’s enemies is “where the danger lies.” Trump’s Justice Department “can’t make up evidence and go after somebody in a court of law, because the defense lawyers would tear that apart and it would get exposed,” she says.
But there’s another danger, which to some extent has already manifested. Even if an investigation ends in no charges, its mere existence — if it leaks — can hang over someone, make them afraid, and have a political impact.
Trump understands this dynamic perfectly well. The email investigation loomed over Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, and then the Russia investigation loomed over President Trump. Indeed, Trump told James Comey that it was a “cloud” hanging over his presidency, and asked the then-FBI director “what he could do to lift the cloud,” per Comey’s memos.
More recently, Trump held up military aid to Ukraine in an effort to get that country to investigate the energy company Burisma and the Bidens (a move that, once it was discovered, led to Trump’s impeachment). But Trump didn’t just want an investigation. He was insistent that Ukraine’s president publicly announce that investigation, according to his aides’ testimony. That is: He wanted to put a cloud over Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, with the ominous phrase “under investigation.”
“Politically, I think it is to their benefit to not actually bring charges,” Rangappa says. “What’s good for them is to have an ongoing perception of criminality and a sense that these criminals are still at large, that it’s the Democrats who are doing it.”
The most prominent example of this so far is in Barr’s highly unusual handling of the Durham investigation. Shortly after Mueller finished his work, Barr assigned Durham to examine whether there was misconduct around the opening of the Russia probe. At some point in the following months, Durham’s probe became a criminal investigation, and its scope widened.
We have no idea what Durham found; his sole charge so far is of an FBI lawyer whose misconduct (altering an email) was revealed last year by the inspector general. Durham’s investigation is ongoing. That’s why it’s so odd that Barr has repeatedly made public comments, often to Fox hosts, always with the gist that he thinks the Russia investigation was deeply corrupt and riddled with malfeasance.
“No contemporary attorney general has, like Barr in the Durham investigation, offered such extended, opinionated, factually unsupported and damning public commentary, naming names and drawing conclusions, about an ongoing investigation that is at least in part a criminal investigation,” Jack Goldsmith and Nathaniel Sobel recently wrote while reviewing what we know of the Durham probe.
‘In my time, when something was before the grand jury or otherwise was a pending investigation, you didn’t talk about it,” says Stuart Gerson, who was a Justice Department appointee under George H.W. Bush and served as acting attorney general in the early Clinton administration. “And if there was no indictment, you didn’t say a word about it ever again.”
But if the point is just to cast a cloud over someone — or to help the president politically — rather than win in a court of law, you might take a different approach.
Gray areas
Actually bringing charges, of course, is more difficult. It is hard to imagine US federal prosecutors in the modern day being so far gone that they’d fabricate charges against a political enemy of the president out of whole cloth. “We are not yet in a banana republic where the Department of Justice will fabricate evidence and have a show trial and bring people into a soccer stadium, thank God,” says Rangappa.
Instead, they need something to work with. Conservative activists, media outlets, and politicians have gotten very adept at coming up with possible somethings — at generating unproven scandals that they then demand be investigated.
“It’s critically important that what the Justice Department does has legitimacy”
For instance, anything involving money, which the political system is awash in, can generate cries of scandal — such as with the Clinton Foundation, or Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine. It’s not illegal to raise money for charity or to be paid a lot to sit on the board of a foreign company, but in both cases, conservatives alleged quid pro quos that do not seem to have really existed: Uranium One for Clinton, and the firing of Ukraine’s prosecutor general for Biden.
Furthermore, the law can be a malleable thing. Famously overbroad classification laws could likely imperil many government employees if they were actually enforced to the letter. Questioning can produce false statements charges.
Of course, if an enemy of Trump’s truly did break the law, and there’s evidence to prove it, they may merit prosecution. The problem is that Trump and Barr’s behavior has created deep doubt about whether any such assessment at DOJ would in fact be fair — or would instead be aimed at pleasing the president.
“It’s critically important that what the Justice Department does has legitimacy,” says Matt Axelrod, who worked for 13 years as a Miami federal prosecutor and then at the Justice Department, under the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. “The whole foundation of convicting people of crimes and putting them in jail has to be based on the law. Basing it on politics would be abhorrent to the rule of law.”
But the law can be a malleable thing, and in politics especially, there are often gray areas.
Imagine, for instance, a situation where there really might be some underlying violation — but it just isn’t the sort of matter the federal government would usually bring charges about. Perhaps the offense isn’t that serious, the law is rarely enforced, or there are weaknesses in the evidence.
If a person implicated in something like this is an enemy of Donald Trump, prosecutors may have an extra incentive to pursue a case when they ordinarily wouldn’t.
That’s what some argue happened to Andrew McCabe, the former deputy FBI director. “It was one extended crazy nightmare where they apparently came very close, from what we understand, to getting an indictment,” says Michael Bromwich, McCabe’s lawyer and a former Justice Department inspector general.
Trump came into office distrusting McCabe because of reports that a Clinton ally, Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D-VA), helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for McCabe’s wife when she ran for state Senate. This distrust deepened when the Russia investigation intensified, with Trump viewing McCabe as a Comey ally. He accused McCabe of using his FBI position for political reasons, to help Hillary Clinton (accusations that internal investigators found to be baseless).
However, McCabe also became embroiled in a leak investigation, the gist of which is that when he felt his reputation was being unfairly maligned, he leaked an anecdote that made him look good. (His defenders point out that he was authorized to disclose information to the press, and argue that he was protecting the FBI’s reputation, not just his own.)
The anecdote portrayed McCabe as standing up for an investigation into the Clinton Foundation despite pressure from Obama Justice Department higher-ups. This disclosure of internal deliberations about an investigation into a 2016 presidential candidate came shortly before that election. And when investigators asked him about it months later, McCabe initially claimed ignorance. The inspector general concluded McCabe lacked candor, and he was fired.
Trump’s grudge against McCabe had nothing to do with the leak, which didn’t involve him at all (and, if anything, hurt Clinton). But he continued to publicly attack and taunt McCabe, including after McCabe’s firing. And, as this was going on, the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia began investigating whether McCabe made false statements to internal investigators. By September 2019, Justice officials rejected his lawyers’ appeals, signaling his indictment was imminent.
All this set off alarm bells for Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes. “Criminal dispositions on false statements matters in internal investigations are exceptionally rare,” he wrote. “Absent some gross aggravating factor, I struggle to think of any other examples. Workplace false statements are normally handled through internal disciplinary means, not criminal charges.” Wittes wrote that his point was “not to suggest that McCabe did nothing wrong,” but instead to argue that criminal prosecution of such a matter was highly unusual.
“It was very clear to us that they were straining to make a case against him where there was no case to be made, and that he was being singled out for exceptionally harsh, politically motivated treatment,” Bromwich told me. “We had heard for a long time that there was tremendous political pressure being put on that office.”
The New York Times’s Katie Benner and Adam Goldman reported that the two main prosecutors on the case “came to believe that they could not get a jury to convict” McCabe and “were worried about the appearance of a vindictive prosecution” — and so one quit the case and the other left government entirely. Two other prosecutors pushed forward, and reconvened a grand jury.
But then nothing happened — the expected indictment didn’t materialize. Rumors circulated that the grand jury voted against the indictment (which would be extremely unusual), but that has never been officially confirmed. Another possibility is that prosecutors foresaw defeat and backed down. Finally, after radio silence for several months, and pressure from a judge overseeing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit about the matter, Justice officials told McCabe’s team this February that he would not be charged after all.
As far as we know, McCabe came the closest of any of Trump’s targets to actually being indicted. He escaped it, but it wasn’t guaranteed to turn out that way. And without the judge pressuring prosecutors to come to a decision, the cloud could still be hanging over McCabe. Or a different grand jury or prosecutorial team could have produced a different outcome. (Barr replaced the US attorney overseeing it with his loyalist Tim Shea while this drama was winding down.)
Another key takeaway is that there was a gray area here. McCabe was not the perfect victim — he really was behind an inappropriate, although not criminal and not partisan, disclosure to the press shortly before the election. Trump’s enemies will not always be saints, but they will deserve equal justice under the law, rather than unfair treatment because of their political views. But good lawyers can take advantage of gray areas and ambiguities to advance their client’s case, as Barr has done so often for Trump.
Bad incentives
To tie a lot of this together, Trump and Barr have so degraded the norm against political interference in criminal cases that a serious incentive problem now exists in the Justice Department and will grow dramatically worse if Trump wins a second term.
Career officials will face what Zelinsky described — pressure to either go with the tide on politically controversial cases or risk jeopardizing their jobs. And those hoping to advance their careers in the department would be keenly aware of these pressures.
“People of a right-of-center orientation may in some cases be basically rolling the dice,” Ayer, the former deputy attorney general, told me. “They may know that what they are being asked to do is really not right, but they also know that to prosper, they’ve got to please the authority figure they answer to, who for some of them is Bill Barr.”
Though Trump has achieved little legislatively, if Republicans hold on to the Senate, he will be able to keep the judge-confirmation factory working. And for an ambitious Republican lawyer, Ayer said, “The ultimate brass ring is a judgeship.”
Particularly ambitious GOP lawyers are probably well aware that prosecuting Trump’s enemies would thrill the president and make them heroes in conservative media. The trick, of course, would be to build a case that would hold up in court.
“I actually think the damage is done, whether he gets reelected or not”
Then there are Trump’s incentives if he wins this fall. It’s worth remembering that everything we’ve seen so far has been from a Trump who’s restrained by reelection calculations.
Recall that the day after the 2018 midterms, he finally fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The day after Robert Mueller’s congressional testimony, he asked Ukraine’s president for a favor during a phone call. Perhaps the fear of a historically unprecedented second impeachment would constrain him somewhat, but he’s already learned that as long as he can maintain the support of 34 senators, he can’t be removed.
A Trump reelection would make him even more powerful within the Republican Party. In theory, he’ll be a lame duck — but so long as he remains widely popular among Republican voters, success in the GOP will continue to depend on maintaining Trump’s favor and defending him. Overall, there’s little evidence to suggest he’ll be chastened, and much to suggest that he’ll go even further.
It’s not just Trump
While most of the former DOJ officials I interviewed were deeply troubled by what’s happened to the department, most professed optimism that if Trump were defeated, these trends could quickly be reversed.
Yet the most pessimistic person I interviewed was Matt Miller, the former public affairs chief under Holder. “I actually think the damage is done, whether he gets reelected or not,” Miller said.
As Miller diagnosed matters, the problem wasn’t just that Trump wanted to politicize the administration of justice and that Barr was willing to help him. The even more worrying trend was that much of the Republican Party — from members of Congress to conservative media commentators to the voters who were part of his base — was either defending Trump or egging him on to go further.
I spoke to Miller shortly after the congressional hearing at which Aaron Zelinsky testified about Barr’s interference in Roger Stone’s sentencing — and what he saw from the Republican side troubled him. Whistleblowers had made accusations of misconduct, he said, and they “were treated as combatants, as instruments of the Democratic Party that were there to get Donald Trump and Bill Barr.”
Things weren’t always this way. Back in May 2017, when Trump fired Comey, there was widespread hesitancy among the congressional GOP to defend the firing. But gradually, Trump fought back against the Mueller probe, constructing his alternative narrative that the real crimes were on the “other side.”
Republican politicians have realized that they wouldn’t be struck down if they defended potentially corrupt behavior by Trump. Indeed, for many of them, quite the opposite happens. Those who most vocally defend Trump from accusations of scandal become stars in the party — and would often be rewarded with top jobs from Trump himself, like Chief of Staff Mark Meadows or Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe.
Lately, the Republican base has increasingly cheered on Trump’s efforts to interfere with the Justice Department, with Fox News commentators urging Trump to give clemency to Roger Stone and hyping the possibility that some former Obama officials will be indicted in the Durham investigation. They are, it’s quite clear, catering to their audience — voters who believe Trump’s conspiracy theories and claims of Democratic crimes, and who want him to move harder against them.
The next Democratic president, Miller predicted, would genuinely try to restore norms of the Justice Department’s independence, because the party truly believes in those norms. But Republicans have learned that they no longer do — and that lesson will be applied in future Republican presidencies.
“The post-Watergate norm that the department should operate independently of the White House when it comes to criminal matters, and without consideration to politics, has completely broken down in the Republican Party,” Miller said. “And I just don’t know why anyone thinks it would just snap back.”


vox--2020-08-29--“It just looks like a bomb went off:” Louisianians on recovering from Hurricane Laura

The winds shook the whole building .
The fire alarm went off .
Sometime , between about 2 am and 4 am Thursday , the roof of the building curled away .
The rainwater came in , soaking the ceiling of the second-floor apartment , dripping down the walls .
Bailey , who ’ s 26 and lives in Lake Charles , Louisiana , emerged from the apartment at sunrise , after riding out the storm with her boyfriend , her dad and their two pets , a Persian cat and a French bulldog-Boston terrier mix .
Outside , she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s roof rolled up like the end of a toothpaste tube .
Debris , planks of wood , and pieces of soggy paper were scattered everywhere .
The windows of the Lake Charles City Hall blew out , and the documents went with them .
( Bailey and some others interviewed for this story asked to be identified by their first names only for privacy reasons . )
That scene was replicated across Lake Charles and the surrounding towns in Calcasieu Parish , in southwestern Louisiana , the morning after Hurricane Laura @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the Gulf Coast as a powerful Category 4 storm , one of the strongest to ever hit the region .
Meteorologists and officials had warned of “ unsurvivable ” storm surge ahead of Laura ’ s arrival , urging residents to evacuate .
But in Lake Charles , about 50 miles inland from where the hurricane made landfall , the winds — which were gusting up to 130 miles per hour — caused much of the devastation .
They sliced away rooftops , pulled apart homes , flipped trees , smashed windows @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
At least 10 people died in Louisiana , many from falling trees .
“ It just looks like a bomb went off , ” Jean Paul Duhon , a 50-year-old teacher and coach at Sulphur High School , in Sulphur , Louisiana , told me .
“ I don ’ t know how many trees are left standing .
Buildings are gone .
Trees snapped everywhere , power lines .
It ’ s just massive destruction all over Sulphur , Lake Charles , Carlyss , all over the place.
” The recovery @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Louisiana Department of Health , as of Friday , water outages were affecting more than 200,000 residents .
Hundreds of thousands are without electricity in Louisiana , Texas , and Arkansas .
On Thursday , a chemical fire at a plant in Westlake , just outside of Lake Charles , forced officials to issue a shelter-in-place order , though not everyone had a place they could shelter in .
Those who hunkered down during the hurricane came outside Thursday to assess the scope of the damage for themselves , and for their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through Duhon ’ s house , the chimney was ripped out , the roof tore away and had , by storm ’ s end , settled in his neighbor ’ s yard .
A tree also squashed his truck — which he says he might be the most mad about — and so he spent Thursday driving around in his side-by-side , fielding texts and Facetiming friends and fellow coaches and students and checking in on their homes or their parents ’ homes and offering status updates .
Local Facebook groups were also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ various streets , or requests for food , water , or gasoline .
Others posted links for assistance , and local businesses offered their services : tree clearing , damage estimates , trash removal .
Patrick , 21 , and his family evacuated to Mississippi , and then moved a little closer , to Port Allen , Louisiana , before returning back to the toppled trees in Lake Charles on Thursday .
His grandmother ’ s carport was crushed .
“ It ’ s basically like a movie , it ’ s crazy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spoke , he was cleaning out the fridge and deep freezer , deciding what to salvage and what to throw away .
Bailey and her family loaded their luggage and other belongings from her dad ’ s apartment , and drove over to check on her own house Thursday morning .
On the way , they passed the South ’ s Defenders Memorial Monument , a Confederate statue that had been a source of tension that summer in Lake Charles as some residents called for its removal .
Earlier that month , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it .
But the morning after the hurricane , it wasn ’ t there .
Laura barreled through and tore down the monument herself .
“ The Lord did one good thing , ” Bailey told me .
“ This is one good thing that came out of it .
Everything else is absolutely awful and devastating.
” A natural disaster meets all the other disasters Frankie Randazzo , a restaurateur who owns businesses in Texas and Louisiana , said he was watching the local meteorologist doing a Facebook Live from Broad Street @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was seeing parts of his building flying past on the screen .
They belonged to the Panorama Music House , a 102-year-old historic building , whose facade crumbled and roof caved in .
Another of his restaurants in Lake Charles , Rikenjaks Brewing Company , fared slightly better , but the winds still damaged the roof as tree branches crashed in .
For Randazzo , it was the latest disaster in a year of them .
“ We ’ ve just been punched in the face all year , I can ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he said .
The coronavirus pandemic and the shutdowns that followed upended small businesses , with restaurants , bars , and venues for mass gatherings put in the most precarious position .
In March , Randazzo shut down his establishments .
He missed all the big holidays : St. Patrick ’ s Day , Mother ’ s Day , much of crawfish season .
Then they began to reopen when restrictions were lifted in May .
But as cases spiked this summer in Texas this summer , the governor reimposed restrictions , including @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Louisiana closed bars again too , though Panorama and Rikenjaks followed different rules , as restaurants .
At that point , though , the Paycheck Protection Program ( PPP ) loan that helped Randazzo pay his employees and keep his businesses afloat had run out .
“ It ’ s an absolutely insane time to be in the restaurant business in the South , ” Randazzo said .
But he said , he always looks for a silver lining , and he sees one in how Hurricane Laura destroyed and battered his businesses @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pays out for the storm damage , it might actually offer him a respite from the economic uncertainty of the pandemic .
“ This could actually be a helpful thing for us , and allow us to close and cease operations under the Covid guidelines , rebuild , remodel , and reopen in six to eight months , when hopefully all of this is done.
” Covid-19 delivered Louisiana a one-two punch .
At the start of the pandemic , Louisiana was among the nation ’ s hot spots , led by a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The case count decreased , only to surge again across the state this summer .
Southwest Louisiana , specifically Lake Charles , had some of the highest positivity rates in the state at the beginning of August .
Cases are now steadily trending down , but the economic fallout is still acute .
Businesses like Randazzo ’ s are struggling , and tens of thousands of people are unemployed across the state .
The total number of jobs lost to Covid-19 in Louisiana was already double that of Hurricane Katrina .
Now , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people already struggling to find work , pay their rent , mortgages , and insurance bills , may now have to rebuild .
“ I think it also makes it worse , though , that people lost their jobs and insurance and they don ’ t have places to stay , ” Bailey said of the hurricane arriving during the pandemic .
And there are concerns that the chaos of Hurricane Laura could spread the coronavirus , especially as people evacuate to places like Texas and other parts of Louisiana , either taking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when they return .
About 1.5 million people were under evacuation orders in Texas and Louisiana .
Officials tried to avoid putting evacuees in large shelters , instead sending them to hotels where it would be easier to isolate .
Sarah Bonvillain , a 22-year-old recent grad , had evacuated and sheltered in a hotel in Austin , Texas , with her girlfriend .
Sarah ’ s parents ’ home in Lake Charles was badly damaged : flooding , broken windows , the roof half gone .
Her girlfriend lives in the dorms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and can ’ t go back there .
Bonvillain texted , while waiting for her laundry , that they are trying to stay in Austin , but it ’ s financially draining .
She said FEMA says it can ’ t help yet , so they were heading over to the Red Cross , after the laundry was done , to see what options they had .
Bonvillain said , as for Covid-19 concerns , right now , the biggest problem is the elevator at the hotel .
They ’ re on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is tiny , so she tries to wait until she can ride alone .
Other people who evacuated , like Patrick , told me they took precautionary measures , like wearing masks .
But some questioned what the rebuilding would look like in the pandemic without electricity , in oppressive heat and humidity — if social distancing , for example , was even possible .
The hurricane itself pushed people together .
When sheltering with her dad , Bailey said , they exchanged one of their first hugs in she doesn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s like merging , really , ” Bailey said of the coronavirus and the hurricane .
“ I think that ’ s why it also just makes everything worse , because everybody ’ s been so socially distant.
” “ We stay in these houses for months and then suddenly the houses are taken away from us , ” she added .
People are used to hurricanes down here in the Gulf .
They ’ ve seen Ike , and Rita , and Harvey , and Imelda .
Now Laura , another @ @ @ @ @ @ @ back again .
But Duhon said it ’ s going the best it can , and this storm , or anything else , isn ’ t going to knock them down .
“ We ’ re going to get back up and we ’ ll be stronger than it was before , ” he said .
“ It ’ s part of living in the South , and living in America.
” Stuff happens , and you just have to deal with it , he said .
But , he like everyone else @ @ @ @ @ @ @ little less stuff to happen .
“ I told somebody the other day , ” Duhon said .
“ I think we should take 2020 , crumple it up , throw it away , and start over again.
” Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work , and helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world .
Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

The winds shook the whole building. The fire alarm went off. Sometime between about 2 and 4 am Thursday, the roof of the building curled away. The rainwater came in, soaking the ceiling of the second-floor apartment, dripping down the walls.
Bailey, who’s 26 and lives in Lake Charles, Louisiana, emerged from the apartment at sunrise, after riding out the storm with her boyfriend, her dad, and their two pets, a Persian cat and a French bulldog-Boston terrier mix. Outside, she saw the metal awning of the building’s roof rolled up like the end of a toothpaste tube. Debris, planks of wood, and soggy pieces of paper were scattered everywhere. The windows of the Lake Charles City Hall blew out, and the documents went with them. (Bailey and some others interviewed for this story asked to be identified by their first names only for privacy reasons.)
That scene was replicated across Lake Charles and the surrounding towns in Calcasieu Parish, in southwestern Louisiana, the morning after Hurricane Laura swept through. The storm made landfall on the Gulf Coast as a powerful Category 4 storm, one of the strongest ever to hit the region.
Meteorologists and officials had warned of “unsurvivable” storm surge ahead of Laura’s arrival, urging residents to evacuate. But in Lake Charles, about 50 miles inland from where the hurricane made landfall, the winds — which were gusting up to 130 miles per hour — caused much of the devastation. They sliced away rooftops, pulled apart homes, flipped trees, smashed windows, and took down power lines. At least 10 people died in Louisiana, many from falling trees.
“It just looks like a bomb went off,” Jean Paul Duhon, a 50-year-old teacher and coach at Sulphur High School in Sulphur, Louisiana, told me. “I don’t know how many trees are left standing. Buildings are gone. Trees snapped everywhere, power lines. It’s just massive destruction all over Sulphur, Lake Charles, Carlyss, all over the place.”
The recovery is beginning, slowly. According to the Louisiana Department of Health, as of Friday, water outages were affecting more than 200,000 residents. Hundreds of thousands are without electricity in Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas. On Thursday, a chemical fire at a plant in Westlake, just outside of Lake Charles, forced officials to issue a shelter-in-place order, though not everyone had a place they could shelter in.
Those who hunkered down during the hurricane came outside Thursday to assess the scope of the damage for themselves, and for their neighbors who evacuated.
A tree fell through Duhon’s house, the chimney was ripped out, the roof tore away and had, by storm’s end, settled in his neighbor’s yard. A tree also squashed his truck — which he says he might be the most mad about — and so he spent Thursday driving around in his side-by-side, fielding texts and FaceTiming friends and fellow coaches and students, and checking in on their homes or their parents’ homes and offering status updates.
Local Facebook groups were also filled with messages asking for information on various streets, or requests for food, water, or gasoline. Others posted links for assistance, and local businesses offered their services: tree clearing, damage estimates, trash removal.
Patrick, 21, and his family evacuated to Mississippi, and then moved a little closer, to Port Allen, Louisiana, before returning back to the toppled trees in Lake Charles on Thursday. His grandmother’s carport was crushed. “It’s basically like a movie, it’s crazy,” he said. As we spoke, he was cleaning out the fridge and deep freezer, deciding what to salvage and what to throw away.
Bailey and her family loaded their luggage and other belongings from her dad’s apartment, and drove over to check on her own house Thursday morning. On the way, they passed the South’s Defenders Memorial Monument, a Confederate statue that had been a source of tension that summer in Lake Charles as some residents called for its removal. Earlier that month, the Calcasieu Parish Police Jury voted to keep it. But the morning after the hurricane, it wasn’t there. Laura barreled through and tore down the monument herself.
“The Lord did one good thing,” Bailey told me. “This is one good thing that came out of it. Everything else is absolutely awful and devastating.”
A natural disaster meets all the other disasters
Frankie Randazzo, a restaurateur who owns businesses in Texas and Louisiana, said he was watching the local meteorologist doing a Facebook Live from Broad Street in Lake Charles, and realized he was seeing parts of his building flying past on the screen.
They belonged to the Panorama Music House, a 102-year-old historic building, whose facade crumbled and roof caved in. Another of his restaurants in Lake Charles, Rikenjaks Brewing Company, fared slightly better, but the winds still damaged the roof as tree branches crashed in.
For Randazzo, it was the latest disaster in a year of them. “We’ve just been punched in the face all year, I can’t even begin to tell you,” he said.
The coronavirus pandemic and the shutdowns that followed upended small businesses, with restaurants, bars, and venues for mass gatherings put in the most precarious position. In March, Randazzo shut down his establishments. He missed all the big holidays: St. Patrick’s Day, Mother’s Day, much of crawfish season. Then they began to reopen when restrictions were lifted in May.
But as cases spiked this summer in Texas this summer, the governor reimposed restrictions, including limiting restaurant capacity and shutting bars. Louisiana closed bars again too, though Panorama and Rikenjaks followed different rules, as restaurants. At that point, though, the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan that helped Randazzo pay his employees and keep his businesses afloat had run out.
“It’s an absolutely insane time to be in the restaurant business in the South,” Randazzo said.
But he said he always looks for a silver lining, and he sees one in how Hurricane Laura destroyed and battered his businesses in Lake Charles. If the insurance pays out for the storm damage, it might actually offer him a respite from the economic uncertainty of the pandemic. “This could actually be a helpful thing for us, and allow us to close and cease operations under the Covid guidelines, rebuild, remodel, and reopen in six to eight months, when hopefully all of this is done.”
Covid-19 delivered Louisiana a one-two punch. At the start of the pandemic, Louisiana was among the nation’s hot spots, led by a spike of cases in New Orleans. The case count decreased, only to surge again across the state this summer. Southwest Louisiana, specifically Lake Charles, had some of the highest positivity rates in the state at the beginning of August. Cases are now steadily trending down, but the economic fallout is still acute. Businesses like Randazzo’s are struggling, and tens of thousands of people are unemployed across the state. The total number of jobs lost to Covid-19 in Louisiana was already double that of Hurricane Katrina.
Now, in the aftermath of Hurricane Laura, people already struggling to find work, pay their rent, mortgages, and insurance bills, may now have to rebuild.
“I think it also makes it worse, though, that people lost their jobs and insurance and they don’t have places to stay,” Bailey said of the hurricane arriving during the pandemic.
And there are concerns that the chaos of Hurricane Laura could spread the coronavirus, especially as people evacuate to places like Texas and other parts of Louisiana, either taking Covid-19 with them or bringing it back when they return. About 1.5 million people were under evacuation orders in Texas and Louisiana. Officials tried to avoid putting evacuees in large shelters, instead sending them to hotels where it would be easier to isolate.
Sarah Bonvillain, a 22-year-old recent grad, had evacuated and sheltered in a hotel in Austin, Texas, with her girlfriend. Sarah’s parents’ home in Lake Charles was badly damaged: flooding, broken windows, the roof half gone. Her girlfriend lives in the dorms at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, and can’t go back there. Bonvillain texted, while waiting for her laundry, that they are trying to stay in Austin, but it’s financially draining. She said FEMA says it can’t help yet, so they were heading over to the Red Cross, after the laundry was done, to see what options they had.
Bonvillain said, as for Covid-19 concerns, right now, the biggest problem is the elevator at the hotel. They’re on the fifth floor, and the elevator is tiny, so she tries to wait until she can ride alone. Other people who evacuated, like Patrick, told me they took precautionary measures, like wearing masks.
But some questioned what the rebuilding would look like in the pandemic without electricity, in oppressive heat and humidity — if social distancing, for example, was even possible. The hurricane itself pushed people together. When sheltering with her dad, Bailey said, they exchanged one of their first hugs in she doesn’t even know how long.
“It’s like merging, really,” Bailey said of the coronavirus and the hurricane. “I think that’s why it also just makes everything worse, because everybody’s been so socially distant.”
“We stay in these houses for months and then suddenly the houses are taken away from us,” she added.
People are used to hurricanes down here in the Gulf. They’ve seen Ike, and Rita, and Harvey, and Imelda. Now Laura, another middle-of-the-alphabet wallop that’s set them back again. But Duhon said it’s going the best it can, and this storm, or anything else, isn’t going to knock them down. “We’re going to get back up and we’ll be stronger than it was before,” he said. “It’s part of living in the South, and living in America.”
Stuff happens, and you just have to deal with it, he said. But, he like everyone else I talked to, would like a little less stuff to happen. “I told somebody the other day,” Duhon said. “I think we should take 2020, crumple it up, throw it away, and start over again.”


vox--2020-08-29--The “Get Your Knee Off Our Necks” March on Washington in photos

Share All sharing options for : The “ Get Your Knee Off Our Necks ” March on Washington in photos Fifty-seven years after Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the 1963 March on Washington , thousands of protesters for racial justice again gathered on the National Mall in Washington , DC .
It was an emotional day of protesting against police violence , the culmination of a summer of nationwide protests in the wake of George Floyd ’ s death .
Rev .
Al Sharpton , who first announced the “ Get Your Knee Off Our Necks ” March at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spoke from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial , alongside the families of Black people who have been killed by police in recent memory .
“ For too long , you acted like we didn ’ t matter , ” Sharpton told the crowd .
“ They say , ‘ Well , everybody matters.
’ But everybody hasn ’ t mattered the same in America .
The reason we had and we still have to say ‘ Black Lives Matter ’ is because we get less health care , like we don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ longer for the same crimes , like we don ’ t matter ... Black lives matter , and we won ’ t stop until it matters to everybody.
” Floyd ’ s sister , Bridgett Floyd , also addressed march-goers , asking them to carry on the legacy her brother created in death .
“ My brother can not be a voice today , ” Floyd said .
“ We have to be that voice , we have to be that change.
” The march was planned before 29-year-old Jacob Blake was shot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Kenosha , Wisconsin , triggering another round of mass protests .
Blake ’ s father , Jacob Blake Sr. , told the Washington crowd that they were holding court over racism in America , pronouncing it “ guilty , guilty , guilty.
” Other speakers drove home the need to vote this November .
Breanna Taylor ’ s mother , Tamika Palmer , thanked those who are working towards justice for her daughter ’ s death after being shot by Louisville , Kentucky , police in a no-knock raid .
“ What @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said .
“ And we are at a point where we can get that change , but we have to stand together , we have to vote.
” Organizers took care to prevent spread of Covid-19 , mandating that attendees wear a mask and doing temperature checks for anyone entering the protest area around the National Mall .
But the urgency of the moment pulled such a massive crowd that thousands of protesters filled the area outside the temperature checks , and it became harder to socially distance within the protest area itself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the 90s didn ’ t seem to deter the crowds either , with many protesters wading into the reflecting pool to help cool off .
The march sought to renew the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. ’ s iconic “ I have a dream ” speech from 1963 , which he gave in front of 250,000 demonstrators .
That march eventually led to the Civil Rights Act , a sweeping set of laws banning discrimination on the basis of race , religion , sex , and national origin across areas of public @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and public accommodations .
Whether the 2020 version achieves substantial legislative change remains to be seen .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ downturn .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work , and helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world .
Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

Share All sharing options for: The “Get Your Knee Off Our Necks” March on Washington in photos
Fifty-seven years after Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the 1963 March on Washington, thousands of protesters for racial justice again gathered on the National Mall in Washington, DC. It was an emotional day of protesting against police violence, the culmination of a summer of nationwide protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
Rev. Al Sharpton, who first announced the “Get Your Knee Off Our Necks” March at Floyd’s funeral in June, spoke from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, alongside the families of Black people who have been killed by police in recent memory.
“For too long, you acted like we didn’t matter,” Sharpton told the crowd. “They say, ‘Well, everybody matters.’ But everybody hasn’t mattered the same in America. The reason we had and we still have to say ‘Black Lives Matter’ is because we get less health care, like we don’t matter. We go to jail longer for the same crimes, like we don’t matter ... Black lives matter, and we won’t stop until it matters to everybody.”
Floyd’s sister, Bridgett Floyd, also addressed march-goers, asking them to carry on the legacy her brother created in death. “My brother cannot be a voice today,” Floyd said. “We have to be that voice, we have to be that change.”
The march was planned before 29-year-old Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, triggering another round of mass protests. Blake’s father, Jacob Blake Sr., told the Washington crowd that they were holding court over racism in America, pronouncing it “guilty, guilty, guilty.” Other speakers drove home the need to vote this November.
Breonna Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, thanked those who are working toward justice for her daughter’s death after being shot by Louisville, Kentucky, police in a no-knock raid. “What we need is change,” Palmer said. “And we are at a point where we can get that change, but we have to stand together, we have to vote.”
Organizers took care to prevent spread of Covid-19, mandating that attendees wear masks and doing temperature checks for anyone entering the protest area around the National Mall.
But the urgency of the moment attracted such a massive crowd that thousands of protesters filled the area outside the temperature checks, and it became harder to socially distance within the protest area itself as the afternoon progressed.
Temperatures in the 90s didn’t seem to deter the crowds either, with many protesters wading into the reflecting pool to help cool off.
The march sought to renew the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech from 1963, which he gave in front of 250,000 demonstrators. That march eventually led to the Civil Rights Act, a sweeping set of laws banning discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex, and national origin across areas of public life, like housing, employment, and public accommodations.
Whether the 2020 version achieves substantial legislative change remains to be seen.


vox--2020-08-29--Systemic racism, explained (to kids)

Systemic racism, explained (to kids)

04neighborhood_materials.pdfSummer is coming to an end , and as we head back to school here on the Island of Explained , we ’ re thinking about the fun times we ’ ve had with the Experimoth and Bored the Whale .
But we ’ re also thinking about some of the hard issues this summer has raised : news about people being killed because of the color of their skin .
So we ’ re devoting our fourth , and final , episode of Today , Explained to Kids summer series to systemic racism .
We talk with Kennedy Mitchum @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Merriam-Webster to update its definition of racism ; Morgan Givens , a former police officer who now produces his own kids podcast , Flyest Fables ; Vox reporter Fabiola Cineas ; and 11-year-old Jolia Bossette , who wrote her elementary school graduation speech about Black Lives Matter .
Listen to the episode with the young people in your life — or just because — and then come back here to download our episode discussion guide and some activities that build on what we learned in the episode .
Thanks to early childhood education @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for developing our learning materials !
Listen to more Today , Explained to Kids episodes : In the spring , we launched a program asking readers for financial contributions to help keep Vox free for everyone , and last week , we set a goal of reaching 20,000 contributors .
Well , you helped us blow past that .
Today , we are extending that goal to 25,000 .
Millions turn to Vox each month to understand an increasingly chaotic world — from what is happening with the USPS to the coronavirus crisis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work — and helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world .
Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

Summer is coming to an end, and as we head back to school here on the Island of Explained, we’re thinking about the fun times we’ve had with the Experimoth and Bored the Whale. But we’re also thinking about some of the hard issues this summer has raised: news about people being killed because of the color of their skin.
So we’re devoting our fourth, and final, episode of Today, Explained to Kids summer series to systemic racism. We talk with Kennedy Mitchum, a recent college grad who got Merriam-Webster to update its definition of racism; Morgan Givens, a former police officer who now produces his own kids podcast, Flyest Fables; Vox reporter Fabiola Cineas; and 11-year-old Jolia Bossette, who wrote her elementary school graduation speech about Black Lives Matter.
Listen to the episode with the young people in your life — or just because — and then come back here to download our episode discussion guide and some activities that build on what we learned in the episode.
Thanks to early childhood education specialists Rachel Giannini and Saleem Hue Penny for developing our learning materials!
Listen to more Today, Explained to Kids episodes:
New goal: 25,000
In the spring, we launched a program asking readers for financial contributions to help keep Vox free for everyone, and last week, we set a goal of reaching 20,000 contributors. Well, you helped us blow past that. Today, we are extending that goal to 25,000. Millions turn to Vox each month to understand an increasingly chaotic world — from what is happening with the USPS to the coronavirus crisis to what is, quite possibly, the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes. Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers, your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work — and helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world. Contribute today from as little as $3.