Savage, Haberman, Swan, and Schmidt in the NYT:
President Trump’s first-term efforts to spur law enforcement officials to pursue his political enemies were haphazard, informal and often hashed out in private.
Now, his demands for investigations are starting to become more formalized through written presidential decrees as he seeks to use the power of public office to punish people and companies he has cast as enemies and silence potential critics.
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump crossed a new line. Flanked by senior aides and cabinet secretaries, the president signed presidential memos that singled out two officials from his first term who had either defied or simply contradicted him. In a clear escalation, he directed the government to examine their actions for any criminal wrongdoing.
The president signed a third order, his most recent attack on law firms for taking clients or hiring former officials he did not like, this time targeting the law firm Susman Godfrey. The firm has led successful defamation suits against news outlets that spread Mr. Trump’s election lies, including a $787.5 million settlement paid by Fox News.
Taken together, the memos send a stark message: To oppose Mr. Trump will mean risking punishment at the hands of the federal government.
One of those memos identified a perceived adversary for criminal scrutiny, Christopher Krebs, a former cybersecurity expert who contradicted baseless claims by some Trump supporters that he lost the 2020 election because electronic voting machines were compromised.
Mr. Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to review Mr. Krebs’s actions to see whether there was any evidence he provided classified information to anyone not authorized to receive it, a federal crime under the Espionage Act….
Mr. Trump’s approach to intimidating and harassing his political adversaries has ratcheted up over the nearly 10 years since he became a Republican presidential candidate. In July 2015, he revealed the cellphone number of a Republican primary rival who had criticized him. By October 2016, he was telling his opponent in the general election, Hillary Clinton, at a debate that “you’d be in jail” if he won the election.
Now, Mr. Trump is openly using his control of the executive branch to satisfy his desire for retribution against people he perceives as working against him. And his officials are readily helping him.
“It’s a lot more directing than nudging,” said Samuel W. Buell, a Duke University law professor and former federal prosecutor. “In the first term it was a lot of: ‘Why won’t my people do what I want them to do? Why do I not have lawyers who will do what I want them to do?’”
“All that stuff from the first term is now unnecessary,” Professor Buell said, “because he has a team of people who believe the president gets to make all the decisions and are going along with it.”…
Mr. Trump is not barred legally from directing the Justice Department to open investigations. But after the Watergate scandal, the United States developed a constitutional norm of law enforcement officials making investigative decisions independently of the White House….