FEMALE NEWSREADER:
President Trump is at the Capital One Arena for his inauguration parade. He is expected to fire up that packed crowd there.
MALE NEWSREADER:
President Trump will sign, in the arena in front of cheering crowds, a number of executive orders.
MEGYN KELLY, The Megyn Kelly Show:
Norms and institutions are a thing of the past. The wrecking ball is back. And this time, he and his supporters mean business. Things are going to get wrecked because they need to be.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:
Why don’t you say what I’m signing?
MALE PRESIDENTIAL AIDE:
Sure. The first item that President Trump is signing is the rescission of 78 Biden-era executive actions, executive orders, presidential memoranda and others.
SUSAN DAVIS, NPR:
For a lot of Americans it just looks like change. Donald Trump is someone who campaigned on saying he would test American institutions, and it looks like Donald Trump is delivering on these promises: to upend Washington, to drain the swamp, to do it completely differently.
JANE MAYER, The New Yorker:
It was as if he was sending thunderbolts out to the country.
MALE PRESIDENTIAL AIDE:
The next item here is the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Treaty.
JANE MAYER:
"All I have to do is put my Sharpie on the page and I can make law a reality." And he did one after the next after the next.
MALE PRESIDENTIAL AIDE:
The next item, sir, is a freeze on all federal hiring.
JANE MAYER:
There were so many things happening at once that it was very hard to focus on any single one thing.
MALE PRESIDENTIAL AIDE:
—to address the cost-of-living crisis that has cost Americans so dearly.
—requirement that federal workers return to full-time, in-person work immediately.
—the restoration of freedom of speech and preventing government censorship of free speech going forward.
—ending the weaponization of government against the political adversaries of the previous administration, as we've seen.
JANE MAYER:
That was what Steve Bannon used to call the "flood the zone" approach to politics. Just drown them in it.
DONALD TRUMP:
Could you imagine Biden doing this? I don’t think so. I don’t think so.
STEVE BANNON, Trump adviser:
That’s President Trump. I mean, he’s all about action—you know, all gas, no break. I’m going to hit it and just overwhelm the system with action, action, action. That’s why we called it “Days of Thunder.”
MIKE DAVIS, Trump legal adviser:
President Trump ran on very specific campaign promises. He’s going to reform our government to make our governments work for real Americans instead of the other way around.
MIKE DAVIS:
He’s going to secure our border. He’s going to get illegal immigrants, including dangerous terrorists, the hell out of our country.
MIKE DAVIS:
And President Trump is doing the unthinkable in Washington, D.C.: He’s actually delivering on his campaign promises to the American people, and he’s doing it very fast.
PETER BAKER, The New York Times:
What he’s saying in that day is, “I’m going to be a man of action.” It’s a phrase he likes, “a man of action.” And he’s going to do it with a stroke of a pen. We saw a president using his power from the very first moment in very expansive ways to put his fingerprints on all sorts of areas of the government and society. He signed more executive orders on day one than any of his predecessors ever did in their early days, and they stretched the power and the authority of the presidency beyond what any previous president had done.
Four years earlier ...
January 20, 2021
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
President Trump leaving the White House for the last time as president.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
—just how quickly and how fast things fell apart from this president.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
He is leaving the White House with much fewer people standing by his side in the wake of the Jan. 6 riots.
MEGYN KELLY:
After Jan. 6 and what happened on the Capitol that day, it was universally terrible. There wasn’t even the most ardent Trump fan defending it. He had been entirely ruled out.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
He leaves office in disgrace, the only ever president to be impeached twice.
MARC FISHER, Co-author, Trump Revealed:
Trump leaves Washington, seemingly for four years of exile, maybe a lifetime of exile. Just utter bottom.
STEVE BANNON:
After President Trump left in January of 2021, your audience should understand that President Trump and the core team around him, we were deplatformed by Big Tech. We were debanked.
NARRATOR:
Steve Bannon was Trump’s 2016 campaign CEO, his White House chief strategist. He was charged with fraud and went to prison rather than testify about Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
STEVE BANNON:
In those years of '21 and '22, when the entire world was against President Trump and his team and it looked like the odds were so incredibly long.
Mar-a-Lago
MIKE DAVIS:
It was a very lonely time around Mar-a-Lago. President Trump was essentially a dead political body left on the side of the road.
NARRATOR:
In isolation at his Florida estate, more trouble for the former president.
MALE NEWSREADER:
The FBI raided the former president's Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, unannounced, breaking into the home.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Former U.S. President Donald Trump once again found himself the target of an investigation.
NARRATOR:
A cascade of other legal problems: multiple civil trials.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Trump was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll.
NARRATOR:
Business fraud.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Trump guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in the Stormy Daniels hush money case.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
A federal grand jury here has indicted former President Donald Trump on four counts.
NARRATOR:
Indictment after indictment.
MALE NEWSREADER:
—charged with leading a criminal organization that worked to overturn the results.
NARRATOR:
The most serious charges: that he’d worked to overturn the 2020 election, culminating with a mob of his supporters attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6 while Congress was trying to certify the results.
JACK SMITH, Special Counsel:
An indictment was unsealed charging Donald J. Trump with conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding.
Since the attack on our Capitol, the Department of Justice has remained committed to ensuring accountability for those criminally responsible for what happened that day.
NARRATOR:
Special Counsel Jack Smith had prosecuted Democrats and Republicans, but Trump supporters saw this case as politically motivated.
MIKE DAVIS:
What they were doing was so wrong and so destructive to the presidency. That you can have a president throw his predecessor in prison for non-crimes. And that’s how we destroy our country. That’s how we become a Third World Marxist hellhole.
NARRATOR:
Mike Davis is one of Trump’s trusted advisers known in Trump’s circle as “the viceroy.” A Washington insider. A former chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
MIKE DAVIS:
I was the only person, it seems, who would go on Fox News every day and defend President Trump.
We’e seen that they have weaponized, they have politicized law enforcement repeatedly to get Trump.
I’ve done over 4,500 media hits supporting and defending President Trump.
They have completely politicized the Justice Department. This Justice Department is rotten to the core.
SUSAN DAVIS:
A lot of what they’re trying to do is recast the narrative of what happened to him during his impeachments, to recast the narrative of what happened on Jan. 6, to suggest it was a day of peaceful protest and not a violent attack on democracy. I think the public record in the investigations would show otherwise.
MIKE DAVIS:
This is lawless. This is Democrat lawfare. This is election interference.
He has presidential immunity for his acts as the president of the United States.
BARTON GELLMAN, Brennan Center for Justice:
Trump has come right up to the edge of saying, “You don’t get to tell me what the law says, I get to say what the law says.” He believes as he once said that Article II of the Constitution means that he can do whatever he wants. He believes that if the president does it, it can’t be illegal.
NARRATOR:
It was a familiar argument—that a president was above the law. It went back more than 50 years to another president dogged by legal problems.
1977 Frost/Nixon interview
DAVID FROST:
So what in a sense you’re saying is that there are certain situations where the president can decide that it’s in the best interests of the nation, or something, and do something illegal?
FORMER PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON:
Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.
DAVID FROST:
By definition?
RICHARD NIXON:
Exactly.
JANE MAYER:
If you think back to Richard Nixon’s period, people called Richard Nixon “an imperial president.” He violated the laws and his administration was corrupt.
NARRATOR:
Nixon was accused of weaponizing the FBI and IRS against his political enemies.
MALE NEWSREADER:
The country tonight is in the midst of what may be the most serious constitutional crisis in its history.
NARRATOR:
Of covering up the break-in at the Democratic Party’s offices at the Watergate complex.
SEN. HOWARD BAKER (R-TN):
What did the president know and when did he know it, about the coverup?
NARRATOR:
And refusing to comply with court orders to turn over Oval Office recordings.
MALE NEWSREADER:
President Nixon announced that he will neither appeal not comply with a federal court order to turn over the Watergate tapes.
MALE NEWSREADER:
The news has caused a storm in Washington, and some of Mr. Nixon’s most loyal supporters are calling for his resignation.
NARRATOR:
When the Supreme Court weighed in, Nixon relented, turning over the tapes and resigning the presidency in disgrace.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
The president now at the door. A final wave.
JANE MAYER:
After Watergate there was an effort to reform the presidency and to put some constraints on it. A lot of ethics laws were passed. Independent agencies were safeguarded. The whole effort was to fight corruption and to fight tyranny—to make sure that a president didn’t become a tyrant.
JOHN YOO, UC Berkeley Law:
Congress tried to take some power back. One way to think of it is, Gulliver is the president. And then after Watergate, what Congress did is they tried to tie him down, just like the Lilliputians tried to tie down Gulliver. Inspector generals, special counsels—these efforts to reduce the president’s ability to control the Cabinet agencies. That was an effort to fragment the executive branch. I think that was the mistake—to try to solve the Nixon problem by making the executive branch less effective.
NARRATOR:
Law professor John Yoo has long been an advocate for strong presidential power and a controversial doctrine called “the unitary executive theory.”
JOHN YOO:
It is the idea that the Constitution vests all of the executive power of the federal government in a single person, the president.
NARRATOR:
It was a fringe theory that had been rejected by the Supreme Court. And in those years after Nixon, president after president would find their power constrained.
TY COBB, Fmr. Asst. U.S. Attorney:
The power of the presidency was probably at its weakest in the post-Watergate years. I don’t think it really picked up steam until the post-9/11 era. 9/11 obviously was a significant event that required strong executive action.
MALE NEWSREADER:
The twin towers, the New York landmarks, have collapsed and are gone.
NARRATOR:
9/11. Thousands of Americans dead. A nation in crisis.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.
NARRATOR:
A presidential administration wanting to respond forcefully, exercise its power without constraints.
DICK CHENEY, V.P., George W. Bush:
We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful.
JOHN YOO:
Alexander Hamilton had said, “The definition of good government is an energetic executive.” You want someone who can act with speed, decisiveness, energy. You could see the presidency is trying to reassert itself, to break free from these bonds that have been with us since Watergate.
NARRATOR:
John Yoo was at the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel at the time.
BARTON GELLMAN, Author, Angler:
The Bush administration relied on Yoo more than any other lawyer in government to justify what they were doing.
GEORGE W. BUSH:
We are protected from attack only by vigorous action abroad and increased vigilance at home.
BARTON GELLMAN:
Yoo is on the extreme of legal debate over presidential power—that the law allowed the president to do extraordinary things after 9/11, including secret rendition to black sites, including torture, including spying on Americans with the NSA. Those things were nearly all repudiated either by his successors at the Office of Legal Counsel or by courts, who said, “That’s not legal.”
NARRATOR:
But in the years that followed, the Supreme Court was ready to enhance executive power.
JANE MAYER:
Justice by justice, the conservatives were taking over the Supreme Court and the theory of the unitary executive was becoming more widespread. And finally, this came to a head, really, in the final session of the 2024 Supreme Court.
NARRATOR:
It was that Trump case, about his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election. It had gone all the way to the Supreme Court. Trump’s lawyers made the Nixon argument: If the president does it, it’s not illegal. And in large part the court agreed.
JOHN YOO:
In Trump v. United States, the Supreme Court, with Chief Justice Roberts writing, says the president is the chief of the executive branch and the president is also in charge of executing the laws, and for this reason must have immunity from presidents later on prosecuting him or her for those decisions.
Supreme Court decision, July 2024
Trump v. United States
MALE VOICE [reading Supreme Court decision]:
The president may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers.
JOHN YOO:
One of the reasons that [the] chief justice gives is so that the president can fully run the executive branch without having to worry about his criminal liability or a civil liability after.
SUSAN GLASSER, The New Yorker:
The immunity decision was arguably one of the biggest, if not the biggest, legal victory that Donald Trump has had in his entire time in public life. It essentially spelled that meaningful end of the federal prosecutions of Donald Trump. That immunity decision, you could say that was like the precursor event to Trump 2.0 in almost every respect.
MIKE DAVIS:
It was hugely important. It was the difference between President Trump going to prison versus going back to the White House. It was hugely consequential. It was one of most important Supreme Court decisions in our history.
Election night 2024
MALE NEWSREADER:
Trump won the presidency and a "get out of jail free" card.
MALE NEWSREADER:
He has now been gifted legal immunity.
MALE NEWSREADER:
After winning an election, the federal cases all go away.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
in his hush money case, unconditional discharge covering all 34 counts. No prison time, no fines.
BILL KRISTOL, Editor at Large, The Bulwark:
Psychologically, it was a big stamp of approval for the sense that the president is kind of above the law. I mean, literally above the law. That’s what the immunity decision found, you can’t find—He’s immune from a normal legal challenge. You got a pretty powerful feeling that you’re kind of unconstrained.
DONALD TRUMP:
I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear—
NARRATOR:
Now that sense of power would fuel his presidency.
BARTON GELLMAN:
It signals a very different kind of president, and a president who doesn’t want to be bound by either the Constitution or statutory law. He believes he has literally unrestricted power.
CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS:
So help me God.
DONALD TRUMP:
So help me God.
JOHN ROBERTS:
Congratulations, Mr. President.
BARTON GELLMAN:
The strategy is to flood the zone, to overwhelm the opposition and stun people who are used to the legal constitutional order and the rule of law.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Donald Trump immediately getting to work with a remarkable show of the use of executive power.
MALE NEWSREADER:
We’re going to see a president pardoning people who participated in the insurrection that he supported.
DONALD TRUMP:
So this is Jan. 6. These are the hostages, approximately 1,500, for a pardon. Full pardon.
MALE REPORTER:
Full pardon, or commutation?
DONALD TRUMP:
Full pardon.
PETER KEISLER, Acting Attorney General, G.W. Bush:
He issues pardons and commutations to everybody who had been convicted of crimes in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
DONALD TRUMP:
We hope they come out tonight, frankly.
PETER KEISLER:
He said it was a grave national injustice, in his view, that they had been convicted and prosecuted. And he called them hostages.
NARRATOR:
Peter Keisler, a prominent voice in the conservative legal world, was acting attorney general for George W. Bush. He has become a critic of President Trump.
PETER KEISLER:
There’s really no way to understand that decision except as an effort to protect people who had committed serious crimes, simply because they committed those crimes in the course of supporting the president's effort to stay in power.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
With the stroke of a pen, the legal consequences virtually undone.
MALE NEWSREADER:
The largest criminal prosecution in U.S. history is abruptly over.
MIKE DAVIS:
The prosecutions, persecutions of these Jan. 6 defendants was so politicized, made it illegitimate. They went through years of suffering. They had their lives destroyed, bankrupted, lost family members. Some people killed themselves. So I have no problem with President Trump pardoning almost all of those Jan. 6 defendants, because they’ve suffered enough.
TEMIDAYO AGANGA-WILLIAMS, Fmr. Senior Investigative Counsel, Jan. 6 Cmte.:
People who attacked Congress, people who used violence to spread their political message, people who had no regard for our institutions and our democracy. That’s who he was issuing pardons for.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
This was a day of violence, this was a day in which 140 police officers were injured, and we cannot rewrite the history of that day.
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA):
Property was destroyed, people were injured—police officers, trying to defend the democratic process, died.
JAKE LANG:
We stood up against a stolen election. We will be vindicated in the pages of history as patriots and freedom fighters.
Jake Lang
Charged: Assaulting officers with a dangerous weapon
RACHEL POWELL:
He’s put my family back together again. Without him, I wouldn’t be out right now.
Rachel Powell
Conviction: Disorderly conduct with a deadly weapon
Sentence: 57 months
ROBERT MORSS:
We don’t condone violence, but we’re also not the insurrectionists here.
Robert Morss
Conviction: Assaulting officers with a dangerous weapon
Sentence: 66 months
STEWART RHODES:
Yes, I feel vindicated and validated, yes, absolutely.
Stewart Rhodes – Oath Keepers leader
Conviction: Seditious conspiracy
Sentence: 18 years
BILL KRISTOL:
It really sends the signal that people can engage in violence on his behalf and he’s got that pardon power there for them.
Enrique Tarrio – Proud Boys leader
Conviction: Seditious conspiracy
Sentence: 22 years
BILL KRISTOL:
He wants people who are on his side to think, you know what, if I go a little bit too far, you’ve got a president there who's kind of watching out for you. It really puts us on a road that goes pretty far from the neutral rule of law and pretty far, unfortunately, towards a kind of personalized use of government to go after your enemies and to forgive those on your side who break the law.
NARRATOR:
Trump and his advisers were pushing to go further, exact retribution for what they called “lawfare.”
MIKE DAVIS:
I think retribution is a very important component of justice. It serves as a powerful deterrent to people who may commit crimes in the future that there are going to be consequences. The president and his Justice Department team should hold accountable those who wage this unprecedented republic-ending lawfare against President Trump.
NARRATOR:
The first target: the Department of Justice itself.
PETER KEISLER:
They fired more than two dozen career prosecutors, people who had worked either on the investigations and cases against Donald Trump himself or against the people who had stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.
MIKE DAVIS:
The message that I took out of it was, “If you persecute Americans as a Justice Department prosecutor or agent, you’re going to lose your job—and you should.” When you try to throw President Trump in prison for the rest of his life, when you try to bankrupt him, when you throw his supporters in prison after Jan. 6, when you do these things, there are consequences.
PETER KEISLER:
They also forced out about half a dozen or so of the senior career leaders at the FBI. They were fired as a group because they were not deemed to be sufficiently politically reliable. The message that sends is your job may depend on you being perceived as supporting the president’s personal and political interests. And that sets the stage for turning law enforcement into another instrumentality of politics, where if you’re the subject or a target of an investigation, how you’re treated may depend on what your politics are. And that’s the opposite of what the system should be doing.
NARRATOR:
It was time for Trump to deploy his own team to the Justice Department—one he could depend on.
TY COBB:
At this stage of his presidency and what he wants to accomplish, he really only values loyalty and virtually nothing else.
NARRATOR:
Criminal defense attorney Ty Cobb was part of Trump’s legal team during the first term. Now he’s a critic.
TY COBB:
He’s not looking for them to tell him what to do, he’s looking for them to do what he tells them to do. He learned a lot the first time around, I think, in terms of how far he could go.
NARRATOR:
Trump’s first attorney general was Jeff Sessions.
TY COBB:
Sessions was a constant object of his ire, in part because of the recusal, without consultation with the White House.
JEFF SESSIONS:
I have now decided to recuse myself from any existing or future investigations of any matter relating in any way to the campaigns for president of the United States.
NARRATOR:
Trump saw Sessions’ decision as disloyal, not protecting him from a DOJ investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
The Justice Department naming the former FBI Director Robert Mueller special counsel to take over the investigation.
TY COBB:
That rubbed the president the wrong way, and he never got over it.
NARRATOR:
Time and again, during Trump’s first term it was the lawyers who got in his way.
CHARLIE SAVAGE, The New York Times:
There were people in the first Trump administration, the so-called grown-ups in the room, more traditional conservatives, Federalist Society lawyers who were very conservative ideologically but were also very serious lawyers as well, who were occasionally willing to say “No” to ideas that they thought were outside the bounds of legitimate legal interpretation or just simply bad ideas. To raise objections. To slow things down.
One of the lessons learned for the people who stuck with Trump after the events of Jan. 6 was that one of their mistakes was having too many people like that around the president. And there was a very deliberate effort to vet people, to ensure that they would be more in the MAGA mold, more permissive lawyers, people who were not going to be obstacles slowing down ideas coming out of the White House, but accelerators.
NARRATOR:
His new attorney general this time would be Pam Bondi.
DONALD TRUMP:
I think she’s going to be as impartial as you can possibly be. I know I’m supposed to say she’s going to be totally impartial with respect to Democrats, and I think she will be as impartial as a person can be. I’m not sure if there’s a possibility of totally, but she’s going to be as total as you can get.
SUSAN DAVIS:
They were friends. They’ve known each other a long time. Part of this with Trump, yes, it is loyalty, and part of it is personal. She has served as his personal lawyer. I think he just really likes her.
NARRATOR:
The top deputies, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, had both served as Trump’s personal criminal defense attorneys.
CHARLIE SAVAGE:
The truism that he's treating the Justice Department as a personal law firm is almost literally true in the second term here, where he has filled its upper ranks with people who previously had been his personal lawyers. Defense lawyers for him have abruptly gone from trying to counter federal prosecutors and FBI agents to being the bosses of those people and being the instruments of his revenge against that institution.
NARRATOR:
It was breaking a barrier that had been erected after Watergate.
EUGENE ROBINSON, Fmr. columnist, The Washington Post:
The Justice Department was not always as independent as it has been in my adult lifetime—John F. Kennedy did name his brother as attorney general. But post-Nixon, because of who Nixon was and what he did and how the Justice Department abetted what he did, it has been separate.
BILL KRISTOL, Chief of Staff, V.P. Dan Quayle:
Since Watergate the norm, and it’s been a healthy norm, has been really to keep hands off the Justice Department, hands off the FBI. I was in the White House many years ago. I actually went to the Justice Department very rarely when I was the vice president’s chief of staff, and partly that was because we were really not just encouraged, but required not to deal directly with the Justice Department. It was just considered a terrible abuse of power to try to use the Justice Department for your own personal purposes or political purposes.
NARRATOR:
But Trump wasn’t going to follow those rules.
STEVE BANNON:
He’s the chief magistrate and the chief law enforcement officer of the United States, and the attorney general reports directly to him; the FBI director reports to him. That’s one of the keys to the unitary theory of the executive, that in the office of the president is executive power, which has really been lost since Watergate.
NARRATOR:
Trump decided to make a statement. He would go to the Department of Justice, make it clear he was in charge.
JOHN YOO, DOJ lawyer, G.W. Bush:
By going to speak at the Justice Department, he is reasserting the president actually is, under the Constitution, ultimately responsible for the execution of federal law, for federal law enforcement. All of it. The Justice Department is not independent of the president.
NARRATOR:
Others who had worked in the Justice Department saw it differently.
J. MICHAEL LUTTIG, Fmr. judge, U.S. Court of Appeals:
Presidents only infrequently go to the Department of Justice at all, and for good reason.
NARRATOR:
J. Michael Luttig was a lawyer in the Reagan White House, a veteran of the DOJ under H.W. Bush and a prominent conservative Appeals Court judge. After Jan. 6, he became a vocal Trump critic.
J. MICHAEL LUTTIG:
There's every reason in the world under our constitutional order for the president of the United States to keep his distance.
DONALD TRUMP:
Oh, wow! He looks like such a nice person. That’s a rough picture. That’s a rough picture.
J. MICHAEL LUTTIG:
The president’s political rally at the Department of Justice was reprehensible, and of course it was unprecedented in all of American history.
MALE ANNOUNCER:
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Attorney General Pamela Bondi.
PAMELA BONDI:
Hi, please, please be seated. Welcome to the Department of Justice.
MIMI ROCAH, Fmr. Asst. U.S. Attorney:
It is an institution whose goals have uniformly been revered as a place where you try to at least achieve your vision of equal justice, unbiased justice and depoliticized justice. Bondi didn't even try to talk about those things.
PAMELA BONDI:
And we all work for the greatest president in the history of our country. We are so proud to work at the directive of Donald Trump. It is—
TY COBB, Fmr. Trump White House lawyer:
She made a point that they were all there for him, and devoted to him, and that's just not—that's just not the way it's supposed to work. They're supposed to preserve and protect the Constitution, and they're not there to preserve and protect the presidency.
JANE MAYER:
During the previous couple years while Trump was being prosecuted and convicted for crimes, he must have been seething and just waiting until he could take his revenge, because that’s basically what he announced he was going to do when he walked into that Justice Department that day.
DONALD TRUMP:
So now, as the chief law enforcement officer in our country I will insist upon and demand full and complete accountability for the wrongs and abuses that have occurred.
MIKE DAVIS:
There's a new sheriff in town. The American people elected President Trump back into the White House, and that Justice Department works for President Trump.
DONALD TRUMP:
Unfortunately, in recent years a corrupt group of hacks and radicals ... weaponized the vast powers of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
MIKE DAVIS:
And there's going to be much-needed accountability in his second term.
DONALD TRUMP:
It’s a campaign, and it’s by the same scum that you have been dealing with for years, guys like Andrew Weissmann.
ANDREW WEISSMANN, Fmr. federal prosecutor:
The message, to me at least, was this is going to be the Department of Justice that is basically the right hand of the White House.
NARRATOR:
Andrew Weissmann was a federal prosecutor who worked for Robert Mueller investigating Trump and Russian interference in the 2016 election. In the years since, he’s become a legal analyst and outspoken Trump critic.
ANDREW WEISSMANN:
If you are thinking about the attack on the rule of law, having a Justice Department that is not making decisions based on the political party or whether you’re an opponent or a supporter of the president is absolutely central.
DONALD TRUMP:
There’s a guy named Norm Eisen, I don’t even know what he looks like. His name is Norm Eisen of CREW. He’s been after me for nine years.
NORM EISEN, Attorney:
He’s singling me out as an example. “Hey, all you other lawyers, I’m going to make a target of you, as well.”
NARRATOR:
Attorney Norm Eisen was a White House counsel under President Obama and helped Democrats build an impeachment case against Trump in 2019. And he filed numerous lawsuits against the Trump administration.
DONALD TRUMP:
His sole life is to get Donald Trump. And he’s been vicious and violent.
NORM EISEN:
When I see Donald Trump lashing out against the legal profession, I see a loser acting out of rage at the institution—rule of law—that he thinks is, and he’s right, is holding him back.
DONALD TRUMP:
They’re not legitimate people there, they’re horrible people. They’re scum.
BARTON GELLMAN, Brennan Center for Justice:
It is the unambiguous declaration of an enemies list—people to become the targets of retribution from the federal government under his command.
MIKE DAVIS:
I want these Democrat prosecutors and agents and judges and other operatives to understand there are still going to be severe legal, political and financial consequences. The only way this will stop is if we give them very severe consequences.
NARRATOR:
Trump expected results and delivered a message directly to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
DONALD TRUMP:
And the reason I’m saying this, Todd, is I’m only going to get one chance to say this, but these are bad people.
NORM EISEN:
When he said “Todd,” referring to Todd Blanche, who’s now the number two person at the Justice Department, “Todd, this is the only chance I’ll get,” he means “Todd Blanche, use the Justice Department and the weight of the power of the American government against Norm Eisen.”
BARTON GELLMAN:
He puts his arm around the Justice Department and essentially recruits them into his mission to take control and in the kind of Orwellian guise of ending weaponization of the Justice Department, actually weaponizing it.
DONALD TRUMP:
We will bring back faith in our justice system for the citizens.
J. MICHAEL LUTTIG:
I was shocked beyond words. Even after all that we've seen from the president over the past eight years, to watch him stand in the Great Hall of the Department of Justice, a sacred place in America, and claim that now he was going to get even by politicizing and weaponizing the Department of Justice and the FBI against his political enemies, was a travesty in all of American history.
STEVE BANNON, CEO, 2016 Trump campaign:
I happen to think President Trump should go there every week. They are shocked that he’s in the sacred temple of the Justice Department. F--- them. Right? This is what democracy is about. These are antidemocratic forces. They have to be broken. They are shocked because the president of the United States, and worst of all, Donald Trump, actually soiled their temple by going in there. F--- you. He’s president of the United States. He’s the chief magistrate and chief law enforcement officer by the Constitution.
MALE NEWSREADER:
The message could not have been clearer: Donald Trump is now in charge at Justice.
NARRATOR:
Outside Washington, Trump was also exercising power over the DOJ, targeting its most prominent office in New York City.
TEMIDAYO AGANGA-WILLIAMS, Fmr. Asst. U.S. Attorney:
There are 93 U.S. attorneys across the country. But the Southern District of New York is the most prominent in the country, often called the Sovereign District, because for so long, the Southern District has acted with a kind of independence from Main Justice in D.C. that other offices have only dreamed of matching.
NARRATOR:
The case: the prosecution of New York City’s Democratic mayor, Eric Adams.
MIMI ROCAH, Fmr. SCNY prosecutor:
The charges against Eric Adams were brought by the Southern District of New York. I think it’s the first time that there’s been a federal indictment against a sitting mayor of New York City and charged with corruption charges, with bribery, all high-profile.
CHARLIE SAVAGE:
And Eric Adams went down to Mar-a-Lago to appeal to Trump. And his lawyers made a case to the new team at the Justice Department that this case was interfering with Eric Adams’ ability to help Trump in his mass deportation agenda. And they made a deal.
SUSAN GLASSER:
The deal that they came up with was one of the most transparent quid pro quos that you could possibly imagine. We made a deal to drop this prosecution, and in exchange, he’s going to help us.
PETER KEISLER:
Emil Bove, the acting deputy attorney general, sent a memorandum that the case should be dismissed, so that Mayor Adams could help the president achieve his immigration agenda in New York City.
MALE VOICE [reading Bove memorandum]:
The pending prosecution has unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime—
PETER KEISLER:
And that’s as nakedly political a rationale as you could imagine. What it says is that because Mayor Adams has said he's supporting the president’s immigration agenda he doesn’t get prosecuted. But presumably if he had been an opponent of the president’s immigration agenda, he would have been prosecuted.
NARRATOR:
Bove’s memo went straight to the desk of acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon.
MIMI ROCAH:
Danielle Sassoon, who had been appointed by Trump, a conservative attorney, member of the Federalist Society, clerked for Supreme Court Justice Scalia, she tried to convince DOJ, appealing directly and sort of going around Bove to Bondi and saying, “This is not how criminal law should be used.”
FEMALE VOICE [reading Sassoon email]:
The reasons advanced by Mr. Bove for dismissing the indictment are not ones I can in good faith can defend.
DAVID FRENCH, Columnist, The New York Times:
That’s when the issue catapulted into national prominence. It’s when conservative lawyers in the Department of Justice objected to this. Because they knew—they knew what this was. They knew this was a quid pro quo, and that was deeply unethical.
FEMALE VOICE [reading Sassoon email]:
Because the law does not support a dismissal ... I cannot agree to seek a dismissal driven by improper considerations ... Very truly yours, Danielle R. Sassoon.
JANE MAYER:
Danielle Sassoon was not the kind of person who you would have thought was going to stand up to Donald Trump, at least not politically, but she believed in the rule of law and she saw this as a corruption and she said, “I want no part of it.”
MIMI ROCAH:
Bondi refused to even meet with Sassoon. In her letter, Danielle had said, “If you’re not going to meet with me, if you’re not going to reconsider this, then I will resign.” She then got a letter from Bove which said, “OK, I accept your resignation.”
MALE VOICE [reading Bove letter]:
The Justice Department will not tolerate the insubordination and apparent misconduct reflected in the approach that you and your office have taken in this matter.
MIKE DAVIS:
I would say to Danielle Sassoon and the others that they work for the deputy attorney general, who works for the attorney general, who works for the president, who is elected by all Americans. And if you don’t like that, then get out of the Justice Department.
NARRATOR:
And many would—nearly a dozen prosecutors in New York and Washington resigned or were forced out.
ANDREW WEISSMANN:
People in the Department of Justice don’t just up and resign. When you resign it’s because it’s either, in your view, amoral, or it’s a quid pro quo that you think is illegal. And that is the reason that you saw so many career people, including conservatives, say, "I can’t stomach this."
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Upheaval in the Justice Department.
MALE NEWSREADER:
A showdown between the Trump administration and its own Justice Department prosecutors.
TEMIDAYO AGANGA-WILLIAMS:
They wanted prosecutors across the country to see that this time around, they would not be standing for any pushback. That they would not be permitting offices, even the Southern District of New York, to push back against Main Justice. And that if you did stand up, then you would lose your careers. It’s all about sending the chilling effect across the department and across the country.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
That sweeping federal corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams is now officially dead.
NARRATOR:
Mayor Adams denied there’d been a quid pro quo or that he’d done anything wrong. But regardless of guilt or innocence, for the advocates of the unitary executive, Trump’s decision was well within his power.
JOHN YOO:
I think the criticism of Trump deciding not to prosecute Adams is way overblown. The president and the Justice Department have the right to choose who to prosecute and not to prosecute. The president says, “Don’t prosecute this person.” That is not illegal or unconstitutional. That’s certainly constitutional. And presidents can do it for reasons that don’t have to do with the guilt or innocence.
PETER KEISLER:
The message out there to the public is even if you’ve committed a serious crime, if you support the administration politically, you can get off. And if you haven’t, we’ll throw the book at you. But if you’ve supported the administration politically, you may get off. It sends that message to the public at large.
SUSAN GLASSER:
From now on, there is no concept of an independent law enforcement function in this country. It exists purely to carry out the personal will of the president. The era that began with the disgrace of Richard Nixon and the forcing from office of a president who sought to use the machinery of government on his own behalf, that era is over, very definitively.
NARRATOR:
Trump’s transformation of the government and his use of presidential power would be far-reaching.
JANE MAYER:
When Trump came into power, he was surrounded by ideologues who had been nursing these theories for quite some time that are really quite extreme. One of the principal ones is a man named Russell Vought. He is someone who is a self-described Christian nationalist who has been around Washington for a long time. He's seen how government works. And he has an idea of really kind of radical changes he wants to implement. And he's someone who knows how to do it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
RUSSELL VOUGHT:
My belief is that the president has to move executively as fast and as aggressively as possible with a radical constitutional perspective to be able to dismantle that bureaucracy and their power centers.
NARRATOR:
Before the election, Vought laid out his vision in a chapter he wrote for the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a blueprint for Trump’s return.
MALE VOICE [reading Project 2025]:
The great challenge confronting a conservative president is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch.
CHARLIE SAVAGE:
He told us quite explicitly he wants to search out for pockets of independence from presidential control and stamp them out. He’s made no secret of the fact that he wants to wrest for the presidency more power over spending decisions away from Congress.
STEVE BANNON, Trump adviser:
Trump and people around him understand what we have to do to get back to a constitutional republic. We’re going after the infrastructure in the plumbing, in the wiring of the whole system. We are not going to quit, we are not going to surrender, we’re not going to take our foot off the gas pedal.
NARRATOR:
Now with Russell Vought the head of the powerful Office of Management and Budget, Trump would take on departments Congress had authorized and funded, starting with the agency that handled foreign aid: USAID.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
President Donald Trump is calling for USAID to be shut down, calling the organization that delivers aid to people around the world “corrupt.”
MALE NEWSREADER:
Many people see it's frivolous if not outright wasteful spending.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Shutdown of USAID could mean less medicine for the sick and less food for starving families, including babies.
JANE MAYER:
This is a power grab. You’re watching the presidency turned into something much more imperial than we’ve seen for a very long time, and maybe ever.
MALE NEWSREADER:
The Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the federal government and it’s workforce—
MALE NEWSREADER:
USAID’s workforce will be whittled down from about 14,000 employees to fewer than 300, a 98% cut.
PAUL K. MARTIN, Fmr. USAID Inspector General:
Large chunks of USAID employees were placed on administrative leave and cut off from agency email systems and other databases. We had hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in play around the world in ongoing programs. All came to a dead stop.
NARRATOR:
Paul Martin, USAID's inspector general, had spent decades in government but had never seen anything like this.
PAUL K. MARTIN:
People have dedicated their lives trying to make a difference at USAID, and to sort of overnight, without any engagement, without any warning, it was a massive shock to the system.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Hundreds of workers at USAID are cleaning out their desks.
MALE NEWSREADER:
An emotional exodus at the former headquarters of USAID. Recently fired federal workers were given just 15 minutes to clear out their desks.
PAUL K. MARTIN:
I do think that USAID was the canary in the coal mine. The speed and the rapidity at which this occurred was pretty breathtaking.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
A senior official at USAID called it a mafia-like takeover.
SUSAN GLASSER, Co-author, The Divider:
It's less than 1% of the federal budget. The fact that this was the very first agency they chose to target in force underscores that this is not a cost-cutting exercise. It's an exercise in power. It was a classic demonstration execution. "We’ll kill one federal agency in order to terrify thousands of others."
PETER KEISLER:
When Congress establishes an agency by law, that’s not optional. That’s a law. And the agency exists and then has to discharge the responsibilities that Congress has given it. So when the president tries to just shut down an agency that has statutory responsibilities, that will in many cases be inconsistent with the law. What’s the point of having the authority to enact laws, which is Congress’s big power, if the president can then disregard whatever they enact?
STEVE BANNON:
Go back to the unitary theory of the executive, the president of the United States, as chief executive, has the ability to make personnel decisions and to fire anybody. You don’t have permanent employment in the federal government.
PETER BAKER:
USAID was the perfect political target from their point of view. A lot of Americans don’t feel all that aggrieved by that, and so, yeah, it was a test case. He wanted to see how far he could go.
NARRATOR:
As he cleared the ranks at USAID, there was one more target: the agency’s independent watchdog.
PAUL K. MARTIN:
I, too, received a two-sentence email thanking me for my service but dismissing me as inspector general.
MALE VOICE [reading dismissal letter]:
Dear Paul, On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as inspector general is terminated, effective immediately. Thank you for your service.
PAUL K. MARTIN:
No explanation, no 30-day notice, no reasons.
SUSAN DAVIS:
It seems pretty clear a violation of the law. You can fire inspectors general, but you have to notify the Senate. You have to give 30 days' notice. He was like, "Yeah, I’m not going to do that."
NARRATOR:
From agencies all over Washington, 17 other inspectors general were purged.
PAUL K. MARTIN:
The inspector general community has been a concept created by Congress to help Congress and the administration conduct meaningful, effective oversight of federal taxpayer spending in executive branch agencies. We are Congress’s eyes and ears. When you dismiss 17 inspector generals, you’ve turned the system on its head.
SUSAN DAVIS:
The role of inspector general was created by Congress. It is a response to the Watergate scandal. And often, Congress will ask IG offices to conduct investigations that Congress doesn’t have the staff or the power or the ability to do, because they’re not housed inside these agencies. So firing the IGs isn’t just about creating a less transparent government, but also really cuts off a channel to Congress.
JOHN YOO:
These inspector generals are a great example of these Watergate reforms that tried to chip away at the unitary executive. If the president can’t fire them, then they don’t have to listen to the president. They don’t have to take orders or direction from the president. And that I think is really an affront to the idea of a unitary executive.
DAVID FRENCH:
What he’s doing is systematically removing any instrument of independent accountability in the government. If Congress was healthy at all, it should rise up and say, “Our creations. We’re going to protect our creations.”
SUSAN DAVIS:
There really is no dissent, certainly within the Republican Party, which is what controls Washington. Lawmakers are almost uniformly aligned behind the president right now. And they also see that there's almost no upside to being publicly critical of the president.
REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), House Speaker:
This is not the usurpation of authority in any way. It’s not a power grab. I think they’re doing what we’ve all expected and hoped and asked that they would do.
JOHN YOO:
Congress under the Constitution has plenty of authority to fight for itself. The founders wanted the president and Congress to fight. What they did not anticipate was political parties. The reason why Congress isn’t fighting now, if people want Congress to fight more, is that Congress is controlled by the same party as the president. Congress, the majority of the House and Senate, probably agree with what the president's doing.
REP. TOM EMMER (R-MN):
President Donald Trump is delivering on his promise to shake up the status quo in Washington.
SEN. JOHN THUNE (R-SD), Senate Majority Leader:
I think all of us believe that we want to be good partners in making sure that the agenda that he campaigned on and which the American people voted for is accomplished and delivered on.
J. MICHAEL LUTTIG:
The fact that the Congress of the United States is silent is unforgivable. The system created under the Constitution was one of separated powers under which each branch serves as a check and balance on the other branches. Right now in America one cannot say that we have the separation of powers that was envisioned by our founders and written into the Constitution of the United States.
PETER BAKER:
Without a functioning Congress, without an independent Justice Department, without inspectors general watching things, literally the only real check on a president’s power at this point would be the courts.
NARRATOR:
It would be up to the lawyers to confront Trump.
NORM EISEN:
When I saw the dismantling of USAID, I said, “I’m going to sue. I’m going to go to court. I’m going to file a case. I’m going to argue this is against the Constitution. It's against what Congress has commanded. No element of Donald Trump’s attacks are going to go unmet. We’re going to litigate it and win.” And we did!
MALE NEWSREADER:
President Trump was dealt not one but three legal defeats in the span of just 90 minutes yesterday.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
The legal challenges to the president’s efforts to reshape the government mounting.
NORM EISEN:
In the first months of the Trump administration, at this point, there’s almost 200 lawsuits that are on file, and whether it’s Democratic or Republican judges who are deciding them, Donald Trump is losing the majority of the time.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
The battle significantly slowing down the president’s efforts to downsize the government.
MIKE DAVIS:
The lawyers are part of the problem. These lawyers and these law firms are oftentimes partisan actors, and they are coming up with plaintiffs to sabotage the president of the United States.
NARRATOR:
Trump would send a message to the lawyers, attacking powerful law firms that had crossed him in the past.
DONALD TRUMP:
We’re going to sign some executive orders. What they’ve done is, it’s just terrible, and it should never be allowed to happen again.
NARRATOR:
He ordered the firms' security clearances revoked; that they be denied entrance to all federal buildings; their government contracts canceled.
EUGENE ROBINSON:
This is just gangster stuff. I mean, it really is. This is mob-style intimidation, because what it is saying, nakedly, is that “I can essentially destroy the law firm.”
DONALD TRUMP:
And you’re looking at about 15 different firms?
MALE STAFF MEMBER:
That or more, sir, yes.
DONALD TRUMP:
OK.
STEVE BANNON:
I am so impressed. The power of what President Trump did, I was stunned of how brilliantly thoughtful it was.
MIKE DAVIS:
What the firms need to understand is that if I were their clients, I would probably find new attorneys, because if you’ve made it on one of these lists you’re probably not going to get a very good reception at the Trump administration for the next four years.
MALE STAFF MEMBER:
The law firm of Jenner & Block. This is a law firm that, as you know, employed Andrew Weissmann after he came off of the Mueller investigation. He is one of a number of reasons that we believe this executive order is warranted.
DONALD TRUMP:
He’s a bad guy.
ANDREW WEISSMANN:
That is really insidious. That is saying that I’m going to target you if you take positions and bring cases in front of judges. In order to have a functioning judiciary, you need to have lawyers who don’t feel threatened by bringing good faith litigation.
MALE STAFF MEMBER:
This is an executive order that takes certain measures against Sussman Godfrey given their previous activities.
J. MICHAEL LUTTIG:
These attacks on the nation’s law firms are intended to put the individual firms out of business. But then larger, to send a message to the nation’s 1.2 million lawyers that they better never take again a case representing a client against Donald Trump and his administration.
NARRATOR:
Some firms fought back.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Hundreds of firms denouncing the president’s executive orders.
NARRATOR:
Some even won in court. But the vast majority of the country’s largest law firms stayed silent.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Some firms fighting back, while others are bending the knee to Trump.
MALE NEWSREADER:
By and large the legal industry has kind of folded.
PETER KEISLER:
These orders are certainly unlawful, and a judge has already said so. But it’s very difficult for courts to really remedy the situation because at the end of the day, even when a court says that an order like this is unlawful, everybody still knows that the law firm is persona no grata, in fact toxic, inside the administration.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Several of the firms have come to the White House seeking a way to avoid punishment.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Paul, Weiss now reaching a deal with the president to get the president to drop the executive order against the firm.
STEVE BANNON:
After that was sent, they collapsed in their opposition. And here’s what I tell people: They’re not that powerful. This whole system has been so powerful and so overwhelming. They cratered. The most powerful law firms in the country.
MALE NEWSREADER:
The word that largely defines the response is "capitulation."
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Five more law firms have now struck deals with the Trump administration.
ANDREW WEISSMANN:
It sent a message to the administration that this works, meaning, do it again.
NARRATOR:
The law firms claimed the deals didn’t threaten their independence and denied they were payoffs to Trump.
DONALD TRUMP:
Have you noticed that lots of law firms have been signing up with Trump? They give you a $100 million and then they announce that, “But we have done nothing wrong,” and I agree, they’ve done nothing wrong. But what the hell, they give me a lot of money considering they’ve done nothing wrong. [Laughter]
MALE NEWSREADER:
Altogether they agreed to give nearly $1 billion in legal services to causes that the firms and Trump support.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
All in an effort to sort of appease him and keep him from criticizing them or targeting them.
MIKE DAVIS:
I want these lawyers to understand that this is not the George W. Bush Republican Party. We’re not going to turn the other cheek. The American people elected President Trump with a broad mandate, so, time to deliver.
TEMIDAYO AGANGA-WILLIAMS:
All American people should be worried about what we’re seeing. I know lawyers are not the most favored group with society, but lawyers are who you go to when you need your rights defended. Lawyers are who you go to when you need to access the courts. And I think it begins with lawyers, but this kind of trend will expand across the board.
PETER BAKER, Co-author, The Divider:
He is extending his reach really far. Much further than most presidents have. And it’s not just on politics. What’s striking is how much he wants to impose his point of view on different aspects of society. He is trying to reshape the country, in a way. It’s not just whether the USAID should be an agency or not. It's what should be played at the Kennedy Center.
MALE NEWSREADER:
President Trump now is the chair of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Trump plans to fire the Kennedy Center board members, appoint himself as chair.
PETER BAKER:
It's what we should call a body of water off our southern shores.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
President Trump is calling it the Gulf of America as opposed to the Gulf of Mexico.
PETER BAKER:
It's what The Associated Press can put in its style guide.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Trump has barred The Associated Press from the Oval Office and White House press pool.
PETER BAKER:
It’s what is taught in the classrooms at Columbia.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Columbia University will comply with policy changes demanded by the Trump administration.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Trump calling for Harvard to lose its tax-exempt status.
PETER BAKER:
He wants to have everybody defer to him.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Paramount announcing they will settle President Trump's lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview for $16 million.
PETER BAKER:
And he is accomplishing a lot. And a lot of his people are very happy about that.
STEVE BANNON:
Here’s what we know: If you take power and exert it, this system’s not so tough. You know why? They’re all gutless cowards. The university administrators, they’re not that tough. The big law firms, they’re not that tough. The media? Look who’s cratered. How many times—Look how they’re settling with Trump. They’re not tough. We’re resilient, we’re anti-fragile and we’re tough. The people around Trump are battle hardened, OK? You’re not going to scare us, and we’re not going to stop. And what we know is you guys are a bunch of p------. You will crater. PBS is going to crater. You don’t believe actually at your core in what you’re trying to do. And you’ll fold—like the law firms, like the universities, like the media, like all of these institutions, you will fold, because we’re relentless and we’re not going to stop.
NARRATOR:
PBS and NPR sued Trump over his attempts to defund them. Harvard also refused to back down. And many of Trump’s efforts were blocked by the courts. But he has been pressing ahead.
April 29, 2025
DONALD TRUMP:
Our golden age has only just begun. We will never give in, we will never give up, we will never back down. We will never, ever surrender. We will fight, fight, fight, and we will win, win, win. Together we will make America powerful again.
DAVID FRENCH, Author, Divided We Fall:
This is new territory for people. And a lot of people are very courageous in their heads when they imagine themselves facing the government, but then when the actual reality is looming in front of them, when the actual crushing weight of the federal government comes upon you or the thought that you could be publicly named and shamed in a way that could bring threats and intimidation to your family, an awful lot of people are going to say, “Well, somebody else can take on this thing.”
PETER BAKER, The New York Times:
I’ve lived in Washington my whole life. I've never seen people in Washington scared the way they are now. I've never seen people in Washington as scared as they are now. They are scared to talk. They are scared to pop their head up. They are scared to be noticed. They don't want to be on his radar screen because they fear that he will use his power against them. When I call people to talk to them and quote them in a story, they say, “Hey, I can't be on the record anymore. I have a kid who works in the government. I have a brother who has a federal grant. My law firm doesn't want me to talk. I’m scared,” they say. “I don’t want to be prosecuted.” I’ve never seen that before in Washington. There’s never been a situation where adversaries of the president, Democrat or Republican, felt afraid in the same way we're seeing now across the board to speak their mind.
NARRATOR:
He was attacking government agencies. Overpowering Congress. Threatening law firms, the press and more. Trump’s far-reaching use of presidential power was leading to confrontation with the Supreme Court.
TEMIDAYO AGANGA-WILLIAMS:
I think the administration is seeking an opportunity to create a constitutional crisis. And by that I mean a crisis that tests the scope of the judicial power to control the executive. That’s why the attack on the rule of law is really Trump’s focus now.
NARRATOR:
Trump’s test case: an unprecedented campaign against illegal immigration.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
A massive immigration enforcement crackdown has led to hundreds of arrests in a matter of days.
NARRATOR:
The administration claimed it was targeting violent gangs and criminals.
ICE footage
MIKE DAVIS:
You had President Trump rounding up international gang bangers. They are robbing, kidnapping, raping, torturing and murdering Americans.
The president has absolute statutory and constitutional authority to get them the hell out of our country.
ICE footage
NARRATOR:
But many others were being swept up, too.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Immigrants with legal status or no criminal history are also being detained and deported.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Many of the deported men lack criminal records in the United States according to ICE.
MALE NEWSREADER:
The families of some of those men deported say not all of them are gang members.
CHARLIE SAVAGE:
How do you know that this person in front of you actually is a gang member? What if they say they’re not? Do they have a right to some kind of process, to go before a judge and say, “Mistaken identity, I’m just a barber," or "I’m just a soccer player." "This tattoo you say is a gang tattoo is just my favorite team." What’s your proof?”
ICE footage
PETER KEISLER:
They are deporting people they've said are very dangerous gang members. But everyone in the country who's accused of something has basic rights of due process, which in this case would mean a hearing to determine whether they are in fact members of this gang and whether they are subject to deportation under the law. That’s the process that the administration has tried to short circuit.
ICE footage
DAVID FRENCH:
He’s saying, “All I’m doing is deporting criminal gangs” or “I’m taking action against murderers and rapists.” And it’s very hard to get people worked up over concepts like due process, a legal term, right? But you know who does get very, very agitated about due process? Judges.
NARRATOR:
In an emergency lawsuit, ACLU lawyers presented Federal Judge Jeb Boasberg with startling evidence: The government was racing to deport alleged gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador without any judicial review.
CHARLIE SAVAGE:
Trump was rushing people onto planes. Judge Boasberg said, “Slow down. Temporary restraining order. Let’s figure out—Let’s freeze the status quo into place. Let’s figure out whether this is legal or not. You need to turn those planes around, bring these people back to the United States.” And the Trump administration did not turn the planes around. They handed more than a hundred people off to a prison in El Salvador. So that raises the question, not only was this legal to do in the first place, but did they violate a court order?
PETER KEISLER:
That was an extraordinary act. Virtually all presidents throughout history have acknowledged that you have to obey court orders. That if you disagree with a court order, it’s not optional to refuse to comply with it. The answer is to appeal.
JANE MAYER:
It’s very close to just the kind of clash that everybody’s fearing between the executive branch and the judicial branch. It seems possible that for the first time in the United States’ history a president might just say he’s not going to listen to the courts.
MIKE DAVIS:
I’m happy those planes landed in El Salvador because the president had a constitutional duty to ignore that lawless and dangerous order and land those planes in El Salvador. This Boasberg, the clown, thinks he’s the commander in chief? He thinks he can order the president to turn around military planes carrying terrorists. What the hell is Jeb Boasberg thinking that he thinks he can expose and sabotage an ongoing military operation? Judge Boasberg does not have the jurisdiction to do what he did. He did not have the power to do what he did, and what he did was lawless.
KAROLINE LEAVITT, White House Press Secretary:
The judge in this case is essentially trying to say that the president doesn’t have the executive authority to deport foreign terrorists from our American soil.
NARRATOR:
Judge Boasberg fired back, ruling there was probable cause the administration was guilty of criminal contempt.
And Boasberg wasn’t alone—
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
The immigration standoff is heating up between the Trump administration and the courts.
NARRATOR:
—court after court ruling against Trump.
MALE NEWSREADER:
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy ruled the U.S. government must retain custody of migrants.
NARRATOR:
Challenging the deportations.
MALE NEWSREADER:
A federal judge appointed by President Trump blocked the administration from summarily removing migrants in South Texas.
NARRATOR:
Finding the administration was violating people’s due process rights.
MALE NEWSREADER:
A federal judge says the Trump administration violated a court order for again sending migrants to a country they’re not from without due process.
MALE NEWSREADER:
The Trump administration is now formally complying with a Supreme Court order to bring back Abrego Garcia.
MALE NEWSREADER:
This is a victory for due process. It’s a victory the Constitution.
J. MICHAEL LUTTIG:
The American public may not even know it as due process. But they know that whenever the government comes against them, whether it be in a criminal proceeding, a civil proceeding, where the government intends to take away your property or your liberty, that you’re entitled to be heard. The Trump administration does not want to give those people the opportunity simply to make their case to the federal government that they’re not members of a gang at all. That’s about as rudimentary and fundamental to America as anything that I can conceive of.
NARRATOR:
Despite the challenges, Trump and his team haven’t let up.
PAMELA BONDI:
And the question should be, why is a judge trying to protect terrorists who have invaded our country over American citizens?
CHARLIE SAVAGE:
The broadest theme that arises from it is a White House that is unafraid to provoke legal challenges and enjoys the fight as an end to itself. Is not embarrassed by the prospect that it might be accused of doing something illegal, but revels in it.
TOM HOMAN, Trump "border czar":
We're not stopping. I don't care what the judges think. I don't care what the left thinks. We're coming.
JOHN YOO:
I deplore the rhetoric that suggests that anyone in the government doesn’t have to follow the Constitution or the laws or obey court orders. I think it would be a dangerous path for our country if any president starts saying they’re going to act outside the Constitution. And so I hope it's just careless rhetoric.
DONALD TRUMP:
We have bad judges. We have very bad judges, and these are judges that shouldn’t be allowed. I think at certain point you have to start looking at what do you do when you have a rogue judge?
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
The Trump administration is escalating its fight with federal judges.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Trump suggested that the judges, including one he appointed, were backroom hustlers.
NARRATOR:
He went after the Federalist Society, a longtime ally that had helped him select judicial appointments.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Why is he attacking the Federalist Society when it was an ally in the first term?
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Trump wrote on Truth Social, “I am so disappointed in the Federalist Society because of the bad advice they gave me on judicial nominations."
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
It seems like what Trump wants is just judges who will agree with him.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Loyal to him.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Loyal to him.
JANE MAYER:
You have to think that it’s a knowing effort on the part of Trump to delegitimize the power of the judiciary. What he’s basically also saying is that there is no such thing as neutral law, or principled law, it’s all just politics. And that’s basically Trump’s view of judges.
MALE VOICE [reading Trump post]:
This radical left lunatic of a judge, a troublemaker and agitator, was not elected president. This judge should be impeached.
J. MICHAEL LUTTIG:
This is unequivocally, indisputably, an attack by the president on the independence of the federal judiciary, pure and simple.
NARRATOR:
Amidst the attacks, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued an extraordinary rebuke to the president.
MALE VOICE [reading Roberts quote]:
Impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.
PETER BAKER:
Even Chief Justice John Roberts, who doesn’t enter the political fray very often, felt compelled, within hours, to put out his own statement saying, “You don’t agree with this ruling, you go to the Appeals Court. You don’t like the Appeals Court, you come to me, the Supreme Court, and we’ll deal with it.”
What he did there was lay down a marker, because what he said is, this isn’t about Judge Boasberg. It’s not about a rogue judge, the way the president would like it to be. It’s about the whole system. And Roberts took that arrow for himself. He was saying, "It’s about us. It’s about the system. And do you respect the system?"
MIKE DAVIS:
Justice Roberts needs to remember that he is a federal judge. He's not a politician. And when judges take off their judicial robes and climb into the political arena and throw political punches, they can expect political counterpunches. And so it’s probably not a good idea for judges to make political statements like he does.
NARRATOR:
Now, Chief Justice Roberts, who had written that pivotal presidential immunity decision a year before, is the face of a court at a crossroads.
SUSAN GLASSER:
It’s a little bit hard to reconcile Justice Roberts, who has claimed to stand for the balance of powers in our system, with the same man who wrote this decision granting Donald Trump’s sweeping, unfettered power. And now, it seems to me, that with many of these actions that Trump is undertaking, he’s seeking to test the Supreme Court. "Did you really mean it?"
MALE NEWSREADER:
The last democratic institution that remains between us and the precipice of a constitutional crisis is the Supreme Court.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
There have been more than 300 lawsuits filed against the Trump administration since he took office.
JANE MAYER:
All the big cases are going to end up in front of the Supreme Court eventually.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
These legal challenges are making their way up to the appellate process. Some will land in the Supreme Court.
JANE MAYER:
Chief Justice Roberts is on the hot seat because the judiciary doesn't have the powers of the purse, and it doesn't have an army. So the only thing it has is its own legitimacy. And so they don't want to be in a position where they make a decision and Trump defies it, because then it makes them look like a paper tiger. So it's a tight spot.
MALE NEWSREADER:
What happens if there's a definitive ruling and Trump just decides "I don't care"?
J. MICHAEL LUTTIG:
The president has acted as prosecutor and judge, but he’s going to have to understand at the end of the day that for the federal judiciary to yield to him would literally be to surrender its constitutional role to Donald Trump. That’s simply never going to happen.
NARRATOR:
But the president and his advisers are betting that the Supreme Court will see it otherwise.
SUSAN DAVIS:
They want to get a lot of these challenges into the courts because they believe that the Supreme Court, with a conservative 6-3 makeup, is a more friendly place to wager some of these fights over executive power. And I think that a lot of the people around the president have a higher degree of confidence now that the Supreme Court will rule in their favor and ultimately codify the expanse of presidential power.
STEVE BANNON:
There's nothing to compromise. There's two different theories about what the Constitution says, what the framers had in mind and what this country is. It’s going to build up to a crescendo. One side’s going to win and one side’s going to lose. Trump is not only not going to blink, he’s going to win.
MALE NEWSREADER:
A big win for the Trump administration. The Supreme Court slammed the brakes, saying "No" to nationwide injunctions.
NARRATOR:
And in the final days of the Supreme Court's term—
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
The Supreme Court potentially cleared the way for even greater presidential power.
NARRATOR:
—victories—for now.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s efforts to deport migrants to third countries.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
The White House is claiming victory after the Supreme Court allowed the White House to move forward with the mass layoffs of federal workers.
TEMIDAYO AGANGA-WILLIAMS:
The battle here may on the face be between Trump versus the courts, or Trump versus the rule of law. But this is the battle for what is going to be normal in America. What are our norms? What is our system of government that we are all going to subject ourselves to? Do we have the rule of law, or do we have royal decrees? That’s what’s at stake here.
MALE NEWSREADER:
President Trump seems to be riding a major wave of momentum these past couple of weeks.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
The Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to move forward with its staffing cuts at the Department of Education.
MALE NEWSREADER:
The FBI is now investigating former FBI Director James Comey in conjunction with the genesis of the Russia investigation.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
In Los Angeles, tensions flaring after President Trump deployed National Guard troops.
PETER KEISLER:
Our constitutional structure is definitely stressed, and how it emerges from that will really depend on how the public understands and reacts to what’s going on. Ultimately, we’re a democracy, and our government is never going to be much better or much worse than what people want it to be. So I think ultimately the question is, how does the country decide to understand what it sees happening around it, and how does it react to that?
