The Wall Street Journal really buried the lede in this piece about how President Trump is directing the administration of justice in his second term as president.
It turns out both John Brennan and Christopher Wray are under criminal investigation.
Prosecutors in Maryland are expected in coming days to charge one of Trump’s first-term national security advisers, John Bolton, now a top Trump critic, with mishandling classified information, according to people familiar with the matter.
In Virginia, prosecutors are expected to seek an indictment of New York Attorney General Letitia James, who won a civil fraud case against Trump, on mortgage fraud charges that Siebert and others saw as weak, people familiar with the case said. James has denied wrongdoing.
Other prosecutors are investigating former CIA director John Brennan, another prominent Trump critic, and former FBI director Christopher Wray, who was originally appointed by Trump but enraged conservatives who came to believe he had wielded the bureau’s powers against them. Former officials have received subpoenas in recent days in the Wray inquiry, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.
On Wednesday, Trump said the Democratic leaders of Chicago and Illinois, too, should be imprisoned.
The entire article is how the Department of Justice is supposed to be “independent” of the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, who, of course, is President Trump.
How did that work out in President Trump’s first term? Well, obviously, rogue bureaucrats spend four years trying to destroy the MAGA movement by criminally investigating and indicting him and his supporters.
The Deep State DOJ arrested and imprisoned Paul Manafort. They arrested and tried to imprison General Flynn and Roger Stone. Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was convicted and sent away to prison. Steve Bannon was indicted twice and sent away to prison. Douglass Mackey and Tom Barrack were arrested, tried, and eventually acquitted. And then, of course, the J6ers were put through the gauntlet, and finally, President Trump himself was arrested and indicted, and they tried and failed to put him away for life.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton was let off easy for the good of the country. Russiagate plotters were never investigated or imprisoned. Nothing was done to crush Antifa and other left-wing terrorists. ActBlue fraud schemes were never investigated, and neither were stolen elections and mass mail-in balloting.
Ultimately, it never really made sense for an entire department to remain “independent” of its boss. The cockamamie scheme of an “independent” is a remnant of the Deep State plot against Richard Nixon over 50 years ago.
Here’s what the WSJ has to say about the whole matter:
WASHINGTON—In his second term, President Trump has taken control of the Justice Department in ways he could have only dreamed of during his first.
Then, he publicly railed against senior department officials but largely heeded the counsel of aides who urged him to trust the legal process. This term, all it took was one errant post to get what he wanted.
On Sept. 20, Trump meant to send a private message to Attorney General Pam Bondi urging her to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and his other favored targets, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter. “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump wrote.
Trump believed he had sent Bondi the message directly, addressing it to “Pam,” and was surprised to learn it was public, the officials said. Bondi grew upset and called White House aides and Trump, who then agreed to send a second post praising Bondi as doing a “GREAT job.”
The misfire provided a window into how, through command and chaos, Trump has executed a wholesale transformation of the Justice Department.
[…]
For decades, the Justice Department has kept the White House at arms length from prosecutorial decisions. In Trump’s first term, officials resisted pursuing such cases, in part because they understood that if they breached ethical norms, those same tactics could be directed at Republicans in the future, said Sarah Isgur, who served as a Justice Department spokeswoman then.
“Trump hasn’t changed. What’s different is the people he appointed,” she said, adding that the current department leadership was handing Trump’s political opponents “even greater power to abuse.”
“This is an observation from an alternate reality because Democrats have in fact abused their power to target President Trump and Republicans,” a Justice Department spokesman said.
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