Trump's war on the deep state sets dangerous precedents

In the President’s State of The  Union address January 30 there was an alarming  sentence: “ I call on the Congress to empower every Cabinet Secretary with the authority to reward good workers—and to remove Federal employees who undermine the public trust or fail the American people.” If the definition  “undermining  of public trust”means lack of credibility due to political bias against him, his  proposal sets some dangerous precedents.  There are  implications  for the impeachment process , endangering lasting public policies,  for undermining the rule of law, and  for preventing government corruption.

Trump has been on a crusade to fire those investigating him who he believes are not  loyal to him. Rumored In danger of being fired are  Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his supervisor  Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. CNN reported Trump asked Rosenstein "if he was on his team".President Trump has already  fired  FBI director James Comey after he failed  to give him  a loyalty pledge and  Trump forced out Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe after asking for whom he voted in 2016 and noting he had a wife running for office as a Democrat who received Democratic party campaign money.

President Trump may have a right to have  loyalists in key supervisory positions  of his executive branch, as he did in private business,  but what he does not understand is  that in government that  right does not transfer to appointing or controlling those who are investigating him for potential crimes. It is instead  viewed as an attempt to thwart the investigation for his own benefit. That is the core of “obstruction of justice” charges that brought down Richard Nixon and could be levied against Donald Trump by the special counsel’s  office. Those same charges could also could be cited by a post 2018 Democratic controlled  House  to impeach (indict) him and it could  motivate an outraged Senate to convict him.

This line  in the address  is also likely  a strategy Trump advocates to destroy the “deep state”, a cadre of lower level protected  civil servants, including even rank and file  FBI agents, who are not acting the way he wants them to. The "deep state' conspiracy theory gathered wings when FBI agent Peter Strzok's anti-Trump emails were revealed. Strzok was immediately reassigned last summer from the Russian connection investigation to Human Resources, but later it was also revealed that it was Strzok who had drafted a memo for FBI Director Comey that resulted in Comey announcing he had reopened the criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails, an action that many believe resulted in Trump winning since her polls crashed as a result. Enough for that conspiracy theory and the deep state. Currently,  the criteria for firing government employees protected by  civil service regulations is mostly  whether they are incompetent or fail to perform duties or committed a crime or failed to observe rules. A political bias could fall into the definition umbrella of undermining public trust unless “Public trust” is not carefully defined.

His proposal could make  lower ranking federal employees having political views that differ from him a firing offense.

Andrew Jackson is credited fathering  the spoils system by rewarding those who supported him with jobs and other plums. So corrupt and widespread  was that practice, various  civil service laws were put into effect in the last century  that protected a large group of lower level government  employees from being fired for solely  political reasons  by defining  what constituted proper cause.

The first step taken by any anti-democratic wannabe autocrat is to take total control of  law enforcement agencies by replacing them top to bottom  with his loyalists. The semblance of legality continues, but the practice of the rule of law is destroyed allowing the autocrat to get away with crimes or corruption. Trump  has indicated his belief any number of times when he fumed  that  the Department of Justice headed by the Attorney General Jeff Sesssions should serve him instead of recusing himself from the Russian investigation.

If Democrats  should control the White House after  2020 elections  and  if the criteria for firing civil servants is conforming to a fuzzy definition of public trust based on political loyalties, then Democrats could use the new precedent to undermine  and overturn what the Trump administration had accomplished by ousting Trump loyal  public employees.  What goes around comes around.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-s-gripes-against-mccabe-included-wife-s-politics-comey-n842161

http://www.newsweek.com/fbi-agent-treasonous-trump-helped-draft-hillary-clinton-2016-796699

https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/31/politics/donald-trump-rod-rosenstein-december-meeting/index.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/i-expect-loyalty-trump-told-comey-according-to-written-testimony/2017/06/07/46413298-4bab-1