Trump's purge of the FBI was an assault on the rule of law and democracy itself. The purge of a large number of the FBI this week, firing any agent having to do with the investigation of January 6, is more than just Trump getting revenge. It will be filling the FBI with those who either are loyal to him or who fear being purged if they are not. It paves the way for Trump to use federal police to take revenge on his enemy's list and use the federal police powers to act in support of his regime by harassing and charging those who participated in investigating Trump's role in the January 6 coup regardless of whether there is no evidence of probable cause to believe they cooked up the evidence. Even filing a criminal case or civil suit causes financial harm and emotional stress as the defendants have to lawyer up.. It will take at least a year for the illegal firing of FBI civil servants to be resolved, and most likely, it will end up in Trump's Supreme Court. Welcome to the new world of Trump's rule; it will take many brave people to take a stand against this attack on our democracy, to resist this power grab, and to take back the rule of law applied without fear or favor to no citizen above the law.
In firing the agents, mostly civil servants, Trump is ordering an "internal review" of them. This will be an effort to rewrite the history of the past four years. He will attempt to appoint a loyalist to review and rewrite. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/d-c-s-new-top-prosecutor-advocated-for-jan-6-rioters-and-echoed-trumps-false-2020-election-claims
To negate the power of law: Trump pardoned 1500 convicted and charged rioters on January 6, making a mockery of the law if it applied to those who supported him. Even those convicted and in jail for seditious conspiracy, the equivalent of treason committed in peacetime, were released from jail with a stroke of Trump's pen. Those now willing to commit violence on Trump's behalf can expect the same favors in the future, freeing them to commit violence on behalf of Trump in the future.
I was a student in Berlin in 1958 with a front-row seat to see how the Communists established their dictatorship in the zones the Russians controlled. This was before the Wall, and it precipitated the later attempt to stop the flight of thousands crossed into the western zones with democratic allies of occupation. One of my closest friends to this day was one of those who fled before the wall was built. Aside from blasting propaganda and slogans with every media and billboard, the key was the control of the police (Volks Polizei), which terrorized its inhabitants. I met my husband of 52 years to be in 1958, and soon to be a refugee from another dictatorial Communist regime (Yugoslavia). This is not a matter of abstract paragraphs in some history books. I may have been a political science major in college. It was a hands-on experience of how dictators worked at the grassroots level and first-hand observation of how they gained and kept control of the lives and thoughts of their subjects during regimes that lasted until 1989. Their instruments: power to use the police to do their bidding. It is the first step in achieving the power of a dictator. JD Vance, Trump's vice president, has admitted he has been influenced by Curtis Jarvn, who advocates a dictatorship and declares, "We must get over our dictator phobia." I never will; I know what it is like. https://www.salon.com/2024/10/01/rachel-maddow-sounds-alarm-on-jd-vances-pro-dictatorship-influences/
Here is the record Trump would like to rewrite:
The evidence gathered by the FBI and other agencies, as presented to juries to get indictments for Trump's role in the attempted coup of January 6, was comprehensive. There are volumes in print, and there will be an attempt to rewrite history now that Trump is in charge of the Department of Justice and Congress. There was enough for the Grand Jury to come to the decision that there was probable cause to believe Trump had committed crimes. On August 1 2023, Trump was indicted for "a months-long campaign of lies about the election results and says that, even when those falsehoods resulted in a chaotic insurrection at the Capitol, Trump sought to exploit the violence by pointing to it as a reason to further delay the counting of votes that sealed his defeat."
The Supreme Court then ruled that Trump or the president had immunity from being prosecuted for crimes if the act was part of his official duties. Jack Smith then refiled the indictment to narrow the scope of the indictment. https://apnews.com/article/trump-jack-smith-jan-6-186c874404912578e44d5781c8267e2d
In case we forget or Trump and his allies try to rewrite history: The charges were dismissed in November 2024 after Trump's election a separate case alleging that Trump illegally sought to overturn the 2020 election was also dismissed. https://sherman.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/the-indictment-of-donald-trump-related-to-events-of-january-6thelection
Jack Smith's final report on the cases against Trump were released to the public in January 2025:https://www.axios.com/2025/01/14/jack-smith-trump-final-report-jan-6
"Jack Smith, who was appointed by attorney general Merrick Garland to investigate Trump, said in court filings that he requested the dismissals because the Justice Department is banned from prosecuting a sitting president, and not because of anything having to do with the substance of the cases." https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gvd7kxxj5o Other charges against Trump and those involved in the Mar-a-Lago case were also dropped.
