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Rep. Adam Schiff, who is also on the committee, received the same treatment. So was White House attorney Don McGahn, and at least eight journalists covering national security, including CNN’s Barbara Starr. “The politicking of the Department and the attacks on the rule of law are among the most dangerous attacks on our democracy that the former President has carried out,” Schiff said.
Swalwell and Schiff, both California Democrats, are right. The context and apparent motive for this covert action is more line up in autocratic than in democratic history.
Authority leaders organize governance around self -care. They need to cover up their corruption and crime, so they politicize the justice system, surround themselves with loyalists and target people who might expose their wrongdoing. The targeting of journalists, prosecutors and opposition politicians of the Trump administration is consistent with the backs of foreign autocrats, such as secretly digging into the personal lives of individuals in their inner circle who will not violate in law. they.
McGahn’s wife’s communication notes also obtained are common-and noteworthy, in an American context-anti-democratic behavior.
“Find the leakers right inside the FBI …. FIND NOW,” Trump (presumably) commanded his constituents via a tweet in 2017. As we know now, the White House is in war mode to mess up investigations between the Trump campaign and Russia, and also cover up other wrongdoings. A week before this tweet, for example, Gen. Michael Flynn resigned as national security adviser when he realized he worked for Turkish autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2016 without registering as a foreign agent, and after it became public that he misled Vice President Mike Pence about if he discussed sanctions on the United States in initial phone calls to Russia’s ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak. Fearing too much to cover Trump’s many public comments about the leak and leak, it’s no surprise to learn that the Justice Department took the phone records of The New York Times and The Washington Post reporter (as well as Starr’s) covering this period.
It also makes sense that the Department justified the seizure associated with a “criminal investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.” Using the law as a weapon to harass journalists and criminalize in the eyes of the public is a common autocratic movement.
Also investigating them behind the scenes to monitor their networks and resources. “The secret is the thing I found not surprising,” wrote one of the Times reporters Eric Lichtblau, who wrote about contacts between Russia’s Alfa Bank and Trump Tower’s computer servers during the 2016 campaign. .
Even if Trump is not in office, knowing that the government will monitor standard confidential communications could have a “shocking effect” on reporters and make people more careful to communicate with them, Lichtblau wrote. .
It’s another legacy, he concludes, to “Trump’s relentless four-year attack on free press.”
Just ask Russian journalists where the demonization of journalists could lead. Two decades of Vladimir Putin’s leadership have created a state where repression allows kleptocracy and you can lose your life by writing about either.
In Russia, where the arm of the state has reached into the private lives of media professionals, surveillance is provided to journalists and their families. Everyone knows the fate of investigative journalists like Anna Politkovskaya, whose scope of human rights abuses in Chechnya during Putin’s “dirty war” culminated in her assassination in 2006. Four Chechens and a former Russian police officer – was convicted of murdering him. He was one of many journalists who died after being stripped of information that Putin wanted to bury (though the Kremlin has denied any connection to the assassination). Opposition politicians involved in the investigation into the familiar with Putin are no better – like Boris Nemtsov of the People’s Freedom Party. In 2011, Nemtsov published the report “Putin. Corruption.” A few years later, he wrote that the government had reached up to $ 30 billion in funding approved for the Sochi Olympics. In 2015, he was killed near the Kremlin, on the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky bridge, its cameras and patrols easily deactivated as he crossed. Putin condemned the murder, and claimed “personal control” of the investigation into it, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Five Chechen men were convicted of murder. Putin’s press conference at the recent summit with President Biden in Geneva showed a stark contrast between democratic and authoritative behavior in the press. ABC News journalist Rachel Scott asked Putin a sharp question: “What are you afraid of?” citing the “long list” of his imprisoned or killed political opponents. No Russian journalist can ask Putin a similar question, even on foreign soil, without fear for their lives.
Trump’s America is not Putin’s Russia, obviously. Yet every autocrat starts somewhere, and the assassination of democracy happens gradually. A culture that supports the right to hold politicians accountable gives way to a secret secret and threat.
Then an independent judiciary can be a weapon used by the leader to try and neutralize anyone who looks at things that might compromise him. This includes journalists, whose jobs often involve “discovering what the government doesn’t want us to know in order to find out important facts,” as Starr said. The conception of the judiciary is one in which the GOP seems to offer practical support for through continued care Magkatakata. This week, Senator Mitch McConnell called on Democrats ’requests that Trump -era Lawyers Jeff Session and William Barr testify before a committee about records confiscated by a“ labor witch. “
It’s rare for parties to stake their reputation on a defeated leader – especially one who incites a riot that fears their own leaders for their safety – unless they think he or she will return to position. If Trump returns to the White House in 2024, such Justice Department actions could be the norm.
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