The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial board eviscerated President Donald Trump in a biting opinion piece on Friday that turned the tables on the MAGA leader for repeatedly vowing to end the “unfair weaponization of the Justice Department.”
But the president did just that with a pair of “extraordinary” executive orders directing his DOJ to launch probes into two members of his former administration he now views as his political enemies, the editorial board wrote.
“This is a broken promise, an abuse of power, and another twist down the spiral of politicized law enforcement,” according to the board.
The Journal’s group of editors seemed particularly convinced that Trump is engaging in “precisely what Democrats did to him” by “picking targets first, publicly announcing them, and only then looking for misdeeds and evidence, Mr. Trump is doing.”
The presidential directives came Wednesday during an Oval Office signing ceremony where Trump called former Homeland Security cybersecurity director Chris Krebs “a disgrace” and “fraud.” Trump made similar statements about former DHS official Miles Taylor, who he said was “guilty of treason,” as he asked his DOJ to investigate the two former Republican officials.
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Krebs, the board wrote Friday, was guilty only of “knocking down claims of phantom voter fraud,” as it dismissed Trump’s repeated false claims that widespread voter fraud resulted in his 2020 defeat to former President Joe Biden.
“Mr. Trump hasn’t forgotten, and he’s now turning the fantasy that he really beat President Biden into a revenge narrative,” the Journal’s board said.
Of Taylor, the editorial board wrote that while his conduct in denouncing Trump under the guise “Anonymous” while a member of his administration wasn’t “honorable,” it blasted the “fishing expedition” the president created as “tainted from the start.”
“The message Mr. Trump is sending to former and current advisers is one of intimidation. Cross him, and you’ll get put into the wringer,” they told readers.
And the board ended their Friday editorial with a stark message of their own: “Good luck finding a lawyer in D.C., given the President’s campaign against big firms that have employed his political opponents.”