'Trump's cult' is making plans that should 'send shivers down the spine': ex-DOJ official

Trump's plans for reshaping the government if he wins a second term are truly terrifying, a number of legal experts and former government officials told The Guardian.

And those making the warning include the former inspector general of the Department of Justice.

“The plans being developed by members of Trump’s cult to turn the DoJ and FBI into instruments of his revenge should send shivers down the spine of anyone who cares about the rule of law,” said Michael Bromwich. “Trump and rightwing media have planted in fertile soil the seed that the current Department of Justice has been politicized, and the myth has flourished. Their attempts to undermine DoJ and the FBI are among the most destructive campaigns they have conducted.”

Trump has vowed to use the Justice Department to go after his political enemies if re-elected. He also plans to replace the entire civil service with loyalists, end the independence of agencies like the FCC, and repeal longstanding bans on the president "impounding," or personally withholding congressionally appropriated money from, disfavored agencies, essentially weaponizing the entire federal government to get revenge on enemies.

This, combined with his rhetoric about eradicating "vermin" from American politics, has even more political experts than just former IG Bromwich worried.

“I’m hard pressed to find any candidates anywhere who are so open that they would use the power of the state to go after critics and enemies,” said Harvard political scientist and authoritarianism expert Steven Levitsky. “This is one of the most openly authoritarian campaigns I’ve ever seen. You have to go back to the far-right authoritarians in the 1930s in Europe or in 1970s Latin America to find the kind of dehumanizing and violent language that Trump is starting to consistently use.”

Former George H.W. Bush administration deputy attorney general Donald Ayer agreed, saying, “It is appalling that a presidential candidate could suggest using the Department of Justice to go after his political adversaries, to go after Biden and his family, and to effectively make the Department of Justice an arm of the White House to be used for its political purposes.”

All of this comes as a group of conservative legal activists, alarmed at how the current Republican legal establishment is coalescing behind Trump, has founded a new organization, the Society for the Rule of Law Institute, to resist GOP extremism.