Quirk in law will give Trump 210 days to pursue unchecked 'reign of terror': expert
NBC National Security Editor David Rohde claimed Friday there's a very real risk that a re-elected Donald Trump could make good on his threat to sic the Department of Justice on his political enemies.
He appeared on MSNBC to elaborate on a piece he wrote in which he said, "What Trump is proposing would shatter 50 years of post-Watergate norms dictating that federal prosecutors don’t take orders from the president regarding criminal investigations.
"Those rules were designed to prevent a repeat of the abuses of Richard Nixon, who improperly used the Justice Department to punish his political enemies." Rohde noted that a quirk in the law would allow the former president to appoint an acting attorney general who will do his bidding via side-stepping U.S. Senate approval.
Admitting it could lead to a "reign of terror" with Trump's hand-picked attorney general filing criminal charges against his political opponents, the legal expert said there would be a 210-day window to set in motion the campaign of retribution.
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"You can have an acting attorney general, any cabinet member, for 210 days, so he doesn't need Senate confirmation," he stated. "And he's talked on a conservative podcast about a reign of terror, where he would serve as the acting attorney general, indict Joe Biden, free the January 6 defendants."
Asked, "How much should anybody feel comforted by the notion that, in some of these cases, a judge could stop the worst abuses of the case. Or should we be looking and say, 'Whoa, Trump has transformed the judiciary and the transformation of the judiciary means the last line of defense could be weaker than it was before?" Rohde replied, "It's weaker."
"One of the people he's talked about appointing as attorney general is Aileen Cannon, who threw out the documents case," he added.
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