Donald Trump has made very clear that he intends to have the Department of Justice do his bidding if he wins a second term as president — and a variety of experts believe he would face little opposition to doing so.
If Democrats retake the House and Trump is re-elected, impeachment would be a threat against any effort he took to kill his criminal cases. But nearly everyone interviewed by The Messenger agreed he would instantly set off a constitutional crisis from the moment he took office.
“The presidency is a very powerful office," said Akhil Reed Amar, Yale University’s Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science. "He would be in a position to do many things.”
Trump has openly spoken of pardoning Jan. 6 rioters and directing the DOJ to prosecute his political rivals, and his allies are already crafting plans to overhaul the department to benefit him and identifying loyalist lawyers to carry out his orders in a second term.
“He doesn’t hide anything,” said former FBI agent Peter Strzok, who came under attack by Trump over critical texts he sent to a colleague.
“It’s not complicated. It’s out there. Get rid of as many people and get in as many loyalists as he possibly can, and turn the government into an instrument of his will and desire to turn it into a patronage system. It’s not hidden. He’s not talking out of both sides of his mouth.”
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Trump has been indicted in four jurisdictions on 91 charges, and many experts say he would almost certainly try to use his power to make those cases go away. But there wouldn't be much he could do if he's convicted in one of the two federal cases and lost all of his appeals, all the way up the U.S. Supreme Court.
“The operative words are fully adjudicated,” said Anthony Coley, a former spokesman for the Biden Justice Department. “If the Supreme Court weighs in and upholds a case, then that is the end of the line. He’ll have to serve, if he’s elected, incarcerated or we’ll see how the Bureau of Prisons would figure it out.”
There is little chance any of the criminal cases would have reached that point before the election, the Messenger reported.
If he's re-elected, Trump could order the Justice Department to file motions to permanently dismiss his federal charges, and any department staffer could sign off "as long as they've got a bar card," said one former senior DOJ official, and even the threat of widespread resignations would not likely serve as a deterrent.
“That’d be a good riddance situation for most of the people in Trump world," said a former senior Trump aide. "The Saturday Night Massacre scenario of resignations would be a welcome thing. It’d not be an, ‘OMG we’re losing attorneys.’”
DOJ lawyers would also likely file motions seeking to end the Georgia and New York criminal cases, arguing a sitting president's constitutional obligations supersede the outcome of state criminal cases, but Trump would most likely get to serve four years in the White House before facing state legal consequences.
“If he's convicted and he doesn't get bailed out pending appeal, they'd have to spring him at noon on Jan. 20,” said conservative attorney George Conway. “I believe that and, I'll be honest, nobody wants to see Donald Trump spend the rest of his life in prison more than I do.”
