By David K. Shipler
Having
demolished much of the best scientific research supported by the federal
government, ignored congressional acts that created and funded agencies,
harassed the private sector into accepting racial discrimination, bullied media
corporations into self-censorship, erased historical truths, distorted
government fact-gathering, sent masked agents to grab immigrants, deployed
hapless national guard onto peaceful streets, and severely damaged the rule of
law and the constitutional separation of powers, Donald Trump and his
collaborators now turn their draconian radicalism against the country’s system
of free elections.
This is Phase
Three in the demise of democracy. Whether the Trumpists succeed remains an open
question, but they are laying the groundwork for what experts who have studied
dictatorships term “competitive authoritarianism.” It means that elections are
held but are manipulated so the opposition party has little or no chance of
coming to power, as in Hungary and Turkey.
The
elements of the effort are these:
Political prosecutions of opposition (Democratic) figures. Trump is mobilizing a complicit Justice Department to take revenge on critics by inflating minor or imagined infractions into criminal charges. The efforts against former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James have been blocked so far by a federal district court judge and two grand juries of citizens honest enough to refuse to indict James, who won a major business fraud case against Trump. But the James case might be revived, and other prosecutions are in the offing.
In what The New York Times calls “a nebulous and far-reaching” federal investigation, former officials involved in bringing criminal cases against Trump are being subpoenaed, with a grand jury empaneled in southern Florida to consider conspiracy charges. Prosecutors of the January 6 rioters are also in jeopardy. Democratic Senator Adam Schiff of California, who led the first impeachment prosecution of Trump, is under investigation. Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, a retired Navy captain, is being investigated by the Pentagon for his part in a video by six Democratic lawmakers reminding military personnel that they can and must refuse illegal orders. He could theoretically be recalled to active duty and court-martialed under Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which prohibits “contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President,” and other officials.
