Where Tyranny Begins

 

David Rohde, “Where Tyranny Begins: The Justice Department, the FBI, and the War on Democracy, W.W. Norton, 2024, 240 pp.

Throughout his presidency, Donald Trump intimidated, silenced, and bent to his will Justice Department and FBI officials. He sowed public doubt in both agencies so successfully that when he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, he paid little political cost and, despite an unprecedented array of criminal indictments, easily won the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election.

In Where Tyranny Begins, David Rohde investigates Trump's strategies to turn the country's two most powerful law-enforcement agencies into his political weapons. Rohde also reveals how, during the Biden years, Justice Department non-partisan post-Watergate 1970s norms that Attorney General Merrick Garland reinforced and inadvertently helped Trump and could fail to deliver a trial and legal accountability by Election Day 2024.

Where Tyranny Begins exposes how ill-suited the DOJ and FBI are to serve as checks on abuses of presidential power. A round of historic reforms equivalent to the post-Watergate reforms that stabilized American democracy in the 1970s are immediately needed. A five-word warning coined by the English philosopher John Locke in 1689 captures the stakes in 2024: "Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins."

My Notes:

Pg. xvii;  After the Watergate scandal and the historic Church Committee congressional investigation exposed decades of abuses by the FBI and CIA, sweeping reforms were enacted in the late 1970s to prevent presidents, attorneys general, and FBI directors from using the DOJ and FBI for improper political or personal gain. Now, five decades later, these reforms are beginning to unravel.

Pg.11f:  President James Garfield’s 1881 assassination by a disgruntled job seeker, who felt his support for Garfield should have entitled him to a job, precipitated the Pendleton Act of 1883.  This act required nearly all federal employees to be hired based on skills, training, and education, rather than political connection.  The act gave the American public an independent, professional civil service that was answerable to elected officials without being beholden to them.  Over 130 years later, Trump and his denigration of the “Deep State” and his attacks on people such as James Comey are starting to dismantle this system.

Pg. 32f: On May 7, 2018, Attorney General Sessions announced the family separation policy to control border crossings.  Over the next three months, more than four thousand children were separated from their families.  Because of the backlash, on June 20, 2018, Trump issued an executive order that largely ended family separation.  Five years after the separation program, as many as one thousand children still had not been reunited with their families.

Pg. 50: In 1988 the Supreme Court ruled 7-1 in Morrison v. Olson that independent counsels were constitutional. However, when the independent counsel law expired in 1997, both parties happily bid good riddance to it.  The attorney general retained the power to appoint less powerful investigators known as “special counsels” due to a conflict of interest, an extraordinary circumstance, or if it would be in the public interest.  The attorney general could remove special counsels or ignore their recommendations if they informed Congress. Under these rules, three days after Comey’s firing, Rosenstein appointed Mueller to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Pg. 98: In an astonishing four-month period between February and May 2020, myriad Justice Department and post-Watergate norms were shredded by Trump and Barr with little political consequence.  Barr had intervened in the Stone sentencing, Liu’s promised nomination in the Treasury Department had been withdrawn, all charges against Flynn had been dropped, and Barr had appointed John Durham to investigate the origins of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation. 

Pg. 103:  The Insurrection Act of 1807  empowers the president of the United States to deploy U.S. military and federalized National Guard troops within the United States in particular circumstances, such as to suppress civil disorder, insurrection, or rebellion. It was signed into law by President Thomas Jefferson in 1807.  In May 2020 Trump considered utilizing the act but Milley opposed issuing the order. 

Pg. 129: A Politico/Morning Consult survey released two days after Biden was declared the winner found that 70 percent of Republicans did not think the 2020 election was free and fair.

Pg. 161:  When House Democrats impeached Trump for his role on January 6, only seven Republican senators voted to convict him, ten short of the number needed for him to be found guilty. 

Pg. 192:  Under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, all records created or received by the president as part of their “constitutional, statutory, or ceremonial duties” are the property of the US government.  This law was passed after Nixon initially refused to hand over recordings of White House meetings.