Stuart Gerson in Just Security
Board Member Stuart Gerson published a piece in Just Security, “Understanding Trump’s Choice for FBI Leadership.” In it, he writes about Trump’s Executive Orders:
Taken in context, including his nomination of the unqualified zealot, Kash Patel, to be FBI Director, it is clear Trump is attempting hypocritically to weaponize federal law enforcement to seek retribution from those he claims weaponized the law against him and his allies […]
As noted, read in the context of repeated statements made by Trump himself, and by his appointees, the weaponization edict is thus best read, not as an assurance of good government somehow benefiting his populist audience, but as a “victor’s” exercise in Orwellian double-speak. Empowering actions against his political opponents to be undertaken by a partisan Attorney General, and a possible Director of National Intelligence lacking professional competence and experience and compromised by disqualifying relationships with U.S. adversaries, Trump’s weaponization Executive Order should be understood as the instruction to subordinates to initiate investigations and to take resultant actions of the same kind for which he (erroneously) condemns the former President and members of the prior administration. The difference is that the previous administration acted lawfully. The Trump administration is being given a license, indeed instructed, to do otherwise.
Stuart M. Gerson served as Acting Attorney General (1993); Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division (1989–1993); and Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia (1972–1975).
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