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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
Trump’s tortured history of legally targeting his foes
Analysis by Aaron Blake, CNN
Updated:
2:27 PM EDT, Mon August 25, 2025
Source: CNN
legal retribution campaign against his foes is in full swing.
The administration has already targeted . On Friday, the FBI searched
Trump adviser-turned-critic John Bolton’s home and office. And on
Sunday, Trump explicitly tied his complaints about another critic,
former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, .
All of which has led Trump’s defenders to launch a familiar
“whataboutism” defense: What about all the times Trump and his
allies were prosecuted? Isn’t turnabout fair play?
“Some people say it’s retribution; I say, who cares?” Fox News
host Greg Gutfeld , adding: “Don’t lecture me on politically
motivated investigations. You guys invented this stuff.”
But there is a key and very important difference: Prosecutions of Trump
and Co. were overwhelmingly successful; the president’s allegations
have fared much worse when his side has actually tried to prove them.
To the extent cases against Trump himself didn’t result in
convictions, it’s not because the evidence was insufficient. It’s
because of technicalities and his being reelected president.
A big question right now is whether the Trump administration actually
pursues these charges or – as one top DOJ official suggested could be
the goal. There’s a case to be made that one of the best things for
our body politic would be for these cases to result in charges that the
administration then has to actually detail and prove.
To this point, though, they haven’t been able to prove much.
We should learn soon, for example, whether the administration deports
Kilmar Abrego Garcia before it tries to prove its criminal case against
him.
The administration sought to justify its wrongful initial deportation
of Abrego Garcia to El Salvador earlier this year by pointing to
against him. Those included that he was a “leader” of the MS-13
gang. (Abrego Garcia’s family and lawyers have denied he’s a gang
member.)
When the administration ultimately bowed to judges’ orders that it
facilitate his return, it made a show of charging him with a years-old
human smuggling offense. (Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty to
transporting other undocumented people from Texas to Maryland in an SUV
in 2022 and taking part in a smuggling conspiracy.) The administration
said it intended to .
“He will face the full force of the American justice system –
including serving time in American prison for the crimes he’s
committed,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said at the
time.
“Upon completion of his sentence,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said,
“we anticipate he will be returned to his home country of El
Salvador.”
But that was then.
Two judges have described the administration’s allegations against
Abrego Garcia . A whistleblower revealed that some in the Justice
Department the handling of some litigation in his case. And now the
administration appears to be before his trial.
It’s a move that would both contradict what the administration said
before and perhaps send a signal about its lack of confidence in its
criminal case against him.
It wouldn’t be the only time that Trump and his team have failed to
prove their case when the rubber met the road.
For years, House Republicans waged an impeachment probe of
then-President Joe Biden – seizing on allegations pushed in large
part by Trump.
But the hodge-podge of allegations were routinely . The impeachment
push was derailed when the source of a key claim the GOP had hyped –
that the Bidens took a $10 million bribe – was .
Even before that, though, some Republicans acknowledged the evidence
just wasn’t there. The House , despite Republicans having the
majority to do so.
(The lack of GOP support for impeaching Biden was a notable contrast to
Trump’s two impeachments, which both garnered historic levels of
though Trump was ultimately acquitted when two-thirds of the Senate
failed to convict him.)
Republicans did get some traction with their allegations against
Biden’s son, Hunter, who was . Still, the charges didn’t pertain to
Trump’s biggest claims against him and Joe Biden, including the
younger Biden’s work for a Ukrainian energy company.
But perhaps the biggest example of cases tied to Trump’s allegations
actually going to court was the Durham investigation — a special
counsel probe launched late in the first Trump administration and
headed by former US attorney John Durham.
The purpose was to re-investigate the origins of the Russia probe that
plagued the early part of Trump’s first term — and to search for
political bias in it.
Then-Attorney General William Barr extensively hyped it. He called the
Russia probe “” and cited “a whole pattern of events … to
sabotage the presidency — or at least have the effect of sabotaging
the presidency.”
But the Durham probe .
Three people were charged with relatively small crimes; two of them
were acquitted. The one successful prosecution was actually a case
originating from an earlier inspector general investigation, not
Durham’s. It after the judge said prosecutors hadn’t proven the
defendant, an FBI lawyer named Kevin Clinesmith, acted out of political
bias.
By contrast, or pleaded guilty to crimes, depending on how you slice
the definition of “ally.” When longtime ally Tom Barrack –
who’s now Trump ambassador to Turkey — was acquitted in 2022, it
was the exception rather than the rule.
Trump himself was convicted in the only one of his four indictments
that went to trial, in Manhattan. He was also found liable in both a
sexual abuse case and a civil fraud case. (An appeals court last week
voided the $500 million penalty against him but .)
As for the other Trump indictments? Juries never got to render a
verdict in those cases.
His two January 6, 2021-related indictments were shelved when he won
the presidency again. But the evidence was compelling enough that a
record number of Senate Republicans had voted to convict him in his
2021 impeachment trial.
And his federal classified documents case was dismissed not for lack of
evidence, but because of a Trump-nominated judge’s that legal
observers said bucked precedent: the special counsel handling the case,
she ruled, was illegally appointed. Indeed, that classified documents
case was perhaps the most iron-clad against him – to the point where
even the likes of Barr said the government had been
In these cases, the government showed what evidence it had and was
prepared to back it up. And when it was forced to back it up, it was
often successful.
Perhaps that will ultimately be the case with the investigations the
Trump administration has launched against its foes. We’ll see if the
administration actually starts charging people.
But history suggests Trump and Co. just throw a bunch of stuff at the
wall – in ways that their opponents haven’t.
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