President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is notorious for prosecuting his perceived political enemies, from United States senators to street protesters. Now two experts are discussing the revenge campaign he has in mind for the last two years of his presidency.
“The damage is incalculable,” Mark Blumberg, executive director and chief legal counsel at The Rule of Law Project, told podcaster George Conway, lawyer and former husband of White House counsel Kellyanne Conway, for The Bulwark on Monday. They were discussing the overall corruption in Trump’s Justice Department. “And I want to make sure that we’re talking about damage in the same way, because I think there are significantly two different ways. The first is to all of the people in our society and our nation who rely on the Department of Justice. Those people have been damaged. The corruption that has been able to flourish as a result of Public Integrity being gutted, and FBI squads related to public corruption being gutted, has had enormous impact on society. The fact that there are communities that have been terrorized, because there literally hasn’t been significant enforcement of the Constitution as it relates to abuse, has wreaked enormous havoc on communities. So there’s that level of damage that somehow has to be repaired in the future by gaining trust with both the people and these communities.”
Blumberg continued, “But the other concept of damage, which is the institutions—George, it’s hollowed out. I think one-third—I think, if I remember their numbers, one-third of career lawyers have left the department. Take the Public Integrity Section as an example. And I’m not sure if I get the right numbers. I think there are maybe three career lawyers left in that department—in that section. How are they going to function?”
He added, “They have to hire. If the Department of Justice changed tomorrow, they have to hire people. There has to be somebody to train those people. There has to be somebody to supervise those people. And there has to be somebody to try and figure out whether the agenda should be exactly the same or whether it should adjust to the new realities that we’re all facing. How long does that take? I don’t know. Maybe let’s be generous and say two years.”
Earlier in the episode, both men agreed that Trump’s behavior in weaponizing the Justice Department is “profoundly evil.” Mental health experts also view it as alarming, as indicating by a recent comment by acclaimed psychotherapist Elliott Connie.
“During a recent 60 Minutes interview, Donald Trump was asked a very poignant question about his hatred of his enemies, and his answer says a lot about his psychology,” Connie explained in an Instagram video on Monday. “As a practicing psychotherapist, whenever I refer to the potentiality that Donald Trump is a narcissist, I always have to make sure I say that I have not done a thorough assessment of Donald Trump, so thus I cannot confirm such a diagnosis. However, if I were to do that kind of assessment, narcissistic personality disorder would be high on the list of things I’d be considering. And comments like this are exactly why.”
Connie added, “The fact that he can maintain his hatred of his enemies, even when facing the judgment of God, is exactly the kind of mentality that narcissists hold. Because what’s happening there is he’s willing to hate people that acknowledge his hatred might be wrong. If you are facing God in this context, and God is saying hatred is wrong, and if you denounce said hatred, I will let you into paradise, and he’s saying, ‘I still can’t do it,’ he’s literally saying that he is more important than God in relationship to making that decision. He is not willing to put down his hatred for anyone or any entity.”