"The president is not above the law." The message was crushingly repeated by the Democrats to try to convince the Republican senators that acquitting Donald Trump in the trial for his impeachment would set a dangerous precedent in American politics. They failed. And since last February 5 was exempted from charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, with the almost unanimous vote of Republican lawmakers, a emboldened president has embarked on a slightly disguised crusade against the separation of powers, defending Your right to influence judicial proceedings.
Immediately after his acquittal, Trump retaliated against the members of his Administration who had testified for impeachment . He publicly requested leniency with his friend and ex-advisor Roger Stone, found guilty for lying in the investigation of the Russian plot. He attacked prosecutors who asked for a sentence of seven to nine years against his friend, accused the president of the jury who will decide on his fate, and attacked the federal judge presiding over the case.
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He has repeatedly lashed out at the Department of Justice and, following criticism among the judicial establishment for his behavior, he defended on Twitter that he has “the legal right” to intervene in judicial cases. "I am authorized to be fully involved," he told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. “In fact, I suppose, I am the head of the country's security forces. Although I have chosen not to get involved. ”
Since he was exonerated from impeachment, the president does not miss any opportunity to portray the judicial proceedings opened against his allies as a result of an illegitimate investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections. “If he were not president, he would be suing everyone on all sides. Maybe I will do it anyway. Witch hunt! ”He tweeted.
On Tuesday he granted pardon to 11 people who included political allies convicted of corruption, in an action that, as numerous legal experts have denounced, incurs a politicization of the figure of presidential pardon, giving priority to their personal relationships over of the guidelines established by the Department of Justifica.
His crusade has placed the attorney general, his faithful ally William Barr, in a more than delicate position, who denounced last week in a television interview that the president's continuous comments made him "almost impossible" to carry out his work. The president acknowledged to reporters that it is true that it made the work of the head of the Department of Justice more difficult, but announced that he would continue to do so. "Social networks for me have been very important, because they give me a voice," he said.
Disregarding Barr's request, Trump has continued to tweet intensely this week about the Department of Justice, sharing the views of conservative figures that the attorney general must "clean his house" and attacking those involved in the investigation of the Russian plot, carried out by the Department that Barr directs. According to anonymous sources cited by the US press, the attorney general is considering resigning. Something he denied on Tuesday night Kerri Kupec, the spokeswoman for the Department, who said on Twitter that Barr "has no plan to resign."
Barr faces the dilemma of choosing between his loyalty to the president and defending the reputation of the Department of Justice as an institution that acts in criminal cases free of political pressure. He has been a attorney general for a year, and he has been for 14 months in the Bush Administration. In his television interview last week, he wanted to portray himself as an independent officer who does not give in to political pressure, but Democrats have long accused him of acting more as Trump's lawyer than as head of the Department of Justice. The president, meanwhile, says he has "total confidence" in his attorney general.
More than two thousand former employees of the Department of Justice called for the resignation of Barr, in an open letter in which they harshly criticized Trump's interference in the case against Roger Stone. Last week four prosecutors turned away from the case after the Justice Department made the extraordinary decision to lower the conviction request, following the suggestion of the president, who had crossed out the prosecutors' request of "very horrible and unfair" on Twitter . The Federal Judges Association has called an emergency meeting to discuss political interference in the case of Stone. And Trump answered them with a tweet in which he suggested that, instead of discussing their interference, they focus on the “tremendous abuse” that was the investigation by special prosecutor Robert Mueller about his alleged conspiracy with Russia, from which at The president was finally exonerated.