Watergate in plain sight
Last night, my wife suggested that we re-watch “All the President’s Men,” as an homage to the late Robert Redford.
I was tempted: it’s a great movie and it was pretty inspiring for a very young reporter (me) just setting out in the world of newspapers in the mid-1970s. (We all imagined we would be Woodward or Bernstein. But hopefully Woodward, since that was Redford’s role.)
But no, I told her. It would be too depressing to watch it right now, because it would remind us of a time when things like that mattered; when facts, scoops, whistle-blowers, and scandals could bring down a president. When newspapers fearlessly spoke truth to the corrupt, and owners refused to cower or blink.
And, on cue last night, we saw several Watergate-level stories play out in real time: Stories of bagmen, cover-ups, Saturday massacres, and the rank abuse of the justice system. It was almost as if the most wretched, most toxic moments of the Nixon tapes were being blasted from loudspeakers.
It was outrageous, even shocking. But … and please bear with me here … it also felt like the MAGA Will To Power was glitching.
So maybe I will watch the movie, after all.
Dear Pam….
WTAF was this? Late Saturday afternoon, Trump posted what looked like a note to his attorney general, Pam Bondi, instructing her to get on with prosecuting his political opponents.
"We can’t delay any longer,” Trump posted on Truth Social in a message addressed to “Pam.”
“[I]t’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”
Was the personal note posted as a mistake? Was it intentional? Is Bondi in deep Trumpian merde? We can’t possibly say.
But one thing seems clear: Trump is escalating his campaign of retribution. And, as usual, there is nothing subtle, hidden, or mysterious about it. In his own weekend massacre, Trump fired a highly respected US Attorney who declined to indict New York AG Letitia James because he had found no evidence that she had violated the law.
It’s an amazing story that’s worth dwelling on for a moment. Via the Intellectualist:
Erik Siebert’s career was built on precisely the kind of integrity that has long been expected of federal prosecutors.
Before joining the Department of Justice in 2010, he served as a police officer in Washington, D.C., a background that gave him a reputation for pragmatism and toughness. In the U.S. attorney’s office, he prosecuted drug traffickers, violent gang leaders, and corrupt officials. He supervised divisions in Richmond and oversaw high-profile immigration and organized crime cases. By early 2025, when Trump nominated him for the top job in the Eastern District of Virginia, Siebert was seen as a consensus choice: respected by Republicans for his law-and-order record, trusted by Democrats for his independence.
But neither his reputation nor his integrity protected him.
Siebert embraced that tradition, insisting his office would follow facts, not politics. When pressure mounted to indict Letitia James, Siebert refused to compromise. His decision was consistent with the Justice Department’s manual, which instructs prosecutors to pursue charges only when evidence supports them. But inside Trump’s orbit, loyalty was the metric, not law.
On the day of his resignation, staff described an atmosphere of disbelief.
One career lawyer recalled colleagues standing silently at their desks, unsure whether to celebrate Siebert’s principle or mourn the fragility of their institution.
Abbe Lowell, James’s attorney, called his ouster “a brazen attack on the rule of law,” words that resonated because they fit.
What Siebert represented was not defiance but fidelity—to the oath prosecutors take to uphold justice impartially.
His removal signaled that fidelity itself had become a liability.
So, Trump had to find someone whose integrity and fidelity to the law would not stand in the way of his retribution. He appointed a non-entity named Lindsey Halligan — a loyalist who has never prosecuted a case in her legal career — to the post. (Halligan was a junior member of Trump’s legal defense team during the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.)
As his Truth Social post makes absolutely clear, a condition of Halligan’s employment will be her willingness to file criminal charges against Letitia James regardless of the facts or the law. How do you think that will play out in federal court?
**
So, was this a display of strength? Or something else?
Trump’s power largely depends on the appearance that he is powerful. That image of irresistable puissance excites his loyalist claque, keeps others in line, while spreading fear amongst his opponents.
But are we seeing the sweep of his power? Or is it a sign that Trump’s assault on democratic norms is glitching?
Despite all the bravado and ~~tiny~~ dick-swinging, Trump is actually losing quite a bit lately. His record in the lower courts is a parade of defeats and humiliations; and the episode in Virginia is yet another reminder that some pockets of inegtrity and resistance remain. Daniel Drezner makes an important contrarian point here:
There is an unusual tacit alliance here between Trump and some of his opponents in this arena. Just as Trump likes to brandish threats as a means of getting what he wants, some of his most ardent opponents also want to highlight the scary nature of Trump’s illiberal power grabs. When Zack Beauchamp warns in Vox that, “Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension — the direct result of an FCC threat to pull the licenses of networks that aired him — has shown us how authoritarianism can come to America. I mean this literally,” he’s trying to highlight the dangers and stakes at play in the hopes of mobilizing small-d democrats. There are times, however, when I worry that such warnings about creeping fascism in America can cause citizens to lose hope in the American experiment.
What is therefore worth stressing is the myriad ways in which the Trump administration has been unable to autocrat its way out of a paper bag.
To be sure, Trump has cowed some institutions into submission, and he has a few competent subordinates eager to carry out his ~~pet peeves~~ edicts.
But he has also appointed some of the dumbest, most craven motherfuckers on the planet, and these underlings have no idea how to autocrat.
The events of the past week alone reveal how this administration is unable to walk and crack down on opponents at the same time. And the reason this should be highlighted is to point out to those ordinary citizens opposing Trump that such resistance is meaningful — indeed, the odds are quite good that this administration will, quite likely, self-destruct. Past success does not translate into future success — particularly as Trump continues to sabotage his own state.
Nota Bene: Drezner is my guest in today’s “To the Contrary” Podcast:
Subscribers can listen to an ad-free version right here… or you can watch on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple / Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed.
The Tom Homan Bribe Story
On Earth 2.0, this would be The Story of the week,a firestorm of corruption, cover-ups, and scandal. Tom Homan, the thuggish head of Trump’s immigration brute squad was videotaped accepting a $50,000 cash bribe… and the Trump DOJ shut the investigation down.
In an undercover operation last year, the FBI recorded Tom Homan, now the White House border czar,accepting $50,000 in cash after indicating he could help the agents — who were posing as business executives — win government contracts in a second Trump administration, according to multiple people familiar with the probe and internal documents reviewed by MSNBC.
The FBI and the Justice Department planned to wait to see whether Homan would deliver on his alleged promise once he became the nation’s top immigration official. But the case indefinitely stalled soon after Donald Trump became president again in January,according to six sources familiar with the matter. In recent weeks, Trump appointees officially closed the investigation, after FBI Director Kash Patel requested a status update on the case, two of the people said.
Exit take: The Homan story is yet another reminder that the “law and order administration” —headed by a convicted felon — is stocked with liars, thugs, and crooks.