Donald Trump's niece has an urgent warning for America in her latest column: don't let him reshape justice to suit his own ends.
Psychologist Mary Trump has long been one of her uncle's harshest critics — and excoriated the media for not taking his threats seriously in the wake of the election.
"In light of the election results, Special Counsel Jack Smith and the Justice Department have concluded that the federal prosecutions of the Donald cannot continue. Then D.C. federal judge Tanya Chutkin dismissed the Jan. 6 case against Donald Trump," Mary Trump noted. "Although the case was dismissed without prejudice, which means it can be revived after Donald is not longer in office, but this is still a dark, if expected, turn. Donald has gotten away with one of the greatest crimes against America (and that’s not even taking into account the documents case his personal pocket judge Aileen Cannon doomed from the start or the New York case for which he was convicted on 34 felony counts but for which he will not be sentenced)."
Now, confident he's gotten away with it, Trump may see the way clear to use the gears of the Justice Department to enact retribution on those he considers responsible for his legal troubles, she wrote.
"Donald is determined to force his delusions into reality, and he will use the Justice Department to help him do that," she wrote.
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He's already floating pardons for Jan. 6 defendants and is reportedly planning to fire line prosecutors who worked with Smith, itself an unprecedented attack — but it could go further. For example, she suggested, it's possible Trump "appoints someone like the disgraced Matt Gaetz as a DOJ Special Counsel to go after Michael Byrd, the Capitol police officer who shot and killed insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt."
There's only one way left to save American democracy from Trump's authoritarian impulses, she said — and that's for Americans to stand up and refuse to normalize what's happening.
"Regardless of the disastrous consequences of the failures of the Republican Party, Merrick Garland, and the corrupt illegitimate super-majority of the Supreme Court, the least we can do is remember the rest of those who sacrificed and suffered that day and do whatever we can to fight for justice — for them and democracy," she concluded.
