After years of baselessly claiming the Justice Department was out to get him for political reasons, incoming President Donald Trump appears set to take a firm hand with the department and make it do precisely that to his political foes, former federal prosecutor Harry Litman warned Monday on MSNBC's "The Beat."
The remarks came as Trump prepares to replace huge chunks of the civil service with his loyalists.
There are things that people can do to fight back, Litman added — even if those remedies are somewhat limited now.
"So Harry, what is the legal recourse for people or companies, if they end up within the crosshairs of Trump and the DOJ, and, as you call them, the flunkies that are going to do his bidding?" asked anchor Katie Phang, herself an attorney.
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"Yeah, there are a lot of legal remedies," said Litman. "You can bring something against the government for a politically trumped-up prosecution, but there is not going to be any personal remedy, as you were saying, to couple everything he is doing with the immunity decision. He did it himself when he said he would fire [special counsel] Jack Smith within two seconds."
Despite all of this, he said, the problem is that "as a general matter, we rely on the professionalism and fairness of the DOJ and there are not a lot of remedies out there, not to mention [Steve] Bannon is crowing about having the judiciary populated with Trump judges."
The upshot, he said, is "this is really serious stuff, and it is a fundamental erosion if it takes place, and I think, Katie, it's going to take place at least in some part, [of the] absolute bedrock assumption about the criminal justice system since at least Watergate. We are really going back to a government of man, not of laws."
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