Trump’s revocation of security protections for his perceived enemies raises chilling questions about the weaponization of government authority.
In Trump v. United States, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued a resounding dissent, offering a “nuts and bolts of what, exactly, the majority has done … to alter the paradigm of accountability for the Presidents of the United States.” Her dissent (and that of Justice Sonia Sotomayor) responded to the majority’s stunning decision that presidential power invested former presidents with absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within their preclusive and conclusive constitutional authority. The case involved Donald Trump—the recently sworn in 47th president—who was indicted by a federal grand jury on four counts involving actions he took following his defeat in the November 2020 presidential election (when he was the 45th president).
In defending Trump at the lower courts, lawyer John Sauer was asked whether a president could order SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival and remain immune from prosecution; Sauer responded affirmatively. Such an action would be protected by presidential immunity, he admitted, since a president would need to be impeached and convicted before facing criminal charges. He also seemed to imply selling pardons could too fall within the bucket of immunity.
On its face, the opinion written by Justice John Roberts acknowledged what was at the heart of the indictment: the allegation “that after losing that election, Trump conspired to overturn it by spreading knowingly false claims of election fraud to obstruct the collecting, counting and certifying of the election results.”
However, in many ways, the underlying heart of the case—vengeance, retaliation and revenge-seeking, even when it can lead to predictable harms and death—are being tested.
On Thursday evening, an order to deny Dr. Anthony Fauci government security detail went into effect. Trump withdrew Secret Service protection from Fauci, who served for over 50 years in the federal government, including as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022, despite known and credible threats against his life. Fauci has now obtained his own private security.
According to reporting in the New York Times, Trump explained his decision, noting, “When you work for government, at some point, your security detail comes off and, you know, you can’t have them forever.”
It’s not only people possibly perceived as rivals across political ideologies that have caught Trump’s attention: Earlier in the week, security detail for Mike Pompeo, Trump’s former secretary of state, was also revoked, along with that of former national security advisor John Bolton.
From a rule of law perspective, the revocations are hard to justify, especially as the threats against these individuals are credible. On May 23, 2022, Thomas Patrick Connally, Jr., pleaded guilty to “sending emails threatening harm” to Fauci. In one of the emails, he wrote, Fauci would be “dragged into the street, beaten to death, and set on fire.” He also made threats to harm Fauci’s family.
In Pompeo’s case, security intelligence amassed during the Biden administration warned that the former secretary of state and Brian Hook, his senior aide, both “faced ongoing threats from Iran because of actions they took on Mr. Trump’s behalf,” including a drone strike that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in 2020.
For Trump’s part, his response to reporters was, “I mean, there’s risks to everything.”
In the abstract, pundits might square the revocation of security details in the wake of threats against former government aides and officials as petty and small. But that would be missing a larger point about the rule of law and the Trump immunity case.
Most memorable for many in the oral arguments were the hypotheticals posed and responded to by Trump’s legal team about harming political rivals—and weaponizing government and government actors to do so. Despite some alarm, it was primarily taken in jest, even during oral arguments at the Supreme Court. To laughter in the Court, Justice Samuel Alito asked, “Well, I mean, one might argue that it isn’t plausibly legal to order SEAL Team Six—and I—I don’t want to slander Seal Team … But no one—I think one could say … that that action would be legal.”
However, the majority failed in its review to take seriously the basic matter at hand. In Jackson‘s dissent, she wrote, “To fully appreciate the profound change the majority has wrought” in the Trump immunity case, “one must first acknowledge what it means to have immunity from criminal prosecution.”
According to Justice Jackson, “Put simply, immunity is ‘exemption’ from the duties and liabilities imposed by law.” It “boils down to a maxim—'[t]he King can do no wrong’ …” The very idea of this was rejected as a founding principle in the United States, its Constitution and its system of government: There are no kings and queens.
Indeed, in 1882, mere years after the Civil War, in United States v. Lee, the Court recognized that “[n]o man in this country is so high that he is above the law. No officer of the law may set that law at defiance with impunity. All the officers of the government, from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law, and are bound to obey it.” Today, this wisdom rings hollow.
To be clear, revoking security details from former government officials who are still under serious and deadly threat is not the same as ordering the elimination of a political rival. Nor is it the same as conspiring to interfere with or thwart a “congressional proceeding at which electoral votes are counted and certified, and the winner of the election is certified as President-elect.” There is nothing criminal in revoking security clearances either. (In Pompeo’s case, it was Secretary of State Marco Rubio who signed off.)
Nevertheless, the revocations carry a terrible stench given the known, credible threats and therefore risks of death, made all the more profound by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States.
Hear more from Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Michele Goodwin on the latest episode of On the Issues, “Fierce Feminist Resistance: The Fight to Save Public Health“:
