I’ve lived through enough President Donald Trump-related freakouts over the years to have learned an important lesson: It’s usually wise to wait for the facts before rushing out definitive declarations.
For example, when an indictment came down against John Bolton — a former Trump official turned Trump critic — accusations of retaliatory government thuggery came raining down. But it turned out that the investigation into Bolton was initiated during the Biden administration, and that the government’s evidence appears to be strong. The initial conclusion that Trump was ticking down an enemies list in an effort to imprison his foes didn’t quite match the facts of the case, as was even admitted by the likes of Andrew Weissmann. Weissmann, for the uninitiated, was one of Robert Mueller’s top lieutenants in the “Russia collusion” investigation (which ultimately found no evidence of collusion), who has routinely offered decidedly anti-Trump legal analyses on left-leaning media outlets. Nevertheless, Weissmann told NPR that the case against Bolton was “stronger and more merited” than other prosecutions against figures such as James Comey or Letitia James, and struck him as “righteous.” That bout of enemies list shrieking, even according to some high-profile Trump opponents, was premature.
That example, which is one of many, is worth bearing in mind as we digest the news that the DOJ has opened a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, ostensibly connected to wildly expensive renovations underway at the Fed headquarters in Washington, D.C. Part of the underlying issue, it seems, is that Powell misled Congress on the subject. Subpoenas have been issued. Powell released a statement Sunday evening calling the investigation a “pretext,” and the latest effort to bully him into acceding to Trump’s well-publicized wishes on interest rates. An excerpt:
“No one — certainly not the chair of the Federal Reserve — is above the law. But this unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the administration’s threats and ongoing pressure. This new threat is not about my testimony last June or about the renovation of the Federal Reserve buildings. It is not about Congress’s oversight role; the Fed, through testimony and other public disclosures, made every effort to keep Congress informed about the renovation project. Those are pretexts. The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president.”
In coming after Powell the way that it has, the Justice Department had better bring powerful and irrefutable evidence of clear-cut law-breaking. If such evidence is offered, the usual chorus of critics will once again look like they’ve pounced prematurely, having never learned the lesson mentioned above.
If, however, the case looks thin, the decision to move forward with an investigation will smack of politically-motivated targeting and outcomes-oriented “justice.” Trump has not been subtle in his intensive pressure campaign against Powell. Whether one agrees with the president or the Fed chairman on the policy decisions in question (and whether or not Powell attempted to goose the economy for Biden in an election year) is irrelevant here. No president is supposed to control those decisions.
Trump has every right to make his displeasure with interest rate choices widely known, as he’s done repeatedly. He also sparred publicly with Powell over the renovation. But if — again, if — his Justice Department is seeking to punish Powell for not complying by launching a dubious criminal prosecution, that would be a banana republic-style abuse. Let’s see what the evidence is and where it leads.
Finally, Trump fans may counter that politically-tinged prosecutions represent a practice embraced by Democrats, including against Trump himself, rather famously. On this point, I agree that many cheerleaders for the Left’s partisan lawfare have vanishingly little credibility to object when the shoe is on the other foot. They applauded overreach and gross misuses of the legal system in New York and elsewhere when their preferred enemies were in the crosshairs, so they can skip the pearl-clutching over this development. It can’t only be “accountability” when the target is disfavored, but “weaponization” when the dynamic cuts the other way.
But that standard must also apply in reverse. Conservatives who rightly fulminated against any number of lawfare/weaponization excesses deployed against Trump and his allies should not make a heel turn into supporting or excusing naked reprisals along the same lines that happen to flow in the opposite direction.
What matters here is the evidence, or the lack thereof, against Powell, whose term is nearly over, incidentally. If it’s robust, the shouting ought to die down quickly. If it’s conspicuously weak, it will very much look like the administration is misusing raw power to make life unpleasant for a government official who conspicuously declined to align his policy decisions with the president’s loud demands.
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And it could also look like the DOJ is preemptively firing a warning shot across the bow of Powell’s successor, in order to establish an implicit threat about what could await them if Trump’s advertised preferences are not obeyed. That would be deeply improper and a genuine sandal. But if Powell unequivocally broke the law, that would be deeply improper and a genuine scandal.
Again, let’s wait and see. Is that so hard?