So where there’s been malfeasance, we need legal sanctions. Prosecutions that likely would have happened had Trump not had presidential immunity — like the campaign finance case that helped land his former attorney, Michael Cohen, in prison — should go forward when he’s out of office. The CAP report calls for every government agency to “conduct an immediate internal review to identify corruption during the Trump administration and publicly report on the steps it will take to address it. Where appropriate, information obtained during these reviews must be shared with law enforcement, inspectors general, and congressional committees.”
In order to avoid repeating Trump’s politicization of law enforcement, a President Biden would need to give maximum autonomy to those in charge of Trump probes, which he’s already inclined to do. Bassin, from Protect Democracy, goes so far as to argue that if elected, Biden should choose an attorney general who hasn’t been involved in Democratic Party politics in order to make the post-Trump cleanup look as fair as possible.
“If America’s lucky enough to be wrestling with the very difficult questions of accountability that countries face after an abusive autocratic regime, it’s going to be essential that the attorney general be seen as independent and not as an arm of the White House or Democratic Party,” Bassin said.
Should Trump officials face prosecution, Bassin worries about even the appearance of a political vendetta. “If they are seen as political retribution, and look in any way like President Trump’s own claims to ‘lock her up,’ that can actually be more destructive than restorative,” he said. “It risks sending us down a downward spiral where each side, when winning power, seeks to prosecute its opponents.”
Given that Trump has convinced large swaths of the country that the F.B.I. is a hotbed of leftist subversion, it’s hard to see how any prosecution would seem legitimate to most Republicans. But Bassin holds out hope that a President Biden could restore, among a majority of the country, “an understanding that there is a role for an independent Department of Justice.”
“I don’t underestimate the challenge here, but he’s got to do all the things that are possible to get us back on that path,” Bassin said. “Otherwise we are going to be fighting over the very foundational institutions of our democracy endlessly.”
This might be our fate regardless. But he’s right about the challenge for Democrats, should they take power. They must extirpate Trumpism, without ever seeming to imitate it.