by Jeffrey Lord
As this is written, news arrives that a grand jury in Manhattan has indicted former President Donald Trump.
Shocking — not.
The column below was written before this news arrived. But without a doubt, this news makes the point of Trump and America versus the Deep State more relevant than ever.
If ever there were a corruption of justice, this indictment is it.
By chance, before this news arrived, there was one telling moment back to back with another.
On Saturday, March 25, former President Donald Trump spoke at a rally in Waco, Texas, and said this: “Either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state.”
Only days later, Americans read this headline in the Wall Street Journal:
The IRS Makes a Strange House Call on Matt Taibbi
An agent shows up at the home of the Twitter files journalist who testified before Congress.
The Wall Street Journal story reported:
Democrats are denouncing the House GOP investigation into the weaponization of government, but maybe that’s because Republicans are getting somewhere. That includes new evidence that the Internal Revenue Service may be targeting a journalist who testified before the weaponization committee.
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan sent a letter Monday to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen seeking an explanation for why journalist Matt Taibbi received an unannounced home visit from an IRS agent. We’ve seen the letter, and both the circumstances and timing of the IRS focus on this journalist raise serious questions.
Mr. Taibbi has provoked the ire of Democrats and other journalists for his role in researching Twitter records and then releasing internal communications from the social-media giant that expose its censorship and its contacts with government officials. This effort has already inspired government bullying, with Chair Lina Khan’s Federal Trade Commission targeting new Twitter owner Elon Musk and demanding the company “identify all journalists” granted access to the Twitter files.
Now Mr. Taibbi has told Mr. Jordan’s committee that an IRS agent showed up at his personal residence in New Jersey on March 9. That happens to be the same day Mr. Taibbi testified before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government about what he learned about Twitter. The taxman left a note instructing Mr. Taibbi to call the IRS four days later. Mr. Taibbi was told in a call with the agent that both his 2018 and 2021 tax returns had been rejected owing to concerns over identity theft.
And right there is yet another decidedly vivid example of just why what the former president said is so critically important for the future of this country.
Over and over — and over and over — one example after another of power-drunk government officials abusing their power — weaponizing their power — has surfaced. And it is clearly no coincidence that all of this has happened since outsider Donald Trump rose to political success with his 2016 election to the presidency.
The IRS visit to the private residence of journalist Taibbi comes as New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg has indicted the former president for plainly no other reason than to Get Trump.
Add that to the three other investigations into Trump and you have four — say again four! — Deep State–weaponized probes into the former president.
In Washington, the Biden Department of Justice has appointed a special counsel to look into classified documents taken in an unannounced FBI raid on Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago home in Florida and Trump’s alleged efforts to interfere with the results of the 2020 election.
Back in New York, Attorney General Letitia James is using her office to fulfill her campaign promise that “The days of this president are numbered.” Which is to say, the attorney general of New York is all about weaponizing her government power to Get Trump.
Meanwhile, down there in Georgia, a grand jury is investigating Trump for, yet again, demanding election integrity. Get Trump, Georgia edition.
Add in the Bragg indictment, and one still only scratches the rage of the Deep State against Trump. These four don’t even count the corruption of the FBI and Justice Department as they tried to subvert the 2016 Trump campaign.
Nor does it count this news as reported by the Washington Post on Jan. 31, 2017 — a mere 11 days after Trump was sworn into office. The Post headline:
Resistance from within: Federal workers push back against Trump
The Post story said this:
The signs of popular dissent from President Trump’s opening volley of actions have been plain to see on the nation’s streets, at airports in the aftermath of his refugee and visa ban, and in the blizzard of outrage on social media. But there’s another level of resistance to the new president that is less visible and potentially more troublesome to the administration: a growing wave of opposition from the federal workers charged with implementing any new president’s agenda.
Less than two weeks into Trump’s administration, federal workers are in regular consultation with recently departed Obama-era political appointees about what they can do to push back against the new president’s initiatives. Some federal employees have set up social media accounts to anonymously leak word of changes that Trump appointees are trying to make.
The very first, instinctual response to all of this is: “Who the hell do these people think they are?”
Taken alone — not to mention collectively — these are all-too-vivid examples of just why Trump is saying “Either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state.”
At the very beginning of the creation of the United States, Founding Father James Madison famously said, in essence, what Donald Trump is saying now. In Madison’s words from Federalist Paper 51:
If Men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and the next place, oblige it to control itself.
Say again, Madison said the government must be obliged “to control itself.”
Clearly, as all of this targeting of Donald Trump by hyperpartisan government bureaucrats who epitomize the Deep State illustrates vividly, they have lost the ability to “control” themselves.
Which is exactly why Trump has now been indicted.
The question now: When will the New York District Attorney’s office — Alvin Bragg and his fellow Deep Staters — be investigated and indicted for a monumental corruption of justice?
It is increasingly clear that Trump has focused on what will — and should be — a central issue in the 2024 campaign. That would be corralling and effectively ending the Deep State. Because if that is not done, just as Trump says, the Deep State will in fact destroy America. Remaking the land of the free into a Stalinist dictatorship, a banana republic where everything from law enforcement to the IRS and beyond is weaponized against political opponents.
Just as has now been done with the indictment of Donald Trump.
Not good. Not good at all.
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Jeffrey Lord, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is a former aide to Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. An author and former CNN commentator, he writes from Pennsylvania at [email protected]. His new book, Swamp Wars: Donald Trump and The New American Populism vs. The Old Order, is now out from Bombardier Books.
Photo “Donald Trump” by GPA Photo Archive. Background Photo “Courtroom” by Carol M. Highsmith.
