Trump 'finds new way to use' power against his enemies with 'highly unusual' DOJ move

President Donald Trump ordered the Justice Department’s civil rights division to investigate a star witness against him from his Jan. 6th, 2021 insurrection — an explicitly political move that experts say is “highly unusual.”

“The move was a highly unusual one by Justice Department leadership, directing a criminal case that appears to involve accusations of lying to Congress to a specialized unit that normally focuses on systemic civil rights abuses like police misconduct and racial discrimination,” the Times reported on Tuesday. Trump ordered the Justice Department to investigate Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide who testified before Congress that Trump allegedly engaged in criminal activity on Jan. 6, 2021. “And yet the decision was in keeping with the administration’s bid to find new ways to use the powers of the federal government to target Mr. Trump’s political opponents," according to the Times.

Trump has tried other political prosecutions that have spectacularly failed. These include his attempts against New York attorney general Letitia James, former FBI director James Comey, Democratic lawmakers who criticized him including Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona and various protesters who have opposed Trump’s immigration and other policies. Yet instead of taking these cases to trial as Trump demanded, grand juries have refused to prosecute.

“This is how grand juries were meant to work,” UC Berkeley Criminal Justice Center Director Chesa Boudin and UC Davis Law Professor Eric S. Fish wrote in The New York Times in February. Quoting Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren that grand juries are “a primary security to the innocent against hasty, malicious and oppressive persecution,” Boudin and Fish pointed out that they are fulfilling this purpose under Trump.

Speaking to Salon Magazine in February, former federal judge John E. Jones III emphasized that the grand jury rejections of Trump’s cases is highly historic.

"It’s unprecedented, although we now see a wave of grand juries pushing back against the government," Jones said. "I don’t recall a single instance, during the almost 20 years I served as a U.S. District judge, when a grand jury refused to return a true bill, an indictment. It just is completely aberrational."

He added: "The grand jury would have to totally reject the whole premise of the case that’s being presented to them by the United States attorney because, remember, there are typically no witnesses appearing before the grand jury to dispute the facts. The grand jury is clearly saying, 'Even accepting the facts you’re putting before us as true, we don’t think under these circumstances this case is worthy of a federal indictment.'"

“The investigation into Ms. Hutchinson began some weeks ago after the Justice Department received a referral from a Trump ally in Congress who accused Ms. Hutchinson of lying to the special House committee that investigated the events of Jan. 6,” the Times wrote on Tuesday. “During explosive televised testimony in June 2022, Ms. Hutchinson, now 29, said that Mr. Trump had encouraged the crowd that gathered to hear him speak near the White House on Jan. 6 to march to the Capitol even though he knew it was armed and could turn violent.”

The Times added, “She also claimed that she had heard that Mr. Trump lunged at one of his Secret Service agents in a presidential limo when he was told he could not join his supporters on Capitol Hill. Other testimony later contradicted that assertion.”

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