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In yet another dictatorial move, President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed two executive orders targeting former Trump administration officials who dared to speak out against Dear Leader, weaponizing the federal government to go after his perceived enemies.
The orders direct the Department of Justice to investigate Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor—two men who worked in the first Trump administration and who have since criticized Trump.
Krebs, who was the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency under Trump, correctly said the 2020 election wasn’t stolen. And Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff under Trump, wrote an infamous op-ed for The New York Times and later a book saying that there was a resistance within the first Trump administration trying to stop his worst whims.
The executive orders Trump signed are absurd.
Trump accused Krebs of “falsely and baselessly” denying “that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen, including by inappropriately and categorically dismissing widespread election malfeasance and serious vulnerabilities with voting machines.”
And he accused Taylor of having “stoked dissension by manufacturing sensationalist reports on the existence of a supposed ‘resistance’ within the federal government that ‘vowed’ to undermine and render effective a sitting President.”
While signing the authoritarian orders in the Oval Office, Trump accused Taylor of committing treason—an insane statement that should send chills down everyone’s spines.
“I think it’s like a traitor,” Trump said of Taylor. “It’s like spying.”
By directing the DOJ to go after Krebs and Taylor, Trump is doing what he accused his predecessor of: weaponizing the federal government.
“I said this would happen,” Taylor wrote in a post on X. “Dissent isn’t unlawful. It certainly isn’t treasonous. America is headed down a dark path. Never has a man so inelegantly proved another man’s point.”
Democrats slammed Trump’s authoritarian orders.
“Trump’s direction to DOJ to investigate Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor because he doesn’t like what they said is an unprecedented abuse of power by a President of the United States,” Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) wrote in a post on X. “I call on all Congressional Republicans to condemn this egregious weaponization of the government.”
Weaponizing the federal government to go after two former staffers is far from the only dictatorial move Trump has made since taking office.
Trump has similarly targeted law firms who employ his perceived enemies and who have sued to block his unlawful actions.
He’s said it’s illegal for news organizations to publish content he disagrees with.
He’s tried to end birthright citizenship, which is guaranteed by the Constitution, and is deporting people without due process—sending them to a gulag in Central America despite a court order to bring them back.
Trump is also reportedly holding a military parade in Washington, D.C., on his birthday, something he’s wanted for years but which has been blocked because it is incredibly expensive and will destroy roads across the city.
“A steady stream of lies & still living in the past while he destroys the economy,” Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee wrote in a post on X. “Chris Krebs did the job Trump appointed him to do & Miles Taylor spoke the truth. Weaponizing the gov’t against those who failed to cow to him won’t make us forget that his Presidency is a disaster.”
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