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Trump's Power Play

By David Leonhardt Opinion Columnist

President Trump doesn’t hide the fact that he rejects many of the constraints on presidential power that every other post-Watergate president has accepted.

Here’s a partial list of Trump’s flouting: He has defied congressional subpoenas; dismissed the findings of the C.I.A. and F.B.I.; refused to release his tax returns; invited foreign governments to interfere in American elections; continued to own his personal businesses; and forced out an attorney general for not protecting him. To Trump, power matters more than democratic traditions. (And here’s a fuller list.)

In the last two weeks — as the virus has continued to dominate the nation’s attention — Trump has taken four new actions that fit the pattern:

1. Yesterday, he ousted Glenn Fine, a well-respected inspector general who was supposed to oversee the $2 trillion spending in the recent coronavirus bill.

2. On Friday night, Trump fired Michael Atkinson, the watchdog for the intelligence community who helped set off impeachment proceedings by forwarding an anonymous complaint about Trump to Congress.

3. On March 27, shortly after signing the coronavirus bill, Trump issued a statement that asserted his right to reinterpret the law and not forward information to Congress about a corporate bailout fund.

4. Twice this week, Trump publicly attacked an inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services, who has documented the shortages many hospitals now face.

All of it adds up to “an abruptly unfolding White House power play over semi-independent inspectors general across the government,” as Charlie Savage — a Times reporter who has won a Pulitzer Prize for exposés of presidential signing statements — wrote.

For more

Noah Bookbinder, a lawyer who runs Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, writes in an Op-Ed in The Times: “The president seems to view any independence within the government and certainly any checks on him as intolerable disloyalty; that notion, of course, runs counter to our entire system of checks and balances.” Kim Wehle, an American University law professor, writes in The Bulwark, a conservative publication: “As hundreds of Americans lie dying and thousands more grieve their dead, President Trump remains busy acting on his grudges and consolidating power for its own sake, while thumbing his nose at the rule of law.” Paul Rosenzweig, a former George W. Bush administration official, told The Washington Post that Fine’s removal was “an affront to independence and oversight.” Rosenzweig continued: “Frankly, if the House of Representatives does not condition all further covid aid on the restriction of the president’s removal authority, they will have made a mistake. They should realize that the president is no longer operating in any semblance of good faith, and he is more dangerous to the fabric of American democracy than the virus.” Quin Hillyer, Washington Examiner: “Trump’s firing of Atkinson continues a troubling series of retaliatory measures against nonpolitical public servants, all of whom had otherwise gained good marks for professionalism, whom Trump blames for testimony or actions leading to his impeachment.”

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