President Donald Trump sought to consolidate his control over the justice system by strong-arming his attorney general, raising concerns over the separation of powers in the US.
Trump demanded Pam Bondi target three of his political enemies, and on Friday a federal prosecutor left his job — with Trump saying “he didn’t quit, I fired him!” — after not prosecuting the same three with sufficient vigor. The prosecutor’s ousting “crosses the reddest of red lines,” a New Yorker columnist argued, in “using the criminal law to punish political opponents as retribution.”
Trump is “gambling that he can consolidate authority before the public turns too sharply against him,” the former George W. Bush aide David Frum wrote in The Atlantic.
