Prosecute These Corrupt Bastards!

"Let bygones be bygones."  Do you remember that? I do. I remember Barack Obama's choice not to prosecute Bush-era torturers or the banksters who stole the world. It was more important, we were told, to look forward, to rebuild that bipartisan consensus and comity that makes us not "a collection of red states and blue states; we are, and always will be, the United States of America.” 

Yeah.

How'd that work out for us? It's hardly the first time. Ronald Reagan broke federal law to sell missiles to Iran—yes, that Iran—in order to fund right-wing death squads in Nicaragua. "Let bygones be bygones." It's hardly the most recent. Donald Trump incited an attack on the Capitol and tried to steal the 2020 election; five people died. "Let bygones be bygones."

Even now this seems to be the preference of our Democratic gerontocracy. They don't want to talk about Trump's crimes. They don't want to talk about accountability for Trump criminals. They want to talk about whatever A/B tested slop their latest favorite consultant is feeding into their ear.

Yet wherever I go—whoever I talk to—whether it's a Pittsburgh bar or a Charlottesville church—do you know what's at the top of every rank and file liberal's mind?

Accountability.

We want accountability for the crimes of the Trump administration. We want accountability for the murderers of Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, accountability for the men and women building concentration camps, accountability for the crooks and billionaires looting our country blind. These people think they are kings of the world. They party in golden palaces. In his house at Mar-a-Lago there are buffoons, there are scammers and grifters, there are mummers and murderers and both at once drunk on cheap champagne paid for by the people's dime. They think justice is never coming for them. 

I propose otherwise.

We can and we should prosecute

At this point it is obligatory for a certain kind of centrist to leap up: "We can't prosecute these people! This will unleash a wave of tit-for-tat retaliation. The next time Republicans take power, they will prosecute Democrats!" Of course, this argument seems thin in an age when Trump appointees have already launched  politically motivated investigations into the chair of the Federal Reserve, Democratic members of Congress, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and numerous former government officials, such as James Comey. Unilateral disarmament will not break the escalatory spiral, just as it did not break the spiral of partisan gerrymandering. Establishing a new peace based on real justice will.

As Roman historian Bret Devereaux argued the week after the J6 coup attempt, 

Reconciliation without justice merely allows Peisistratos [a would-be tyrant and coupist] to keep trying until he gets lucky and succeeds. But what is equally obvious from the history of stasis (on this, see Thuc. 3.82-86) is that vengeance without law or reconciliation merely heightens tensions and ensures that the next explosion of violence will be worse.

Our Founders were obsessed with the classical tradition for a reason: it was one of the few models they had for the experimental republic they were creating. We moderns might do well to know such traditions ourselves.

The key is that we are enforcing the laws that already exist and are being broken. We are not pursuing mere partisan power or grinding ideological axes, as MAGA has done. We are enforcing the laws that were in force at the time the crimes were committed: laws against murder, laws against war crimes, laws against corruption and theft. It is not our fault that Trump and his lackeys decided to commit so many crimes. It's just our mess to clean up.

History more recent than 560 BCE reinforces this lesson. After J6, Biden's Department of Justice appears to have proceeded on the assumption that prosecuting anonymous footsoldiers was more important than prosecuting ringleaders. The men and women who stormed the Capitol went to jail, at least for a while; the men and women who planned, funded, and incited the attack went on to further glory.

I think we can all now see how well that worked out. Footsoldiers are a dime a dozen. The people driving this lawlessness are at the top. When building a case against a mob boss who carefully insulates himself from evidence and accountability, it may be necessary to build a case footsoldier by footsoldier. When a man stands on a podium and says "And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore" and then his mob goes and does exactly what he told them to, there's less of a need for such tactics.

The denazification of Germany provides an instructive example. We prosecuted the leaders. We prosecuted the worst of the worst. And then we hanged them for the crimes against humanity they very much had committed. Some of them skated—maybe too many. But does anyone honestly believe that the reverse—prosecuting a few thousand Wehrmacht privates while letting the Nazi elite roam free—would have produced a good outcome? Denazification succeeded at its single most important goal: transforming Germany society from blood-mad militarism to peaceful liberal democracy. And it did this because it went after the elites. The ringleaders.

Prosecutions serve a dual purpose. They prevent these specific people from committing the same crimes all over again. And they send a message to any future person of wealth and power contemplating such crimes: don't, or justice will come for you too.

There are many crimes to prosecute

The second Trump administration is not defined by any single crime. Military men have conducted an illegal campaign of boat strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific, including the deliberate murders of helpless, shipwrecked men. Billionaires and oligarchs have crowded round the trough of corruption, paying Trump and his family in gold and memecoins and favors for favors in return. Masked agents of the state have murdered Americans in the street, committed rapes and brutality, and generally involved themselves in all the crimes inevitable when a system of concentration camps is built.

There are too many crimes to name. Donald Trump is suing the IRS, which he controls, for $10 billion dollars, and is pressuring officials to settle and fork over billions in taxpayer dollars. CBS settled a defamation suit brought by Trump in Trumps' favor; shortly after, Trump's FCC approved an $8 billion merger involving CBS’s parent company. ArcelorMittal donated hundreds of tons of steel to Trump's ballroom and in return is protected from Trump's tariffs. This essay could be nothing but a recounting of the litany of crimes committed by the second Trump administration.

Accountability must come from many directions: courts martial for war crimes, civil prosecutions for corruption, criminal prosecutions for the thugs and murderers and rapists of ICE and CBP.

I want to be specific about war crimes. The pilots who flew Midnight Hammer did not commit a war crime, even if it was an attack on a foreign country not authorized by Congress. The military has an extremely strong norm that civilian leadership has "the right to be wrong," and all things considered we want a military that generally defers to civilian leadership. The alternative is, bluntly, not a democracy. That said: the double tap boat strikes—the deliberate killing of shipwrecked, helpless men—on the basis of orders directly from Secretary Hegseth—is a war crime, regardless of whether the men were drug traffickers or not. During WWII we rescued (or tried to) shipwrecked IJN sailors. The IJN machine-gunned American survivors.

We must also talk about corruption. The Republicans on the Supreme Court have declared that Trump has absolute immunity for crimes committed under the guise of executing the duties of his office. Until and unless their power is broken, this will make it difficult to prosecute Trump personally for his corruption. However, it is as illegal to pay a bribe as it is to receive one. And Trump is hardly the only man involved in this river of dirty money. Prosecution should focus as strongly on the billionaires and oligarchs and CEOs who have been bribing the administration.

In terms of criminal prosecutions: not every instance of force used by ICE or CBP is a crime. At least some of their activities will, almost certainly, count as the lawful use of force. That said, they have transparently exceeded their remit. They have shot us in the streets. Sexual abuse is never part of their "official duties."  These gross crimes must be prosecuted.

This sounds like a wishlist for a future Department of Justice—but in truth we can start these processes this year. A future Democratic House of Representatives can exercise the investigatory powers of Congress—committees and subpoenas—to begin building the evidentiary base and mass support necessary for these prosecutions. As Congress' own interpretation has it, "Congress's power to conduct investigations stands on equal footing with its authority to legislate and appropriate."  

A Senate impeachment trial for Donald Trump, even if it does not result in a conviction, can serve the same purpose. Even if such Congressional actions do not directly lead to convictions, they should be understood as part of a longer campaign culminating in such. This is an outcome we build towards, not a one-and-done fantasy.

We will need to overcome obstacles

Housecleaning must be done promptly. Trump's lackeys will spare no effort to insulate themselves from consequences or burrow into institutions. They will throw up every roadblock they can imagine. And as the example of Poland shows, if we allow this kind of obstructionism to delay justice, the people will once again conclude that both parties are the same and nothing ever changes.

Aside from the Supreme Court—and contrary to popular opinion—the court system has held up shockingly well under Trump II. The case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia demonstrates this well. Trump deported Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, baselessly alleged that he was a member of MS-13, did an end run around the justice system, and declared that once he was in CECOT he was out of their hands. And the courts ground on. In response to a court order, the administration returned him to the United States (but has continued to prosecute him via other means). 

In all likelihood, the administration could have successfully deported Abrego Garcia, had they proceeded more competently. Instead, the Trump administration has begged and screamed and stonewalled and obstructed and declared their opposition to legal rulings. And yet, in the end, they still brought Kilmar Abrego Garcia back from CECOT on the basis of a court order.

This is hardly the only example I might mention. Grand juries are increasingly returning "no bill" on Trump's malicious prosecutions. Government lawyers are having breakdowns in court. As the administration's own legal woes show, competence matters. The clownish incompetence of Trump's Department of Justice has handed real wins to his enemies, as they have been unable to win in court, even on high-profile political cases.

In other words, the most important obstacle to successful prosecution of Trump criminals is simply the hard, boring work of the legal process. Yet the next Democratic president cannot come into office and expect to have a competent, professional Department of Justice ready to hand. Trump has driven out competent long-service lawyers in favor of his own cronies. Nor can they expect the Supreme Court to bend over backwards to hand them wins.

Thankfully, given the overall class base of the Democratic Party, it will not be difficult for a future Democratic administration to find highly competent, highly motivated legal professionals. These people are by and large champing at the bit to get their hands on Trump criminals.

What matters therefore is that a future administration will be willing to make it happen and replace Trump stooges with new blood. As Trump demonstrated, you can just fire people. You can just hire people. Find a way to get these people into government and working cases, whatever procedural bullshit you need to barrel through.

Ezra Klein remarked that liberals must learn from Elon Musk, tactically at least: we must learn to build organizations that "run through walls."  We must have leaders who will not fail at the slightest roadblock. Throw bodies at the problem. We can do it. We are willing.

Trump's corrupt pardons will not stop us

And now we come to a serious problem: it is highly likely that on his way out the door in 2028, Trump will pardon himself and his family for any and all crimes committed while in office. He may also pardon his friends, cronies, and other high officials. President Biden pardoned his son, Hunter, to protect him from malicious prosecution by Trump; that pardon was a blanket pardon for any and all federal crimes he may have committed between January 1, 2014 and December 1, 2024; it is likely Trump will hand out similar such pardons to protect his courtiers from the consequences of their very real crimes.

The first thing to note is that Trump is probably just going to forget to pardon a lot of people. The scale of the crimes committed under his administration is simply immense. As noted above, these crimes extend well beyond his inner circle of family and courtiers, and involve large swathes of the American elite, as well as rank-and-file ICE agents and, in some cases, military officers. I doubt Trump will have much concern for such "little people."

Second, many states have their own laws against murder and corruption. Presidential pardons cannot affect state law. Critically, a cooperative federal government can enable state prosecutions—by willingly turning over evidence, disclosing records, not stonewalling state prosecutors in court, and in general not obstructing the process of justice.

Lastly, there is the prospect of Constitutional hardball. Under current jurisprudence, pardons are absolute and unconditional. A future Congress, in its authority as co-equal interpreter of the Constitution, might legislate that pardons implicating the President's own crimes are null and void. This would set up an immediate confrontation with the Court. Such a confrontation is necessary, given the Court's own debasement and political interference, but it would be a mistake to rest one's plan of accountability on victory on this specific issue. I mention it therefore only to flag it.

The key thing is that we should not let the prospect of pardons deter us today. Congressional investigations can begin in 2027. We cannot be so afraid of what the other side is going to do to us that we forget to make them afraid of what we will do to them.

There is accountability beyond prosecution

I have thus far discussed prosecution. But prosecution is limited in a number of ways. Not everyone in the Trump administration will have committed gross crimes. Not every one of those crimes can be successfully prosecuted. And many of them may have some form of pardon in hand.

ICE is currently going on a hiring binge. These are men and women who are attracted by the thuggery and the violence. Even before Trump, they were actively obstructing Biden's immigration agenda and pushing for more brutal policy. CBP is little different. Over at the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth has been purging female officers and black officers and generally attempting to remake the American officer corps in his own white Christian nationalist image. Again, one could go on and on.

So what are we to do about the numerous cronies and thugs and buffoons that Trump is spreading through the federal government? The word is lustration. Cleaning house. Accountability that extends beyond the confines of the criminal justice system. As Elon Musk so kindly demonstrated, you can just fire people. Donald Trump opened those floodgates. It is an ugly game, but we must learn to play it. A new Democratic administration should take the opportunity to simply fire unqualified and malicious Trump appointees.

It is sometimes alleged that this must be impossible. "Firing ICE will simply hand MAGA its own paramilitary!"  The debaathification of Iraq is held up as a cautionary tale: the members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party were summarily kicked out of government by Paul Bremmer; they would go on to form a nucleus of well-organized and armed anti-American resistance.

Here's the thing. Historical comparisons are again instructive. After WWII, the victorious Allies committed to a program of stringent denazification. They almost immediately discovered this would be impossible: of a German population of approximately 70 million, perhaps 8 million were members of the Nazi Party—9% of the entire country. There was no functional way to exclude such a large percentage of the population from social participation, especially when it included so much of the civil administration.

So let's talk numbers. As of January 2026, ICE counted perhaps 22,000 agents. There are 342 million Americans. That is a drop in a drop in the bucket. For comparison, there are already 150,000 people in federal prisons alone, plus another million in various forms of state and local detention.

So when we talk about cleaning house in the federal government, we are talking about an entirely manageable scale of personnel.

This does however raise another question. I said at the outset that we are not engaged in purely partisan politics. We do not want to replace red thugs with blue thugs. The point is to reconstruct the government on the basis of new principles, ones that are fair and just for all.

That means combining this housecleaning with genuine civil service reform. A new Pendleton Act must be combined with breaking the "unitary executive theory" and thus also Court reform. This essay is already too long to provide such a proposal in detail. But it must combine the benefits of orderly professionalism provided by independent agencies with the genuine merits of political control and discipline of those agencies. If Democrats are the party of big government, we must also be the party of good government.

This is how we win

It is sometimes alleged that all this business about democracy and the rule of law is just some elite obsession. The American people are mindless hogs who only care about slopulism and tax cuts and the price of eggs.

Yet how did Peter Magyar win in Hungary—against an authoritarian much tougher, much more popular, and much more entrenched than Trump? He explained to the people of Hungary how these two stories are inextricable. Gas is five dollars a gallon because Trump started an illegal war with Iran. Grocery prices are up because Trump is getting rich off tariff corruption. Nothing is getting built because Trump's masked thugs are snatching hardworking immigrants off the streets.

Life is hard because these people are stealing from you. These crooks are taking money out of your pocket. Where'd all that tariff money go?

Returning to a politics of comity and compromise means, first and foremost, prosecutions for the degenerate officials and corrupt oligarchs and brutal thugs who would destroy our Constitutional system. Rebuilding a professional civil service means, first and foremost, rooting out those who are committed to destroying it.

That starts with justice.

Featured image is "Justice and Scale Flag," CC-BY-SA 4.0 St. Louis Attorney's Office 2012.