We’ve Seen this “Movie” Before
Spoiler Alert- It Doesn’t End Well for American Democracy
Steps One and Two for Subverting Democracy
There are four steps, according to political scientists Levitsky and Ziblatt, to subverting democracy.[1] The first is the words used by autocrats that want to take power. Words they use to describe their political opposition. Provocative, harsh words, words of derision. Step one has been underway by Donald Trump and his MAGAites for some time now.
The second step is to “capture the referees”. Using a soccer game as an analogy, Levitsky and Ziblatt describe the demagogue’s next move in subverting democracy is to “…capture the referees, sideline at least some of the other side’s star players, and rewrite the rules of the game to lock in their advantage, in effect tilting the playing field against their opponents.”[2] Who are these “referees”? They include the judiciary, law enforcement, regulatory agencies, as well as intelligence and tax departments. These are supposed to be “neutral arbiters”, but once the demagogue has “captured” them, they become or are infiltrated with the demagogue’s loyalists.
These neutral arbiters become “powerful weapons” to selectively enforce laws and regulations for the demagogue’s friends and allies, while punishing his critics and opponents. Law enforcement is turned so that it targets the demagogue’s opposition and critics, while judges that do not “cooperate” are targeted and pursued for impeachment.[3]
“Capturing the referees” is a process that was begun and refined during the course of the Trump presidency. It is something that will be done much more systemically if Trump gets a second term. Taking control of the judiciary and law enforcement can be done much more effectively with a “fixer”, someone on the inside of these key government agencies. Trump has made extensive use of “fixers”.
“Fixer Number One”
Much has been made recently about the former Trump fixer, Michael Cohen, who testified for the government in the trial resulting in the recent conviction of former president Donald Trump of 34 felony counts related to election interference via hush money payment and falsification of business records to cover it up.
But in many ways, Cohen doesn’t come close to the caliber of the “fixer” who replaced him once Trump became president. This person had a high skill level for the role he was going to fill for Trump. He knew exactly how to “capture the referees”. That honor was bestowed on the person who eventually came to the position of Attorney General AG) of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)- William Barr.
Capturing the Referees: Enter the Real “Fixer”
It took a while for Barr to come on the scene. Trump’s first AG appointee, Jeff Sessions, first had to be fired by Trump. That happened when questions arose regarding Sessions involvement with Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. Sessions had recused himself “…after Democrats accused him of failing to disclose contacts with the Russian ambassador during his Senate confirmation hearing.”[4] Following Sessions’ recusal, an independent counsel was appointed by Session’s Deputy and what became known as the Mueller Investigation was launched.[5] From the Mueller Investigation, it emerged that Trump’s attorney Cohen was identified as the person who had made the questionable hush money payments (a possible campaign contribution violation) not only to Stormy Daniels, but also to former Playboy model Karen McDougal.[6]
As far as why he fired Sessions, the BBC reported, “…Mr. Trump told the New York Times: "Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else." Trump was making clear what he expected out of his Attorney General (AG) and Sessions did not deliver. Barr would not disappoint, at least not until the end of Trump’s presidency. One of the few things Barr did not go along with Trump on while AG was whether there was fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Barr found none. Except for that, Barr met Trump’s expectations as AG as we will see.
The Pressure Begins
By the time Barr started serving as AG, the DC office (Main Justice) of the DOJ on his predecessor Sessions’ watch had already begun to apply pressure on the DOJ’s Southern District of New York (SDNY). This office had decided to take over the Cohen case from the Mueller Russian election interference probe. This pressure had to do with Cohen’s formal accusation. Main Justice was trying hard to get any reference in the indictment to Trump removed. In the indictment it discusses Cohen working with an “Individual 1” acting in concert with Cohen regarding these payments to buy silence Daniel’s prior to the 2016 election. Already the SDNY had greatly reduced the indictment’s length to try to please Main Justice, but it was clear to everyone at SDNY and Main Justice that Individual 1 was Trump.[7]
When Barr began as AG for the Trump administration in February 2019, Cohen had already pled guilty and been sentenced. Even so, according to the person running the SDNY office, Geoffrey Berman, Barr right away not only, “…tried to kill the ongoing investigations but- incredibly- suggested that Cohen’s conviction on campaign finance charges be reversed.” [8] For Berman, this began a two-and-a-half-year battle with Barr and some of Barr’s subordinates at Main Justice. It was a battle comprised of Main Justice’s regular intrusion into, as well as attempting to influence investigations and decisions of SDNY, into alleged crimes by those Trump and his circle deemed was in their political interests to protect. It’s all laid out plainly in Berman’s book about Barr’s interference and obstruction efforts titled Holding the Line.[9]
This begins to answer a question that seems to have gotten “lost in the shuffle” of all the media coverage of Trump’s election interference hush money trial and conviction. Did it ever seem odd to anyone that the case against Cohen was brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and not by DOJ’s SDNY office? The answer now is pretty clear. Once Cohen was indicted and convicted, no further pursuit of the matter was done by the DOJ during AG Barr’s watch.
But, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had other ideas about that.
Barr’s Politization of the DOJ
Almost from the outset of his presidency, Donald Trump and his fixers politicized the Department of Justice and the FBI. Using the term “politicizing” in ways removes the clarity of what this term really means. Levitsky’s and Ziblatt’s terminology of “capturing the referees” describes it more clearly. As they point out, government agencies, most especially the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI, are intended to be “neutral arbiters”, a part of the government driven not by politics, vengeance upon enemies, vendettas, or favors, but by the rule of law and justice. [10] As CNN’s Marshall Cohen recounts, Trump “…repeatedly crossed lines and violated norms that have been in place since Watergate to create independence between the White House and federal law enforcement…”[11] Rick Pildes, a former CNN legal analyst now teaching at New York University emphasizes the importance of this independence saying,
“It’s extremely important for the integrity of American democracy that the president cannot manipulate law enforcement for partisan, political, self-interested preferences…Trump has constantly agitated to eliminate the boundaries between a President and the DOJ, which was incredibly disturbing.”[12] (emphasis mine)
During Trump’s four years as president, numerous examples of this misuse of the DOJ and FBI exist. He publicly urged the FBI to investigate those he perceived as opponents including several Democratic lawmakers. He also did this to some prosecutors and FBI officials who participated in the Russia investigation. Trump wanted President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, investigated, as well as the author “anonymous” of the infamous 2018 New York Times op-ed piece that was critical of him. He fired then FBI Director James Comey when Comey refused his request to stop investigating Trump’s fired, convicted, and disgraced former National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn. As Cohen recounts, “A clear pattern emerged where Trump leaned on law enforcement to protect him and his allies, and to harass his critics…” University of Washington law professor and constitutional law specialist Lisa Manheim commented, “By politicizing (the Justice Department) now, and frankly by engaging in a lot of conduct that appears to be illegal, President Trump undermined the ability of the department to proceed in a clear way going forward.”[13]
But, this misuse of the DOJ would not have been nearly as effective for Trump without his fixer.
Barr’s Obstruction of the Mueller Investigation of “Russiagate”
Trump’s firing of his FBI Director for not calling off the Flynn investigation led to what is known as the Mueller Investigation. This three-year investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential campaign via the Trump campaign is another example of Trump’s “capturing the referees” with great success. During the course of the investigation, Trump lashed out repeatedly at special counsel Robert Mueller, pointing to DOJ rules against indicting a sitting president. Mueller’s Report never cleared Trump’s name, yet Trump repeatedly lied saying the Mueller Investigation report exonerated him. That’s because Bill Barr stepped in to help his boss.
Trump’s new Attorney General and fixer William Barr issued a “summary letter” of the Mueller Report. Barr’s letter was issued before the Mueller Report was even released to the public, as it was in the process of being reviewed for possible redactions (for national security reasons) prior to its public release. Attorney General Barr, a “captured referee” running interference for Trump, created an obfuscation by making it appear in his “summary” of the Mueller Report that Trump had been cleared of any malfeasance. Trump seized on this announcing to the world that he had been “exonerated”, which was hardly the truth. The Mueller Report did not say that at all, which became clear once it was publicly released. As said in the fact sheet published by the American Constitution Society comparing the Mueller Report to Barr’s summary letter that preceded the release of the Mueller Report:
“The actual text of the Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report tells a very different story than what was in summaries produced by Attorney General William Barr in letters to Congress and in a press conference prior to the report’s release. A comparison of the report to Barr’s statements shows that Barr downplayed Mueller findings about Russian contacts with Trump campaign associates as well as the damning evidence of the president’s obstruction of justice that Mueller assembled…”[14] (emphasis mine)
Barr, the Ideal Partner for Trump
Trump’s Attorney General William Barr has been, from the perspective of strongman historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, “an ideal partner for Trump” (serving as a “captured referee” that Ziblatt and Levitsky term it). According to her, “…Barr has covered up Trump’s illegalities and enabled schemes meant to help the president’s autocratic allies and harm his enemies. As examples of this behavior, Ben Ghiat says Barr:
“…mischaracterized the results of the Mueller investigation to the public and helped Turkish bank Halkbank avoid indictment for participation in a multibillion-dollar effort to evade Iranian sanctions after Erdogan pressured Trump- typical work for the head of “justice” in a personalist state.”[15]
While the experts CNN used to review Trump’s involvement with the Mueller investigation had a mixture of views about it, Michael Zeldin, who is a former CNN legal analyst and previously had worked for Mueller at the DOJ, said he believed “…there were one or two incidents that were strong and prosecutable obstruction crimes, including when Trump ordered his White House counsel to write a memo falsely stating that Trump never ordered him to fire Mueller…” Zeldin, goes on to say, “In my view, that is a clear act of obstruction. The sole intention was to interfere with the investigation. There is no other explanation for this.”[16] Trump’s controlling the “referees”, in this case the Attorney General as well as the processes and procedures of the DOJ, allowed Trump himself to escape any accountability for Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, which he continues to this day to call a “hoax”.
Obstruction Continued Until the End of the Trump Administration
Trump’s politization of the DOJ continued in the weeks after his November 3, 2020, presidential election loss until almost the very end of his presidency. He used this time to attempt to stay in office. In January 2021, a story broke in the New York Times [17] that shows how close Trump came to capturing the “referees” to the point where he might have been able to change the outcome of his election loss to Joe Biden. The New York Times describes the time-period when this almost happened as starting in December 2020 with the resignation of Attorney General William Barr (who knew there was no election fraud) through the time that Deputy AG Jeffrey Rosen served as the Acting Attorney General in January 2021. Despite Trump’s continued push for the DOJ to intervene on his behalf in the courts regarding the unproven election fraud that Trump insisted (without proof) was rampant, Rosen resisted. Another DOJ lawyer named Jeffrey Clarke, through a Pennsylvania congressman, made contact with Trump indicating to Trump that he was willing for the DOJ to pursue the election fraud that Trump seemed certain existed, and help him reverse the results so Trump could win the election. Ready to do just that, Trump was preparing to fire Rosen and appoint Clarke as Acting Attorney General. However, when the other senior DOJ staff heard of Rosen’s possible firing, they all threatened to resign. Trump backed down and instead, decided to pursue insurrection to remain in power.
The Trump Presidency- a “Dress Rehearsal”
So yes indeed, we have seen this “movie” before. Its practical name is “Obstruction of Justice and the Destruction of the Rule of Law”. The 2016-2020 Trump presidency was simply a “dress rehearsal” for this movie’s “premier” in 2025, if Trump et al has their way. Simply put, the Trump/MAGA authoritarian machine is not done, if given a second term. This time they will institutionalize fixers throughout the DOJ. Their Heritage Foundation funded game plan, Project 2025 in its 579 pages, details exactly how this will be done, and more. Though the document is voluminous, buried in it on Page 559 is a sentence that gets to the heart of what a second Trump presidency intends for democracy’s rule of law:
“Ensure the assignment of sufficient political appointees throughout the department.”[18]
There it is, clearly stated. The rule of law, the foundation to any democracy, will be gutted. Fixers will be placed throughout the DOJ in the form of political appointees (rather than career civil servants) who will be pull the levers of justice to fit the president’s agenda. They will be directing the harassment, prosecution, persecution, and imprisonment on behalf of the president and his minions of their designated political “enemies” (i.e., anyone they don’t like or feel “did them wrong” during Trump’s presidency). For the rulers (i.e., a second Trump presidency), they in turn will have unfettered power. The president’s power will be absolute. Democracy will die. Trump has made it clear that, if elected, he intends to pursue this outcome for his presidency.
An Updated Version of “Birth of a Nation”?
Amazing isn’t it, how fixers and other captured referees can so easily and quickly destroy a democratic government that is over 200 years old? It is far easier than Americans seem to realize. The time to realize it, and to act, is now.
Hopefully, we will not see a reprise (speaking analogically) of D. W. Griffith’s 1915 movie Birth of a Nation.[19] Hopefully, we will not see a new “movie” that characterizes the values Griffith’s movie embodies- racism, violence, hate, evil, and autocracy. Hopefully, we will realize that Trump and his MAGAites are peddling the same propaganda that Griffith’s film did, only in a 2024 version. Hopefully, we will show this November that Americans’ collective moral compass and wisdom is far more integral that the Trump/MAGA machine. Hopefully…
[1] How Democracies Die, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Copyright 2019, pg. 179, Ibid
[2] How Democracies Die, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Copyright 2019, pg. 78, Ibid
[3] How Democracies Die, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Copyright 2019, pg. 78, Ibid
[4] Trump fires Attorney General Jeff Sessions (bbc.com)
[5] Trump fires Attorney General Jeff Sessions (bbc.com)
[6] Holding the Line, Inside the Nation’s Preeminent US Attorney General’s office and its Battle with the Trump Justice Department, by Geoffrey Berman, former US Attorney, SDNY, pg. 18, Penguin Press, 2022, penguinrandomhouse.com
[7] Holding the Line, by Geoffrey Berman, former US Attorney, SDNY, pp 26-27, Ibid.
[8] Holding the Line, by Geoffrey Berman, former US Attorney, SDNY, pp 30-33, Ibid.
[9] Holding the Line, Inside the Nation’s Preeminent US Attorney General’s office and its Battle with the Trump Justice Department, by Geoffrey Berman, former US Attorney, SDNY, pp 1-311.
[10] How Democracies Die, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Copyright 2019, pp 78-81, Ibid
[11] “Chronicling Trump’s 10 Worst Abuses of Power”, by Marshall Cohen, CNN, January 24, 2021, Updated 7:55AM ET, Ibid
[12] “Chronicling Trump’s 10 Worst Abuses of Power”, by Marshall Cohen, CNN, January 24, 2021, Updated 7:55AM ET, Ibid
[13] “Chronicling Trump’s 10 Worst Abuses of Power”, by Marshall Cohen, CNN, January 24, 2021, Updated 7:55AM ET, Ibid
[14] “Stark Contrasts Between the Mueller Report and Attorney General Barr’s Summary, American Constitution Society, https://www.acslaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/PIEP-Fact-Sheet-Mueller-Report.pdf
[15] Strongmen, How they Succeed, How they Fail, by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, pg. 163, Copyright 2020, Ibid
[16] “Chronicling Trump’s 10 Worst Abuses of Power”, by Marshall Cohen, CNN, January 24, 2021, Updated 7:55AM ET, Ibid
[17] “Trump and Justice Department Lawyer Said to Have Attorney General to Try to Advance Election Claims”, by Kate Benner, The New York Times, January 22, 2021, at 8:05 PM, https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-nyt-trump-justice-department-election-20210123-35ghnfsorra55pjnrec5dzu27a-story.html
[18] 2025_MandateForLeadership_CHAPTER-17.pdf (project2025.org)