Subject: Re: Bolton Indicted
Trump isn't doing a single that that's never been done before.

You've never had a President publicly call for the prosecution of their political enemies, by name.

You might have a conspiratorial bent in thinking that this happened all the time, but every other prior AG has had some degree of political independence conferred on them by the fact that the President would be punished politically if they asked the AG to pursue an unfounded prosecution solely for political reasons, and the AG declined. There's a reason why this DOJ is acting differently than Bill Barr's DOJ - because Trump has obliterated the presumption that AG's should have some exercise their own authority in making prosecutorial determinations.

Keeping the prosecutorial function separate from the primary political office of the Executive is a core element of a "rule of law", small-l liberal society. There is a reason why nearly all states have their AG be a separate office, rather than be under the direct control of the Governor's office. it might be every state - I'm too lazy to check. Yes, the Governor and AG will talk to each other. But it's an important protection that the Prosecutor have the ability to push back against the Executive. Even though the AG is also a political office, by having the Prosecutorial and Executive powers in two different people, they face different political incentives - which reduces the degree to which the Prosecutorial power is subordinated to ordinary politics.

The U.S. government isn't formally set up that way, but some measure of that structure was informally created by the expected norm that the President had to let the AG have some independence or there would be political hell to pay. Not total independence, and certainly the President and AG talk - just like Governors and AG's talk. But you never had a situation where the AG would be completely subordinate to the President with no expectation that they would be allowed to exercise their independent judgment in prosecutorial decisions. Trump has abolished that norm.

It's different, Dope. On some level, I think you realize that this is bad. That it's bad for the President to be calling out names for prosecutions on their social media feed, and then having those people prosecuted at his direction. That's not how rule of law states work.

The SA was murdering people at least as early as 1931.

Yes, but Hitler was seizing power through legal and democratic means as early as the mid-1920's. He didn't just jump in on day 1 and start disappearing people - and he didn't completely abolish the guardrails around the government's exercise of power until March of 1933. So it's not really a strong argument to claim that because the U.S. isn't today like Germany under the Enabling Act, it must mean Trump can't possibly be a fascist. Because Hitler was a fascist long before he got the powers of the Enabling Act.