The Many Foes Trump and Co. Have Targeted — and Friends They’ve Rewarded

The Washington Post

12:46 JST, February 13, 2025

There’s a lot of norm-breaking – and according to multiple judges, apparent lawbreaking – going on with the Trump administration right now. And it can be difficult to keep track of everything.

But one of the defining trends of President Donald Trump’s first three weeks back in office is this: His administration is going to extraordinary lengths to help people who happen to be his allies, while going to similarly extraordinary lengths to act against his actual and perceived foes.

The most recent example: Trump on Tuesday fired an inspector general who had just issued a blistering report. That report said the administration’s chaotic effort to curtail the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) had put nearly $500 million of food assistance in jeopardy, among other findings casting Trump’s anti-USAID efforts in a dim light.

Trump has now fired around 20 inspectors general, a group of independent agency watchdogs who often proved a nuisance to him in his first term. And he has apparently violated the law in doing so by failing to give Congress 30 days’ notice of his intent.

It’s normal to try to help allies and reduce the power of your foes, but the lengths to which Trump and Co. are going to do so – including such potentially illegal actions and mixing politics in usually independent Justice Department functions – reinforce a picture of a president exploiting governmental power for personal political benefit.

That pattern is pretty unmistakable.

Let’s recap, starting with examples of potential retribution:

The foes Trump and his administration have targeted

Justice Department officials who investigated Trump: Trump’s Justice Department fired more than a dozen of them after determining they couldn’t “assist in faithfully implementing the president’s agenda.” Acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove has also ordered a list of all agents involved in the Jan. 6 case against Trump, which critics fear could lead to retribution.

The inspectors general: Not only do these firings run afoul of the law requiring 30 days’ notice, but these watchdogs – who report to agency heads but investigate independently of them – have also frequently been thorns in Trump’s side. Similar to how he treated the USAID inspector general who issued an unflattering report, Trump in his first term fired two inspectors general who had investigated members of his Cabinet and one who forwarded a whistleblower complaint that led to Trump’s first impeachment.

John Bolton: Trump stripped his former national security adviser turned frequent critic of his security detail, despite Bolton having been the subject of an alleged Iranian assassination plot.

Mike Pompeo: Trump did the same with his former secretary of state, who has supported Trump but also occasionally criticized him – including a pretty sharp rebuke alleging Trump put troops in danger by withholding classified documents.

Anthony S. Fauci: The infectious-disease expert also lost his security detail, despite years of threats.

Gen. Mark A. Milley and Mark T. Esper: Both the former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman and the former Trump defense secretary, who have repeatedly clashed with Trump, saw their portraits removed from the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also revoked Milley’s security clearance and private detail.

Joe Biden and other prominent critics with security clearances: Trump has moved to revoke the security clearances of numerous other people, including former president Biden, some of his top national security and Justice Department appointees, New York prosecutors who scrutinized Trump, lawyers who criticized him and former national security officials who signed a letter linking the Hunter Biden laptop story to possible Russian disinformation. Biden had also said he would revoke Trump’s security clearance, citing Trump’s “erratic behavior” related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. But Trump’s moves have gone well beyond that, including saying that part of his reasoning was that he didn’t “respect” these people.

The media: Trump’s Defense Department has replaced some mainstream media outlets with mostly pro-Trump ones in prominent media workspaces. Also, the Associated Press said Tuesday that one of its reporters was banned from a White House event because the organization has continued referring to the “Gulf of Mexico,” despite Trump signing an executive order changing it to the “Gulf of America.” (The AP noted that it has a worldwide audience, and the world still uses “Gulf of Mexico.”)

Other media outlets: Separately, Brendan Carr, Trump’s loyalist Federal Communications Commission chairman, has revived a trio of complaints against NBC, ABC and CBS. The move breaks with decades of precedent by diving into potential legal activity over alleged media bias. A Democrat on the FCC called scrutiny of CBS “a retaliatory move” that is “designed to instill fear in broadcast stations and influence a network’s editorial decisions.”

Critics of Elon Musk and DOGE: Edward R. Martin Jr., another Trump loyalist serving as interim U.S. attorney for D.C., recently signaled his office would take action against not just threats to Musk and his U.S. DOGE Service team, but also “anyone who impedes your work” and even those who “acted simply unethically.” Critics say Martin’s extraordinary letters – prosecutors usually don’t talk about such things without bringing charges and are generally focused only on lawbreaking – could create a chilling effect on Musk’s critics.

Other Jan. 6 prosecutors: Martin has ordered a “special project” looking into prosecutors who brought a specific charge against Jan. 6 defendants – obstruction of an official proceeding – that the Supreme Court limited the use of.

The friends they’ve helped

Jan. 6 defendants: Trump gave blanket clemency to all of the more than 1,000 Jan. 6 defendants, including the many who assaulted police and those who were convicted of seditious conspiracy. Many of these defendants, it bears emphasizing, rose up to try to overthrow the 2020 election on Trump’s behalf.

Antiabortion activists: Trump pardoned 23 people who were convicted of illegally blocking access to reproductive health clinics, including those who hounded patients, injured a nurse and in one case crushed someone’s hand.

Eric Adams: The Justice Department recently moved to drop corruption charges against the New York mayor, who is a Democrat but has cozied up to Trump since his indictment last year. Remarkably, the Justice Department cited not the facts of Adams’s case but the need for him to cooperate in Trump’s illegal-immigration crackdown.

Rod Blagojevich: Trump on Monday pardoned the former Democratic Illinois governor and “Celebrity Apprentice” contestant, who has become a Trump ally. In Trump’s first term, he commuted Blagojevich’s corruption sentence.

Trump’s co-defendants: The Justice Department recently dropped charges against Trump’s two co-defendants in his federal classified-documents case. The case against Trump was ended because he returned to the presidency, but the Justice Department could have continued pursuing the other defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira.