The White House in Washington, D.C. at night. July 9, 2018. – Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM

President Trump, of course through Twitter, criticized the recommendations of career prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C., that Roger Stone be sentenced to six to nine years in prison, a sentence well within the federal sentencing guidelines. While Attorney General Barr has denied any direct order from the president, it is, to say the least, quite a coincidence that he replaced the recommendation with a more lenient one and was promptly thanked on Twitter by the president just after three career prosecutors withdrew from the case and a fourth resigned from the Justice Department altogether. When Attorney General Barr complained about the tweets, the president denied any interference, but then expressed (again by Twitter) his right to interfere in any prosecution.

The president has been widely criticized for interfering with the independence of the Justice Department. That "independence," however, has long sat on a slim reed. The department is not legally independent of presidential control, and the president is the elected head of the Executive Branch with the constitutional power and duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. No one seriously disputes that a president can generally fire his political appointees at will, with some statutory limitations, such as an FBI director's 10-year term and career civil servants who have extensive legal protections.

Until this administration, executive authority over the department, has, with few exceptions, been exercised with judgment and forbearance. To be sure, enforcement policy changes with administrations and parties, as it should. Elections are about something, and one of those things is what laws the government focuses its limited resources on. We can expect the work of the department's Civil Rights, Antitrust, and Environment/Natural Resources Divisions to change between Republican and Democratic administrations, not to mention the Solicitor General's posture on issues that come before the Supreme Court. But the practice has been to avoid political intervention in the work of the Criminal Division, in order to protect the department's well-earned reputation for integrity and impartiality in enforcing the often harsh provisions of the criminal law. As we know, any hint of political meddling can undermine public faith in the legitimacy of an investigation.

Donald Trump doesn't care about any of that. A man who sees no boundaries between his person and his office, or between his own desires and the public interest, he openly demands that the Department of Justice be lenient to his friends and pursue the people whom he considers his personal enemies. Not only does he want his old mentor, crony and admirer Roger Stone left unpunished. He rages repeatedly that DOJ does not find a way to prosecute his hate-objects like Hilary Clinton, former FBI Director Comey and Assistant Director McCabe, Congressmen Schiff and Nadler, and most recently Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman for some imagined federal crime – in reality for lésé majesté. Attorney General Barr has not, thus far, been willing or able to do the outright unlawful, but he is the president's willing servant as far as he thinks the law allows. As far as Barr appears to be concerned, the problem with the president's appetite for publicly parading his power is that it makes it harder for the department to do his will discreetly.

President Trump's intervention in criminal cases that concern him personally is a gross abuse of authority. It goes far beyond the kind of comments President Obama made about investigations of potential IRS corruption or David Petraeus's misuse of classified documents. These did not affect the department's ultimate actions – Petraeus pleaded guilty – because the Attorney General and DOJ staff knew that they were no more than passing remarks. Even President Nixon kept his celebrated enemies list a secret. None of that for this president. He wants the world to know that the law enforcement power of the federal government is no more than an extension of his will or his whim, to be used or withheld for whatever personal reasons of friendship or vengeance he sees fit. It is as much an abuse of authority and discretion granted by the Constitution as if he were to pardon his cronies and supporters for corrupt reasons.

In sum, the problem is not institutional but personal. It is not that the office of the presidency has the authority to direct the enforcement of federal law by the executive branch. That is essential to establish some degree of democratic control over the workings of the permanent government so that we are not governed by mandarins. Instead, the problem is that this president believes and openly proclaims that the enforcement of federal law is simply the exercise of his own ego for his own gratification. He is aided by anxious subordinates trying to anticipate his wishes without waiting for orders. Perhaps the Founders believed that impeachment would be a remedy for such a dictatorial outlook, but we have just seen what that remedy is worth.

Editorial Board member Anne Singer recused from this editorial