Donald J. Trump and his lawless lieutenants are scared about what’s coming. They should be.
Less than two weeks ago, the richest man in the world issued a threat to the U.S. Congress. Responding to reports that Democrats plan to investigate him if they win the House, Elon Musk posted a warning: “Live by the sword, die by the sword. Those who pick fights with me should understand that I will find out who is really pulling the strings and come for them.”
Even for Musk, it was menacing… and stupidly reckless. “Die by the sword”? That’s going to be his message for the people who are readying probes into his business dealings and alleged misconduct inside the Trump administration?
Well, the people he’s trying to scare don’t show signs of being spooked. Democrats told the Washington Post they’re eager to get started. One of them, Rep. James Walkinshaw, responded to Musk directly: “No swords or strings, @elonmusk. I’d just like you to explain to Congress and the American people why DOGE failed so miserably and why you then lied about the savings.”
Threats won’t stop this train.
And tomorrow, the American people will go to the voting booths, and most major forecasts show they’re likely to deliver a stinging rebuke. Democrats are projected to retake the U.S. House — with Decision Desk HQ putting the odds at 84 percent and CNN’s final model at 92 percent. If they do, all the House gavels for all of the oversight committees will change hands on January 3rd. That’s the day the age of accountability begins.
To be fair, we’ve heard variations of this phrase in the past and watched them fizzle. During and after Trump’s first term, the threads of accountability were left dangling. The Mueller report was buried by Trump’s own attorney general… then the January 6th inquiry… moved at a snail’s pace… special prosecutor Jack Smith built two cases that never reached trial as the defendant himself returned to the White House — and the cases were dismissed. Trump thought the lesson was that he could outlast the investigations and win.
This time it will be very different. He’s got nowhere left to run and neither do his deputies. The anger of the populace is transcending party lines, and the push for accountability will barrel forward no matter what stunts he tries to pull.
The textbook case of a president trying to shut down investigations into his own conduct was in 1973. That year, Richard Nixon ordered the firing of the Watergate special prosecutor, and his attorney general and deputy attorney general resigned rather than carry it out. The executive branch’s investigative machinery was (for a moment) turned off. It didn’t matter. The Senate’s Watergate Committee plowed forward with hearings, the House Judiciary Committee opened impeachment proceedings, and within ten months, Nixon was gone.
Trump has done something similar but on a scale Nixon wouldn’t have dared. Our current president didn’t fire one prosecutor. His Justice Department fired scores of prosecutors who worked on cases against him or in corners of DOJ that could open probes into his misconduct, while FBI agents have been systematically purged from the bureau, including the ones who investigate corrupt public officials. All the while, he’s indicted his opponents, opened investigations into his critics (myself included), jailed reporters, branded political foes as terrorists, and tried to do just about anything he can think of to scare those who’d shine a light on his misconduct.
He’s even preemptively gone after the people he knows might investigate him again from Capitol Hill. By CNN’s count, at least thirteen members of Congress (every one of them a Democrat) have landed under criminal scrutiny on an absurd array of claims. He’s tried to investigate and even imprison Sens. Mark Kelly, Elissa Slotkin, Adam Schiff and Ruben Gallego, and Reps. Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, Chrissy Houlahan, Robert Garcia, Eugene Vindman, Ilhan Omar and LaMonica McIver... all because he evidently fears that they’ll be the ones to come after him when they retake the majority.
It’s about to backfire in spectacular, karmic fashion. As noted earlier, Democrats in Congress are brushing off the intimidation and preparing to staff up their committees for years of investigations into Trump administration corruption.
Meanwhile, some of the prosecutors and agents Trump pushed out are coming together to probe him from the outside. Last week on MSNOW, one of them named Mark Blumberg (a nearly thirty-year veteran of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division) announced the Rule of Law Project, a group of former federal prosecutors and investigators who are building prosecution-ready cases on Trump corruption and abuses of power that the current DOJ has been designed to overlook. Their plan is to hand those cases to state attorneys general, to local district attorneys, to Congress, and to a future Justice Department that will actually do its job.
(We’ll be featuring them on DEFIANCE Daily this week. Stay tuned.)
This is where Nixon is, once again, an insufficient historical analogy. Trump will face a system that’s ready to come for him and his inner circle in ways we’ve never seen. There’s a U.S. House with subpoena power... fifty state legal systems... hundreds of county prosecutors... and a shadow Justice Department staffed by the very people he thought he’d successfully shut up by pushing them out of their jobs. He can’t close these doors or use presidential “immunity” to make them go away.
When Elon Musk tweeted “live by the sword, die by the sword,” he obviously intended it as a threat. But he should’ve written it as self-fulfilling prophecy. He and the rest of Trump’s henchmen have spent two years swinging at everyone who questioned them. They’ll soon see the sword is changing hands.
We’re not intimidated. We never were. And starting January 3rd, our defiance will be the opening rallying cry of a new age. The age of accountability.
Your friend, in defiance,
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