Trump's 'tin-pot dictator' move guarantees his impeachment: conservative

President Donald Trump's second term has proven tumultuous, but his troubles may have only just begun, according to one conservative commentator.

In a Wednesday essay for the conservative National Review, former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy – who was an assistant U.S. attorney under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush – lamented that Trump's Department of Justice (DOJ) was staking its credibility on pursuing weak investigations against the president's political opponents. McCarthy argued that the Trump DOJ's recent failure to indict six Democratic members of Congress over a video message will likely lead to Trump's eventual third impeachment should Democrats retake at least one chamber of Congress in this fall's midterm elections.

The National Review columnist argued that while he personally viewed the video (which encouraged active-duty troops to remember their duty to disobey illegal orders) as "craven but legally unimpeachable," Trump's crusade nonetheless constituted an act of "bullying."

"More even than capricious tariffs, the president’s signature policy is bullying lawfare — the tin-pot dictator-style exploitation of law-enforcement power to punish political enemies and scapegoats and to settle old scores," he wrote. "And no, the fact that lawfare was practiced against him does not excuse it since lawfare threatens our justice system’s legitimacy, which is vital to a flourishing, free republic."

McCarthy went on to assert "there was no plausible justification for the proposed indictment," citing the 1969 Brandenburg v. Ohio decision that guarantees expressions of speech will not be punished provide they don't incite acts of lawlessness. He noted that this was the same case that led to former President Joe Biden's DOJ to not prosecute Trump for his January 6, 2021 speech at the Ellipse in Washington D.C. that preceded the siege of the U.S. Capitol.

"The president’s disregard for settled constitutional principle is exacerbated by his affront to separation of powers. A president has no business indicting, threatening to indict, or attempting to indict members of Congress who have committed no crimes — over a policy dispute," he wrote. "As congressional Republicans must know — if they have any memory of their prior pose as guardians of our constitutional framework and of the Article I branch’s institutional prerogatives — it is the end of liberty if the executive can paralyze Congress by threatening it with prosecution."

According to McCarthy, the die has been cast, and Trump's failed attempt to indict the six Democrats in the video means an unprecedented third impeachment is all but assured.

"Democrats will respond to the president’s attack on them by impeaching him," he wrote. "The progressive base will accept nothing less, and at this point congressional Democrats will not need convincing."

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