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President Donald Trump speaks in the Rose Garden at the White House on Wednesday in Washington.

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In a fusillade of Twitter posts this week, President Donald Trump blasted his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for failing to pursue probes of Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey. It is unclear whether the presidents posts will spur his attorney general and the Justice Department to pursue investigations into either individual. It is increasingly clear, though, that Trump has no compunction about using the machinery of federal law enforcement as a weapon against his political opponents. What he probably doesnt realize is that he is committing a crime by doing so.

There are 120,000 full-time federal law enforcement officers in the United States, all of whom reportat least indirectlyto the president. Meanwhile, thefederal criminal code runs to 868 pages, with many crimes defined vaguely and many rarely enforced. If the president wants to use the vast investigative and prosecutorial infrastructure at his disposal to go after his rivals, its likely that federal law enforcement officers will be able to findsome provision that his opponents have violated. Even if not, the president could make his opponents lives miserable with ceaseless probes and baseless charges.

But the very breadth of federal law enforcement power has, at least since Richard Nixon abused it, given rise to a strong norm of independence from political control. While the president is the nominal head of the executive branch and can order the Justice Department to follow his priorities, he must not use his authority to criminalize political opposition or harass his opponents.

A now mostly forgotten political scandal from George W. Bushs second term shows what can happen when an administration tries to transform the Justice Department into a political weapon. To put that scandal in context: Each of the federal judicial districts has a U.S. attorney who serves as its chief federal prosecutor. The president can fire any one of them at any time. In 2006, Bush dismissed nine, includingmost controversiallythe U.S. attorney in New Mexico, David Iglesias.

Iglesias says he was fired after a number of Republican officials in the state pressured him to bring corruption charges against a prominent Democratic politician in therun-up to the 2006 midterm election. That would potentially violate obstruction of justice laws, which make it a crime for anyone to corruptly influence a grand jury investigation oragency proceeding (among other matters). A subsequent Justice Departmentreport recommended the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate whether Bush administration officials had broken the obstruction laws in the course of the Iglesias firing. The report stated: [W]e believe that pressuring a prosecutor to indict a case more quickly to affect the outcome of an upcoming election could be a corrupt attempt to influence the prosecution in violation of the obstruction of justice statute. The report added that the obstruction laws didnt just apply to the indictment of an opponent prior to an electionthey could apply to pressuring a prosecutor to take partisan considerations into account under other circumstances as well.

A special prosecutor was ultimately appointed to investigate the Iglesias firing and eventually concluded that there was insufficient evidence that any Bush administration official had pressured the New Mexico U.S. attorney. But all along, the Justice Department proceeded on the assumption that administration officials could be charged with obstruction if they had sought to influence Iglesias investigation for partisan purposes. In that case, there was no smoking gun: no tweets in which the president intimated that he would fire the prosecutor unless the prosecutor brought charges against the presidents political rival. (Twitter was only a fewmonths old then, and Bush wasnot a user.)

Is Trump pressuring Sessions to pursue cases on the basis of partisan considerations? Seems like it.

Today, by contrast, the gun smokes in 140-character plumes. In one of his posts, Trump asked why his beleaguered attorney general wasnt looking into Clintons crimes and Russia relations. In others, he complained of Comeys illegal leaks of memos to the New York Times and berates Sessions for taking a VERY WEAK position on leaks and on Clintons alleged mishandling of classified material. In yet another, he blasted Sessions for failing to replace the acting FBI director with someone who will go after Clinton with vigor. On Wednesday, theWashington Post published a piece sourced to four people familiar with the issue indicating that Trump may fire Sessionsa leak that may be aimed at Sessions himself.

Is Trump pressuring his attorney general and the acting FBI chief to pursue cases on the basis of partisan considerationsthe sort of conduct the Justice Department said could amount to criminal obstruction? Seems like it. If Trump follows up by replacing Sessions, the parallels to the Iglesias firing will be even stronger, except that this time there will be ample evidence of the presidents motive.

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To be sure, Trumpas presidenthas a constitutional responsibility to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, and he might argue that this is what motivates his interest in the Clinton and Comey cases. But if a jury could be convinced that Trumps motives are political rather than in the public interest, then his advocacy for action against Clinton and Comey could be considered corrupt, thus amounting to criminal obstruction. That, at least, appears to be the implication of the Justice Department report regarding the Iglesias episode, and it is consistent with the way the obstruction laws have been interpreted in other contexts.

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Certainly Mueller is already collecting all the necessary documentation on this particular crime, right? At this pace, Mueller is going to have to leave some felonies out of his final report just for the sake of brevity. More...

Trumps power over the Justice Department might dissuade prosecutors from pursuing obstruction charges against him. But the Justice Department is staffed with career attorneys committed to the rule of lawand in many cases protected by civil service regulations. It is not so clear that they can be browbeaten by the president. Plus, whether or not Trump can be indicted while still president, he will find himself in legal jeopardy after he leaves office. And then there are his aides and associates; if any of them have assisted Trump in his campaign to pressure the Justice Department, they are complicit in a crime.

The vast reach of federal criminal law and law enforcement leaves us vulnerable to the risk that Trump will use these resources for political ends, as he already seems to have suggested. But Trump is vulnerable to the same forces that he seeks to unleash on his rivals. In an effort to ensnare his opponents, he may be laying his own trap.

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The Obstruction of Justice Case Against Donald Trump - Slate Magazine

Donald Trump and Melania Trump walk off the stage after his rally Tuesday in Youngstown, Ohio.

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On Tuesday, President Donald Trump took a reprieve from the chaos engulfing his administration, traveling to Youngstown, Ohio, to commune with his fans and supporters in a campaign-style Make America Great Again rally. The event was typical Trump fare: exuberant and improvisational, with the occasional feel of a tent revival. And Trump brought his greatest hits, blasting Democrats, the news media, and other opponents for the crowds enjoyment.

The president also addressed immigration, and there his rhetoric took a darker turn. Trump has always described unauthorized immigrants in harsh, disparaging terms. But here he went further, spinning a lurid and explicit tale of extreme violence against innocent people.

Youve seen the stories about some of these animals, said the president.

Its easy to file this under Trumps usual anti-immigrant demagoguery, specifically his preoccupation with crime committed by Hispanic immigrants. Recall his presidential announcement speech, where he assailed the Mexican government for sending criminals and rapists to the United States, as well as his (and Attorney General Jeff Sessions) recent fixation on MS-13, a gang with origins in Central America. In a June rally in Iowa, the president stated that they like to cut people, and on Thursday, he mentioned them in a tweet: Big progress being made in ridding our country of MS-13 gang members and gang members in general. MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN!

Despite the connection to those earlier statements, the Youngstown riff was different. It was especially detailed and graphic. And while the racial content of this kind of rhetoric has always been clearthe immigrants are always nonwhite, the victims are typically whitethis was unusually explicit. Trump wasnt just connecting immigrants with violent crime. He was using an outright racist trope: that of the violent, sadistic black or brown criminal, preying on innocent (usually white) women. Even considering his 1989 jeremiad against the Central Park Fivewhere he demanded the death penalty for the five black and Latino teenagers wrongly convicted of raping a white womanthe Youngstown rhetoric was sensational and excessive.

What it wasnt, however, was unique. Rhetorically, Trumps Youngstown speech recalls the openly racist language found in the early 20th century among white reporters, pamphleteers, and politicians who expressed the prejudices of the era. In Southern newspapers, for example, writers described the alleged crimes of black offenders with gruesome and sensational detail, usually to justify lynchings and other forms of extrajudicial violence. A miserable negro beast attacked a telephone girl as she was going home at night, and choked her, reads a 1903 report from a newspaper in Greenville, Mississippi. The writer of a 1914 pamphlet titled The Black Shadow and the Red Death spun terrible tales of black crime, including one where cocaine and whiskey led a half-drunken negro beast to kill a little school girl with a pretty head.

Politically, what President Trump was doing in Ohio has a clear antecedent in the racial demagoguery common in the Jim Crow South. Rather than campaign on what they would do for voters, Southern politicians fanned flames of race hatred. This nigger baitinglabeled as such by observers at the timewas how they built emotional connections with their audiences and tarred their (often equally racist) opponents as unacceptable proponents of racial equality. You people who want social equality vote for Jones. You men who have nigger children vote for Jones, declared South Carolina Gov. Coleman Livingston Blease in his 1912 re-election campaign against state Supreme Court Justice Ira Jones, blasting his opponent as a supporter of rights for black Americans.

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Lawmakers like James Vardaman in Mississippi and Cotton Ed Smith of South Carolina earned national notoriety for their vicious advocacy of white supremacy on the campaign trail. This style of politics did not end as the 20th century progressed; in 1958, Alabama Attorney General James Patterson ran for governor and wonbeating a fresh-faced George Wallaceas a staunch opponent of civil rights, backed by the states Ku Klux Klan. In two re-election races, one in 1984 and the other in 1990, North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms ran race-baiting campaigns. Against thenGov. Jim Hunt, he distributed literature warning of black registration drives and black political figures such as Jesse Jackson. And against Harvey Gantt, the black mayor of Charlotte, Helms ran one of the most breathtakingly racist ads of the modern era.

Trump isnt yet running for re-election, but he is in dire political straits. According to FiveThirtyEights aggregate measure of his popularity, just 38.5 percent of Americans approve of his presidency, compared with 55 percent who disapprove. Hes caught in a feud with his attorney general, theres in-fighting among his senior staff, and hes facing backlash from within the armed services on account of a cynical attempt to stoke anti-transgender bias for political gain. Its possible, perhaps even likely, that the presidents riff in Youngstown was just another digression, a rant that emerged from the stew of resentments and prejudices that seem to form Trumps psyche.

But the additional timing of his statement on transgender service members suggests otherwise. On Friday Trump will visit Long Island, where 15 members of MS-13 were arresteda trip that would fit a political plan to demagogue Hispanic immigrants as imminent threats to white Americans, and white women in particular. Trump is aware that hes flailing, and to rebuild supportto re-establish that bond with his votershes turning to an old, crude, and dangerous rhetorical well.

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Make America Afraid Again - Slate Magazine

PresidentDonald Trumpmade clear his dissatisfaction with Sen.Lisa Murkowski(R-Alaska)Wednesday,whenhe tweetedthat she let down her party and the nation by voting againstRepublicans attempts to repealObamacare.

But apparently Trumps public disapproval is not the only way the administration plans to make his anger known.

TheAlaska Dispatch Newsreported Wednesday night that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke called Murkowski and fellow Alaskan Sen. Dan Sullivan (R) after Tuesdays health care vote to let them knowher positionhad put some of their state-specific projects in jeopardy particularly those pertaining to energy.

Sullivan told the outlet that Zinkes phone call carried a troubling message, and the interior secretary made it clear to him that the call was in response to Murkowski voting no on the motion to proceed on Tuesday.

She was only one of two Republicans, along with Sen.Susan Collins(Maine), to break from party lines on the vote.

While Murkowski did not respond to Alaska Dispatch News requests for comment regarding the phone call, the senator seemed unfazed by the presidents attempts at publicly shaming her.

Were here to govern. Were here to legislate,Murkowski told MSNBCafter Trump sent his tweet. Were here to represent the people who sent us here. Every day shouldnt be about campaigning.

Murkowski does not face reelection until 2022.

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Donald Trump Is Reportedly Seeking Revenge On Alaska Over Health Care Vote - HuffPost

Shortly after winning the presidential election in November, then President-elect Donald Trump vowed to not take the $400,000 salary he was set to earn as the United States' commander-in-chief.

"No, Im not gonna take the salary. Im not taking it," he told CBS's Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes .

In April, Trump donated his first-quarter salary of $78,333.32 to the National Park Service to fund the agency's battlefield preservation efforts, a program that is currently $229 million behind in deferred costs.

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And on Wednesday he gave his second-quarter pay worth $100,000 to the Education Department to help fund a STEM-focused camp for students, according to a department press release .

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said the "generous gift" showed the president's "commitment to our nations students and to reforming education in America so that every child, no matter their ZIP code, has access to a high-quality education."

Trump's budget proposal, meanwhile, seeks to cut the Education Department's budget by 13% . It proposes slashing the budget of the Interior Departmentwhich houses the National Park Serviceby 12% .

DeVos said the beneficiary of Trump's donationthe camp focused on science, technology, engineering, and mathis part of the department's effort to encourage students to explore the fields. She referenced a STEM summer reading event for young girls that she and Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter and adviser, attended on Tuesday, saying the participants "got to explore, create and experiment in a collaborative environment."

"Todays and tomorrows economy requires engaged students, boys and girls, are prepared for STEM careers," DeVos said in a statement.

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Donald Trump Just Donated $100000 of His Salary to Betsy DeVos' Education Department - Fortune

Mr. Sessionss recusal was necessary, of course, because of his role as one of Mr. Trumps earliest and staunchest supporters, and his own undisclosed contacts with Russian officials facts that make it impossible for him to maintain the neutrality and independence essential to any credible inquiry. Mr. Trump, who appears to understand little and care even less about the importance of these limitations, thinks Mr. Sessionss job is to protect him by impeding those investigations. In other words, he expects the attorney general to obstruct justice on his behalf.

Mr. Trump is startlingly blunt about this, calling Mr. Sessionss recusal unfair to the president, as though he is owed a personal loyalty that supersedes the rule of law. The irony is that Mr. Sessions has been the most loyal of Mr. Trumps supporters, arguably more invested in implementing the Trump agenda than the president himself.

This page is no fan of Mr. Sessions, whose dark vision of America includes a hard-line stance on illegal immigration, a return to the war on drugs and other discredited tough-on-crime policies, and a government newly empowered to seize cash and other property from ordinary citizens without due process. But just as Mr. Sessions was right to recuse himself, he is right to stand his ground now, effectively daring Mr. Trump to fire him.

This demeaning cat-and-mouse game may be shocking to some of the presidents most blinkered advocates, but it only illustrates what any cleareyed observer has been able to see all along, which is that Mr. Trump cares more about protecting himself, his business and his family than anything else. To him, the rule of law, the principle on which America was built, is at best an abstraction. More often it is an obstacle to be evaded.

For that reason, Mr. Trump may in the end follow the advice of the conservative commentator Ann Coulter, who urged him to be a man and fire Mr. Sessions. Presumably that would be the first step toward getting rid of Robert Mueller, the special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation. Then Mr. Trump, and the rest of us, might at last learn whether his party will impose any limits on his desecration of the presidency.

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A version of this editorial appears in print on July 27, 2017, on Page A26 of the New York edition with the headline: Mr. Trumps Assault on Jeff Sessions.

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Donald Trump's Assault on Jeff Sessions - New York Times