Jozef Imrich, name worthy of Kafka, has his finger on the pulse of any irony of interest and shares his findings to keep you in-the-know with the savviest trend setters and infomaniacs.
''I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.''
-Kurt Vonnegut
A number of US lawmakers and officials are being investigated by the justice department
By Ella Lee in Washington
John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, became the first scalp in the US president’s campaign of legal vengeance on Friday, pleading guilty to mishandling classified information.
The president has a long list of critics that he is pursuing during his second term. To exact his retribution, he and his acting attorney-general Todd Blanche have deployed an array of tactics, from criminal investigations to electoral oustings.
He has accused his predecessors Joe Biden and Barack Obama, and Bill and Hillary Clinton, of crimes and has revoked some of their security clearances. Republicans involved in investigating the January 6 2021 Capitol attack, such as former representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, have had their clearances removed as well.
The sweep of the retribution campaign has targeted other critics — among them some of the nation’s top law firms, who have lost government contracts and had their security clearances removed. Trump has also pushed out one-time Maga coalition allies who opposed his policies, or failed to support them robustly enough, by backing their opponents in primaries.
Dozens of others could face charges if the Department of Justice acts on Trump’s claims. Who else is in the crosshairs?
Under indictment
John Bolton
The DoJ in October indicted Bolton, who Trump has described as a “dirty guy”, on a total of 18 counts relating to the handling of sensitive information. A plea deal reduced this to a single count in exchange for a guilty plea. The former national security adviser will also pay a fine, is committed to community service and could face a prison sentence of up to 10 years, though the government agreed to seek a term of no more than five years.
Bolton became an outspoken critic of the president after leaving his first administration in 2019. In a book published in 2020 he accused Trump of using foreign policy as a tool to help him win re-election.
Trump told reporters on Air Force One this month that his former adviser “wanted to go to war with anybody that opened their mouth” and was not a “smart person”.
The guilty verdict is the first — and so far only — victory in the president’s campaign of vengeance against his erstwhile enemies.
James Comey
Trump’s feud with his former FBI director spans nearly a decade. In 2017 the president fired Comey, hinting that it was over his investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
In 2018, Comey published a memoir that described Trump as “untethered to the truth”, while the president has claimed the former FBI head should face charges for “treason” and accused him of being a liar.
The DoJ has twice sought to bring charges against Comey during Trump’s second term. He was charged in April over a social media post of a photo of seashells displaying the message “86 47”, which prosecutors said amounted to a threat on Trump’s life. “‘86’, it’s a mob term for ‘kill him’,” Trump, who is the 47th president, told reporters in the Oval Office.
Comey is expected to enter a plea in September, and his trial could begin the following month if the case is not dismissed.
The other charges against Comey were tied to 2020 congressional testimony but were dismissed after the court ruled that Trump’s handpicked prosecutor had been unlawfully appointed. Comey’s daughter, Maurene, a former New York federal prosecutor, blames her firing last year on her father’s conflict with the president.
Under investigation
The DoJ is probing several Democratic lawmakers and officials who have butted heads with Trump.
Lisa Cook
Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook is under investigation for alleged mortgage fraud, which she denies.
In Trump’s termination letter to Cook, he called her conduct “deceitful and potentially criminal”. Her firing came as Trump pressured the Fed to lower interest rates.
She was accused by housing regulator Bill Pulte, whom Trump has tapped as acting director of national intelligence, of listing properties in both Michigan and Georgia as primary residences to obtain favourable loan terms.
Her case is now before the US Supreme Court, which is expected to rule this summer. Pulte said last month he believes she will be indicted, “no matter what the Supreme Court does”.
Adam Schiff
Adam Schiff, a California US senator, led the first impeachment of Trump by Democrats in the House of Representatives in 2019. “Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff is guilty of crimes against our Country!!!”, the president wrote on Truth Social in December.
Schiff is also under investigation for alleged mortgage fraud, which he denies. Schiff has said the charges amount to an effort to intimidate him, calling the investigation “the kind of stuff you see tinpot dictators do”.
John Brennan
Former CIA director John Brennan has for years faced attacks from Trump, who has called him a “loudmouth, partisan, political hack” and “easily the WORST” director in history.
Brennan has accused Trump of being “drunk on power” and suggested that the US constitution’s 25th Amendment, which lays out how a president can be involuntarily removed from office, was “written with Donald Trump in mind”.
Brennan faces two criminal probes, the first tied to allegations that he lied to Congress. The second is a sprawling “grand conspiracy” investigation into whether officials in the Obama and Biden administrations conspired to keep Trump out of the White House, which the president has long claimed. The investigation was revealed by FBI director Kash Patel in an interview with the podcaster Joe Rogan last summer.
Fani Willis
Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, investigated and indicted Trump on charges of attempting to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. Trump dubbed her “Phoney Fani” and said she was a criminal after the case was thrown out of court due to her undisclosed relationship with a special prosecutor.
She is reportedly under federal investigation over a trip she took to the Bahamas for leadership training. Willis’s office and the federal prosecuting office in Atlanta declined to comment.
Eric Swalwell
California Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell helped lead the second impeachment of Trump over his role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. He also filed a lawsuit against the president over the riot.
Pulte referred mortgage fraud allegations against Swalwell to the DoJ last year. He has denied any wrongdoing and sued over the investigation but later dropped the case.
Swalwell is also under federal investigation for allegations of sexual misconduct, which he has denied. After the allegations were revealed, Trump told the Daily Mail that Swalwell was a “sleazebag” and a “bad guy”, though he denied knowing anything about the charges.
Gavin Newsom
California governor Gavin Newsom says he is the latest name on Trump’s “hit list” as the Department of Justice investigates him and his wife.
Newsom, who Trump frequently refers to as “Newscum”, has become a figure of resistance against the president, trolling him on social media by mirroring his use of all-caps text and AI images.
“They have not found a crime — they are simply trying to find one,” Newsom, a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, wrote on X.
A person familiar with the investigations said several probes have been under way for roughly a year in the Eastern District of California. One is related to Newsom’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, and her tax affairs, while another is related to his former chief of staff and may extend to current staff members.
Failed to prosecute — for now
Jerome Powell
Trump appointed Powell to chair the Fed during his first term but has berated him repeatedly for not cutting interest rates more quickly.
“He is truly one of my worst appointments,” Trump said of Powell last year, adding that he was a “numbskull” he would “love” to fire.
An investigation into Powell’s oversight of a $2.5bn renovation project at the central bank’s headquarters was launched in January by Jeanine Pirro, US attorney for the District of Columbia.
A federal judge stopped the probe after finding “abundant evidence” that it was part of a pressure campaign against the central bank head. Pirro vowed to restart it if new details emerge.
Letitia James
New York attorney-general Letitia James took on Trump’s Manhattan business empire with a sprawling civil lawsuit alleging he had fraudulently inflated his net worth. She obtained a staggering $464mn judgment against him, but a federal appeals court overturned the fine. New York’s top court is reviewing the case.
Trump has called her “racist” and “corrupt” and said her investigation was a “witch-hunt”.
James was initially indicted over mortgage fraud allegations, but the case was thrown out after the prosecutor’s appointment was ruled to be unlawful. Two subsequent prosecutions have failed to reindict her.
Federal prosecutors are still investigating financial transactions tied to both James and her longtime hairdresser.
Minnesota officials
Minnesota’s top officials, including Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, were investigated over whether they obstructed or impeded law enforcement during the Trump administration’s violent crackdown on immigrants in the state earlier this year, when two US citizens were shot by federal agents.
A federal judge this month quashed the DoJ’s subpoenasafter finding their primary purpose was to “coerce” the officials into helping the Trump administration enforce its immigration policies, and to “harass and retaliate” against them when they refused.
The ‘seditious six’
Late last year, as concern grew over the legality of US military strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean, six Democratic lawmakers appeared in a video reminding service members that they could refuse to carry out illegal orders.
Trump described their message as “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” in a post on his Truth Social platform.
Pirro sought charges against the six — who had all served in the military or intelligence services — but a grand jury refused to indict them. The Pentagon separately targeted one of them, Senator Mark Kelly, threatening him with military legal proceedings that could lead to a court-martial or “administrative measures”. It is the subject of an ongoing legal battle.
