Is it True that Trump is Politicizing our Independent Institutions?

by John D. O’Connor

The following is an article originally published on Biz Pac Review. Read it HERE.

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To the annoyance of many, including some supporters, President Trump incessantly seeks political advantage from his various firings, investigations, enforcements, fines, lawsuits, and impoundments.  By roughly, crudely, often humorously, but always insensitively, comparing his actions to Joe Biden’s and excoriating the Democrats or “fake news,” Trump leaves himself vulnerable to the somewhat amorphous charge of politicizing our most independent, non-partisan, and professional institutions.

Law enforcement, national security, and financial agencies, in theory at least, should be only tangentially affected by partisan politics.  While a new Administration may enunciate different emphases and priorities, it should ideally be, nonetheless, free of partisan politics. So, it is not surprising, and indeed, facially compelling, that Trump is “endangering Democracy,” in the sense of heavy-handed politicization of these agencies and institutions.

However, if we apply just a wee bit of critical thinking, we should at least consider whether Trump, like a bull in a china shop, is in fact reforming a corruptly politicized china shop.

Let’s take former National Security Advisor John Bolton, fired by Trump, who thereafter wrote a critical book.  Trump’s DOJ is now investigating Bolton for misuse of classified documents after Biden’s DOJ dismissed the same investigation, and a judge allowed Bolton to publish his book in spite of Trump’s 2020 objections.  Why isn’t this revisitation simply politicized retribution?

In fact, Bolton’s book, “Inside the Room Where It Happened,” is politicized retribution against the man who fired him, utilizing leaked classified information to settle a personal score and make money to boot.  While a Court allowed the book to be published, that decision was only rendered because the cat was already out of the bag, with 200,000 copies hurriedly printed and many already distributed.

The Court firmly advised Bolton that he was “gambling with national security of the United States” and risked prosecution.  Biden dropped the investigation because, of course, Bolton was hurting Biden’s political enemy, Donald Trump.

Clearly, Bolton and Biden had politicized both national security and law enforcement, two critical democratic functions, against Trump, who is following the rule of law, regardless of how distasteful the Queens native may be to those who leak information.

Now, to Lisa Cook, fired by Trump from the Federal Reserve Bank Board of Governors, for allegations of mortgage fraud.  Because Ms. Cook is black, her termination is being seen as punishment for being a Biden supporter and a DEI hire; thus, her firing is a political retribution by Trump.

But Cook was, in the first instance, a politicized hire as a Democratic bureaucrat working on the Obama Presidential Transition Team. Her professional interest has not been monetary, but the removal of what she deems to be racial disparities.  For instance, she campaigned against and widely maligned a University of Chicago professor who dared to criticize the jejune Defund-the-Police movement.

Cook’s benefactor, Rep.  James Clyburn, and Maxine Waters politicized the Fed by exhorting Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to support the wildly irresponsible COVID spending package, while not tightening money to deter inflation.  They also pushed Powell to pursue “diversity and inclusion,” which Waters and Clyburn equated with “maximum employment.”  It supposedly helped racial minorities when Powell was pushed by them to claim obvious inflation as “transitory.”  His political reward? Biden’s appointment of him to a second term.  The ultimate result?  Punishing persistent inflation that hurts minorities the most.

So, as Trump strives to rid the Fed of Cook, not only totally unqualified, but prone to ignorant politicization, he is attempting to restore a qualified, non-partisan Board of Governors.

Now, let’s look at Trump’s lawsuits against television networks, with CBS being the most prominent.  The country grants broadcasting licenses to networks like CBS and affords them First Amendment immunity from all but maliciously false or misleading broadcasts.  While CBS and other legacy media claim to “tell it like it is,” we all know differently.  These networks have done a poor job of veiling their political bias and lack of integrity.  CBS could not stand to give the nation an objective, unfettered view of Kamala Harris, even in a softball interview. Instead, it deceptively edited it, thus politicizing an essential function of the press.

But far worse was four years of protecting Joe Biden, a clearly impaired leader of our great country.  When the chips were down in the 2020 election, and Lara Trump very politely analyzed Biden’s speech patterns as suggesting dementia, Jake Tapper of CNN did not merely debate her or discuss her opinion, but, rather, as if from a position of inside knowledge, excoriated her.  Then, he profited four years later with his book, Original Sin, about, gosh, missing the hidden story of Biden’s mental failing.   When Tapper appeared on CBS Evening News in 2025 to promote his book, he and the show’s host, John Dickerson, sat with somber affect discussing how their two networks were positively shocked by Biden’s performance at the June 27, 2024, presidential debate, and only then were made aware of Biden’s cognitive decline; that the Biden family had hidden his dementia from the press, which required the press to “heroically” investigate it.  Oh, please, enough.

So, when Trump calls CBS “fake news,” isn’t he seeking depoliticization of what should be unbiased news?

Recommend for watching are James Comey’s various testimonies and the network coverage of them, starting in March 2017 and going through April 2018, when he published his book, A Higher Loyalty.  As Comey continued to support the validity and credibility of the Steele Dossier, he touted that it was consistent with other information the FBI had about Russian collusion.

But Comey knew from the summer of 2016 that the entire Russiagate story was a hoax created by the Clinton campaign to take attention off the leak of damaging DNC documents showing that Hillary, along with the DNC, had cheated contender Bernie Sanders out of the Democratic nomination in 2016.

In fact, in July 2016, John Brennan reported to President Obama and James Comey that the Russian collusion story was a construct of the Clinton campaign.  Meanwhile, the three leaders of the intelligence community – James Comey, John Brennan, and James Clapper – all collaborated on the problematic 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (“ICA”), which DNI Tulsi Gabbard, with strong evidence, claims contained intelligence either manufactured or manipulated by the Obama Administration to undermine Trump’s legitimacy.

So, a fair analysis of Trump’s current program is that he is seeking accountability for politicized governmental corruption, even if he seeks political credit for it.  In short, Trump is the new sheriff in town, taking down the bad guys who have been terrorizing the honest but intimidated and deceived citizens of our country.  So, call him crude, as you may wish, but also call him right.

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John D. O’Connor is a former federal prosecutor and the San Francisco attorney who represented W. Mark Felt during his revelation as Deep Throat in 2005. O’Connor is the author of the books Postgate: How the Washington Post Betrayed Deep Throat, Covered Up Watergate and Began Today’s Partisan Advocacy Journalism, and The Mysteries of Watergate: What Really Happened.