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Just eight days into Donald Trump’s first term, the legal expert Benjamin Wittes coined a phrase that would come to describe many of the president’s actions: “malevolence tempered by incompetence.” Wittes’ idea was that Trump’s inattention to detail and ignorance of how government works often undermine his malign aims. More than nine years later, the phrase still applies—this time to Trump’s efforts to use the power of the federal government to punish his political enemies. A president determined to weaponize his office is, obviously, a dangerous perversion of how American presidents should behave. Yet two new investigations reveal both the malevolence and the incompetence of this president’s ongoing revenge tour.

The first effort reflects one of Trump’s main preoccupations: his 2020 election defeat. After Trump claimed fraud and egged on the crowd that sacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, some of his own officials turned against him. One of them was Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump’s then–chief of staff, who testified to a House committee investigating the attack that Trump wanted magnetometers near the White House removed to let potentially armed rioters join the crowd. On Thursday, we learned that Trump’s Justice Department is reportedly trying to convince a grand jury in D.C. to charge Hutchinson with a crime or crimes, which could include lying to Congress.

It’s not yet clear what prosecutors think Hutchinson lied about, but threatening a former subordinate with jail time in an attempt to rewrite the history of your coup attempt is as nefarious as it gets. And while it’s certainly possible........

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