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Government by Payback Squad

The Trump White House has weaponized all the arms of federal law enforcement to intimidate its political enemies and critics, undermining the rule of law and democracy.

Payback master: FBI Director Kash Patel in testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee this week

On the morning of May 6, the FBI raided the office, and a clutch of businesses, belonging to an 82-year-old Virginia state lawmaker named L. Louise Lucas, the Democratic president pro tem of the Virginia Senate. FBI officials didn’t disclose any court documents or charges to back up the raids; they haven’t yet even indicated that Lucas was a principal target in this shadowy investigation.

They didn’t really have to. While some MAGA apologists have suggested vaguely that the probe into Lucas’s affairs dated back to the Biden administration, one calendar date is clearly far more relevant: The raids came just two weeks after Virginia voters approved the redistricting referendum that Lucas had spearheaded—one that would have given Democrats four additional House districts in the recursive gerrymandering war launched by the Republican Party. Like other high-profile efforts from federal law enforcement to go after critics of the Trump model of authoritarian rule, the Lucas action was a show of force, intended to intimidate and frighten MAGA detractors everywhere; any legal rationale was strictly an afterthought—or perhaps more accurately, a half-afterthought.

This mobilization of federal agents as enforcers of political orthodoxy is obviously yet one more indication of the country’s broader slide into autocracy—yet it hasn’t commanded sustained public attention, thanks to the very flimsiness of all these failed indictments and prosecutions. So many of these meritless operations have been tossed out of court or abandoned that they merge quietly into the burgeoning file of rank Trumpian incompetence, alongside fiascos like the president’s “Liberation Day” tariffs crusade or his vibes-driven war on Iran. That’s dangerous, since these politically driven harassment campaigns are clearly accelerating—and represent a crisis for the continued rule of law amid broader conditions of democratic decline.

This is the essential context for making sense of the reports surfacing this week that the FBI, under the direction of uber Trump loyalist Kash Patel, has launched a “payback squad” dedicated to turning the tables on anyone, like former special prosecutor Jack Smith, involved in investigating Trump during his first term or under President Biden. This chilling authoritarian persecution is likely just getting started—and won’t be much deterred by the potential Democratic takeover of Congress after this November’s midterms. (That indeed was why Patel, who’s otherwise been fighting to save his job amid reports that he’s been drinking extensively on the job, was smugly belligerent in his testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee this Tuesday.)

Patel’s payback squad just distills the broader logic behind the GOP’s inquisitorial treatment of Democratic officials, former government employees critical of Trump, and journalists whom the right dislikes. Since Trump took office for a second term in January 2025, there have been precisely zero federal investigations and prosecutions of Republican lawmakers, GOP-aligned nonprofits or conservative media personalities. Instead, the president has gone out of his way to pardon convicted Republicans and Republican-allied malefactors, like Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao and former Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada, who had been convicted of money laundering and fraud. (The FBI did raid the home of former Trump national security adviser John Bolton, and sought to indict erstwhile FBI director James Comey but that was only after they had become bitter critics of the president.) The only Democrats he has set free are people like Texas Representative Henry Cuellar, who had been indicted on charges of bribery and money-laundering by the DOJ under Merrick Garland. Trump then blew up at Cuellar, a conservative Democrat, for not switching parties. “Such a lack of LOYALTY,” bellyached the president........

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