How Close Are We to the Tipping Point?

A Thought Experiment with Todd Blanche and Emil Bove

Last week, Todd Blanche, Trump’s lead defense attorney in his New York criminal trial, was confirmed and sworn in as Deputy Attorney General, the second-ranking official in the Department of Justice. Emil Bove, who has served as acting Deputy Attorney General (and Trump’s chief henchman and enforcer) for the last month, has now become the Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General (“PADAG”), another position of wide-ranging authority in the Department.

The installation of these two men suggests a thought experiment aimed at understanding our proximity to authoritarian rule.

Arguably, the closest the country came to losing democratic rule in the aftermath of the 2020 election was Trump’s attempt to use the Department of Justice to sow doubt and chaos that he could then capitalize on to change the results. The events of January 6 were certainly more convulsive, but at that point, the procedures for the transfer of power were underway, and Trump’s loss was fixed in the country’s mind. The violence and glaring illegitimacy of Trump’s last stand would have left him very hard-pressed to seize and maintain power.

The DOJ episode, by contrast, took place behind closed doors and was designed to take us three-quarters of the way to an authoritarian overthrow before the country knew what was happening. As Trump put it in a call to top DOJ officials, “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”

So here is the thought experiment: What if the two top officials remaining at the Department of Justice—the ones who had served as Deputy Attorney General and PADAG during the first Trump Administration—had been not Jeff Rosen and Richard Donoghue, but Todd Blanche and Emil Bove?

To recap the events in broad strokes, Trump’s central ally at the Department in 2020 was Jeff Clark, an Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division. Congressman Scott Perry (one of many people involved in the attempted insurrection who will likely escape all reckoning) had introduced Clark to Trump as a man ready to do his bidding, including bending the facts and law.

At the time, Trump was leveling all sorts of false charges of election fraud in various swing states, including Georgia. He needed his Department of Justice to give an official imprimatur to his false claims. On December 27, he made his “just leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen” comment in a phone call to a stunned Donoghue and Rosen.

The next day, Clark received a draft letter from a colleague addressed to Georgia officials. It falsely claimed that the Department had significant concerns about the election results in Georgia and other states. It suggested that the state legislature convene a special session to reconsider certifying Joe Biden's victory and instead consider appointing an alternate slate of electors for Trump.

Clark immediately took the letter to Donoghue and Rosen, who refused to sign it.

It was the same basic stratagem—trying to get the states to appoint alternate electors—that Trump pursued from this point forward through January 6. It was the core of his infamous one-hour conversation with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on January 2 (which, unbeknownst to Trump, Raffensperger taped), in which he browbeat Georgia officials and said, “All I need is 11,780 votes.”

On January 3, Clark, who had established back-channel communication with Trump personally, told Rosen that Trump intended to appoint Clark as the new acting Attorney General; he offered to decline the appointment if Rosen would sign the letter to Georgia. Clark’s offer, and his unauthorized direct communications with the President, were wildly improper. They provoked an emergency that led in short order to an Oval Office showdown involving Trump, Donoghue, Rosen, and Clark.

At that meeting, Rosen told Trump that executing this plan would lead to mass resignations at the Department, starting with Rosen and Donoghue but including scores of senior DOJ officials. That would have made the Saturday Night Massacre look like a minor personnel matter. Only then did Trump back down from his DOJ-centered plan, though he continued to pursue the basic strategy of getting the states to adopt alternate electors to the end.

Rosen and Donoghue were solid conservatives with impeccable credentials for service in a Republican administration. But they also understood their oaths, which were to the Constitution, not Donald Trump. And they stood up for the Constitution, and against Trump, at a critical time under immense pressure from their tyrant boss. They are patriots and heroes in the finest traditions of the Justice Department, alongside Elliot Richardson and William Ruckelshaus, who resigned rather than execute Richard Nixon’s orders to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox—and yes, Danielle Sassoon and Hagan Scotten, who resigned last month rather than execute Emil Bove’s orders to dismiss a righteous case against New York Mayor Eric Adams.

Transpose Rosen and Donoghue for Blanche and Bove, who occupy the exact same positions in the Department today. Is there any doubt that the two of them would sign off on the letter and the plan to deceive Georgia immediately and with enthusiasm?

Play it out: the letter goes out on intimidating DOJ stationery with the acting AG’s signature to Georgia, where Trump’s confederates are prepared to take the handoff. Honest officials like Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger protest that there was no fraud in the election. But Trump’s accomplices respond: Who are we to contradict the United States Department of Justice, which says they have found fraud? Let’s just convene a special session so we can try to be sure… where is the harm to democracy in that?

The very plausible upshot in this scenario is that the fate of Georgia’s 16 electoral votes is taken out of the hands of the voters and put into a political scrum of self-interested state legislators, who vote them for Trump.

Now lather, rinse, repeat in the other states. After all, the DOJ has found significant cause for concern in all of them, and Georgia has followed through. And if all of these anti-constitutional events result in a popular uprising, as Clark put it, that’s what the Insurrection Act is for.

Critically, each aspect of this criminal scheme occurs under the color of the law. The core fact undermining every step is that there is no basis to challenge the results—it’s all anchored in a lie. But it’s not at all clear that the insanity of it all gives the courts or other actors the ability to step in and restore the righteous outcome. The legal process would have run its course, and a pro-democracy decision would have required reversing the facts on the ground.

Notice that this nightmare scenario depends on the installation of Trump loyalists not only at the top of federal agencies but in the all-important number two positions, where deputies of parallel rank with Blanche call the day-to-day shots (and typically become acting heads at the end of the administration).

In the first weeks of Trump 2.0, a lot of focus has been paid to the confirmation of a series of inappropriate cabinet officials, such as Gabbard, Kennedy, and Hegseth. But Trump has also been very careful to install sycophants at the deputy level. In recent days, arch-loyalists have assumed the number two positions in many of the most critical agencies, including major donor Stephen Feinberg at Defense and former aide Michael Ellis at the CIA. It’s part of Trump’s and Project 2025’s careful plan to avoid what they see as the mistakes of Trump 1.0.

Perhaps the most telling example is at the FBI. Traditionally, FBI upper leadership has consisted of former agents with significant field experience. For that reason, agents were understandably alarmed by Kash Patel’s total lack of experience as an FBI agent. An agent advocacy group demanded that Patel’s Deputy be an experienced agent, and Patel agreed. Then the White House overrode that promise and installed Dan Bongino—a conservative agitator, serial conspiracy theorist, and a man who has called the Bureau “irredeemably corrupt.”

Trump’s careful placement of loyal toadies across the executive branch deputy positions greatly increases his prospects to impose his corrupt will. Of equal importance, he has systematically purged the government of grown-ups who would oppose his authoritarian ambitions, including figures like Rosen and other first-term appointees like White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.

And by the way, whatever happened to Jeff Clark as a result of his efforts to help Trump steal the election?

He became Co-Conspirator #4 in the January 6 federal indictment against Trump, but after the Supreme Court ruled that Trump had immunity for virtually any dealings with the DOJ, Clark was dropped from the superseding indictment.

The January 6 Committee subpoenaed him, and he appeared before the Committee but declined to answer a series of questions based on dubious privilege claims. The Committee voted to recommend contempt charges, but the full House never voted on them. Clark then appeared again before the Committee, where he invoked the Fifth Amendment over 100 times.

Clark was also indicted in the Fulton County RICO case based on his post-election conduct. That case has now been mothballed and is unlikely to ever go to trial.
And last year, the D.C. Bar disciplinary committee recommended that Clark’s law license be suspended for two years. That recommendation is pending.

Last month, Clark rejoined the Trump Administration as the acting Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He is back and ready to serve.

Talk to you later.