Trump’s Acts of Retribution Aim at the Future as Well as the Past

In his first week in office, President Trump made clear that his promises to exact revenge on his perceived enemies were not empty campaign pledges — and that his retribution is intended not just to impose punishment for the past but also to intimidate anyone who might cross him in the future.

By removing security protections from former officials facing credible death threats, he signaled that he was willing to impose potentially profound consequences on anyone he sees as having been insufficiently loyal. That included his former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who helped lead the pandemic response.

Mr. Trump’s decision to try to scale back civil service protections was aimed at culling federal employees he believes slowed or blocked his first-term agenda and replacing them with loyalists. That initiative, developed in Mr. Trump’s first term but never fully enacted, is intended to create a chilling effect so that career employees know they could be fired if they are not compliant, one senior aide said.

By ordering the Justice Department and intelligence agencies to begin scouring their ranks in a hunt for political bias, he started a process of dismissing or sidelining officials deemed to have participated in investigations he has sought to cast as “witch hunts” against him.

His decision to grant clemency to even the most violent Jan. 6 rioters and those convicted on sedition charges for plotting an assault on democracy freed top leaders of far-right groups. Shortly after being released, two of the most prominent of those leaders asserted, unrepentantly, that they wanted Mr. Trump to seek revenge on their behalf.

A week into Mr. Trump’s second presidency, it is difficult to assess what practical effect the flurry of actions will have on what he sees as a hostile establishment. For example, an executive order announcing investigations into the Justice Department and intelligence agencies to “ensure accountability for the previous administration’s weaponization of the federal government” is vague about what investigators are supposed to examine, and about what the “remedial actions” the order calls for might look like.

But taken together, the moves send a clear signal that Mr. Trump feels unconstrained about punishing the disloyal, that he is potentially willing to go further against his enemies than he had pledged on the campaign trail and that there will be a price for any opposition to come.

In a statement, Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, said Mr. Trump was keeping promises he made on the campaign trail. “As he has said consistently, the best retribution is the success of all Americans, and based on the historic actions he has taken in less than one week, the country is back on track,” Mr. Cheung said.

Mr. Trump’s steps included ordering government officials to report on efforts by their colleagues to promote diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

But perhaps the most blunt message came when the president stripped security details from several former officials who have faced death threats. It was a surprise move, one Mr. Trump had not indicated on the campaign trail he was considering.

Dr. Fauci, whose advice and policies during the pandemic led to his being seen as a villain by many of the president’s supporters, lost his security protection. So did John R. Bolton, the national security adviser during part of Mr. Trump’s first term, and Mr. Pompeo, the former secretary of state. Both Mr. Bolton and Mr. Pompeo have been the targets of assassination plots by Iran for their involvement in counseling Mr. Trump as he decided to kill Iran’s top security and intelligence commander in 2020. Like other American national security officials who had been involved in similarly sensitive decisions, they were provided security based on intelligence community threat assessments.

But last week, Mr. Trump said they were not guaranteed security once leaving government, and that they had all made enough money to pay for private security. He said he would feel no responsibility if they were to be harmed by adversaries.

Mr. Trump’s decision left officials like Mr. Bolton looking to find and fund their own protection.

“I think this is Trump’s style, beyond any question, and it’s what he really wants to do,” Mr. Bolton said in an interview on Sunday. “Despite all the talk about looking forward, what he really wants to do is look back. But I’m not so sure that path is smooth.”

The security details decision was especially unsettling to some Republicans because at least two of the officials who had their security withdrawn — Mr. Pompeo and Brian Hook, who had been a special envoy working on Iran policy — had done nothing to clearly oppose Mr. Trump. Mr. Pompeo was slow to endorse him and gave some mild criticisms after the news broke in 2022 that Mr. Trump had held on to classified documents after leaving office. But Mr. Hook had committed no obvious offenses; he had even volunteered his time to help on Mr. Trump’s transition team.

Republican lawmakers close to both men were left trying to find out what had happened. That has become a common phenomenon, as people seeking jobs in the second Trump administration navigate a maze of loyalty demands, trying to discern what the political statute of limitations is for any whiff of disloyalty, and why it applies in some circumstances and not others.

Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both Republicans, went public on Sunday about their discomfort about Mr. Trump’s decision on the security details, a rare instance of public pushback from within the party about the president’s penchant for revenge.

Mike Pence, vice president during Mr. Trump’s first term, whose own life was threatened by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021, said he was “disappointed and concerned” about the decision to cancel the security details of Mr. Bolton, Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Hook.

During a meeting with reporters on Friday at the Washington offices of his nonprofit organization, Mr. Pence said he would not discuss classified information, but that it was clear from public reports that the threats from Iran were real, ongoing, and that the security was required to protect the lives of the former officials.

President Joseph R. Biden Jr. tried to offer some protection by granting pre-emptive pardons to some people, including his relatives, who might be targeted by Mr. Trump and his allies.

But Mr. Trump mused to the Fox News host Sean Hannity last week that Mr. Biden may have erred in not granting himself a pardon.

“The funny thing, maybe the sad thing, is he didn’t give himself a pardon,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Hannity, before claiming — based on no evidence — that Mr. Biden profited from his family members’ work before he became president.

Targets of Mr. Trump’s ire often found themselves facing investigations or other government actions during his first term. But it was only in the year before his defeat in 2020 that he began to develop a more systematic approach to purging the government of those he saw as foes and restocking it with loyalists — a playbook that he is executing now.

One critical moment came in November 2019. Mr. Trump was sitting in the dining room adjoining the Oval Office, watching on television a procession of officials testifying in his first impeachment trial.

Mr. Trump erupted, according to people who were in the dining room. He wanted to know who these officials were who were providing damaging testimony against him.

He had long been focused on the notion of a “deep state,” a group of Trump haters or “snakes,” as he called them, hiding inside the federal bureaucracy and thwarting him and his agenda. On that day five years ago, he saw what in his mind was a parade of officials betraying him by testifying about what they had seen, heard or been briefed about concerning his efforts to pressure the President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine into investigating Mr. Biden.

After the Senate acquitted him on those impeachment charges, Mr. Trump was grim as his aides cheered. “Never should have happened,” he said, adding an expletive, furious about what he had gone through. He immediately set about enforcing payback. He brought a former personal aide, John McEntee, then 29, back into government and gave him the assignment of ridding the federal bureaucracy of “snakes.”

Mr. McEntee did so with gusto, firing people suspected of disloyalty and redesigning a government hiring questionnaire to more effectively vet candidates for their loyalty to Mr. Trump.

Mr. McEntee’s broader efforts were stymied by the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, which ground the changes Mr. Trump wanted to a halt. Still, Mr. McEntee started developing loyalty test questionnaires and changed the White House liaisons to crucial Cabinet agencies like the Justice Department — precursors of the approach Mr. Trump and his team are taking at the outset of his second administration.

Mr. McEntee’s role is now being played by Sergio Gor, another Trump loyalist who is the new director of presidential personnel and effectively the point man for enforcing loyalty.

At the time, Mr. McEntee was something of an outlier among Mr. Trump’s aides, as there were few who shared his goal of having a government run by rigorously tested loyalists. But now those working directly for Mr. Trump are committed to the idea.

Many, like him, were swept up in the investigations into his actions as president and after he left office, receiving subpoenas or even indictments of their own. And like him, many believe their accusers should pay a price.