McQuade: I think so. In 2016, we saw people who stayed through the administration, who continued to work at the Justice Department after decades of being career prosecutors … And in the moment of truth, on January 3, 2020, when Donald Trump wanted to install, as the attorney general, Jeffrey Clark, who was willing to do his bidding—and he had drafted a letter allegedly to the state of Georgia to be used as a proof of concept to try to pressure state legislatures to change the outcome of their election—we saw a number of Justice Department officials, even Trump appointees, threatened to resign. All of the component heads at the Department of Justice, the assistant attorneys general for all the various divisions there, White House counsel threatened to resign, and Trump backed down because of that.
Imagine, in a future administration where he’s not worried about criminal prosecution, he’s not worried about another reelection, and he has learned to put in the key positions people who are loyalists, I think that people will follow through on their threats to resign. And what does that leave? It leaves left people who are willing to go along with these illegal orders. I do worry about who might be left. And if you would say, Hey, I’m going to pardon you, just go ahead and do these things, file these charges, file these indictments. Don’t worry, I’ve got you. I’m going to pardon you for any consequence you might face. And I will reward you for doing my bidding, I would hope that the people who are at the Justice Department now and who have taken their oath to uphold the Constitution would not follow through on those things. But if he hires people who are among his loyalists right now, and that’s how he rewards them, then I worry about how twisted our Department of Justice could become.
Sargent: And it’s good to see that Kamala Harris is now making a very strong case about that likelihood. Let’s flip to the alternate scenario. Isn’t Trump being a bit premature in declaring that Smith is losing or has lost all the cases against him? If Trump doesn’t win the election, which is possible, then he’s very likely to be convicted of crimes after that. Can you walk us through that alternative scenario? What happens if Trump loses? What does the calendar look like? How does it all unfold?
