Trump Is Expanding His Dangerous Cult of Impunity
In his inaugural address last month, President Donald Trump claimed that the federal government “fails to protect our magnificent, law-abiding American citizens but provides sanctuary and protection for dangerous criminals.” Most observers took that as an attack against the outgoing Biden administration. It could also be read as a mission statement for the new Trump administration.
The latest such beneficiary is Andrew Tate, a former kickboxer and professional misogynist. That is not a pejorative or emotive term; it is a self-admitted description of his worldview. “You can’t slander me because I will state right now that I am absolutely sexist and I’m absolutely a misogynist, and I have fuck-you money, and you can’t take that away,” he famously bragged in a podcast in 2020.
Tate is an emblematic figure of the “manosphere,” a loose network of anti-feminist social media figures. He and his allies attract disaffected young men to their movement by amplifying their sexual and social insecurities and then teaching them to blame their perceived shortcomings on women, feminists, and “elites.” Tate’s support for violence against women, as well as his disturbing views on rape and sexual assault, has raised alarms on both sides of the Atlantic. British schools have even mounted special campaigns to counter his popularity among their youth.
In addition to preaching misogynistic views, Tate has faced multiple criminal investigations for allegedly acting on them. In Romania, where he and his brother Tristan resided, prosecutors charged the two men with rape and human trafficking in 2022. British prosecutors obtained an arrest warrant for them last year in connection with similar allegations in that country 10 years ago. They have lived under house arrest for most of this decade while they await prosecution and/or extradition.
Despite their legal issues, or perhaps because of them, Tate is a popular figure in far-right circles. The Financial Times reported last week that the Trump administration, through special envoy Ric Grennell, had pressured the Romanian government to release the two brothers from house arrest. Grennell later denied that he had done so, though he said he supported Tate. So did Trump, who insistently claimed to know nothing about them. The Romanian government denied that U.S. pressure had played a role in the two brothers’ sudden flight from the country last week.
Nonetheless, the Tate brothers landed in Florida in a private jet on Thursday. Their arrival is the perfect symbol of the Trump administration’s approach to crime and justice. The defining question in federal criminal cases right now isn’t whether a defendant is guilty or not guilty. It’s not even whether they’re poor or rich. (Though it always helps to be the latter.) It’s whether you are friends with President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.
Trump began his presidency with a sweeping pardon of all participants in the January 6 insurrection in 2021. He claimed that the pardons would end “a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years” and would help begin “a process of national reconciliation.” The recipients received pardons for their convictions on “offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
Trump and his allies have sought to cast the hundreds of Americans charged with attacking the Capitol as “political prisoners” and otherwise law-abiding citizens. Their records suggest otherwise. One pardon recipient from Tennessee has since received a 10-year prison sentence for drunk driving, which led to the death of a passenger in another car. Another recipient from Indiana was shot and killed by a local police officer while he was resisting arrest just one week after Trump took office.
Trump appointees in the Justice Department have also interpreted Trump’s pardon as broadly as possible to include almost any other criminal offenses that came to light during the January 6 investigation. To that end, the department has intervened in favor of a Florida man who was convicted for possessing stolen Army grenades and classified information, a Kentucky man who pleaded guilty to owning a stash of illegal firearms, and a host of other defendants who were convicted of crimes not directly related to the insurrection because of their participation in it.
Other people in Trump’s orbit have also received increasingly favorable treatment since he took office. Justin Sun, a cryptocurrency entrepreneur, faced civil charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission for his role in allegedly defrauding investors in a crypto market that he owned in 2023. Sun also happened to be the largest buyer of Trump tokens from World Liberty Financial, which recently launched a memecoin in the president’s name and on his behalf. The SEC told a federal judge in New York last week that it wanted to put the case on hold for 60 days, a common first step before settling or dismissing charges.
This approach crosses traditional party lines. Federal prosecutors charged Eric Adams, the Democratic mayor of New York City, with multiple fraud and corruption-related offenses last year. After Trump’s victory last November, Adams courted Trump at Mar-a-Lago and offered his help with immigration enforcement and mass deportations. Finally, earlier this month, Trump appointees at the Justice Department ordered federal prosecutors in Manhattan to dismiss the charges without prejudice, temporarily relieving Adams of his legal troubles but leaving them intact in case he doesn’t comply. Multiple prosecutors resigned in protest over the apparent quid pro quo.
Other public figures ensnared in public corruption probes have sought to curry Trump’s favor as well. Bob Menendez, a former U.S. senator from New Jersey, was sentenced to 11 years in prison last month for his role in a foreign bribery scheme. Though Menendez was a longtime Democrat, he sang a different tune after sentencing and complained that the Biden Justice Department had targeted him. “President Trump was right,” he claimed. “This process is political, and it’s corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores the integrity to the system.”
That prosecutorial power can be used as a sword as well as a shield. Shortly after taking office, Trump appointed Ed Martin, a lawyer who was on Capitol Hill with rioters on January 6, as the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Martin has spent the last five weeks purging the federal prosecutor’s office of Trump’s perceived enemies and mounting a highly publicized effort to dissuade critics of Trump and South African billionaire Elon Musk, who wields vague but significant influence in the administration.
At a House hearing on the so-called Department of Government Efficiency earlier this month, for example, California Representative Robert Garcia sharply criticized Musk’s actions and urged his fellow lawmakers to push back against them. “What the American public wants is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight,” he said, according to The Washington Post. “This is an actual fight for democracy.” Martin, in turn, sent a letter to Garcia claiming that those metaphorical remarks “sounds to some like a threat to Mr. Musk” and urging him to “clarify” his comments. It would be hard to take Martin’s letter as anything but an attempt to intimidate Democratic lawmakers.
The overall message of these actions is clear: The law, such as it is, exists only at the pleasure of the sitting president. He can kill investigations into his friends or order them against his foes. He can pardon violent criminals and welcome accused sex traffickers into the country as long as they’re his allies. He can effectively commandeer the elected government of the nation’s largest city by holding a potential federal prosecution over the mayor’s head. All of this has occurred in just the first five weeks of the second Trump administration. January 20, 2029, is 203 more weeks away.