TRUMP IS USING THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT AS HIS PERSONAL SPA

Donald Trump hasn't been having particularly good luck in court in recent days. There's this, for instance:

A federal grand jury in D.C. rejected an attempt by the Justice Department to indict former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson for the account she gave lawmakers of President Donald Trump’s actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol....

In a brief court appearance Tuesday afternoon, Neville S. Hedley, who introduced himself as the acting senior litigation counsel at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, told U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui that the grand jury had not concurred on the proposed indictment. Hedley did not specify the defendant, but the people familiar said he was referring to Hutchinson.

And this:

A federal judge on Tuesday expressed skepticism about the Trump administration’s effort to force California to set aside some 20,000 mail ballots that the federal government claimed were sent to noncitizens.

After listening to arguments for several hours in a packed Los Angeles courtroom, the judge, David O. Carter of U.S. District Court for the Central District of California ... suggested that he was unconvinced by the Justice Department’s argument that urgent action was necessary to halt illegal voting ahead of next week’s election. California counties have until Dec. 3 to certify elections, he noted, giving the government enough time to examine ballots and determine if any were cast illegally.

Also:

A federal judge Tuesday dismissed a new charge against a pair of former FBI officials accused of lying to Congress, finding the Justice Department took novel — and improper — steps to announce the allegation.

Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui said at a hearing that prosecutors created “their own category of charging” with the new complaint they tried to bring against Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, who were initially charged last week with making false statements to Congress about their level of knowledge about an investigation of Hunter Biden’s laptop....

Flores and Benavides have been targets of withering criticism from allies of President Donald Trump. Both were involved with election security issues around the 2020 contest, which Trump falsely claims was rigged. After they were arrested last week, Trump said, “I heard they were bad people.”

Trump loses in court on a regular basis. Yet his attorney general, Todd Blanche, just keeps throwing cases against the wall, especially as Election Day approaches.

In recent days Mr. Blanche and his team have announced, unsealed or initiated a succession of headline-grabbing actions certain to placate Mr. Trump’s demand for results, many targeting his longtime adversaries or promoting contested claims of election fraud....

On Monday, a federal judge in Washington unsealed new charges against James B. Comey, the third criminal case brought against the former F.B.I. director Mr. Trump openly reviles.

Also, we've had

intensification of an immigration investigation into Representative Ilhan Omar, a sharp critic of the White House; [and] the indictment of L. Louise Lucas, a Virginia state lawmaker, accused of overseeing a criminal conspiracy to sell marijuana....

All of this is why I disagree with something Jamelle Bouie says about Trump's feelings regarding the law:

Donald Trump is not the first president to break the law. He is not the first president to disregard the law. He is not even the first president to insist that his actions cannot, on some deep ontological level, be illegal. But he may be the first president to abandon the pretense that the law matters at all.

... He thinks he is a law unto himself; that he holds sovereign authority over the entire country; that he can rule by decree and punish those who resist. As one would expect, his administration has been an exercise in breaking the law, exceeding its bounds and violating its spirit.

This is true up to a point -- Trump think he's a law unto himself and can rule by decree -- but it's wrong to say that he think the law doesn't matter at all.

He knows that judges can rebuff him. He knows that they do this on a regular basis. Even the bootlickers on the Supreme Court rebuff him occasionally.

But while he'd prefer to win, just fighting these judges is lifefuel for him. He enjoys the combat, and he doesn't feel the least bit chastened or afflicted by self-doubt when he loses.

Trump is corrupt, and he believes everyone else is as corrupt as he is. When he loses in court, he tells himself -- and often tells the entire country -- that the courts are crooked and the system is rigged.

This belief is soothing to him, especially as he's approaching midterm elections his party is likely to lose badly. Believing that the courts are rigged (and that grand juries are corrupt as well) tells him that he's not really losing, or he wouldn't be losing if it weren't for the fact that the judges are enemies and crooks.

Notice that his underlings generally keep their jobs if they file weak cases that get thrown out of court, even if the filings are prepared hastily and riddled with typos.

A letter federal prosecutors sent on Monday to officials in Washington State seeking help in protecting “the integrity” of the midterms referred to “voter roles” — misspelling voter rolls. The Justice Department’s lawsuit in Alaska last week omitted the key verb describing the action it wanted the court to take.

It's fine with Trump even if an indictment isn't really an indictment.

The fact that Comey is charged in an information, and not an indictment, has legal significance. As a reminder, here’s the difference: An indictment is a criminal charge issued by a grand jury that hears the prosecutor’s evidence and makes a finding that there is probable cause to support the charges. An information is a document drafted by prosecutors and signed only by them....

The Fifth Amendment requires the government to go to a grand jury to charge a federal felony. Informations are used when a defendant has cut a plea deal with prosecutors and agreed to waive indictment. Comey did not. So this is a “waiverless information.” Prosecutors ... could not proceed with this case without taking it to the grand jury for indictment first.

Trump is using the Justice Department to file weak cases. When their weaknesses are exposed, Trump feels persecuted -- a feeling he deeply enjoys and treats as proof of his rightness. He could theoretically be shutting down courts that rebuff him -- as I assume some future, even more fascist Republican president will -- but he isn't. He's content with this. The fight alone is like a deep-tissue massage for him.