A number of prominent Republicans, including several former members of the first Trump administration, have signed an open letter decrying the president for using his power to punish two former administration officials who criticized him, likening his actions to those of a “royal despot.”
“For a president to personally and publicly direct the levers of the federal government against publicly named citizens for political reasons sets a new and perilous precedent in our republic,” the group wrote. “No matter one’s party or politics, every American should reject the notion that the awesome power of the presidency can be used to pursue individual vendettas.”
Earlier this month, Mr. Trump issued two executive orders revoking the security clearances of Chris Krebs, who led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency under during Mr. Trump’s first term and rebutted his claims that the 2020 election had been rigged and stolen, and Miles Taylor, who once served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Taylor anonymously wrote a New York Times opinion essay in 2018 accusing Mr. Trump of rampant “amorality” and telling of an internal government “resistance.”
Mr. Trump’s executive orders also revoked the security clearances of people and institutions affiliated with Mr. Krebs and Mr. Taylor, and called for investigations into their government tenures. The letter, signed by more than 200 people, criticized those actions as part of a “profoundly unconstitutional break” with precedent.
“Behavior of this kind is more to be expected from a royal despot than the elected leader of a constitutional republic,” the signers wrote. “This is the path of autocracy, not democracy.”
The letter’s signatories include Ty Cobb, a lawyer who led Mr. Trump’s response to a special counsel’s investigation of his ties to Russia during its early phases, and John Mitnick, who served as general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security until he was fired in 2019 after clashing with the White House.
Mr. Cobb and Mr. Mitnick, like many of the other Republicans on the list of signatories, have been openly critical of Mr. Trump since parting ways with his administration.
The letter was spearheaded by the State Democracy Defenders Fund, a group run by Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who served on the staff of the first team of House Democrats that worked to impeach Mr. Trump in 2019.
