Dan Sullivan’s empty words about the rule of law as Trump takes on dictatorial powers
When Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey in 2017, Sen. Dan Sullivan said the president could have whoever he wanted in that position, but “The timing of the president’s firing of Director Comey raises questions that will need to be answered by the administration.”
No one has forgotten all those questions that were never asked or answered.
With Trump now using the Department of Justice for political retribution against his enemies and destroying the rule of law, there are lots of questions that guys like Sullivan should be asking.
But Sullivan, who wants to be reelected, is not up to the challenge.
Trump called out Attorney General Pam Bondi in public to go after Comey, though career prosecutors said there was no case. Bondi’s department produced a laughable indictment—with no evidence about how to prove any charges—to carry out Trump’s campaign of revenge. The indictment does not specify Comey’s alleged lies.
As the Wall Street Journal put it, the Justice Department has been transformed from an “independent enforcer of the law into an extension of the White House that has pursued Trump’s foes and their associates with relish.”
The silence from Sullivan about the danger of dictatorship is noteworthy because he can’t even muster a repeat of his empty words eight years ago about Comey’s firing.
“The rule of law is the foundation of our Democracy,” Sullivan said in 2017. “It should apply equally to all, including the White House, the FBI, the IRS and the Justice Department. Unfortunately, it has been eroded over the past several years. We, both Democrats and Republicans, need to work on reestablishing and safeguarding this critically important American ideal.”
In 2024, Sullivan took to claiming that the New York Trump trial over his hush money payments to a porn star was “eerily similar to the show trials Stalin launched against his political opponents.”
“There’s an old Soviet phrase,” Sullivan said. “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime!”
Sullivan attached his name to this 2024 chain letter from Sen. Rand Paul that attacked the judicial system in the United States and contained numerous false or exaggerated claims about Trump’s 34 felony convictions.
They did not question whether Trump paid hush money to cover up an affair with a porn star and then created false records to disguise the hush money payments to save his campaign in 2016.
“We condemn this show trial, not just because it marks the attempt to imprison a leader of the loyal opposition, but because it threatens the existence of due process of law, without which a constitutional republic dedicated to the protection of individual liberty is not possible,” Sullivan and 28 other Republican senators claimed last year.
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