U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) is sounding an alarm about President-elect Donald Trump‘s transition-stage actions, declaring that “Trump is putting into action a plan to cripple our democracy in a way we may never recover from” and citing numerous instances he identifies as harbingers of imminent autocracy.
Murphy, who sits on the powerful Appropriations Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee, asserted on Wednesday that a deliberate dismantling of Democratic norms by the incoming Trump team is “happening right in front our eyes” and has “accelerated rapidly in the last 24 hours.”
Murphy begins his warning with the House plan — led by Subcommittee on Oversight Chairman Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) — to investigate January 6 Committee member and former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, a non-MAGA Republican.
Murphy asks: “Who will stand in the way of Cheney and others being put in jail? Not DOJ. Kash Patel was chosen to lead the FBI BECAUSE he wants to prosecute Trump’s opponents. Not the courts. Trump’s pliant DOJ can handpick a jurisdiction with a MAGA judge.”
3/ Who will stand in the way of Cheney and others being put in jail?
Not DOJ. Kash Patel was chosen to lead the FBI BECAUSE he wants to prosecute Trump’s opponents.
Not the courts. Trump’s pliant DOJ can handpick a jurisdiction with a MAGA judge.https://t.co/t79NOUtV7B
— Chris Murphy
(@ChrisMurphyCT) December 18, 2024
Murphy also sees Democratic ruin in the Trump team’s lawsuits against the media, which he portrays as a tool to silence dissent.
Citing a Trump suit against Iowa’s Des Moines Register for publishing a poll that was wrong prior to the election, Murphy categorizes Trump’s legal maneuvering as an intimidation tactic, made to punish antagonistic journalists and media organizations.
7/ Sometimes Trump will win these suits because he controls the DOJ and some courts, but other times he doesn’t care. After he lost one case against a journalist, he said, “I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about.”
He gladly admits it’s about intimidation.
— Chris Murphy
The everpresent legal threat is also meant to compel, in Murphy’s view, what scholars of authoritarianism call “obedience in advance” by media, which will be encouraged to self-censor in fear of legal action.
Do not obey in advance. Lesson 1, first page, of my pamphlet “On Tyranny” https://t.co/C3857ouRzO pic.twitter.com/FWIDPecber
— Timothy Snyder (@TimothyDSnyder) October 25, 2024
Murphy predictably met blowback from MAGA on X, where comments are largely indicative of a belief that Cheney acted unlawfully. One representative expression of this is shown below:
If she committed crimes by colluding and tampering with witnesses then she needs to be charged and tried.
No one is above the law, Chris.
— B
(@b_connerton) December 18, 2024
Cheney also has her defenders on X, agreeing with Murphy that Loudermilk’s pursuit is an intimidation maneuver that relies on a misreading of the facts.
The Loudermilk report accuses Cheney of undermining Cassidy Hutchinson’s relationship with the lawyer initially representing her.
Report doesn’t mention Hutchinson said that attorney, a Trump ally, encouraged her not to remember things and said she’d be given a job.
— Arthur Delaney