Nixon-Style ‘Blacklist of Enemies’ or a ‘Whole New Ballgame’? Legal Experts React to Report That Trump DOJ Seized Data from Top House Intel Democrats

For Fordham Law School’s Center on National Security director Karen Greenberg, the Nixon analogy undersells the danger.

“It’s nice to recall the echoes of the past and the Nixon times, but I think we’re in a whole new ballgame,” Greenberg told Law&Crime in a phone interview. “I think it’s quite frightening also, to notice. We don’t know the extent of this surveillance. We only know what we’ve been told so far. We don’t know how long it was, how many people were considered enemies. So I think in some ways, this is a very new and different chapter.”

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For Greenberg, the author of “Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State,” any investigations that follow must be backed by stronger action for accountability in order to stem future abuses.

“President Obama famously said, ‘We’re going to look forward, not backwards,” Greenberg noted, referring to Obama’s comments about George W. Bush-era torture in 2009. “And you know what, that’s what happens when you look forward, not backwards. You end up with it.”

“What happens if you break the law? What happens if you overstep your authority? What happens if you do things that are contrary not just to the law, but to the norms that have been established for decades? What happens if you do that?” Greenberg asked. “If nothing happens, how do you think this isn’t going to get repeated. And we have seen no desire on the part of Merrick Garland to actually approach accountability when it comes to the excesses of the Trump administration.”

As to what accountability would be needed, Greenberg replied that is what an investigation should uncover, but she added that the inspector general reports have been, in practice, the end goal for too long.

“We’ve had so many good, thorough, detailed inspector general reports about what went on in a variety of different parts of the executive over the past decade,” she noted. “And what’s the result then? So I think that’s just not enough.”