OPINION:
President Kennedy asked a generation what it could do for its country. Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Michigan Democrat, has an answer for the next one: If you serve your country in a Republican administration, you will go to prison.
Ms. Slotkin delivered that threat to students at the University of Chicago on Oct. 13 and said the quiet part aloud: “I want that deterrence message sent.”
Deterrence is a word for Soviet tanks, Chinese missiles and Iranian centrifuges. Ms. Slotkin, a former CIA analyst, knows the word. She aimed it instead at young Republicans who are deciding whether to work for their own government.
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When the backlash hit, Ms. Slotkin tried to walk it back, saying Democrats would go only after Republicans who actually broke the law.
Yet that is the trick of weaponized injustice. Josef Stalin’s secret police chief, Lavrentiy Beria, put it in nine words: “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”
I know this from personal experience. In April 2022, then-Rep. Slotkin voted along party lines to hold me in contempt of Congress for declining to testify before Congress after President Trump invoked executive privilege.
I was the first senior White House adviser ever imprisoned for honoring that privilege. For half a century, Justice Department policy under both parties held that if Congress can jail the president’s aides for keeping his confidences, the privilege is worthless. A 1984 Justice Department opinion put the rule in writing. It was not invented for Mr. Trump. It protects whoever holds the office.
I kept my oath. Ms. Slotkin put me in prison. She did it with the help of 217 other House Democrats, a Democratic judge, a Democratic jury and an all-Democratic appeals court panel.
When the justice system enables such partisan weaponization, it is no longer just. That is why my case remains on appeal.
Please know this: Lawfare’s punishment starts long before any verdict. Every subpoena means an attorney. Every accusation becomes a headline that follows you forever. Families drain their savings. Employers back away. Friends stop calling. You can win and still be ruined.
Consider the Democrats’ targets: John Eastman was disbarred in California, then indicted in Georgia and Arizona for giving a client legal advice; Jeffrey Clark was hauled before a Washington disciplinary board that recommended disbarment “to send a message to the rest of the Bar”; Rudy Giuliani was stripped of his law licenses in New York and Washington, hit with a $148 million defamation verdict and forced into bankruptcy.
Then there is Mark Meadows, who spent $2 million in legal fees to fight a Georgia case that was thrown out and an Arizona case that collapsed. Walt Nauta, a Navy valet, was indicted for moving boxes before a judge found the prosecutor had no lawful authority. Dan Scavino was held in contempt by the same House vote that took me.
Cleta Mitchell was run out of her law firm three days after sitting in on a phone call. Gen. Michael Flynn endured four years of prosecution and had to sell his house to pay the attorneys before a pardon ended the charade.
Then there is the president himself: four indictments, 91 counts, a half-billion-dollar civil judgment and not one of them standing today.
Ms. Slotkin is hardly the lone Democrat preaching the gospel of such weaponized injustice. The list of Democrats waving the bloody shirt of lawfare is long: Susan Rice (“This is not going to be an instance of forgive and forget”), J.B. Pritzker (“The tables will turn one day”), Jason Crow (“We are taking names”), Eric Swalwell (“I hope that deters people”), Hakeem Jeffries (“To all members of the Trump administration. … Donald Trump will leave office long before the five-year statute of limitations expires. You are hereby put on notice”), Larry Krasner (referred to a group of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as “wannabe Nazis”) and James Carville (acknowledged fantasizing about Mr. Trump being “shaved, dressed in orange pajamas and spit on”).
The senator from Michigan did not write the gospel. She just read it aloud to the choir.
Of Ms. Slotkin, Mr. Trump said, “She’s a person that should be tried for what she did.” Said Sean Davis of The Federalist: she “should be censured by the Senate and then charged with treason.” Mike Davis of the Article III Project says that she “expressly called for the arrest of political opponents,” which is precisely what Democrats accuse the president of doing.
My message to Republicans: If they can come for me, your sons and daughters, then they can come for you. That alone is reason to vote on Nov. 3. Here is the clear and present broader danger.
If Democrats take Congress, Ms. Slotkin’s “Star Chamber” moves into high gear, and we have seen that movie: two years of gridlock under a thunderstorm of subpoenas, televised denunciations, contempt votes and impeachment votes.
Kennedy asked what you could do for your country. Ms. Slotkin’s answer is a subpoena and a cell. On Nov. 3, go to the polls and give her your answer.
• Peter Navarro is the White House senior counselor for trade and manufacturing. www.peternavarro.com
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