Despite Donald Trump’s unprecedented takeover of the Republican party, there are a few who have put principle above power.
They include several elected officials, former lawmakers like Liz Cheney and Jeff Flake; legal giants like former Federal Judge --and runner-up for a Supreme Court nomination -- Michael Luttig and Peter Keisler, founder of the Federalist Society, and policy and media heavyweights like Bill Kristol and the gang of GOP alums over at the Bulwark and columnists like Max Boot.
The knee-jerk loyalty of most Republican politicians is a mixture of true believers, party faithful and fear. For others it’s about money from lucrative lobbying -- there never has been an Administration more welcoming to influence peddling -- to the media limelight.
There’s also a small band of formerly respected moderate conservatives, now in full MAGA mode, who are shameful opportunists. They include:
JOE DIGENOVA
He’s back, charged with prosecuting Trump’s revenge demands from the 2016 campaign, starting with former CIA director John Brennan.
DiGenova was a top aide to Maryland’s liberal Republican U.S. Senator Charles Mathias. Then he was a successful U.S. Attorney prosecuting political corruption and convicting Jonathan Pollard, an American spying for Israel.
He became a critic of President Clinton, getting him and his wife / law partner, Victoria Toensing, lots of media attention which they lapped up. He became one of those spotlight seeking partisan lawyers.
He was made for Trump world.
He called special counsel Bob Mueller’s team investigating Russia’s effort to help Trump in the 2016 election “legal terrorists.” He represented a Putin-allied Ukrainian to get this bandit to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. He accused liberal philanthropist George Soros of controlling foreign service and FBI agents.
He said that Trump’s cybersecurity expert, Chris Krebs, who declared the 2020 election as the most secure ever, should be “shot.” Under the threat of a defamation suit, diGenova apologized.
In the effort to overturn that honest election, diGenova was an on-again, off-again Trump lawyer; stories suggested he wasn’t much respected by the president. A 162 page internal Fox News document accused diGenova of “spreading disinformation” and non-disclosure of financial motives.
An experienced prosecutor was removed by this Administration after she concluded there was insufficient evidence against Brennan. Similarly an investigation ordered by the first Trump Administration, reached the same conclusion about Brennan. That won’t phase diGenova.
DEVIN NUNES
The former California congressman started off as a conventional conservative, his mentors were two former House Speakers, John Boehner and Paul Ryan, the antithesis of Trump. He once called the House right wingers, now the Trump core, “lemmings with suicide vests.”
Campaigning with Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign, he was politically smitten. Previously, in his first two years as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, he maintained the panel’s traditional bipartisanship.
After Trump was elected he became a raging partisan, determined to prove the Russian effort to help Trump in 2016 was a hoax. He struck paydirt with the illicit surveillance of Trump supporter, Carter Page.
It was downhill from there.
He saw conspiracies everywhere and was caught secretly working with the White House on intelligence issues. When revealed, he had to temporarily recuse himself as committee chair.
Nunes, taking a leaf from his new hero, went on a defamation suit orgy, filing almost a dozen actions, everything from CNN to local California outlets . He hasn’t won anything, most were just thrown out.
In 2021, a discredited Congressman Nunes quit and became CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group, which was to be a social media leader. It was a total bust, with the stock price plummeting after it went public in 2024. After losing more than $700 million last year with only $3.7 million in revenues, Nunes was dumped.
He’s now chair of the Intelligence Advisory Board. The president pays no attention to his intelligence director, so it’s doubtful he’ll pay any attention to Nunes.
A dozen years ago the California congressman was seen as a possible chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, even Speaker of the House. He has made more money with his Trump association at the price of respect.
ELISE STEFANIK
Elected to the House in 2014, as the chamber’s youngest member, the upstate New Yorker had future written all over her. The head of the moderate Republican caucus, she was young, smart and politically savvy.
She opposed Trump in the 2016 Republican Presidential primary. Within a couple years she did, if not a 180 turn, a 179. She saw MAGA as the future, jumped on the Trump bandwagon, fiercely defended him during the first impeachment and even attended a COVID super-spreader Trump Rally in Oklahoma. (Former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain caught the virus there and died.)
Stefanik became the champion Trump cheerleader. She was a 2020 election denier, said the criminals convicted of the January 6th violent assault on the Capitol were being held “hostage” and blamed Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi for that Trump-inspired insurrection.
Caroline Mason, one of Stefanik’s early mentors, an officiant at her 2017 wedding, told Time magazine: “She basically abandoned her own core values for a man who had no core values.”
She stormed back into the headlines two years ago conducting a hearing on antisemitism at universities. She devastated a couple ill-prepared Ivy League presidents who had to resign. She just published a book on the issue, “Poisoned Ivies,” which reviews suggest rehashed her old attacks.
But the political future she calculated collapsed. Trump passed her over to be his running mate in 2024. She is retiring from Congress and was running for Governor. When Trump didn’t endorse her, and as she was 19 points behind the incumbent Governor, she quit the race and politics.
Like most who hitch their political star to Trump, diGenova, Nunes and Stefanik may get a temporary high. It never endures and they pay a real reputational price.
Al Hunt. Happy to see you on Substack
All of those in Trump’s orbit that violated their oath of office should be tried for Treason!