The Resistance Cheers Tactics Trump Will Likely Use Against Them

Not bad for the Democrats, considering there is no evidence yet to support the central allegation against Trump: that he is either compromised by or collaborated with Russia. But it would be a mistake to conclude that all of this is good for the republic, or for that matter those resisting the Trump presidency.

There are two reasons for this. First there is the problem of overreach. If Comey and Rogers on Monday confirm what President Barack Obama's last director of national intelligence, James Clapper, told NBC News earlier this month -- that there is no evidence of collusion between Trump's associates and Russia -- then the resistance loses credibility to go after Trump's abuses of power down the road.
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Tim Edgar, who served in Obama's first term as the director of privacy and civil liberties at the White House, told me that it's a mistake to conflate leaks of government-monitored communications with leaks designed to expose government wrongdoing or corruption. "J. Edgar Hoover was a prolific leaker, the Nixon White House leaked information, including information about its opponents from surveillance," he said. "You may care somewhat if the government has intercepted your call, but you care more if they are using that information against you in some way."

Edgar, who is now a professor in law and public policy at Brown University, is worried that the anti-Trump forces are not seeing the danger. "My message to the resistance is that you have to be careful," he said. "These laws exist to protect all of us and our constitutional rights, and there is a difference between leaking the contents of surveillance transcripts and whistle blowing involving questionable government policy."

In this sense, the resistance is fashioning a rod for its back. Democrats rightly howled when it was leaked that the FBI had wanted to investigate the Clinton Foundation but was stymied by the Justice Department in the run-up to the election. Trump will now have access to all kinds of damaging information on Democratic politicians. What is to stop him from selectively leaking monitored communications against the resistance?

Ideally, the rest of Washington would stop him. We don't do that kind of thing in America. This is what police states do. But these norms are only effective if they are observed with consistency. Unfortunately, the resistance is so eager to pre-empt Trump's presidency that they have just licensed the very tactics they fear Trump himself will use against them.