Eighty years ago, Friedrich Hayek wrote one of the most powerful books about threats to free society, The Road to Serfdom, as Europe collapsed into dictatorship. He devoted a chapter to the question of “Why the Worst Get on Top”.
The Austrian-British writer wanted to explain how someone like Hitler could possibly come to be and what sort of subordinates made it possible. Concentrated power doesn’t merely attract bad men, Hayek argued; it selects for them. A strongman needs lieutenants who will execute his commands without hesitation, so the qualities rewarded are not judgement or moral courage but pliability. A readiness to do whatever the leader wants becomes the path to promotion.
As I learned inside Trump’s first administration, people are policy. You can understand where Trump is headed not just by who he puts in charge but by how they got there.
In the dying weeks of Trump’s first term, the lawyers who told him the truth about his election loss were shoved aside. Those who rose in their place were willing to help him upend it: Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark. The credential for last-minute advancement – into senior adviser roles to the leader of the free world – was apparently a willingness to burn the constitutional order for the boss and to do or say whatever was needed to justify the baseless claim that the election was “stolen”.
There are two people in Washington, DC — more than any others — whose jobs are to tell the president of the United States “no”. The attorney general and the White House counsel. Those jobs exist to keep the president on the right side of the law. This weekend, two men were elevated into America’s top legal jobs after working to build literal monuments to their boss.
On Sunday, the President announced that Will Scharf, Trump’s staff secretary and perhaps the chief “monument man”, will become White House counsel on 1 September.
Trump signs an executive order regarding vaccine flexibility in the Oval Office alongside ‘monument man’ Will Scharf, White House Staff Secretary (Photo: Reuters/Kylie Cooper)Americans know him, if at all, as the man standing over Trump’s shoulder in the Oval Office, narrating executive orders as the President signs them. He also chairs the National Capital Planning Commission, which oversees federal construction in the capital, a role in which he has become Trump’s personal builder. He fast-tracked the White House ballroom. He expedited review of the President’s planned triumphal arch — a 250-foot “Arc de Trump” — and personally argued it should be exempt from the century-old law capping Washington’s buildings at 130 feet. Approve the arch, and the leader makes you his lawyer. That’s essentially the economy of advancement in Trump’s Washington.
The other promotion this past weekend went to Todd Blanche, Trump personal criminal defence lawyer. His first reward for serving Trump with unquestioning loyalty was the deputy attorney generalship, then elevation to acting Attorney-General in April, after Trump forced out Pam Bondi for insufficient aggression against his political enemies. Indeed, the last attorney general was fired for not weaponising the Justice Department fast enough. The new one was chosen because, as Senator Adam Schiff put it, he’s never stopped being Trump’s defence lawyer. It’s no surprise, then, that Blanche was the architect of the “anti-weaponisation” fund , one of the most corrupt government schemes in modern memory, meant to funnel billions of dollars to Trump allies and criminals who were prosecuted by the DOJ.
But Blanche is a “monument man”, too, which is evidently a requirement for elevation. When preservationists sued over Trump’s demolition of the East Wing (which he tore down to construct a 90,000 sq ft ballroom dedicated to himself), Blanche took on the case. He argued in court filings that construction must resume, portraying the President’s party palace as a matter of national security urgency.
Blanche’s team effectively told the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit that no court could halt the project, even if it amounted to complete lawlessness. On Friday, the court answered: the ballroom “is for Congress to decide and is not a matter for Executive self-help”. Hours later, the Senate confirmed the man who will now carry Trump’s ballroom to the Supreme Court. Should Blanche ever forget whom he serves, he need only glance up on his way into work. Since February, a colossal banner of the President’s face has hung from the facade of DOJ headquarters just outside of Blanche’s office — drawing far more attention than the humble inscription that’s been etched into the building for almost a century: “Where law ends, tyranny begins.”
Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, was confirmed as US attorney general by the Senate on Saturday (Photo: Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images)Both men’s former colleagues remember them differently. Blanche’s fellow prosecutors said he was a man dedicated to the rule of law. Scharf’s once saw him as a principled conservative.
I remember being at a retreat with Scharf early in the first Trump administration, when he was still an up-and-coming GOP lawyer. At a dusty conference centre in the American Southwest, he talked my ear off about his idol, Whittaker Chambers, with the fervour of a convert. Chambers’ 1952 memoir, Witness, detailed his defection from communism and dedication to telling the truth about the dangers of it. Chambers worried that by abandoning communism he’d left the winning side of history for the losing one — but felt that a man of conscience must do what’s right anyway. Scharf said the other side would do anything to win but that conservatives played by the rules, even if they lost. He said he was hellbent on upholding that principle.
What a difference a few years makes.
The Will Scharf ascending to the White House counsel’s office no longer has to choose between doing right and winning. He apparently sees them as synonymous. The man who advocated in our chats for “principle-over-power” now fast-tracks the arches for the ruler and contorts the law to fulfil the President’s desire for soaring monuments to his own greatness. Precisely the kind of unconstrained power that conservative idols like Chambers and Hayek warned about. Soon, Scharf will be the last lawyer standing between the president and the statutes. And he will gladly roll out the red carpet and step aside.
I can tell you how important these two legal jobs actually are. When I served in the first term, the lawyers willing to say “no” were the last line of defence. The president would demand something illegal. Those of us around him would object; he would wave us away. He’d berate us again and again on repeat visits. Only when the lawyers got involved (the Justice Department, the White House counsel’s office or our own agency attorneys) and stated flatly that he could not break the law did Trump begrudgingly back down. Even then, he never really did. He would circle, sulk and return to the idea weeks later, hunting for a lawyer who might give him a different answer.
It was a wall that held — barely — a hundred times over. Trump remembers that wall as vividly as I do. He spent his four years out of power studying where it stood and who manned it. This weekend, he finished solving the problem. The next time he goes hunting for a lawyer with an answer he likes, he won’t have to look very far. The two men who should’ve been whispering “no” into the President’s ear got his attention by whispering “yes, sir”. Now they’re seated at his right hand.
Miles Taylor is the former chief of staff of the US Department of Homeland Security and has served on Capitol Hill, in the White House and at the Pentagon. He is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, regular national security commentator and democracy reform leader
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