Ronald Brownstein writes:

A torrent of new revelations is filling in the picture of how Donald Trump used, and abused, his authority as president. But the disclosures may serve only to underscore how little remains known about all the ways in which Trump barreled through traditional limits on the exercise of presidential power—and highlight the urgency of developing a more comprehensive accounting before the 2024 election, when he may seek to regain those powers.

The steady flow of discoveries over the past few weeks has been damning. Emails show how both Trump and his White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows pressured the Justice Department to support the former president’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in 2020. A previously unheard tape captures how Rudolph Giuliani, as Trump’s attorney, explicitly pressured Ukraine to manufacture an investigation against Joe Biden—the issue that prompted the former president’s first impeachment. Even more ominous has been the disclosure that the Justice Department under Trump subpoenaed communications records of journalists, Democratic members and staffers in the House of Representatives, and even Trump’s own White House counsel, all without their knowledge.

The revelation of that sweeping surveillance, in particular, has triggered a uniform reaction among many who have most closely tracked Trump’s ethical and legal record: If a program that consequential and potentially egregious is surfacing only after he left office, there is likely much more that remains undiscovered.

“When the news broke about the congressional revelations, I was actually on television shortly thereafter … and I told the host, ‘This is just the tip of the iceberg; there will be more,’” Norm Eisen, who served as a special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment, told me recently. “Certainly, someone who would target the news organizations and target Congress would do much more.”

John Dean, a pivotal figure in shattering the Watergate cover-up as Richard Nixon’s White House counsel, agreed. “He is such a harsh taskmaster and is so vicious about leakers and disloyalty that I think his inner circle is terrified of him and remains that way, and for that reason we know very little,” Dean told me this week. “Is there more? You bet.” [Continue reading…]