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Welcome to Talking Feds, a roundtable that brings together prominent former federal officials and special guests for dynamic discussion of the most important political and legal topics of the day.

I'm Harry Littman. It's been a week of intimations of Democratic backsliding come January 20th, with very

little to allay concerns that Trump 2.0 aims to remove, ignore, or mow down the long-standing

guardrails of constitutional rule. Even inaugurations have their well-established norms and laws

of disclosure, of funding, of ethics, of freedom from personal conflicts. Yet as we tick off the

weeks until Donald Trump takes the oath of office, assuming he opts to take the oath of office,

Trump and his surrounding enablers are picking and

choosing which to follow and which to ignore. Only last week did Trump's campaign staff get around

to signing an ethics pledge that was due back in October, though Trump himself has flatly refused to

sign it. The financing of the transition and inauguration remain a black box,

with no transparency about which oligarch wannabes are whispering in Trump's ear.

And one of Trump's closest advisors, Boris Epstein, looks to have been caught lining his own pockets,

demanding retainers from applicants for administration positions in return for putting in a good word. Meanwhile, special counsel Jack

Smith, after two years of work building two compelling criminal cases against the former and future

president, moved to dismiss both, likely extinguishing

the most serious efforts to hold Donald Trump accountable. There will be on anticipated twists and

turns, blunders and scandals, and perhaps surprising acts of resistance that may blunt Trump's authoritarian ambitions.

But seven weeks out from January 20th, there's very little cause for being sanguine.

...