As the Senate moves to an impeachment trial and America slouches into this election year, the rule of law is center stage.

Yet Donald Trump is substituting lawless thuggery for impartial justice.

The biggest immediate news is the presidents killing of Qassem Suleimani. The act brings America to the brink of an illegal war with Iran without any congressional approval, in direct violation of Congresss war-making authority under the constitution.

But other presidents have disregarded Congresss war-making power, too. What makes Trump unique is the overall pattern. Almost wherever you look, he has shown utter disdain for law. Consider Trumps outing of the person who blew the whistle on his phone call to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy tweeting just after Christmas a link to a Washington Examiner article headlined with the presumed whistleblowers name, then retweeting a supporter who named the presumed whistleblower.

Even before outing the whistleblower, Trump had whipped his followers into a lather by calling the whistleblower a spy, guilty of treason.

The outing not only imperils the whistleblowers safety. It violates the purpose of the Whistleblower Act, which is to protect people who alert authorities that government officials are violating the law.

Its on this deeper level that Trumps lawlessness is most corrosive. From now on, anyone aware of illegality on the part of a government official, including a president, will think twice before sounding the alarm.

Trumps intrusion into the navys prosecution of Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher on war crimes has the same corrosive effect.

Trump not only stopped the navy from possibly giving Gallagher a less-than-honorable discharge. Trump also upended the military code of justice, designed for the military to handle legal violations in its ranks, including war crimes.

Gallaghers Navy Seal accusers were themselves whistleblowers who broke the Seals code of silence in order to stop a rogue chief. Now they face recrimination from within the ranks. From now on, any soldier who witnesses a superior officer committing possible war crimes will be more reluctant to report them.

Similarly, Trumps ongoing intrusions into the justice department (DoJ) and the FBI arent just efforts to derail investigations of his wrongdoing. Theyre attacks on the system of impartial justice itself.

Trumps attorney general, William Barr, is supposed to be responsible to the American people. Instead hes become Trumps advocate. Barr even advised the White House not to turn over the whistleblower complaint to Congress.

After misleading the public on the contents of Robert Muellers report, Barr bowed to Trumps demand that the department look into the origin of the FBI investigation that had led to the Mueller report.

And now, after the DoJs own inspector general has found that the FBI had plenty of evidence to start its Russia inquiry more than 100 contacts between members of the Trump campaign and Russian agents during the 2016 campaign Barr refuses to be bound by the findings, and has appointed a prosecutor to launch yet another inquiry into the origins of the Russia investigation.

The deeper systemic corrosion: from now on, attorneys general wont be presumed to be administering impartial justice, and the findings of special counsels and inspectors general will have less finality and legitimacy.

Barr is part of Trumps private goon squad, along with Rudy Giuliani, chief enabler Mick Mulvaney and Trumps resident white supremacist, Stephen Miller.

Giuliani is using the authority of the presidency to mount a rogue foreign policy designed to keep Trump in power. Its double lawlessness: Giuliani is bending the law and hes accountable to no one.

Miller, meanwhile, is waging Trumps ongoing war against people legally seeking asylum in the United States featuring family separations, caged children and inhumane detention.

Miller even got Trump to pardon Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff who was ordered by a federal judge to stop detaining people solely on suspicion of their immigration status. Arpaio disregarded the order, which is why he was convicted of criminal contempt of court.

From now on, rogue sheriffs will be less constrained.

You see the pattern: whistleblowers intimidated, the justice department politicized, findings of special counsels and inspectors general distorted or ignored, foreign policy made by a private citizen unaccountable to anybody, rogue military officers and rogue sheriffs pardoned.

Each instance is disturbing on its own. Viewed as a whole, Trumps lawlessness is systematically corrupting justice in the US.

Impartial justice is the keystone of a democracy. Even if the Senate fails to remove Trump for impeachable offenses, American voters must do so next November.

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Trump's lawless thuggery is corrupting justice in America - The Guardian