What did Donald Trump do today?

He (kind of) fired a US Attorney that he'd appointed himself for not falsely charging a political enemy with a crime.

Letitia James is the Attorney General of the state of New York. Last year, she won a massive civil fraud suit against Trump and his business for, among other things, falsifying mortgage documents. 

That appears to be why Trump has targeted her and at least two other prominent Democrats for mortgage fraud charges. The other two, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook and California Senator Adam Schiff, have produced evidence refuting the charge that they lied on mortgage application documents. James hasn't even been accused, because Trump's handpicked United States Attorney for Eastern Virginia, Erik Siebert, hasn't been able to find any evidence that she broke the law when she bought a house in his jurisdiction.

Today, Trump said he wanted Siebert fired. His administration, which leaked the story last night, is not making any secret of the fact that it is because Siebert failed to find some kind of criminal charge against James, although Trump's "explanation" today for wanting Siebert fired was that two Democrats had supported him to be confirmed. (Trump has never used this excuse with any other nominee who received Democratic support.)

But, as of the close of business Friday, Trump had not actually fired Siebert—only said, indirectly, that he thought Attorney General Pam Bondi ought to do so. For someone whose game show catchphrase was "You're fired," Trump is famously afraid to actually do it, preferring to have junior staff handle it or reassign staff to other roles. In one particularly notable case, he waited until he knew FBI Director James Comey had left the office on a business trip before having a note delivered to his office.

In response to today's events, Siebert resigned. 

This all comes several weeks after another Trump appointee, Ed Martin, performatively stalked James' Brooklyn townhouse in an old-fashioned detective costume, then posted pictures of himself doing it to social media and conservative news sites. Martin heads the ironically named "Weaponization Working Group" within the Department of Justice, which has only ever targeted Trump's political enemies. 

Trump's DOJ has also subpoenaed James over her office's suit against Trump, something it has no legal reason to do, since the fraud Trump was found to have committed was as a private citizen in a state court.

Accusing his perceived enemies of the crimes he's guilty of isn't exactly new territory for Trump. His first impeachment during his first term came because he tried to punish the Ukrainian government for failing to manufacture evidence that he could use against his 2020 election rival, Joe Biden. He's accused his former National Security Advisor John Bolton of mishandling classified information, something he did flagrantly in his post-presidency, stealing dozens of boxes of secret documents and refusing to give them back voluntarily. And Trump, who headed a fraudulent charity and a fake university, has threatened to have the IRS revoke the tax-exempt status of actual non-profit universities like Harvard.

Why does this matter?

• You either have an independent judiciary or you have a dictator's secret police. 

• Trump doesn't need Americans to be able to trust the legal system, but Americans do.  

• Convicted criminals who live in glass White Houses shouldn't throw stones.