The President's post-impeachment behaviour has alarmed Attorney-General William Barr, who has told people close to the President that he is willing to quit unless Trump stops publicly commenting on ongoing criminal matters, according to two Administration officials.
It also has appalled several legal experts and former officials, who have said his direct intervention in legal matters risks further politicising law enforcement at a time of fraying confidence in the Justice Department.
More than 2000 former Justice Department employees signed a public letter this week objecting to Trump's public intervention in the case of his longtime friend Roger Stone, and urging Barr to resign.
The head of the Federal Judges Association has called an emergency meeting to address growing concerns about political interference in the Stone case. And four prosecutors resigned from the case last week after Trump publicly decried their recommended prison sentence of seven to nine years for Stone and the Justice Department reversed course to lobby for a lower sentence.
A jury convicted Stone last year of lying to Congress and obstruction in a case that Trump has repeatedly condemned as unfair while leaving open the prospect of issuing a pardon for his friend and political ally.
Carmen Ortiz, the former US Attorney for Massachusetts under President Barack Obama, was among the signatories on the letter condemning Trump's political interference in legal matters.
"I've worked under both Republican and Democratic administrations," she said, "and I've just never seen behaviour like what were seeing right now."
Trump added to the sense of legal disarray by granting executive clemency to a group of 11 people that included several political allies and others convicted of corruption, lying and fraud. Among the recipients of Trump's largesse was Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor who was convicted on corruption charges in 2011 related to trying to sell Obama's vacated Senate seat. His sentence was commuted. Financier Michael Milken, who was charged with insider trading in the 1980s, and Bernie Kerik, the former New York police commissioner jailed on eight felony charges, including tax fraud, were pardoned.
Trump said the pardons and commutations were based on "the recommendations of people that know them," including Blagojevich's wife, Patricia, who made a direct appeal to the President on Fox News.
Legal experts said that by relying on his personal connections rather than the Justice Department's established review process for finding convicts deserving of clemency, Trump risked politicising his pardon power.
"It's a clemency process for the well-connected, and that's it," said Rachel Barkow, a professor and clemency expert at the New York University's law school. "Trump is wielding the power the way you would expect the leader of a banana republic who wants to reward his friends and cronies."
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump's increasingly provocative comments raised the prospect that he might issue pardons for Stone and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. Since his impeachment acquittal, Trump has tried to portray the prosecutions of his allies as the illegitimate product of an illegitimate investigation by former special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 race.
Prosecutions stemming from the Mueller investigation are "badly tainted," Trump tweeted today, and "should be thrown out."
"If I wasn't President, I'd be suing everyone all over the place," Trump wrote. "BUT MAYBE I STILL WILL. WITCH HUNT!"
Trump's constant commentary and increasing willingness to flout traditional legal processes signal that the President feels emboldened and unrestrained after Republicans voted almost unanimously to acquit him on impeachment charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, said Chris Whipple, author of The Gatekeepers, a history of White House chiefs of staff.
"It shows that Susan Collins was right - Trump has learned a lesson," Whipple said, referring to a prediction by the Republican senator from Maine that Trump would be more cautious after impeachment. "The lesson he learned is that he's unaccountable. He can do whatever he wants now with impunity."
Whipple said the President's decision to pardon several of his political allies just before Stone is scheduled to be sentenced set the stage for an increasingly "dangerous" phase of Trump's presidency.
"This is a president who thinks the law exists to be circumvented," he said.
