Democracy advocates say Trump’s return means they will have to work harder.

WASHINGTON — Americans who believe in democracy will have to work harder going forward as the man who sought to overturn the 2020 election he lost returns to the White House this month, advocates warned Thursday.

“Trump has already shown that he will act like a dictator if he takes office,” said Tom Joslin, a longtime counterterrorism adviser who served on the staff of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

“He will abuse the power of the bully pulpit. He will abuse the power of the presidency. He will abuse the power of the executive branch,” Joscelyn added.

Jocelyn is one of Trump’s critics affiliated with two groups, State Democracy Defenders Action and the Defend Democracy Project, who said the president’s coup attempt ended in a violent attack by a mob of his followers. We had a conversation with reporters ahead of the 4th anniversary.

Trump, who condemned the attack in a prepared speech the next day at the urging of White House staff and lawyers, has pushed a fictional account of Jan. 6 for years. No crime was committed at the Capitol, including the hundreds who assaulted police. Trump has said he will pardon them all, but has sometimes been wary of pardoning those convicted of the most violence.

On January 6, Trump appointed Kash Patel, a former aide who spread an unfounded conspiracy theory that the FBI incited violence, as director of Trump’s second term.

“Those kinds of conspiracy theories have no place in candidates,” said Norm Eisen, a former White House counsel under former President Barack Obama who worked with the House on Trump’s first impeachment case in 2020.

Trump’s transition team did not respond to HuffPost’s inquiries.

Asha Rangappa, a former FBI agent and current lecturer at Yale University, said the FBI is an especially dangerous place for someone like Patel because it has broad investigative powers without external checks. “It doesn’t take much for the president to declare someone (an entity, an entity) a national security threat,” she said.

She pointed out that even hiring standards are set internally, and Trump and Patel can eliminate existing requirements and replace them with whatever they want. “Theoretically speaking, I think everyone who was there on January 6 could get a pardon and hand over their badge and their gun,” she said.

Trump himself was impeached by the House a week later on charges of inciting the attack, but too few Republican senators joined Democrats in convicting him of incitement of insurrection. This allowed the House of Representatives to ban him from federal office for life. Trump was later indicted by Justice Department prosecutors for his actions leading up to January 6. The Justice Department dismissed the case after Trump was elected president last November, citing guidelines that prevent the prosecution of sitting presidents.

The Georgia indictment against Trump, based on his efforts to overturn his election loss in that state, is tied up in pretrial appeals, but even if that case moves forward, Trump would be able to delay the proceedings until he is no longer president.

Despite all this, Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, who participated in the impeachment of the coup attempt, told reporters Thursday that he continues to have faith that American democracy will endure.

“Democracy is a dynamic process, and we will survive this blow. We will survive this ridiculous sucker punch we got,” he said. “The Constitution is always on the verge of another election, and we will fight.”