Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith (Kevin Wurm/Reuters)

President Trump ordered the attorney general to review the work of all law enforcement agencies to determine whether any of their moves over the past four years constituted a “weaponization” of the federal government. He told the director of national intelligence to similarly examine the intelligence community’s activities.

In an executive order, Trump described “actions that appear more oriented toward inflicting political pain than toward pursuing actual justice.” He didn’t specifically cite any of the four criminal cases he faced, including two now-defunct federal prosecutions by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith. But he has long complained that those investigations were a politically motivated effort to undermine him, and has long promised to probe those who did the investigating. That could hurt them legally and financially for years.