Trump contorting justice department into his ‘personal weapon', experts warn

The Guardian

7 hours ago

As Donald Trump's Department of Justice expands investigations of his foes and ousts dozens of lawyers and staff who worked on cases targeting himself and his allies, scholars and ex-prosecutors say the rule of law is under siege in the US as the department morphs into Trump's 'personal weapon'.
The justice department's politicization to please Trump was underscored by an announcement on 23 July of a new ' strike force' to investigate unsubstantiated charges that ex-president Barack Obama and top officials conspired to hurt Trump's 2016 campaign and his presidency with inquiries into Russian influence operations to help Trump win, say critics.
The announcement came the day after Trump dodged queries from reporters about the justice department's failure to produce long-promised files about the notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and pivoted to blast Obama without evidence for 'treason'. Trump's conspiratorial charge echoed dubious claims by his national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, who days before called for a justice department inquiry into a purported 'treasonous conspiracy'.
Likewise, the FBI earlier in July announced investigations into the ex-FBI director James Comey and ex-CIA director John Brennan, which critics see as political efforts to placate Trump who has often voiced anger at them for their roles in the Russia investigations before and during his first term.
Legal scholars and ex-prosecutors say Trump and his loyal attorney general, Pam Bondi, have turned the justice department into his personal law firm to pursue his political and legal agendas.
'It's not unprecedented for presidents to deploy their powers for personal ends, but no one including Nixon has done this with the intensity of Trump,' Peter Shane, who teaches constitutional law at New York University, told the Guardian.
Shane added: 'DoJ is now being used as a personal weapon on behalf of Trump to a degree that is without precedent. Trump has a team of sycophants and enablers at DoJ. They're not behaving the way office holders sworn to uphold the constitution are expected to behave.
'The idea that the Obama administration fabricated the story of Russian interference has been refuted multiple times, including by the Senate intelligence committee when, under the chairmanship of then senator Marco Rubio, the committee determined that Russia had indeed launched an aggressive covert effort to interfere in the 2016 election on Trump's behalf.'
Other scholars raise similar alarms.
'Trump is using the justice department to target his perceived enemies and pursue his political goals,' said Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor who now lectures on law at George Washington University. 'The guiding principle for any DoJ prosecutor has always been loyalty to the constitution and the rule of law. Under this administration, it appears that the primary job requirement for any DoJ prosecutor, up to and including the attorney general, is loyalty to Donald Trump.'
The premium that Trump has placed on loyalty at the justice department was revealed early by his choices of Bondi as attorney general, Todd Blanche as deputy attorney general and other senior officials.
Bondi, an ex-Florida attorney general, helped defend Trump in the Senate during his first impeachment, and Blanche was his lead counsel in New York where Trump was convicted in 2024 of 34 felony counts for falsifying business records to hide payments during his 2016 campaign to a porn star who alleged an affair with him.
The justice department's drive to please Trump was evident in July when Bondi fired about 20 departmental employees. They included support staff and several prosecutors who worked on January 6 cases for special counsel Jack Smith, who charged Trump with improperly retaining hundreds of classified documents after he left office in early 2021, and for engaging in an 'unprecedented criminal effort' to stay in power after his 2020 election loss.
Notably, Bondi this month abruptly fired without explanation the department's top ethics official, Joseph Tirrell, and Maureen Comey, a key prosecutor in New York who had worked on charges against Epstein and is James Comey's daughter. Several senior justice department and FBI officials were ousted in the first months of Trump's second presidency.
For their part, Trump and Bondi have been blunt about axing lawyers and staff they deem political foes for allegedly politicizing the justice department against Trump.
In February, for instance, Trump ordered the department to oust all remaining 'Biden-era' US attorneys, claiming the department 'has been politicized like never before' under Biden. In a similar vein, before taking office Bondi pledged during a confirmation hearing to eliminate what she blasted as 'the partisanship, the weaponization' of the Department of Justice under Biden.
Some ex-prosecutors say Trump's charges that he was the victim of justice department weaponization stem from his penchant for conspiratorial thinking.
'The inane claims of weaponization we hear from Trump and his associates are particularly extraordinary because Trump regularly calls for the criminal investigation and prosecution of his political enemies,' said Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor who is now a law professor at Columbia University.
'Baseless claims of crimes by his political opponents have always been a staple of Trump's rants. But now that he is president and has picked justice department leaders for their loyalty and not their competence or integrity, the risk of abusive investigations grows.'
The justice department's intense focus on targeting Trump critics was evident after Bondi became attorney general when she quickly issued a memo establishing a 'weaponization' working group, say critics.
Barbara McQuade, who teaches law at the University of Michigan and used to be a federal prosecutor, said Bondi's memo actually 'weaponizes law enforcement and undermines public confidence in government' because it pushes a 'false narrative' about the two special counsel investigations of Trump.
McQuade stressed that 'federal grand juries returned indictments in both cases, meaning that they found probable cause that the crimes were committed.'
Other justice department veterans have been appalled at its transformation including the wave of firings. Stacey Young, who spent 18 years as a federal litigator at the Department of Justice before leaving voluntarily in January, launched the group Justice Connection to help remaining justice department employees deal with ethical and legal headaches and find jobs for those who want to leave.
'These unprecedented firings at the justice department are growing exponentially,' Young told the Guardian. ' They happen with no notice and no opportunity to be heard, in violation of the Civil Service Reform Act and due process. Many people, and even their supervisors, have no idea why the firings targeted them or why now. Employees now wake up each day wondering if they're going to be next.
'It's screwing with people's lives, and it's also creating a culture of fear among the entire workforce. DoJ leadership is making clear the ability to keep your job is not tied to your performance, your expertise, or your commitment to uphold and defend the constitution.'
On 24 July, three justice department officials including Tirrell who were abruptly fired this summer, filed a lawsuit against Bondi seeking reinstatement and back pay arguing that they were axed improperly and without cause.
Other ex-federal prosecutors say the department is now being weaponized to please Trump.
'There is literally no reason to fire these people, other than to continue molding the department into Trump's personal law firm,' Mike Romano, an ex-justice department prosecutor who left voluntarily in March after almost four years working on prosecutions of Trump allies who stormed the Capitol on 6 January 2021.
'Trump and Bondi are bringing us back to the spoils system, where the government is not staffed by merit but based on favors, and is not staffed with experts, but with hacks and cronies. As a country, we decided almost 150 years ago that the spoils system is terrible and corrupt.'
Further, Bondi and Trump have stepped up attacks on judges who have rebuked justice department lawyers for presenting arguments in court that were specious or failed to respond to judges' queries, several of which have involved the administration's hardline anti-immigrant actions, say critics.
'There are certain things lawyers should avoid doing because they are sure to pique the ire of federal judges,' said ex-federal judge John Jones, who is president of Dickinson College. 'These include patronizing, temporizing, lying and making baseless arguments. The Trump DoJ lawyers have hit them all before multiple judges.'
Likewise, Emil Bove III, a key Trump defense lawyer in 2024 who was the justice department's number three for several months before Trump nominated him as a federal appeals court judge that the Senate recently approved, was cited in one whistleblower complaint for telling department lawyers they could flout court orders to further Trump's immigration agenda.
More broadly, scholars and justice department veterans see the Trump administration breaking sharply with historical norms and rewriting history to burnish Trump's image.
'The firing of the January 6 prosecutors and the pardons of the Capitol rioters are all part of an effort to whitewash what happened on January 6,' said Eliason. 'The goal is to portray the rioters as the true victims and falsely suggest that the law enforcement professionals who pursued these cases did something wrong.
'A key foundation of our constitutional system is adherence to the rule of law and the independence of the justice system from politics. That's all being discarded by the Trump administration.'
Shane likewise stressed: 'Trump has placed his own lawyers in key justice department positions, expecting them to continue thinking of themselves as personal lawyers for Donald Trump, not government lawyers for the president as an office-holder bound by law.'