Carl P. Leubsdorf
One of President Donald Trump’s most egregious acts has been his debasement of the Justice Department, transforming an agency designed to protect individual Americans “without prejudice or improper influence” into the political arm of his administration.
In effect, Trump and his appointees are weaponizing the department against their political enemies in the name of ending the Biden administration’s alleged “weaponization” against him.
Nothing illustrates that more dramatically than his choice of Fox News commentator and 2020 election denier Jeanine Pirro to replace conservative activist Edward Martin as interim U.S. attorney in Washington.
Along with Martin’s new assignment to run a Justice Department task force on “weaponization,” Pirro’s selection exemplifies the way Trump is using the department to pursue his campaign vows of retribution and vengeance against his political foes.
While she was once the elected district attorney in New York’s suburban Westchester County, Pirro has long since morphed into the role of political commentator and advocate, one of Trump’s most vehement Fox News defenders.
He started to weaponize the Justice Department at the top, by selecting Pam Bondi as attorney general, along with an array of lawyers and political operatives who supported his false contention he was cheated out of re-election in 2020.
Three of its four highest ranking officials were involved in Trump’s past legal battles, including the New York hush money case or the now muted federal indictments for trying to overturn the 2020 results and mishandling classified documents: Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr. and Solicitor General John Sauer.
Another Trump personal attorney, Alina Habba, was named acting U.S. attorney in New Jersey and promptly announced a blatantly political probe of its Democratic administration for alleged “obstruction” of the president’s deportation efforts.
Technically, all are qualified. Bondi, for example, was elected twice as Florida’s attorney general after serving as a local prosecutor. But from a moral and ethical viewpoint, they seem highly questionable choices for a department whose value statement defines it as pursuing the law and the facts “without prejudice or improper influence.”
She underscored that by approving Trump’s receipt of a jumbo jet from Qatar, for whom she formerly lobbied.
In naming Bondi, Trump said on Truth Social that, “For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans – Not anymore.”
But that is a false portrayal of former President Joe Biden’s Justice Department. Her predecessor as attorney general, former federal appeals judge Merrick Garland, was so determined to be independent of the White House that Biden’s political advisers complained he delayed too long in probing the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection that sought to prevent congressional certification of Biden’s 2020 victory.
Bondi promptly purged lawyers who worked on cases against Trump, cut back divisions that investigate tax violations and political corruption and started to turn the traditionally independent department into a prosecutorial arm of the White House. (One early target: New York Attorney General Letitia James, who prosecuted Trump’s New York real estate empire. James appears to have made herself vulnerable to prosecution by making a false claim on a mortgage form for a niece in Virginia.)
Crossing traditional boundaries, Trump directed Bondi to consider prosecuting two former officials of his Department of Homeland Security, Christopher Krebs and Miles Taylor, for rejecting his false contention the 2020 election was rigged against him. He also directed her to probe a top Democratic fundraising organization, ActBlue, for allegedly receiving illegal foreign contributions.
Meanwhile, Martin’s assignment heading a new task force on “weaponization” indicates the department may be planning prosecutions carrying out Trump’s campaign vows of retribution against his political enemies.
“Ed will make sure we finally investigate the Weaponization of our Government under the Biden Regime, and provide much needed Justice for its victims,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
As interim U.S. attorney in Washington, Martin threatened probes of several top Democrats, including Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, and sent letters to three medical journals, asking how they insured “competing viewpoints.”
Trump withdrew his nomination after GOP Sen. Tom Tillis, showing unusual Republican resistance, torpedoed the choice. But Pirro’s selection is hardly much better, though she has prosecutorial experience.
Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. Readers may write to him via email at [email protected].
