The politicization we’re seeing with the Justice Department and the FBI should come as no surprise. After all, Donald Trump campaigned on a platform of retribution, promising to deploy the federal government’s vast investigative and prosecutorial powers to go after his political enemies.
What shape this weaponization would ultimately take has now begun to crystalize. As was his practice during his first term, where he sought to sully his opponents with charges that had zero basis in fact, Trump has used his bully pulpit in his second term to blame the “radical left” for recent political violence. He’s insisted upon this connection even though shooters appear to have acted alone, and there are no known ties between them and liberal or leftist organizations. But Trump isn’t interested in facts. He is now leveraging this false connection as a justification to crack down on liberal organizations and, for example, go after their non-profit status or bring criminal charges against them.
Further, and quite publicly, Trump recently ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to bring cases against his political enemies, including Sen. Adam Schiff, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Former FBI Director James Comey. He did this via a social media post addressed directly to Bondi. With that instruction, Trump dissolved any remaining illusion of Justice Department independence.
But there are at least three big problems Trump has run into on his retribution tour. And they are substantial enough to threaten to defang his threats long before he’s even taken a solid bite at the vengeance apple.
.jpg)
Incompetents in charge
The first problem is fairly obvious: Trump put incompetents in charge of the Justice Department, valued for their loyalty over their skills. While Pam Bondi did run the state AG office in Florida, she has never worked as a federal prosecutor and came into the job with little direct experience overseeing an agency of this size. Her second in command, Todd Blanche, was Trump’s personal attorney, as was Emil Bove, whom Trump put in charge of weaponization at the Department. Neither has any prior DOJ experience.
Over at the FBI, things are no better. Director Kash Patel and his number two Dan Bongino have no experience in law enforcement whatsoever, with both coming instead from the world of right-wing podcasting.
The result is that no one appears to be advising Trump competently about the limits of his own legal authority. Instead, lawyers have had to fan out across the nation to defend indefensible positions, apparently under orders from Bove to ignore the courts where needed.
It should come as no surprise, then, that the Justice Department has lost significant credibility—and the vast majority of its cases—in federal court. After eight months of this, federal district and appellate courts have grown more scathing in their assessment of Trump’s legal arguments and have begun to admonish and even begin sanction proceedings against White House attorneys and officials for misconduct and contempt.
The only reason the entire Trump agenda hasn’t been largely shut down by the courts is because of the feckless conservative majority on the Supreme Court, which barely ever rules on the merits. Instead, it simply dissolves injunctions, without comment, via its “shadow docket.” This has allowed some of Trump’s policies to continue while the cases make their way to trial, handing the regime a few de facto victories even if the merits have yet to be addressed squarely.
But lately the federal district courts are on to SCOTUS’s game. They have begun to push back, criticizing the lack of transparency from the High Court and finding workarounds to stall or enjoin some of the worst policies that the conservative majority allowed to move forward.
Shut up already, Kash
The second problem is readily apparent to both courts and the public. The Justice Department now regularly violates its own rules against speaking publicly about evidence and active investigations. Kash Patel’s high profile bumbling of the case during the initial investigation of the Charlie Kirk murder comes to mind, where he announced not once but twice that authorities had suspects in custody, only to let them go later.
He still hasn’t learned his lesson. Just yesterday, Patel tweeted about physical evidence allegedly found near the site of a fatal shooting at an ICE facility in Texas. Patel leveraged the evidence to irresponsibly speculate about the killer’s motive:
While the investigation is ongoing, an initial review of the evidence shows an idealogical [sic] motive behind this attack (see photo below). One of the unspent shell casings recovered was engraved with the phrase “ANTI ICE.” More updates will be forthcoming.
Here is the photo he attached:
 |
Patel further politicized the shooting by adding,
These despicable, politically motivated attacks against law enforcement are not a one-off. We are only miles from Prarieland, Texas where just two months ago an individual ambushed a separate ICE facility targeting their officers. It has to end and the FBI and our partners will lead these investigative efforts to see to it that those who target our law enforcement are pursued and brought to the fullest extent of justice.
Justice Department practices stress that the release of certain types of information could unduly prejudice the proceedings and should therefore be avoided. Justice Manual Rule 1-7.610 expressly advises that “DOJ personnel should refrain from disclosing” a number of things, “except as appropriate in the proceeding or in an announcement after a finding of guilt.” These include “[s]tatements concerning anticipated evidence” which presumably would include bullet casings allegedly found near a murder site.
Patel’s rush to judgment, like Trump’s, is already coming back to bite him. Setting aside the very on-the-nose feel of the words “Anti-ICE”—scrawled on a yet another set of bullet casings found near yet another deadly shooting—interviews of the shooter’s friends already indicate that the killer was not some crazed leftist member of antifa, but rather yet another young white terminally on-line male gamer without strong or easily categorizable political views.
Professional investigators understand that there are sound reasons underlying the rules against sharing evidence publicly, especially so early in a case. For example, if there are any as yet unknown co-conspirators, the public announcement that bullets with markings were found at the scene could provide advance warning of the state of the investigation and how close it might be to finding them.
Further, even though the prime suspect is now deceased, such disclosures could taint the jury pool against any others who might later be charged in the case.
There is also simply no good reason for Patel to rush to share such evidence, including his personal opinion about a possible motive, other than to spin a political narrative. Here, the shooter fired at and killed detainees inside of a van. No ICE agents were harmed, and there is no evidence that the killer actually intended to target them.
Yet Patel is determined to push a version of events that permits the White House to rail against the “demonizing” of ICE agents by Democrats in the wake of the attack, suggesting that it was a direct cause of the violence.
 |
Public skepticism of FBI investigations already runs high, given how Patel consistently reveals himself as a partisan hack uninterested in the truth but willing to exploit a tragedy to score political points. That erodes public trust in the cases the Department later brings, making indictments and convictions by juries harder to obtain. It also sets off internal struggles as agents still committed to doing their jobs professionally take issue with Patel’s leadership and push back within the agency.
Judges are also taking note of the Justice Department’s lack of professionalism and discretion. Yesterday, a federal judge admonished the Justice Department over its public statements in the Luigi Mangione case, which may have violated local rules guaranteeing him a fair trial. The notably perturbed judge ordered the government to file a response next week and to advise the Deputy AG, for dissemination within the Department as appropriate, that future violations could include personal financial penalties, contempt of court findings or relief specific to the Mangione matter.
Everyone’s leaving, but not without some fine parting gifts
It’s been a long running trend at the Justice Department: The competent and ethircal attorneys are leaving. They are either resigning after refusing to go along with unlawful or sketchy orders, or they are being pushed out for failing to deliver Trump’s enemies’ heads on a golden platter.
Trump recently forced out U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert for failing to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led the civil suit against Trump for financial fraud, and James Comey, the former FBI Director whom Trump fired as part of his alleged obstruction of the Russian collusion investigation.
Trump replaced Siebert with Lindsey Halligan, an insurance claims attorney with no prosecutorial experience. She got the job because looks the part to Trump’s eye and is loyal to him. Sure enough, Halligan has already begun the process of charging Comey, likely with some kind of perjury allegation where the statute of limitations would otherwise run out in a matter of days.
But Siebert’s colleagues may have the last word. On Halligan’s first day on the job, they handed her a memo explaining how they had concluded there was no probable cause to charge Comey. That could make it far harder to get a grand jury to indict.
If Halligan presses forward anyway, a judge could also wind up throwing out the case due to prosecutorial misconduct. That is admittedly a very rare occurrence. But if ever there were a basis to grant such a dismissal, this case would be it, especially given the timeline:
Siebert and his office investigate and find no probable cause to indict Comey;
Trump pushes Siebert out;
Trump sends a public message to Pam Bondi to make sure Comey and others face charges; and
Trump appoints Halligan, who presses forward with charges despite receipt of the staff memo finding no probable cause to charge.
The Justice Department is now playing with fire. As discussed above, it is already in a deep credibility and ethical hole with the judiciary and with skeptical grand juries who have begun to refuse to indict. Yet the White House seems intent on pouring gasoline down that very hole so it can light the whole system up.
Time for judges and grand jurors to stand ready with extinguishers.
