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Donald Trump's Weaponization of His Justice Department

Submitted by Robin Messing on Wed, 10/08/2025 - 3:22pm

Donald Trump's weaponization of the Justice Department to go after his political enemies is not particularly new. Trump wanted his Justice Department to investigate and prosecute a long list of people and entities during his first term including Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, Former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, law enforcement officials, federal prosecutors, and agents from the intelligence community who investigated his campaign's connection to Russia. The Justice Department opened up investigations or appointed special counsels to investigate nearly everyone on Trump's hit list. Of all the people Trump had investigated during his first term, only three were charged with a crime, and only one of them--low level FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith--was convicted. Read Adam Klasfeld's and Ryan Goodman's review at Just Security for more about Trump siccing the Justice Department on his enemies during his first term. Then read about the 100 times that Trump has threatened to punish or prosecute his perceived enemies since 2022.

Trump's abuse of the Justice Department during his first term pales in comparison with his weaponization of it in his second term. Trump received at least some pushback against his abuse early in his first term by his first Attorney General, Jeff Sessions and by White House Counsel Don McGahn who advised Trump against using the Department to go after his enemies. But any restraints on Trump's abuse in his first term are now off in his second term, and he is now wielding his Department of Justice with a fury never seen before.

Let's look closely at how Trump has changed the rules and how he is now using his Justice Department to attack his enemies. Here are the topics I will cover.

  1. The Justice Department Ditches Norms and Slashes Its Public Integrity Unit
  2. The Indictments of James Comey and Letitia James
  3. The Arrests of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Representative LaMonica McIver
  4. Trump Wants To Prosecute President Obama For Treason
  5. Trump Calls For the Justice Department to Investigate Two Former Trump Administration Officials
  6. Honorable Mentions 
  7. Summary

 

The Justice Department Ditches Norms and Slashes Its Public Integrity Unit

Trump's abuse of the Justice Department to go after his political enemies is a sharp departure from the rules and norms that were put in place after the Watergate scandal. Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. Attorney who is now teaching at the University of Michigan Law School, explains the rules that had guided the Justice Department over the last 50 years.

There is a provision in the Justice Department manual that says prosecutors may never consider partisan politics, political association, political party, political office in making a charging decision. And it seems that Pam Bondi is turning that on its head. Now, it's a norm, it's not a law, but since Watergate, it has been crystal clear that that is the way that prosecutors conduct themselves....

 

This [use of the Justice Department to go after Trump's political enemies and the Soros Foundation] is such a bastardization of the rule of law. You know, there's a famous speech that Robert Jackson gave in the Great Hall of the Department of Justice in 1940. He, at the time, was the attorney general of the United States. He, of course, would go on to become a Supreme Court justice and chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. But one of the things he said in this speech, entitled The Prosecutor, which is posted on the wall of many U.S. attorneys' offices, is the importance of not targeting individuals, but of targeting crimes. And so if a crime occurs, you investigate and you charge the people responsible. But if you instead choose a person and then try to dig up whatever dirt you can on them, that is the opposite of the way that the tool is supposed to work. It is a way that it can be weaponized and a way that power can be abused.

That seems to be what is happening in the case of George Soros. He obviously is a very powerful, wealthy individual. He funds candidates and programs that support Democrats and progressives. And so it's understandable why a Republican president might want to try to upend those efforts. But one of the things that has been part of the post-Watergate norms is an FBI manual referred to colloquially as the DIOG, which stands for Domestic Investigations Operations Guide. And one of the provisions in that DIOG, one of the main and first provisions, is the need to have predication before you can start an investigation. Predication means that we have some factual allegation that we've received and in good faith, we are going to open an investigation. It is a good-faith allegation of a crime or a threat to the national security. 

So it would be improper, for example, for me to say, I want to look at everybody on the board of governors of the Federal Reserve, and I'm going to dig into their backgrounds until I find something they've done wrong, and then I'm going to use that to prosecute them. Instead, what you're supposed to do is find an allegation of a crime. Perhaps a bank reaches out with a suspicious activity report and says, here is an irregularity in a mortgage application. We want to share that with you for potential investigation. That would be appropriate predication. That recording you just played of Pam Bondi, what she alleges that George Soros is responsible for doing is being a billionaire, funding campaigns to remove President Trump from power....

So after Watergate, when we saw President Nixon abuse his authority in a couple of ways - I mean, one certainly was in an effort to stop the FBI's investigation into his own involvement in the Watergate break-in. He directed that the FBI be told that the CIA was investigating and that they needed to stand down. And so that kind of meddling by the president was seen as politically based and inappropriate.

Now, norms were put in place to prevent that kind of thing. One is a limit on communications between the White House and the Justice Department. They are not supposed to talk about cases. There is an exception for people at the highest level.... But what's never supposed to happen is the president directing who should be charged or not charged. That is a post-Watergate norm.

 

So those were the old rules. How has Trump's Justice Department destroyed them? The Washington Post reported on May 17 that the Trump Administration was considering gutting the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section.

Federal prosecutors across the country may soon be able to indict members of Congress without approval from lawyers in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, according to three people familiar with a proposal attorneys in the section learned about last week.

Under the proposal, investigators and prosecutors would also not be required to consult with the section’s attorneys during key steps of probes into public officials, altering a long-standing provision in the Justice Department’s manual that outlines how investigations of elected officials should be conducted.

If adopted, the changes would remove a layer of review intended to ensure that cases against public officials are legally sound and not politically motivated.

Reuters reported a few weeks later that the Justice Department did indeed gut the Public Integrity Unit.

Five months into President Donald Trump’s second term, it has been stripped of power.

 

The unit has lost its authority to file new cases. Its staff has been reduced from more than 30 attorneys to five. And its once-powerful gatekeeping role – reviewing potential cases against members of Congress and other public officials to prevent politically motivated prosecutions – has been suspended.

Those changes, confirmed by three people familiar with the department’s operations, are part of an overhaul of the Justice Department by the Trump administration that is dismantling guardrails designed to stop political interference in criminal investigations involving politicians, federal judges and other public figures....

Among the most significant changes is the suspension of a longstanding Justice Department requirement that federal prosecutors seek the Public Integrity Section’s approval before bringing charges against members of Congress – and consult with the unit before launching criminal prosecutions in many other matters involving public officials.

The suspension of that rule in early May hasn’t been previously reported. It frees political appointees in the Justice Department to prosecute public officials without going through a review intended to prevent baseless or politically motivated prosecutions. It also halts the unit from supervising election fraud cases, including allegations of election disinformation....

The crippling of the Public Integrity Section, under a president who campaigned on a vow to exact retribution against his enemies, could make it easier to prosecute Trump’s opponents and spare his allies, said constitutional law experts and former Justice Department officials.

“We are talking about the politicization of the justice system,” said Stuart Gerson, the head of the Justice Department’s civil division under Republican President George H.W. Bush and an acting attorney general under Democratic President Bill Clinton. “The rule of law is endangered.” ...

“The true weaponization [of the Justice Department] is beginning now,” said Randall Eliason, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in Washington D.C. specializing in corruption under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

 

The Indictments of James Comey and Letitia James

Donald Trump has been seething against former FBI Director James Comey ever since Comey told him about the questionable Steele Dossier tying him to Russian collusion early in his first term. He wanted Erik Siebert, the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, to prosecute Comey, but Siebert refused because he did not have enough evidence to bring an indictment. This put him in an untenable position, so he did the honorable thing and resigned from his job rather than bow to the pressure to prosecute someone without sufficient evidence. At least that's what Siebert claims. Trump claims that Siebert couldn't have resigned because he had fired him. So who did Trump want to replace Siebert with and why? Trump told us when he posted this message to Pam Bondi on Truth Social. 

Holy vindictive prosecution, Batman! Donald Trump just told us that he wanted to find someone to maliciously prosecute his enemies, and Lindsey Halligan would be just the person to do it. Of course, the fact that Trump would abuse the Justice Department to take revenge against his enemies should come as no surprise to anyone who saw the word cloud Trump posted on Truth Social that practically screamed that seeking revenge would be his top priority as president.

And just in case you are still unconvinced about Trump's primary motivation for prosecuting Tish James, James Comey, and others, he removed any doubt with this touching passage from his eulogy at Charlie Kirk's funeral.

[Charlie Kirk] did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them. That's where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent and I don't want the best for them. I'm sorry. I am sorry, Erika. But now Erika can talk to me and the whole group, and maybe they can convince me that that’s not right, But I can’t stand my opponent.

Trump wanted a hatchet woman to prosecute his enemies, and he got exactly what he wanted in Lindsey Halligan. Prosecutors reportedly wrote Halligan a memo stating that they could not find probable cause to indict Comey. But Halligan remained undeterred. Despite the fact that she had no experience as a prosecutor, she somehow found the evidence to indict Comey in just four days that Siebert and his team of experienced prosecutors overlooked in their two-month investigation. Or so she would have you believe.

You might find the vagueness in Halligan's two-count indictment of Comey a bit peculiar. All we are told is that Comey allegedly lied to a Senator during a Judicial Committee hearing about whether he had authorized PERSON 3 to serve as an anonymous source for news reports about an FBI investigation regarding PERSON 1. The indictment does not tell us which Senator Comey allegedly lied to. Nor does it tell us who PERSON 1 or PERSON 3 are. Michael Popok, a trial attorney with over 30-years' experience, explained why this vagueness should raise a red flag in the following video. 

This [indictment] is so bare bones that it is hard to do the reporting, which means it’s great for the defense in terms of striking down this indictment. The indictment is supposed to be able to tell the person what they’re being indicted for. And since there is only mention of PERSON 1 and PERSON 2 and PERSON 3, and there was a statement, but we won’t tell you what the statement is, how is the person indicted supposed to know?... I’m not supposed to have to piece together [what Comey’s supposed lie was, who he supposedly lied to, and who he supposedly lied about.]

Now, maybe despite all that this, you still believe Trump had a legitimate reason to fire Siebert and replace him with someone else. Maybe he was incompetent. Or maybe he was a political hack--a RINO who was loved by the Democrats as Trump claimed in his Truth Social post to Pam Bondi. There are three problems with this argument.

  1. Siebert was recommended for his position by Virginia's REPUBLICAN governor, Glenn Youngkin.
  2. He was appointed to be the Acting U.S. Attorney by President Trump. And on May 6, Trump nominated him to serve in the position permanently.
  3. He won the unanimous support of the judges in his district to stay in his position indefinitely.

Legal commentator Liz Dye presents these facts in her video explaining why Siebert’s replacement by Halligan followed by Comey’s indictment is so outrageous. She concludes that,


This is massive corruption that would have gotten the president impeached in any other era. The fact that Congress doesn’t care at all is a disaster for the rule of law.
 

You won’t find a better video than Dye’s explaining how we got here.

 

Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor with 30-years' experience, agrees with Dye. Kirschner predicts in this next video that Comey's motion to dismiss the case "will be the most robust, the most compelling vindictive prosecution motion ever filed in the courts of the United States. Not hyperbole."

And finally, let's hear from Ty Cobb, a lawyer who worked for the  White House during the Mueller investigation. Cobb said that Comey's case may be tossed out before trial because of the  “wholly unconstitutional [and] authoritarian” way the indictment was done. This exchange he had with Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan provides the best two-paragraph summary of what Trump’s Justice Department is doing and why it is doing it that I have seen.

Brennan: Well, the New York Times is reporting that half a dozen US attorneys offices have been ordered to draft plans to investigate a group funded by George Soros, who is a Democratic donor.  You look at that, you look at the lists of names of others who the president have said he specifically wants to be prosecuted or investigated.  I'll read a few of them to you: two former Trump officials, Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor. He also said he wants a federal investigation into former special counsel Jack Smith. The DOJ fired the 35 lawyers who were involved in the January 6th and classified documents cases. Justice Department's now going after Fulton County DA Fani Willis's travel records. We have quite an exhaustive list here. What is the pattern you see?


Cobb: Well, I think if you go to 30,000 ft, what you see is a lot of moving parts, but simple themes. The simple themes are rewriting history. Trump wants to rewrite history so that the next generation may not know that he incited a violent insurrection, refused to peacefully transfer the power of the presidency after losing an election, stole classified documents and showed them to friends and guests at Mar-a-Lago, and that he was a criminal.  He’s a convicted felon. All, anybody involved in those events that offended him, they’re in real danger.

As you can see, many prominent lawyers were alarmed by Comey's indictment. But there was at least one person who couldn't wait to let the world know how thrilled he was about it.

Can you say, "Poisoning the jury pool," boys and girls? There. I knew you could.

James Comey wasn't the only person who Trump wanted Siebert to prosecute. He also wanted him to prosecute New York State Attorney General Letitia James for mortgage fraud. Ed Martin, the head of the DOJ's Weaponization Working Group, and Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, pressured Siebert to indict James. Siebert investigated James for five months and concluded that he couldn't indict her because the evidence that she intentionally committed fraud just wasn't there. 

I strongly recommend reading Ruth Marcus's article in The New Yorker for a deeper understanding of just how weak the case against James is. Not only was there insufficient evidence to indict her, there was actually evidence that exonerated her. Pay close attention to Marcus as she explains why pressuring a prosecutor to go after someone without evidence crosses the reddest of lines.

Since Trump regained office, the Department of Justice has dismissed career prosecutors for an array of unjustified and self-serving reasons: for daring to have worked on the criminal cases against Trump; being the daughter of Comey; failing to remove personal pronouns in a signature block. It has dismissed pending cases to serve political ends, such as that of New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams. What’s happening now is worse. Dropping the criminal charges against Adams amounted to a political perversion of the justice system. But using the criminal law to punish political opponents as retribution inflicts far greater damage. Here, a potentially guilty person doesn’t walk free; an innocent person is harmed. The prospect of eventual acquittal in the case of an unjustified prosecution is of little comfort; as Trump well understands, being indicted and having to stand trial is ruinous enough. Firing a prosecutor for refusing to pursue a political opponent without a sufficient legal basis crosses the reddest of lines. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche were reported to have privately defended Siebert and questioned the viability of the case against James.

And if that's not enough to convince you that an indictment of Tish James would be a meritless political prosecution filed solely to appease Trump's vindictiveness, there's this report from MSNBC.

A top prosecutor in Virginia has informed colleagues she plans to decline to seek charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James, resisting intense pressure from President Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with her discussions.

Elizabeth Yusi, who oversees major criminal prosecutions in the Norfolk office of the Eastern District of Virginia, has confided to co-workers that she sees no probable cause to believe James engaged in mortgage fraud, the two sources told MSNBC. Yusi plans to present her conclusion to the president’s new interim U.S. attorney, Lindsey Halligan, in the coming weeks, they said.

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE! Don't forget that Trump also mentioned James's first name in one of the two Truth Social posts proving that he was using his Justice Department for malicious prosecutions. Trump really got his money's worth when he fired Siebert and replaced him with Halligan. Halligan indicted James for bank fraud and making a false statement to a financial institution. Watch the following video to see James's reaction to her indictment as well as former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance's discussion of how weak the indictment is.

 

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The Arrests of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Representative LaMonica McIver

Mayor Ras Baraka and three New Jersey members of Congress went to inspect a recently reopened ICE detention facility in Newark New Jersey on May 9. The events that led to the arrests of Mayor Baraka for trespass and Representative LaMonica MvIver for assault are a bit too complex for me to summarize here, but you can read about them in the New Jersey Monitor.

Now watch former prosecutor Katie Phang's video to see footage from the event and see Phang's analysis of McIver's arrest. There are several points to keep in mind as you watch the video.

  1. Mayor Baraka and the three representatives were there in their official capacities to inspect the facility. They should have been allowed in to do their jobs unhindered.
  2. It is not clear whether McIver intentionally put her hands on a law enforcement official or if, as McIver contends, she was shoved into him by someone else in the scrum.
  3. You can see Homeland Security agent Ricky Patel talking to someone over the phone around 6:05 into the video. Patel tells the person on the other end, "I'm going to take him right now. Even though he stepped out [of the area behind the gate near the facility], I'm going to put him in cuffs." He then turned to his men and said, "We're going to walk out of the gates. I'm going to place the Mayor in handcuffs. Okay? We are arresting the Mayor right now, per the Deputy Attorney General of the United States." The Deputy Attorney General was Todd Blanche. (If Blanche's name sounds familiar to you, it is probably because he was the one who conducted an interview with Ghislaine Maxwell that "exonerated" Trump from all wrong doing involving Jeffrey Epstein. Maxwell was rewarded for feeding Blanche the answers that Trump wanted to hear by being transferred to a cushy low-security prison despite the rule prohibiting sex offenders from being sent to such prisons.) It seems clear that Baraka was complying with the order to leave the facility, and he was arrested only because Blanche ordered him arrested.
  4. At around 6:34 of the video, Patel tells the others, "If you have body cams, turn them off." Katie Phang expressed uncertainty in her video as to whether Patel told the others to turn their body cams on or off, but I clearly heard him say "turn them off." Both the closed captioning of the video and the video's transcript indicate that he ordered the others turn their body cams off as well. This shows that Patel knew he was about to do something shady at best or illegal at worst.

U.S. Attorney Alina Habba announced that she was dropping the misdemeanor trespass charge against Baraka on May 19. Federal magistrate judge Andre Espinosa scolded a representative of Habba's office for five minutes and called the arrest and dismissal of Baraka "embarrassing."

“The hasty arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, followed swiftly by the dismissal of these trespassing charges a mere 13 days later, suggests a worrying misstep by your office,” Espinosa said. “An arrest, particularly of a public figure, is not a preliminary investigative tool. It is a severe action, carrying significant reputational and personal consequences, and it should only be undertaken after a thorough, dispassionate evaluation of credible evidence.”

Representative McIver's arrest looks like fruit from a poisonous tree to me. Had Blanche not ordered Baraka's unjustifiable, and likely unlawful arrest, the events leading up to her arrest would never have happened. Mayor Baraka filed a lawsuit against Patel and New Jersey Attorney Alina Habba for false arrest, malicious prosecution, and defamation. I predict that McIver will be found "not guilty" (assuming her case even gets to trial) and will follow up with a similar lawsuit. I suspect the above Trump Truth Social post telling Pam Bondi that she should go after James Comey, Tish James, and Adam Schiff will help prove that Trump was using the Justice Department as a weapon for malicious prosecution and that Baraka an McIver were the first victims of Trump's weapon. (Caveat: I am not a lawyer. Trump's post to Bondi happened over four months after this incident, so I do not know if it will be admissible in court to prove that the Justice Department had been weaponized as early as May.)

 

Trump Wants To Prosecute President Obama For Treason

I am am not even going to try to put together a comprehensive list of all of the perceived enemies who Trump has said he wants to investigate and prosecute during his second term. The list is so long that I would be bound to leave one or two out. But there is one person whose inclusion in Trump's prosecution club is so absurd in light of Trump's history with him that I can't help but mention him--and that would be President Obama. Trump called for President Obama to be prosecuted for treason in July for manipulating intelligence in a crooked investigation of the Trump campaign's ties to Russia. 

 

Donald Trump has had it in for Obama for a LOOOOONG time. A rumor had been circulating among Obama's critics since 2008 that Obama was born outside the United States. President Obama released a copy of his short-form birth certificate in June 2008 showing he was born in Hawaii, but that was not enough to quell the suspicions of the right-wing Birther conspiracy theorists. Enter Donald Trump in March 2011 when he breathed life into this theory that had previously been circulating only on the fringes by claiming he had sent a team of investigators to Hawaii to discover the REAL truth about Obama's birth certificate and by offering a $5 million reward to anyone who could convince him that Obama was born in the U.S. Obama released his long-form birth certificate in April 2011 proving he was indeed born in Hawaii. and he mocked Trump and his birtherism a few days later at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

But Trump did not stop spreading birtherism even after he was proven wrong when Obama showed him his long-form birth certificate. If anything, being mocked only made him double down and encourage others to break the law in order to get evidence to support his fantasy.

Ironically, Trump accused Obama of hacking his phone two and a half years later. As the saying goes, every Trump accusation is a confession. Trump seems to think that others are carrying out the same odious or illegal acts that he himself has done or encouraged others to do.

Trump hated President Obama so much that he practically accused him of stealing the 2012 election from Mitt Romney. He even called on his followers to march on DC to prevent Obama from serving a second term. Sound familiar? (Note the dates of these tweets. (Election day was November 6, 2012.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trump can hold a grudge for a long, long time. His grudge has made him unhinged. Five years after Obama humiliated him at the White House Correspondents' dinner, Trump accused Obama and Hillary Clinton of being the founders of ISIS.

 

Of course, Trump's claim that President Obama committed treason by twisting the intelligence against him is nonsense, and no serious evidence has been brought forth to support this claim. And even if there was evidence to support this claim (which there isn't), the Supreme Court gave Obama immunity when it ruled in Trump v. United States that presidents have absolute immunity for all actions that fall within the core duties of the president and presumptive immunity for actions that fall within the outer perimeters of the president's duties. What a delicious twist of irony. Any attempt to prosecute President Obama would be hoisted by Trump's own petard.

 

Trump Calls For the Justice Department to Investigate Two Former Trump Officials

To be fair to Trump, I must note that he doesn't just demand his Justice Department investigate Democrats. He has also demanded investigations of Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor, two former officials of his first Administration.

Donald Trump appointed Chris Krebs as Under Secretary of the National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD) in February 2018. The NYPDD was transformed into the Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency with Krebs as its leader. Krebs became the target of Trump's fury when he and the agency he led said that the 2020 election was the most secure election in U.S. history. His declaration that the 2020 election was secure, along with his appearance on 60 Minutes explaining his determination, was all it took to get Trump to sic his Justice Department on him.

 

Miles Taylor was a former chief of staff to Kirstjen Nielsen, President Trump’s third Homeland Security Secretary. He was the author of an article published anonymously in the New York Times in 2018 explaining why he was part of a resistance movement of senior officials within the Trump Administration who were trying to thwart the worst parts of Trump's agenda. (He later resigned his job and identified himself as the author of this piece.) He has since been an outspoken critic of Trump's and has often warned voters against re-electing him. Trump published a fact sheet calling Taylor "a bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his government position, prioritizing his own ambition, personal notoriety, and monetary gain over fidelity to his constitutional oath." He also claimed that Taylor disclosed "sensitive information obtained through unauthorized methods and betrayed the confidence of those with whom he served." 

Whatever it was that Taylor disclosed, Trump is PISSED. He has even accused Taylor of being guilty of treason--a crime that could carry the death penalty. 

What sensitive information did Taylor reveal that has Trump so upset? I don't know, but if I had to guess it would be that Trump wanted to shoot migrants in the legs who were illegally crossing the border to prevent them from coming into the country. Taylor said that Trump even wanted women and children to be shot! (See 37:45 - 42:11 of this video.) This seems to track closely to what Trump's Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, said about Trump wanting to shoot Black Lives Matter protestors in the legs.

Taylor says he has disclosed no classified information and has called Trump's demand that he be investigated an attack on free speech. Taylor explains how he is fighting back in this next video.

 

 

Honorable Mentions

I said earlier that I would not be listing everyone who Trump has threatened to investigate or prosecute, but I would be grossly negligent if I did not include these honorable mentions in my discussion.

  1. Trump has signed an executive order and a national security memorandum which will enable his Justice Department to go after left-wing protesters. Those who are protesting against Israel and against Trump's ICE raids will be its most likely targets, but an abusive Justice Department could use these documents to justify going after anyone who Trump sees as an enemy. I discuss this alarming development in more detail in this column. 
  2. Donald Trump has said that Fani Willis, the federal prosecutor who went after Trump for his fake elector scheme and his attempt to pressure Georgia's Secretary of Defense to find him 11,780 more votes, should be prosecuted and thrown in jail.
  3. The Trump Justice Department has filed a judicial complaint against Judge James Boasberg after Boasberg tried to hold Administration officials in contempt for defying his order against deporting Venezuelans to a torture prison in El Salvador without due process. This was a singal to all judges that the Administration thinks it can defy judicial restraints on its illegal activity with impunity. I discuss this in more detail in my column on Trump's attacks against judges who have ruled against him. 
  4. Trump wants to imprison Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson because they are trying to resist ICE's brutal invasion of Chicago

And make no mistake about it. ICE has been terrorizing Chicago, as Chris Hayes reports. 

 

Summary

You might be tempted to disregard my analysis of the Justice Department because I am not a lawyer. But I am not alone. 282 former Justice Department officials have written an open letter decrying the Department's weaponization, its ousting of law enforcement officials who keep our country safe, and its gutting of its civil rights division. I'm sure they would all agree that putting Trump in charge of the Justice Department is like putting the Joker in charge of Batman's trial.

Update 10/9/25: I added the fourth point under Honorable Mentions in response to Trump's desire to throw Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson in prison.

Update 10/10/26: I updated the section about Letitia James and James Comey to reflect yesterday's indictment of Tish James.

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