Early in his second term, US President Donald Trump appointed an ally to lead a ‘Weaponization Working Group’ at the Department of Justice (DoJ), tasked with scrutinising law enforcement officials who had previously investigated him. His pick was Ed Martin, a former Missouri party chair who had promoted Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and defended rioters who stormed the US Capitol.
Since being back in office, President Trump has demanded that the DoJ prosecute those who have opposed him. Martin promised to charge Trump’s political enemies with crimes wherever possible and said he would ‘name’ and ‘shame’ those who couldn’t be charged.
By September, no prosecutions had materialised. An irate Trump posted a message to Attorney General Pam Bondi, the nation’s top law enforcement official. ‘They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is being done,’ he said in a social media post. Aides insisted President Trump intended the message to be private. Instead, the public post has become ‘exhibit A’ in accusations that Trump is undermining the DoJ’s independence.
President Trump targeted New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose office successfully brought a civil fraud case against the Trump Organization, and former FBI Director James Comey, who refused to halt the Bureau’s investigation into Russian interference in Trump’s 2016 election win. He also singled out Senator Adam Schiff, who led the first impeachment trial of Trump during the President’s 2017-2021 term.
Both James and Comey were then indicted after a career US attorney, Erik Siebert, left his position and Trump installed one of his personal lawyers, Lindsey Halligan, who had no prosecutorial experience to that point. Both defendants pleaded not guilty and accused the DoJ of vindictive prosecution. A federal judge dismissed both cases, finding the prosecutor had been illegally appointed amid other potential irregularities. A separate investigation of Schiff appears to have stalled.
Representative democracy risks descending into a system where political enemies are punished and allies protected. This is the type of thing that happens in Putin’s Russia
Richard Painter
Former White House Ethics Counsel and Professor of Law, University of Minnesota
‘Political leaders of all stripes should refrain from interference with prosecutorial decisions, since such can be seen to question the integrity of the institutions charged with enforcing the rule of law,’ says Steven Richman, Chair of the IBA Bar Issues Commission, who speaks in a personal capacity. ‘Appearance matters. When a prosecution is independently evaluated and warranted, it should proceed without political commentary that can taint it.’
More politically-charged inquiries are under way. Critics see a widening pattern of President Trump using the DoJ to punish perceived adversaries. Since the post-Watergate reforms of the 1970s, US norms and policies have generally insulated prosecutors from political pressures.
‘When Trump is tweeting, or posting on X, directions and demands to the attorney general that certain people be indicted because they’re guilty as hell, that is a blatant, in-your-face violation of the limit on communications between the White House and the Justice Department,’ says Barbara McQuade, a former US Attorney who’s now a professor at the University of Michigan Law School. ‘The list of people that Trump includes are clearly political enemies. He said so himself, that these are people who weaponised the Justice Department. He got indicted, and now it’s payback time. That’s not how it’s supposed to work,’ McQuade says.
During his 2024 re-election campaign, Trump vowed to use federal law enforcement for retaliation, declaring that officials in the administration of President Joe Biden involved in the Mar-a-Lago and 6 January investigations against him should be ‘investigated and put in prison’. He has since expanded political investigations, appointing Alina Habba – a lawyer from his hush-money case defence team – as US attorney in New Jersey. She announced inquiries into New Jersey’s governor and other officials for allegedly obstructing Trump’s mass arrests and deportations of migrants. State officials have publicly defended New Jersey’s policy, put in place during President Trump’s first term, under which police will only get involved in an immigration matter when there’s a criminal warrant issued.
Read more at
