Washington, Feb 16: Pam Bondi had insisted at her Senate confirmation hearing that as attorney general, her Justice Department would not “play politics”.
Yet in the month since the Trump administration took over the building, a succession of actions has raised concerns the department is doing exactly that.
Top officials have demanded the names of thousands of FBI agents who investigated the Capitol riot, sued a state attorney general who had won a massive fraud verdict against Donald Trump before the 2024 election, and ordered the dismissal of a criminal case against New York Mayor Eric Adams by saying the charges had handicapped the Democrat’s ability to partner in the Republican administration’s fight against illegal immigration.
Even for a department that has endured its share of scandals, the moves have generated great upheaval and tested its independence.
Recent firings and resignations have rattled the foundations of an institution that has prided itself on being driven solely by facts, evidence and the law, and led to this question: Will a president who raged against his own Justice Department during his first term succeed in bending it to his will entirely in his second?
“We have seen now a punishing ruthlessness that acting department leadership and the attorney general are bringing to essentially subjugate the workforce to the wishes and demands of the administration, even when it’s obvious” that some of the decisions have all the signs “of corrupting the criminal justice system,” said retired federal prosecutor David Laufman, a senior department official across Democratic and Republican administrations.
He spoke not long after Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor, Danielle Sassoon, resigned in protest following a directive from Emil Bove, the Justice Department’s acting No. 2 official, to dismiss the case against Adams.
In a letter foreshadowing her decision, Sassoon accused the department of acceding to a “quid pro quo” – dropping the case to ensure Adams’ help with Trump’s immigration agenda. Though a Democrat, Adams had for months positioned himself as eager to aid the administration’s effort in America’s largest city, even meeting privately with Trump at Trump’s Florida estate just days before the Republican took office.
Multiple high-ranking officials who oversaw the Justice Department’s public integrity section, which prosecutes corruption cases, joined Sassoon in resigning.
On Friday, a prosecutor involved in the Adams case, Hagan Scotten, became at least the seventh person to quit in the standoff, telling Bove in a letter that it would take a “fool” or a “coward” to meet his demand to drop the charges. (Bove and department lawyers in Washington ultimately filed paperwork Friday night to end the case).
Though the circumstances are significantly different, the wave of resignations conjured memories of the 1973 “Saturday Night Massacre” when multiple Justice Department leaders quit rather than carry out President Richard Nixon’s orders to fire the Watergate special prosecutor.
“Even though there may not be more resignations, a clear message has been sent about the objectives and the expectations of the department,” said Alberto Gonzales, who served as attorney general under Republican President George W Bush until his 2007 resignation in the wake of the dismissal of several US attorneys.
“The purpose of the department is to ensure that our laws are carried out, that those who engage in criminal wrongdoing are prosecuted and punished,” Gonzales said. (AP)
