{"id":27313,"date":"2025-10-10T23:58:02","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T23:58:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=27313"},"modified":"2025-10-10T23:58:02","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T23:58:02","slug":"how-trumps-revenge-campaign-could-transform-the-doj","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=27313","title":{"rendered":"How Trump\u2019s Revenge Campaign Could Transform the DOJ"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.<\/p>\n

Yesterday afternoon, a federal grand jury indicted New York State Attorney General Letitia James on two charges\u2014bank fraud and false statements to a financial institution\u2014both connected to her purchase of a home in Virginia. The government is alleging that she saved $18,933 in all.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the kind of money the DOJ typically seeks to recoup, but James isn\u2019t just any alleged fraudster. A prominent anti-Trump gadfly, James brought a civil case against Donald Trump and his company in 2022 and won, resulting in a $500 million fine being levied against the president (he later successfully appealed the fine and has so far paid nothing, although the ruling maintained his liability). Even before that case, James had been outspoken about her criticisms of Trump; in 2018, she called his presidency \u201cillegitimate.\u201d<\/p>\n

James\u2019s indictment comes just more than two weeks after the Justice Department launched its case against another longtime Trump target, former FBI Director James Comey, on charges that he lied to Congress in 2020. (Both Comey and James deny the charges.) Is this a coordinated attack on Trump\u2019s enemies? And how much control can the president really exert over the DOJ\u2019s lawyers? My colleague Quinta Jurecic, who has covered both indictments, joins me to discuss.<\/p>\n

Will Gottsegen: Why is now the moment to indict both Comey and James in such quick succession?<\/p>\n

Quinta Jurecic: The Comey indictment happened when it did because there was a ticking clock. The statute of limitations for most defenses is five years, and last month would have\u00a0 been five years from the congressional testimony that Comey gave in which they\u2019re alleging that he lied.<\/p>\n

Trump installed a new prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia late last month, after the previous prosecutor refused to go after Comey and James. This prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, is now bringing these seemingly retributive cases. In the Comey and James cases, she presented the indictment to the grand jury solo; that\u2019s extremely unusual. And she is also the only person whose signature is on the indictment (typically you\u2019d see the signature of at least one assistant U.S. attorney who is working on the case), which makes it pretty clear that she is channeling the White House\u2019s wishes here.<\/p>\n

Will: Halligan was appointed amid an effort by the president to force out many top prosecutors. What are the kinds of guardrails in place at the DOJ to prevent it from being used as a political weapon?<\/p>\n

Quinta: The standard for getting an indictment before a grand jury is not high, making it an authority that is really easy to abuse. What the Justice Department has done to prevent that is to build up these kinds of guardrails of internal guidelines that tell prosecutors how to behave. The Justice Department\u2019s internal manual says you should only bring a case before a grand jury if you think you can win a conviction at trial. Prosecutors who were abiding by that seem to have reached the conclusion that there was simply nothing to the James case or the Comey case, and therefore those cases shouldn\u2019t be brought.<\/p>\n

You end up with a situation where the only person who is apparently willing to put these cases in front of the grand jury is Halligan\u2014somebody who has no prosecutorial experience, had never served in the Justice Department before this, and doesn\u2019t seem bound by these Justice Department rules in the ways that previous prosecutors felt that they were.<\/p>\n

Will: What does a healthy relationship between the White House and the Department of Justice look like?<\/p>\n

Quinta: In the post-Watergate era, a thicket of norms and practices has grown up around the importance of maintaining law enforcement\u2019s independence from the president. The department really built up this ethos, which presidents have more or less respected until Trump, that the Justice Department is part of the executive branch, it is constitutionally under the control of the president, but there are strong, normative restrictions around the president using the department as a weapon.<\/p>\n

Trump has been very effective in reshaping public perceptions of the Justice Department as something that can be used in this way. And he did it by arguing that the Biden administration had done it to him. His commentary on these issues is essentially, Well, I was prosecuted, so why can\u2019t you be too? (This line of argument is particularly flimsy, given those were cases where the Justice Department took pains to make sure that they were not subject to political influence.) And I think what that does is makes it seem like this is common practice when it really is not. I worry that that has broken the public perception of the relationship between the president and the Justice Department in a way that is going to be very hard to get back.<\/p>\n

Will: With these norms out the window, what might happen to the DOJ?<\/p>\n

Quinta: Right now, there are fewer mechanisms than there used to be for policing Trump\u2019s actions, thanks in significant part to the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling on the immunity case, which basically said, We think that the president has the constitutional authority to tell the Justice Department what to do. And so Trump actually has a pretty strong case that what he is doing is constitutional, whether or not it is a good idea.<\/p>\n

In Watergate, you saw what was known as the Saturday Night Massacre: There was this bulk resignation of Justice Department leadership when Nixon ordered the firing of Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor investigating him. But any mutiny that is going to happen here is going to be quieter. In some ways, I think we\u2019re seeing it already. We\u2019ve seen an extraordinary amount of leaking coming out of the department over the course of these investigations, all basically saying, Prosecutors think that there\u2019s no basis for these charges. One form of resistance is covering your tracks and quietly making it apparent to the press that you do not like this. Another is just that people are leaving. We\u2019re seeing a pretty astonishing exodus of talent from across the department. And I think a lot of that is that people see what\u2019s happening. They don\u2019t like it, and they don\u2019t want to go along with it.<\/p>\n

Will: What does a DOJ exclusively full of Halligans look like?<\/p>\n

Quinta: They\u2019re going to have trouble actually prosecuting these cases. I would not be surprised in the slightest if both the Comey indictment and the James indictment really fall flat. Beyond these specific cases, the broader hollowing out of talent is making it much harder for the Justice Department to bring even basic cases, just because they don\u2019t have the resources.<\/p>\n

Will: How does Comey\u2014and James, too, if this is the route her defense decides to go\u2014prove that he\u2019s being unfairly targeted as a rival of the president\u2019s?<\/p>\n

Quinta: Vindictive prosecution is the idea that you\u2019re being prosecuted only because of improper reasons. You executed a constitutional right, and now you are being punished. There\u2019s also a related idea of selective prosecution: 100 people did the same thing that I did, but only I am being prosecuted. We know that Comey is going to bring this motion; his lawyer, Patrick Fitzgerald, has said as much. I would not be surprised in the slightest if James brought the same motion. And though these motions are very difficult to win, these two people have what must be one of the strongest cases for such a motion ever.<\/p>\n

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