Trump Is Weaponizing the DOJ Just Like He Accused Democrats of Doing
Trump's appointees are wielding federal power in a manner that appears every bit as corrupt as what he complained about on the campaign trail.
Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign season, Donald Trump accused his Democratic opponents—President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris—of using the levers of power against him.
"The Biden regime's weaponization of our system of justice is straight out of the Stalinist Russia horror show," he told rallygoers in March 2023 after being indicted in Manhattan for violating election law. In a September 2024 debate against Harris, Trump even blamed Democrats' rhetoric for the assassination attempt he survived weeks earlier, saying "I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me."
But now that Trump is firmly ensconced back in office, his administration seems to have no interest in stopping government weaponization. Rather, it seems keen to wield that power for itself. Looking back now on Trump's complaints, it appears less that he was upset than that he was jealous.
On February 10, acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove issued a memo to Danielle Sassoon, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Citing the authorization of Attorney General Pam Bondi, Bove directed Sassoon to dismiss the charges in the Department of Justice's (DOJ) ongoing case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams for bribery and wire fraud.
Two weeks before Trump took office, the DOJ adamantly maintained Adams' guilt. "Law enforcement has continued to identify additional individuals involved in Adams's conduct, and to uncover additional criminal conduct by Adams," acting U.S. Attorney Walter Kim wrote in a motion to the court.
But just weeks later, Bove instructed Sassoon to drop the case—partly because "the pending prosecution has unduly restricted Mayor Adams' ability to devote full attention and resources" to enforcing Trump's immigration policies.
Sassoon refused, telling Bondi in a letter that dropping the charges against Adams for the reasons Bove specified would be wholly inappropriate and unethical. "If a criminal prosecution cannot be used to punish political activity, it likewise cannot be used to induce or coerce such activity," Sassoon wrote. "Threatening criminal prosecution even to gain an advantage in civil litigation is considered misconduct for an attorney."
She further claimed in a footnote that during a January meeting at which she and Bove were present, Adams' attorneys offered a quid pro quo in which Adams would "assist with the Department's enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed." She also alleged that Bove "admonished" a member of her staff for taking notes and "directed the collection of those notes at the meeting's conclusion."
Sassoon concluded the letter by offering to resign if Bondi did not "reconsider the directive."
"I have not spoken to [Sassoon]," Bondi later told a reporter, "but that case should be dropped." The following day, Bove accepted Sassoon's resignation and said she and the other prosecutors in her office would be investigated by the DOJ for "disobeying direct orders implementing the policy of a duly elected President."
The entire affair reeks of the political favoritism that Trump inveighed against on the campaign trail. Sassoon, a Federalist Society member who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and was appointed to her position by Trump just days earlier, is clearly no leftist radical.
Bove's position, meanwhile, is nakedly political: He charges that Sassoon refused to dismiss a "politically motivated prosecution" despite admitting in his original memo that the DOJ had not "assess[ed] the strength of the evidence or the legal theories on which the case is based" and that "this directive in no way calls into question the integrity and efforts of the line prosecutors responsible for the case, or your efforts in leading those prosecutors in connection with a matter you inherited."
At least six other federal prosecutors resigned before Bove found one willing to dismiss the charges against Adams. "I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion," Hagan Scotten, an assistant U.S. attorney in Sassoon's office, wrote in his resignation letter to Bove. "But it was never going to be me."
Bove also claimed in his second letter that Sassoon's accusation of a quid pro quo was "false." But that very same week, Adams appeared on Fox & Friends with Tom Homan, Trump's border czar, who said the mayor had agreed to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement measures. "If he doesn't come through," Homan said, "I'll be in his office, up his butt saying, 'Where the hell is the agreement we came to?'"
Not only did Homan describe a literal quid pro quo, he even defined the "quid" and the "quo" on national television.
Meanwhile, Edward Martin Jr., Trump's pick to head the U.S. Attorney's Office in the District of Columbia, has spent his first few weeks in office threatening investigations of his boss' political enemies.
When media outlets reported on the identities of engineers working with Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, Martin offered his office's services to Musk in letters posted on X. In one letter, Martin told Musk that his office would investigate anyone "discovered to have broken the law or even acted simply unethically."
Martin also sent letters to Democratic lawmakers, threatening to investigate fiery comments they made about political opponents. The letters were a farce: Each lawmaker's comments were well within the bounds of political speech protected by the First Amendment. In one case, the letter came nearly five years after the remarks in question, when Sen. Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.) said two conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices had "released the whirlwind" and would "pay the price."
This week, Martin dropped his investigation into Schumer, but only after the DOJ reportedly refused his request to present the case to a federal grand jury.
In the meantime, Martin has busied himself with other abuses of his considerable power. As Reason has written, the Biden administration spent much of its final days in office approving as many grants and loans as possible from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) before Trump was sworn in. An EPA staffer admitted as much after the election, telling an undercover operative with the right-wing group Project Veritas, "We're just trying to get the money out as fast as possible before they come in and stop it all."
An unseemly task, certainly, and ripe for abuse as administrators are likely to impose less scrutiny than usual on a shorter timeline. But ultimately, the agency was funded by an act of Congress and imbued with the authority to disburse the money.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced in February that $20 billion of EPA money was "parked at an outside financial institution by the Biden EPA"—later identified as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a grant program for clean energy projects; the grants in question were designated to particular recipients but held and distributed by Citibank. Zeldin said this money was part of a "scheme" to conduct "a rush job with reduced oversight," and he pledged to claw back the funds and "get them back inside of control of government."
The Washington Post reported last week that FBI agents had questioned EPA employees about the distribution of the grant money. Denise Cheung, a 24-year veteran of the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office and head of its criminal division, resigned when Martin apparently directed her to draft an order compelling Citibank to freeze the funds.
Cheung had discussed the order with the FBI's Washington field office, which "issued a letter to the bank recommending a thirty-day administrative freeze on certain assets," Cheung explained in a resignation letter to Martin. She then received a call from Martin, in which he "criticized that the language merely 'recommended' that a freeze of the accounts take place" and "directed that a second letter be immediately issued to the bank under your and my name ordering the bank not to release any funds in the subject accounts pursuant to a criminal investigation."
"When I explained that the quantum of evidence did not support that action, you stated that you believed that there was sufficient evidence," Cheung added. "Because I believed that I lacked the legal authority to issue such [an order], I told you that I would not do so. You then asked for my resignation."
Martin "then personally submitted a seizure warrant application without any other prosecutors in his office that was rejected by a U.S. magistrate judge in D.C., who found that the request and accompanying FBI agent affidavit failed to establish a reasonable belief that a crime occurred," according to The Washington Post.
"That happens basically… never," writes Harry Litman, who served as a U.S. attorney under President Bill Clinton. "I can't recall a single instance when it happened in a US Attorney's office where I was serving."
Martin currently serves as the interim U.S. attorney, but Trump also nominated him to the post permanently, which will require Senate confirmation. He faces considerable headwinds from the opposition party: This week, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee asked the D.C. Bar to investigate Martin's conduct since taking office.
In a letter last month, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D–Va.), the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, charged that Martin's public actions "raise serious concerns that your new initiative is a pretext for misusing your office for political ends, threatening and intimidating critics of the Administration, and chilling constitutionally protected speech."
Meanwhile, Rep. James Comer (R–Ky.)—who chairs that committee—praised Martin's nomination, saying it signaled that Trump "wasted no time delivering on his promise to restore law and order in our capital city."
If Trump had come into office on a pledge to rid the DOJ of political persecution and ideologically motivated indictments, it would be a cause worth celebrating. But less than two months back in office, Trump's appointees have used the levers of federal power for his benefit in a manner that seems every bit as corrupt as the process Trump criticized on the campaign trail.
