Trump Has Turned the Department of Justice Into His Own Personal Weapon

In his second administration, US President Donald Trump succeeded in turning the institution of legal justice into his personal weapon. A fragile wall was built to separate the Justice Department from the political interests of the Oval Office in the wake of the Watergate scandal in 1974. Within months, Trump broke down that wall, using a legal team at his disposal to go after domestic dissidents and conduct political investigations.

The latest shocking example of how far the president is willing to go occurred last week when New York Attorney General Letitia James was indicted on charges of mortgage fraud. James is the latest person to be targeted by the Trump-era Justice Department. Trump has been venting to James since she won a civil fraud case against him and his family company.

The news comes just weeks after US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Eric Seibert concluded there was insufficient evidence to move forward with charges against former FBI Director James Comey, who along with James was another one of the people at the top of Trump’s enemies list due to his role in investigating possible links between the 2016 Republican presidential campaign and Russia. Under pressure from the president to resign — in late September, Trump told reporters, “Yes, I want him to step down” — Seibert stepped down. Trump replaced him with Lindsay Halligan, a 36-year-old former insurance lawyer from Florida with no prosecutorial experience.

Continuing the pressure, Trump sent a message on social media to Attorney General Pam Bondi, stating in plain language: “Justice must be served now!!” Days later, Halligan took the case to a grand jury in Virginia, which then indicted Comey.

Trump also fired Justice Department prosecutors who were connected to the cases against him, and tried to pressure law firms that handled parts of the investigations to sign punitive agreements at the risk of losing security clearances. Top FBI agents were let go and said it was done for no reason other than that they antagonized Trump and his supporters. More recently, FBI Director Kash Patel reportedly fired the agent who refused to arrest Comey and accompany him on a “criminal walk” in front of reporters.

And long before the end of Trump 2.0, conditions will be worse than they were at the end of Watergate, given that the current attacks are taking place in broad daylight and with the approval of Republicans in the House and Senate. The new Ministry of Justice will not be able to respect the Constitution no matter who is president.

Unless Congress acts soon, the Justice Department will be damaged beyond repair.

Founded in 1870, The Justice Department had a problematic history long before President Richard Nixon sat in the Oval Office.

A. took over. Mitchell Palmer, the last Attorney General under President Woodrow Wilson, carried out the “Palmer Raids” from 1919 to 1921 as part of the Red Scare of the era, which targeted socialists and communists. Thousands of people were imprisoned without due process. Fewer people were deported.

Attorney General Harry Dougherty, who had previously served as President Warren Harding’s campaign manager, was forced to resign in 1924 after his involvement in the Tiebout Dome scandal, which revolved around the Secretary of the Interior accepting bribes from oil interests. Between 1961 and late 1964, President John F. Kennedy’s brother, Robert, served as Attorney General and authorized FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to conduct wiretaps on civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

But no one subverted the independence of the Justice Department as much as Nixon did. During his tenure from 1969 to 1972, Attorney General John Mitchell – who had been Nixon’s campaign manager – expanded illegal wiretapping and sabotage operations into the anti-war movement. He also investigated and leaked negative information about the president’s political opponents. Mitchell worked to prevent New York Times Since the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971.

He resigned on February 15, 1972, to chair the Committee to Re-elect the President (informally abbreviated as CREEP), the group that was responsible for the break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate complex. In 1975, Mitchell was convicted for his role in the scandal and spent 19 months in prison. Richard Kleindienst, who replaced Mitchell and supported his hardline stance against local anti-war protesters, was implicated in the cover-up. He resigned on April 30, 1973.

During the Saturday Night Massacre in October 1973, Nixon wanted the new Attorney General, Elliott Richardson, to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, who had been demanding that the President release recordings of White House and Oval Office phone conversations. When Richardson and then-Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus resigned rather than carry out the order, Nixon found someone else – Attorney General Robert Bork – to do the job.

Finally, as we heard in the “smoking evidence” tape from 1972 when the Supreme Court forced the release of the recording, Nixon and Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman wanted the CIA to block the FBI from conducting its investigation into the whole thing.

As a result of the Watergate scandal – which culminated in Nixon announcing his resignation on August 8, 1974 – Americans finally realized how dangerous it was for the Department of Justice to be a mere extension of the presidency. Under an imperial president, strategies of intimidation, harassment, and abuse of power can be victorious.

Richard Thornburgh, who later served as one of President Ronald Reagan’s attorneys general, admitted in 1977: “People began to think that the Justice Department was like every other department, and could not be trusted to do what was decent and honorable and right.”

During the years that followed, a series of attorneys general pursued reforms that attempted to ensure the integrity of the agency. For example, President Gerald Ford’s second Attorney General, Edward Levy, created the Office of Professional Responsibility to monitor activities within the Department of Justice. Levy also imposed new restrictions on FBI activities.

Under President Jimmy Carter, Attorney General Griffin Bell announced that most communications regarding cases should go through his office or two of his top aides. In September 1978, Bell gathered Justice Department lawyers in the Great Hall of their building to articulate three basic principles that he insisted would guide the agency moving forward.

First, there had to be guidelines to prevent them from allowing political considerations to guide their work. Transparency will be vital. Outside of political initiatives, communications had to be severely restricted. Second, the Department of Justice had to strive to protect its public image as a neutral government body. Finally, the Attorney General had to maintain a staff of honorable and principled lawyers who could adhere to these values.

“I believe our primary mission is to serve the government as professionals, to exercise our independent judgment and to do our duty as we see it,” he told the lawyers gathered before him. But the partisan activities of some prosecutors this century, combined with the unfortunate legacy of the Watergate scandal, have created understandable public concerns that some decisions in justice may be the product of favoritism, pressure, or Politics. Bell told the press that the changes would be necessary “to restore and maintain public confidence in the Department of Justice.”

Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti, who took office in 1979, incorporated these principles into the Justice Department’s internal rules. Future Attorney General Merrick Garland — who was a special assistant to Civiletti, according to AtlanticFranklin Foer – “He sat next to Civiletti as he continued to work on reforming the Justice Department: writing new rules and procedures to prevent another president from abusing the institution. They were preserving the rule of law by wrapping it in standards, completely insulated from political pressures.”

Congress also passed important reforms in the 1970s. In 1976, the House and Senate passed legislation limiting the FBI director to a single 10-year term. The goal was to prevent another leader from retaining power for the duration of Hoover (who served for approximately 48 years) while at the same time ensuring that they had sufficient independence from the president.

Two years later, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which created a FISA court that was responsible for approving surveillance operations on American citizens. That same year, Congress passed the Ethics in Government Act, which created an independent board to investigate wrongdoing in the executive branch. Once the attorney general was appointed, the law made it very difficult for anyone, including the president, to infringe on the work of the special counsel.

While Democrats and Republicans allowed the law establishing the independent prosecutor’s office to lapse in 1999 – frustrated with their lack of any control over these prosecutors, who had become fodder in the era’s heated partisan battles – the rest of the reforms that isolated the Justice Department worked fairly well. While there have been examples when the lines between presidential politics and legal justice have become blurred, overall the divide has stood the test of time.

Even when Trump overcame these barriers in his first term, there were enough so-called adults in the room to resist his efforts.

In 2025, Trump He was more successful in achieving his goal. As part of his broader effort to assert total control over executive power—fulfilling a vision that proponents of the “unitary executive theory” have been advocating since the 1980s—Trump is systematically destroying any remaining independence within the Justice Department.

With a president who does not adhere to security barriers — and surrounded by staffers eager to test the constitutional limits of executive power — this has become a dangerous situation for the nation. The lessons of the Watergate scandal, embedded in the reforms of the 1970s, have been dismantled. As a result, the Justice Department, which the country relies on to uphold law and order, is subject to the full authority of the president, who can do as he pleases with this important agency.

By dismantling the independence of the Department of Justice, Trump has rewritten the limits of executive power, thereby eroding the strength of the rule of law within a democracy.