Dem
47
GOP
53
One of the goals of the Trump administration has been to hollow out the DOJ and fire as many career prosecutors as possible, while getting as many others as possible to quit. Once the pros are gone, the White House can install loyalists who will do the bidding of the President, or anyone ostensibly acting at his direction. Then, they can go on a revenge tour to punish his perceived enemies and reward those who pay him off or with whom he feels some affinity—like other criminals, including those who attacked the U.S. Capitol and assaulted police officers with bats and pipes. So, one could say the mission of the DoJ has been largely turned on its head. The mission now is not to be an independent agency whose only fealty is to the rule of law and that serves the American people and brings cases without fear or favor. Instead, the mission is to serve one Donald J. Trump and intimidate and jail anyone who crosses him or threatens his agenda. In case anyone is wondering, this is what actual weaponization of the DoJ looks like. (As a reminder, Trump was indicted not because of politics, but because he broke federal law by conspiring to overturn a free and fair election and by squirreling away, and refusing to return, highly classified documents in his bathroom and ballroom at Mar-a-Lago.)
As dangerous as proceeding down that path is, and as harrowing as it is for innocent men and women to be targeted for political purposes, there are some foreseeable consequences to these actions. When all you care about is loyalty, you're going to find some serious holes in your new hires' competence. Turns out it takes more than just being a sycophant to be an effective prosecutor. And the judges before whom these flunkies appear are getting mighty impatient in ways government attorneys have not seen before. Remember when Erez Reuveni was truthful in court, and admitted that the deportation of Kilmar Abrego was an administrative error? He was rewarded for his candor by being summarily fired. No one who wants to keep their job with this administration will make that mistake again, so lawyers are either obfuscating or outright lying to the courts now. As a result, courts have made clear that any benefit of the doubt that DoJ attorneys used to enjoy is gone, while calling their work "shoddy." What had been called a "presumption of regularity" is now "prove it." And, lo and behold, they can't.
The saying goes that a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich if she wants. And indeed, in grand jury proceedings, the deck is stacked against defendants. Only the prosecutor is allowed to select and present evidence and the standard for an indictment is only probable cause, far lower than the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard for convictions. And yet, if there's no evidence at all, that sandwich walks. And more and more, we're seeing grand juries refusing to return indictments due to insufficient evidence. The DoJ prosecutors are overcharging as a publicity stunt—asking for felony indictments when the action only supports a misdemeanor—and grand juries aren't playing along. In L.A., for example, where Trump has installed loyalist Bill Essayli, a former state assemblyman, as interim U.S. Attorney, he tried to punish protesters by bringing felony assault charges, only to see them dismissed outright or rejected by grand juries. In D.C., prosecutors are also failing to secure indictments against protesters challenging Trump's federal takeover.
In Trump's immunity case before the Supreme Court, Justice Samuel Alito and others warned that if presidents were not immune from criminal charges for their official acts, former presidents of both parties could be subject to political prosecutions, and they could not perform their official duties under that threat. Turns out that they had that backward.
The justices failed to account for a corrupt president's weaponizing that immunity cloak to turn America's foremost prosecutorial agency into his own personal retribution arm. But the guardrails and layers of process that Justice Sonia Sotomayor and the other dissenters argued would protect former presidents also work to protect the people from the current president's abuse of power.
And former federal prosecutors are not staying quiet. Most are fighting their dismissals and many are running for office themselves. When you believe in the rule of law and have spent your career in service of equal justice, it's hard to let it be destroyed without a fight. (L)