Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks as President Donald Trump listens during a White House news conference on crime in Washington on August 11. Photo / Eric Lee, The Washington Post
President Donald Trump has spent months chipping away at the barriers that have long protected the Justice Department from political interference. But now federal prosecutors and legal observers are bracing for what comes next as he escalates that effort rapidly.
Veteran lawyers in a Virginia US attorney’s office fear that the ouster of their boss last week – after a White House push to prosecute two of the President’s political foes – could portend even more overt efforts by Trump to dictate the outcome of investigations.
Other federal prosecutors in Maryland, Georgia and western Virginia who are handling politically sensitive probes may soon face similar pressure to fall in line.
“I just want people to act. They have to act,” Trump told reporters outside the White House on Saturday evening, adding, “We have to act fast.”
Former Justice Department officials said they are stunned by what they see as the acceleration and increasing audacity of Trump’s demands.
Just in the past week, the President and members of his administration threatened to prosecute critics for what they described as “hate speech”, which itself is not illegal under federal law. They floated the notion of charging Democratic donors and organisers under federal racketeering statutes. And on Friday, they forced out Erik S. Siebert, the Trump-appointed US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, after he opted not to pursue indictments against New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) and former FBI director James B. Comey, citing a lack of evidence that they had committed crimes.
Any one of those events, in previous administrations, could have spawned congressional investigations, probes by inspectors general and widespread pushback from inside the Justice Department, an institution that, since Watergate, has prized itself on its independence from direct White House pressure, legal observers said.
“We’ve never seen anything even approaching this level of interference with the day-to-day job of prosecutors,” said Carol Lam, a former US attorney in California, who served during the administration of President George W. Bush.
“Having personal vindictiveness steer prosecutions, you see that seeping down the ranks” of the Justice Department, she said. “And there appears to be no bottom.”
On Saturday, Trump capped off those rapid-fire developments with an extraordinary directive, delivered publicly over social media, instructing Attorney General Pam Bondi to swiftly prosecute Comey, James and other political rivals and back US attorneys willing to get that job done.
Trump’s message was “shocking to anyone who has worked at the Department of Justice”, said Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney in Detroit under President Barack Obama.
“Trump says they are ‘guilty as hell,’” she said, referring to the president’s post. “Of what crime? What evidence does he have? Trump doesn’t seem to care as long as his enemies are punished.”
The President’s allies have accused James, who secured a civil fraud judgment against Trump and his real estate empire last year, of committing mortgage fraud. They’ve alleged that Comey, whom Trump fired in 2017 over the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, lied to Congress. Both deny any wrongdoing, and neither has been charged.
Beyond James and Comey, the President has zeroed in on a handful of other probes focused on longtime adversaries. It remains to be seen to what degree Trump’s impatience will affect those cases that have drawn his interest. The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment on Sunday.
Federal prosecutors in Maryland are probing accusations of mortgage fraud lodged by Trump’s allies against Senator Adam Schiff (D-California) as well as claims that John Bolton, the President’s former national security adviser, mishandled classified documents. Both men have been among Trump’s loudest critics.
Overseeing those cases is Kelly O. Hayes, a career prosecutor with over a decade of experience, whom Trump appointed in March as interim US attorney in the state.
In recent weeks, Hayes has met with Ed Martin, a Trump loyalist and Justice Department political appointee who has been particularly aggressive in his pursuit of the mortgage fraud accusations, according to a person familiar with those discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the ongoing probe.
Martin has also conferred with law enforcement officials in Atlanta to advance a similar mortgage fraud case involving Biden-appointed Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook – allegations Trump cited as he moved to fire Cook.
Schiff, Bolton and Cook have all denied wrongdoing. Cook is challenging her dismissal in court.
“This is unlike anything we’ve ever seen,” Schiff told MSNBC on Sunday. “Nixon had his enemies list, but it wasn’t so exhaustive and blatant as this, where he was ordering in front of the whole country, the Justice Department to go after his enemies.”
Meanwhile, a handful of other top prosecutors handling politically sensitive cases have resigned under unusual circumstances.
Todd Gilbert – a former Republican speaker of the Virginia House who was appointed interim US attorney for the Western District of Virginia – stepped down in August, after barely a month on the job. His Roanoke-based office is handling an investigation into key figures in the FBI’s Russia investigation.
Gilbert has not publicly addressed the reasons for his resignation. Some people familiar with his thinking have cited factors other than that probe.
On the day he left office, Gilbert tweeted a cryptic meme from the movie “Anchorman,” saying only: “Boy, that escalated quickly.”
In the Eastern District of Virginia, Siebert’s ouster on Friday set off a wave of concern among the more than 300 attorneys and staff members in the Alexandria-based office – and within some parts of the Trump administration.
Deputy Attorney-General Todd Blanche, the President’s former personal lawyer, was among those in the department’s top echelons who had pushed to keep Siebert on the job, noting his effectiveness in advancing other administration priorities such as immigration enforcement, according to two people familiar with those discussions.
Prosecutors described a widespread sense of confusion as Siebert’s departure – and the demotion of his chief deputy, who normally would have succeeded him – left unclear for hours who was in charge.
Trump said Saturday that he had picked Lindsey Halligan, a White House adviser and another of his ex-lawyers, as Siebert’s replacement. She enters the role facing deep unease from her new staff, according to several of the office’s current and former prosecutors, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Many of them wondered how Halligan, an insurance lawyer with no previous prosecutorial experience, would navigate the minefield of thorny legal questions that arise in sensitive investigations such as those into Comey and James.
One predicted that Trump would probably learn that, regardless of who led the office, he was unlikely to get his wish of seeing James indicted.
“In terms of what he wants, the end result is going to be the same,” the prosecutor said. “If you don’t have the evidence, you don’t have the prosecutors and you don’t have the grand jury all on the same page, it doesn’t matter who is in the office.”
Although the nation’s 93 US attorneys are political appointees and are broadly expected to adhere to administration priorities, the White House customarily does not step in and direct them to bring charges.
“There’s always been some pressure,” said Lam, who served as US attorney for the Southern District of California from 2002 to 2007. “But now it’s overt and specific. It’s not just, ‘You don’t do enough white-collar cases,’ for instance. Now, it’s case-specific.”
Lam and eight other US attorneys were fired from their jobs during the Bush administration in a 2006-2007 purge that prompted congressional investigations into whether the dismissals were retribution for prosecuting Republican officials. The firings sparked outcry from Democrats and some Republicans and eventually led to the resignation of then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
This time, the GOP response has been muted.
Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) decried “lawfare in all forms” as “bad” on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. He suggested, however, that previous Democratic administrations were equally to blame.
Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma) responded to Trump’s attempts to direct prosecutions with a shrug.
“President Trump is very open and transparent with the American people, and he speaks his mind,” Mullin told CNN. “That’s what his supporters love about him.”
Democrats were less sanguine: Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) told CNN on Sunday that Trump’s latest moves threaten to turn the Justice Department “into an instrument that goes after his enemies, whether they’re guilty or not”.
“This is the path to a dictatorship,” he said.
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