New Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday ordered a review of the federal prosecution of Donald Trump as she unveiled a series of directives designed to overhaul a Justice Department the president claims is biased against conservatives.
Hours after she was sworn in at the White House, Bondi called for the creation of “weaponization working group” that will scrutinize the work of special counsel Jack Smith, who charged Trump in two criminal cases. The group will also review “unethical prosecutions” stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, among other things, according to the memo.
The memo satisfies the longstanding contention of Trump and his allies that the Justice Department under the Biden administration had become “weaponized” against conservatives, even though some of its most high-profile probes concerned the Democratic president and his son, and there’s been no evidence to support the idea that the prosecutions against Trump were launched for a partisan purpose.
It was one of 14 directives signed by Bondi designed to roll back Biden administration policies and align the Justice Department with the priorities of a White House determined to exert control over federal law enforcement and purge agencies of career employees it views as disloyal.
Among other directives Bondi signed were orders to lift the moratorium on the federal death penalty and end federal grants administered by the Justice Department for jurisdictions that “unlawfully interfere with federal law enforcement.”
Bondi herself had foreshadowed the “weaponization” working group’s creation by asserting at her confirmation hearing last month that the Justice Department had “targeted Donald Trump.” The Justice Department will provide quarterly reports to the White House on the progress of the review, which will look for instances where agencies’ actions “appear to have been designed to achieve political objectives or other improper aims rather than pursuing justice,” according to the memo.
In another memo, Bondi wrote that prosecutors could face firings if they refuse to sign onto briefs or appear in court to argue on behalf of the administration, saying it’s the department lawyers’ job to “vigorously defend presidential policies and actions against legal challenges.”
The flurry of activity signals a dramatic reshaping of the Justice Department under Bondi, a longtime Trump ally and former Florida attorney general who defended the president during his first impeachment trial against allegations that he abused the power of his office.
Democrats who opposed Bondi’s confirmation have raised concerns about whether she would be able to lead a Justice Department free of influence from the White House given her close relationship with the president, who repeatedly suggested on the campaign trail that he would seek to use the justice system to exact revenge on his perceived enemies.
Bondi has said that politics will play no role in her decision-making, but she also refused at her confirmation hearing last month to rule out potential investigations into Trump’s adversaries. She also has repeated Trump’s claims that the prosecutions against him amounted to political persecution, telling senators that the Justice Department “had been weaponized for years and years and years, and it’s got to stop.”
Despite the wide-ranging ambitions of the “weaponization working group” memo, there’s no indication that the group will have prosecutorial powers or tools such as subpoenas that could compel subjects of the inquiries to cooperate with the new unit.
And though the memo purports to take aim at the “weaponization” of the Justice Department, it notably excludes from review investigations into Democrats by Biden’s Justice Department, including special counsel probes into the former president’s handling of classified information and his son Hunter’s gun and tax allegations, which resulted in felony convictions before he was pardoned by his father in December.
Smith’s team investigated Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Both of those cases resulted in indictments that were withdrawn after Trump’s November presidential win because of longstanding Justice Department policy prohibiting the federal prosecution of a sitting president.
Smith has forcefully defended the prosecutions, saying politics played no part in the decisions of his team, who he said “stood up for the rule of law.” In his final report to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, Smith said the evidence his team gathered was sufficient enough to convict Trump on charges of scheming to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, accusing Trump of an “unprecedented criminal effort to overturn the legitimate results of the election in order to retain power.”
Bondi was sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas earlier Wednesday alongside Trump in the Oval Office. It the first time that Trump had participated in a second-term swearing-in of a Cabinet member, underscoring Trump’s intense personal interest in the operations of the department that investigated him during his first term and indicted him after he left office in 2021.
Trump praised Bondi’s record as a prosecutor and said she will restore “fair, equal and impartial justice” at the department.
Bondi told the president that she would not let him down.
“I will make you proud and I will make this country proud,” she told him. “I will restore integrity to the Justice Department and I will fight violent crime throughout this country and throughout this world, and make America safe again.”
Bondi enters with the department roiled by the firings of career prosecutors and senior FBI officials, along with the highly unusual scrutiny of thousands of agents involved in the sprawling Jan. 6 investigation.
FBI agents this week sued after the Justice Department demanded that the bureau turn over the names of all agents involved in the Jan. 6 probe, which agents believe may be a precursor to mass firings.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove said in a memo to the workforce Wednesday that FBI agents “who simply followed orders and carried out their duties in an ethical manner” are not at risk of being fired. The only employees who should be concerned, Bove wrote, “are those who acted with corrupt or partisan intent.”
“There is no honor in the ongoing efforts to distort that simple truth or protect culpable actors from scrutiny on these issues, which have politicized the Bureau, harmed its credibility and distracted the public from the excellent work being done everyday,” Bove wrote.
