Trump Is Weaponizing the DOJ Just Like He Accused Democrats of Doing
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
Article from Reason.com
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