Well, they made it official: The Justice Department no longer serves the United States, it serves Donald Trump personally.
Buried in new Attorney General Pam Bondi’s memo dump between the empty platitudes about “justice” and the barely concealed threats against career prosecutors is a single phrase marking a tectonic shift in the DOJ’s purpose. Bondi advises the DOJ that they cannot deprive “the President of the benefit of his lawyers” (memo available here).
What the Nixon is this?
While this step is brazen, it’s not necessarily unexpected. At this point, everyone running the DOJ actually are Trump’s personal lawyers. Emil Bove and Todd Blanche will serve as top deputies at the DOJ after working as Trump’s personal defense attorneys. Trump’s appellate lawyer John Sauer gets to be Solicitor General and file weekly Supreme Court briefs in cases like Trump v. People Who Hurt His Feelings. And Bondi herself represented Trump in his first impeachment — a gig she got after conveniently dropping an investigation into Trump University after receiving a sizable donation from… oh, you don’t even need me to finish that sentence, do you?
At this point, it would be more honest to slap a “Trump Legal Services” sign on the DOJ building and start running TV ads promising to “Make Your Indictments Disappear!” Now that Cellino & Barnes lost its iconic phone number, maybe the DOJ could take it. If there’s any administration eager to lean into “88” iconography, it’s the Musk/Trump administration.
Even after stacking the DOJ with personal cronies, calling them “his lawyers” out loud delivers a Constitutional Law jump scare. The Department of Justice generally engages in a subtle balancing act. The Attorney General serves at the pleasure of the President, but the department itself speaks for the government as a whole. This distinction usually manifests as a limited or not-so-limited independence. It’s why Merrick Garland’s DOJ spent half its time trying to put Hunter Biden in jail based on charges that barely merit probation against average citizens. Even the most aggressive executives try to pay lip service to the idea that Justice enjoys independence from the personal whims of the White House.
This memo shatters that illusion. And while the most stunning admission comes toward the end, Bondi lays the groundwork for this shift earlier in the memo:
It is the job of an attorney privileged to serve in the Department of Justice to zealously defend the interests of the United States. Those interests, and the overall policy of the United States, are set by the Nation’s Chief Executive, who is vested by the Constitution with all “[E]xecutive Power.” More broadly, attorneys are expected to zealously advance, protect, and defend their client’s interests. Department of Justice attorneys have signed up for a job that requires zealously advocating for the United States.
Without the second sentence, that paragraph is a standard high school civics course description of the DOJ. But, as any successful high school civics student knows, “the overall policy of the United States” is not, in fact “set by the Nation’s Chief Executive.” The “executive power” means enforcing laws passed by Congress, not making up new ones. Orwellian is a term that gets overused, usually to suggest some a 1984-style omnipowerful dictatorial regime. This is more Orwellian as in a bunch of pigs clumsily rewriting rules as they go along.
The responsibilities of Department of Justice attorneys include not only aggressively enforcing criminal and civil laws enacted by Congress, but also vigorously defending presidential policies and actions against legal challenges on behalf of the United States. The discretion afforded Department attorneys entrusted with those responsibilities does not include latitude to substitute personal political views or judgments for those that prevailed in the election.
Yeah, but it’s not THE election. There are a lot of elections involved in enforcing the law. The 2024 election does not — or at least should not — relieve a DOJ lawyer from enforcing the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Laws do not cease to exist until the legislature passes a new one. Bondi’s already adding a porcine touch to the concept of prosecutorial discretion that all laws are equal but some are more equal than others.
Apparently the personal judgments that are on the outs includes stuff like “the Civil Rights Act” or “laws against foreign bribes.”
And, of course, one big policy “that prevailed in the election” that DOJ staff are expected to wholeheartedly embrace is a holy crusade against anyone who thinks former presidents shouldn’t be able to sell nuclear secrets to hostile foreign governments. After years of characterizing Trump’s theft of classified materials and, much more importantly, repeated refusal to turn them over once asked about it as the “weaponization” of the Justice Department, Bondi has breezily slid the Department into weaponizing the Justice Department. Because another memo pumped out by Bondi sets the stage to punish those who prosecuted Trump cases and to chill any future effort if/when Trump or his allies commit future crimes.
They’ve finally found the outer limit of qualified immunity. It’s not literally setting a man on fire, it’s Trump’s feelings.
Which is weird because a couple weeks ago, Bondi couldn’t even begin to answer a question about special counsel investigations and now she has very detailed and official thoughts about it. If one didn’t know any better, it’s almost like she openly lied to the U.S. Senate!
Would Pam Bondi try to weaponize the legal system? She weaponized the legal system against hurricane victims over their pet dog, she’s more than capable of turning DOJ action into political ordnance.
The nation’s top law enforcement agency has been converted into a legal defense team for a single individual, run by people who literally represented him in court. It’s a bit of an (un)ethical trend with this department these days. Nixon sparked a constitutional crisis when he started a firing spree until someone at DOJ would do his bidding. Trump avoided Nixon’s mistake by making sure he didn’t install anyone in the job with enough backbone to refuse him.
So when Bondi talks about “his lawyers,” believe her. Because this Justice Department isn’t for America anymore. It’s for him.
(Memo available on the next page…)
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
