Trump Administration Debauches U.S. Justice
February 16, 2025
For years Trump called the U.S. justice system “politicized” and “weaponized” against him, all constituting “election interference.”
In fact he’d committed serious crimes. Theft of classified documents, endangering national security. And his own election interference — instigating violence to overturn his 2020 defeat, and even cooking up fake electors.
The real scandal of U.S. justice was Trump’s making a mockery of it, getting away with his crimes. The Justice Department, far from unfairly targeting him, squeamishly dragged their feet for two years before moving, so he could run out the clock and evade accountability.
Trump’s lies corroded public trust in our justice system, a key pillar of civilized society. Hastening the overall decline in respect for our institutions, and propelling the bloody-minded nihilism, that are destroying our civic culture. Especially critical to a democracy is holding public officials to account.
Trump’s campaign swore to “clean up” the system and “restore” nonpartisan integrity. Always laughable given his vows for retribution. Now he’s swiftly remade the Justice Department and FBI into exactly the improperly politicized vehicles he’d so falsely denounced.
First came the firings. All professionals in those agencies who’d been assigned to work on investigations and prosecutions of Trump — totally proper, given his crimes — have been summarily ousted. So much for nonpartisanship.
However, there’s an even more shocking politicization of the law:
New York City Mayor Eric Adams (a Democrat) had been indicated (by the Democratic Biden administration), charging a pattern of serious federal crimes. Plain bribery, selling his official actions, to a foreign country no less. Textbook public corruption.
But then Adams, after November’s election, pilgrimaged to Mar-a-Lago to lavish kisses on Trump’s hind parts and promise help with his anti-immigrant plans. And so the Justice Department’s new Number Two, Emil Bove (formerly a Trump personal lawyer), directed that the Adams indictments be voided.
Not because they were improper, or unsupported by evidence — instead, with flagrant candor, Bove asserted the prosecutions would hinder Adams in serving Trump’s agenda. And in campaigning for re-election.
So here’s a new rule of justice: a politician’s crimes cannot be prosecuted because that would hurt his electability!
Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor, Danielle Sassoon (a Republican, installed by Trump just days earlier), refused to obey Bove’s order and resigned, calling the apparent improper quid pro quo for Adams’s exoneration “a breathtaking and dangerous precedent.”
Bove then said the DOJ would go to court seeking not only to end the existing Adams case but to bar “further targeting” of him. Thus immunity from prosecution for any other crimes he may have committed, or will commit. Yet, contradictorily, the DOJ would reserve the option of reinstating charges. Making Adams’s further conduct in office hostage to Trumpian approbation.
Sassoon meanwhile also wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi, decrying Bove’s actions. Bondi replied that she’d “look into” — not Bove’s conduct — but why his directive hadn’t yet been implemented.
Several colleagues had quit with Sassoon. So the Adams case was transferred to DOJ’s so-called “public integrity” section, two senior officials of which also then resigned in response, bringing the number to at least seven. The rest were told their jobs were at risk if none would agree to sign the court papers seeking dismissal of the Adams indictments. Reportedly one did. Then yet another Manhattan prosecutor, Hagan Scotten, wrote a resignation letter telling Bove that only a “fool” or a “coward” would comply with his demands.
But it gets worse.
Bove’s reply to Sassoon attacked her as “incapable of fairly and impartially reviewing the circumstances” — and saying he’d open internal investigations into her “conduct,” and that of other prosecutors who had worked on the Adams case — who’d be suspended.
Did Bove and Trump actually imagine their machinations would help re-elect Adams? Surely the malodorous stitch-up compromises him even more, repelling voters in this year’s Democratic primary. Though unfortunately Adams’s main rival may be (ugh) Andrew Cuomo. There’s also talk of Adams running as a Republican. Well, he does exemplify that party’s corrupt ethos.
Trump pushed false reasons to distrust the integrity of America’s justice system. Now he’s created real ones.