“If confirmed, I will work to restore confidence and integrity to the Department of Justice — and each of its components,” Pam Bondi vowed during her confirmation hearing in January. “Under my watch, the partisan weaponization of the Department of Justice will end. America must have one tier of justice for all.”

But since her confirmation on February 4, Attorney General Pam Bondi has done exactly the opposite, weaponizing the DOJ against Trump’s political enemies and withdrawing criminal investigations of his allies. The tone was set on her first full day, when she fired off an all-staff memo threatening to fire anyone who raised ethical or legal objections to advancing frivolous arguments in court.

Literal Mob Rule:

The Civil Rights Division, which once protected victims of discrimination, is helmed by yet another former Trump lawyer, Harmeet Dhillon, a culture warrior who brags about outsourcing her prosecutorial discretion to Twitter randos. Per the Wall Street Journal: Harmeet Dhillon, head of the civil-rights division at the Justice Department, wakes up around 6 a.m. and begins her workday scrolling through X, searching for claims of discrimination. A lot of them, Dhillon said, regard universities. After spotting “a list of new horrors,” she said, “I text my deputies, and we assign cases, and we get cranking.”

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      The DOJ has always been a kind-of weapon, intended to legitimize the use of force against enemies of the state. This is, incidentally, why incoming Presidents are loathe to use it against their corrupt predecessors. And why DOJs tend to fixate on people with virtually no political capital (minority political leadership, black market traffickers, migrants, foreign business interests, and domestic low-level con-artists) while steering well clear of sitting politicians, large cap business executives, large church leaders, and dignitaries from wealthy allied nations.

      Trump’s pogrom on migrants and minorities is spilling over into targeting people who aren’t traditionally on the DOJ’s shit list, because he’s far more concerned with the raw metrics of his department (the volume of individuals arrested and deported) than the consequences of his policies (deteriorating trade relations, impact to domestic trade and travel, long term market stability, long term labor prices, etc). And his pardons and case dismissals are a more vulgar effort at self-enrichment than has historically been seen (although hardly without precedent)

      What has shifted isn’t the DOJ’s purpose but the individuals that are now considered “fair game” in the eyes of Department leadership. One could argue that this is partially Biden’s fault - he “shot at the king and missed” when the Southern District indicted Trump a few years ago. But you can go back to the Bush Era USA firing or the Nixon Saturday Night Massacre to see similar instances of Presidents using their stranglehold on the Justice Department to shape prosecutorial action.

      This has been a fundamental flaw in the US political system for ages. We claim to have an independent judiciary (a joke under any extended scrutiny) but what does that mean without an independent prosecutorial agency?

      • Optional@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        The DOJ has always been a kind-of weapon, intended to legitimize the use of force against enemies of the state.

        So, nobody told Merrick?

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Garland was more than happy to prosecute all the goofy little J6ers, along with the traditional list of migrants and smugglers and foreign adversaries.

          He just steered clear of anyone with power.

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              Chasing the small fry while the big fish swims away?

              Some might argue it would have been more beneficial to flip defendants into witnesses and use them to prosecute the media organizers and financiers, not unlike how the FBI (finally, after decades of dragging their feet) broke up the East Coast mafia gangs.

                • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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                  2 days ago

                  Garland waited until late November of 2022 to appoint a special counsel, after Democrats in Congress had lost their subpoena power, and put a guy with a broken leg on the case. Smith’s office focused on the Mar-a-Lago documents case, which floundered for years, before his very appointment as special counsel was rejected by a Trump appointee Judge (which they recognized was a problem going into the case clung to the venue regardless).

                  To my knowledge, Smith didn’t pursue any third party financiers or media figures responsible for organizing the J6 riot. His primary role was to fumble the Mar-a-Lago documents case. He did get a Grand Jury to indict Trump for inciting a riot, under a more-friendly DC venue, in August of 2023. But Smith never managed to bring the case to trial in the subsequent year and a half. The case was scuttled as soon as the election was over.