A Busy First Week at the Trump DOJ

From reassigning Democratic operatives to shutting down the J6 prosecution, the new Department of Justice isn't wasting any time cleaning house while waiting for Pam Bondi's Senate confirmation.

Senate Democrats last week put on hold the confirmation process for Pam Bondi, President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general. Her full Senate approval appears inevitable but Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee claimed they wanted more time to review her background file. Another hearing is scheduled for Wednesday; a vote to advance her nomination out of the committee is expected later that day.

But if Democrats had hoped postponing Bondi’s confirmation would delay the Trump administration’s carpet bombing of the Department of Justice, they are once again mistaken. In fact, Trump’s DOJ is wasting no time reversing the dangerous course set by Joe Biden and Merrick Garland while redirecting resources from the now-closed January 6 prosecution to fight real security threats across the country.

Shortly after the president took the oath of office last Monday, several Trump appointees were sworn in at Main Justice to fill top posts at the department. James McHenry, a longtime immigration lawyer at the DOJ, will serve as acting attorney general until Bondi takes over; the move appears to underscore the president’s plans to prioritize immigration enforcement at the department.

Emil Bove, who represented the president in both the Alvin Bragg case in New York and former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case in Florida, is now the acting deputy attorney general. Bove traveled to Chicago over the weekend to meet with Trump’s border czar Tom Homan and other federal law enforcement officials to coordinate mass deportations, which are underway in the Windy City. One official told ABC News that Bove had “personally observe[d] DHS immigration enforcement operations and support[ed] the efforts of FBI, DEA, ATF, USMS, and federal prosecutors who are assisting DHS in this critical mission.”

Other appointments include Omeed Assefi as acting chief of the DOJ’s antitrust division until Trump’s pick, Gail Slater, is confirmed. According to Bloomberg, Assefi sent a video message to the division’s staff last week to pledge an “aggressive stance going forward,” including pursuing investigations and lawsuits against Big Tech—which might explain all the sucking up by Big Tech titans before and on Inauguration Day.

“Can I Take My Swingline Stapler?”

At the same time, notorious political operatives inside the DOJ are getting the Milton from “Office Space” treatment, moved from their cushy role doing the dirty work of the Democratic Party to offices where they might actually get their polished fingernails dirty. George Toscas—a top National Security Division official who looked into the Hillary Clinton email server “matter,” helped initiate the FBI’s surveillance of the 2016 Trump campaign, and pushed for the armed raid of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022—has been reassigned to a newly-created unit at the DOJ to fight efforts by lawless “sanctuary cities” to obstruct deportation plans. Toscas was last seen giving former Attorney General Merrick Garland a bear hug during his grotesque Dear Leader-like march on his last day in office.

Corey Amundson, who as head of the DOJ’s public integrity unit fought hard against an FBI investigation into election fraud in Georgia in 2020, also has a new desk at the immigration unit. At least 20 DOJ employees reportedly have been moved to other positions.

This is all super unfair, according to one former assistant U.S. Attorney. “It has terrified people,” Ashley Akers, a J6 prosecutor who resigned last week, complained to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “It’s not sensical. You have people who are subject matter experts…and to pull them and put them in an unrelated section where they have no experience and probably on interest seems contrary to the mission of the department.”

Depoliticizing the Most Political Agency in the Land

Now Akers might be slightly bitter since her last act in office was undoing her own prosecution of several J6 defendants. Following the president’s full pardon of J6ers, prosecutors in the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s office, which handled the unprecedented investigation for four years, were forced to file dismissal motions before D.C. judges. Further, the office has a new chief, Ed Martin, a longtime conservative activist who was sworn in as acting D.C. U.S. Attorney last Monday afternoon. Martin immediately filed a flurry of motions to dismiss J6 indictments and confronted at least one judge attempting to keep in place probation for some of the 14 defendants whose sentences were commuted by the president.

And in a move cheered by J6ers, the DOJ also removed the “Capitol Breach” database from the department’s website. The portal listed the name, case number, charges, outcome, and sentence for every J6er, something defendants considered a scarlet-letter tracking mechanism of sorts to incite more harassment against them.

The DOJ’s targeting of pro-life protesters, arguably the Biden/Garland’s DOJ most vengeful and political use of federal law, also came to an end. New chief of staff Chad Mizelle on Friday sent a memo to the civil rights division strictly curtailing the application of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE ACT; the Biden/Garland DOJ prosecuted at least two dozen pro-life activists under the FACE ACT, resulting in lengthy prison sentences for most including women in their 70s. “President Donald Trump campaigned on the promise of ending the weaponization of the federal government and has recently directed all federal departments and agencies to identify and correct the past weaponization of law enforcement. To many Americans, prosecutions and civil actions under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act have been the prototypical example of this weaponization. And with good reason,” Mizelle wrote.

Trump also pardoned 23 pro-lifers on the eve of the March for Life; several were immediately released from prison including 76-year-old Joan Bell, who was serving out a 27-month sentence imposed by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, an 80-year old federal judge in Washington. (Karma will be a bitch for these evil DC judges.)

More Changes Ahead

Bondi still has her work cut out for her—rooting out bad actors within the department’s whopping 34,000 employee base won’t be easy. She may face headwinds from Senate Republicans afraid to pursue much-needed internal investigations into Jack Smith and his team as well as former DC US Attorney Matthew Graves for bringing vindictive, selective prosecutions against the president and his supporters.

But reform and accountability are already underway. The once-revered Department of Justice suffers a deep public trust deficit following a decade of relentless politically charged lawfare against Republicans. It appears, however, that the right team is in place to restore that public’s trust and return the DOJ to its original crime-fighting mission—something the country desperately needs.