Shocker: Reuters Discovers Trump's Super-Secret Plan to 'Control the Department of Justice'

Curtis Means/Pool Photo via AP

And that would be ... winning a presidential election.

No, seriously, that's the plan. Donald Trump becomes president, and then appoints people to set prosecutorial priorities and statutory interpretations at the Department of Justice and the FBI. 

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For some reason, Reuters labors under the impression that this would be the first time a president has done this:

Some of Donald Trump's allies are assembling proposals to curtail the Justice Department's independence and turn the nation's top law enforcement body into an attack dog for conservative causes, nine people involved in the effort told Reuters.

If successful, the overhaul could represent one of the most consequential actions of a second Trump presidency given the Justice Department's role in protecting democratic institutions and upholding the rule of law.

It would also mark a dramatic departure from the department's mission statement, opens new tab, which identifies "independence and impartiality" as core values.

Ahem. In fact, double ahem. The current Attorney General has demanded executive privilege over a recording of a deposition of Joe Biden in a criminal investigation. When did Special Counsel Robert Hur become a presidential advisor? At the same time, the DoJ is using another special counsel to pursue felony indictments against Joe Biden's opponent in the upcoming presidential elections, having waited nearly three years and until Trump became the clear GOP front-runner before taking any action on those cases. And let's not forget the DoJ's attempt to cut a sweetheart plea deal for the president's son that was so embarrassing that a judge threw it out and forced Merrick Garland to actually prosecute Hunter Biden. 

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How'a that for "independence"?

Oh, and let's not just put this in the perspective of the Bidens. The DoJ is sending SWAT teams to arrest pro-life activists over an argument on a sidewalk that even the local police thought was a nothingburger and then pushed the case all the way to a loss in federal court. Other pro-life demonstrators aren't as fortunate, facing years in prison over alleged FACE Act violations while the FBI slow-walks investigations into dozens of attacks on pro-life clinics protected by the exact same statute. 

Speaking of demonstrators, the DoJ has spent the last three years tracking down the January 6 rioters and throwing the book at them. Meanwhile, the FBI stood around and did nothing while pro-abortion activists showed up at the houses of Supreme Court justices in an attempt to intimidate them during the deliberations on Dobbs, a clear violation of federal criminal law (18 USC 1507). How many of those got a summons to federal court, let alone a dawn raid by numerous FBI agents as Mark Houck experienced, for that violation of federal law? Zero.

How's that for "impartiality"?

Those are just a few examples. We haven't even touched on the Obama DoJ's decision to let Hillary Clinton off the hook for far more serious mishandling of classified material than Trump committed, and as Secretary of State rather than president for the obvious purpose of obstructing congressional oversight. For that matter, we haven't even mentioned the Obama administration's attempt to use the DoJ and the intelligence community to perpetrate the Russia-collusion hoax against Trump in the middle of a presidential election, based on Hillary's oppo-research smear campaign and nothing more. 

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And just to be fair, we've had this debate about "independence and impartiality" in every administration since Richard Nixon and John Mitchell. The supposed "wall of separation" has never existed, and simply can't exist, under the current structure of the executive. Congress is the proper check on executive power, not the DoJ that exists within it, a point that also comes up in every presidential scandal. 

Maybe Reuters should hire grown-ups to write these analyses, eh?

For better or worse, presidents control the DoJ by both appointment and policy. Until someone proposes a constitutional amendment for direct election of AGs (as many states have), that hierarchy will remain a reality. Trump didn't invent presidential control of the DoJ, and as noted above, he would hardly be alone in using it for his own personal and political agendas. In fact, it could be argued that voters had this in mind when electing Joe Biden to replace Trump ... and made the situation exponentially worse. 

This is nothing more than media panic porn as Trump becomes more likely to win a second and final term at the expense of an incumbent using the DoJ to kneecap his political opponent. Get ready for a lot more of this hysterical coverage from the corrupt media, which is why we need to gear up to fight them. 

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | November 22, 2024
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