‘A subversion of the justice system’: DoJ shifts into Trump’s ‘political wing’ as criminal investigations accelerate

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (DoJ) has increasingly become his administration’s “political wing” with criminal investigations of economic and political foes and an FBI raid of a Georgia election office seeking evidence for Trump’s debunked claim that his 2020 election loss was rigged, say ex-prosecutors.

The shifts at the DoJ have been especially marked since the start of 2026 and the growing politicization of the department – headed by Trump’s loyalist attorney general, Pam Bondi – was symbolized on 19 February , when a large banner with Trump’s picture was unfurled over the door of the DoJ headquarters.

“The president’s scowling face over the door is a constant reminder of all that he has done to dismantle the justice department as the trusted custodian of fair and evenhanded justice,” said Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general in the George HW Bush administration.

The department’s recent investigations targeting the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, and Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz – both of whom Trump has publicly attacked for their policies – demonstrate what ex-prosecutors call the DoJ’s “unrelenting” attacks on the rule of law.

Further, the DoJ’s increasing politicization was palpable when the FBI raided a Georgia election office in January to obtain troves of 2020 election records that administration officials believed would support Trump’s claims that his loss that year was “rigged”, despite multiple reviews failing to prove electoral fraud.

“Trump has succeeded in completely politicizing the justice department,” said ex-federal prosecutor Randall Eliason, who now teaches law at George Washington University.

“This justice department has been transformed into a political wing of the Trump administration, using the power of the justice system to punish Trump’s enemies and reward his friends with little regard for the law.

“Some say he has turned it into his own personal law firm, but that’s too generous – even a law firm generally would follow legal rules, obey court orders and not bring frivolous cases.”

The politicizing of the department is progressing under ultra-loyalist Bondi, say ex-prosecutors, despite major setbacks in 2025 charging Trump foes – former FBI director James Comey and the New York attorney general, Letitia James – which courts rejected as flawed cases.

More recently, the weaponization agenda took another hit when a grand jury on 11 February failed to indict Democratic senator Mark Kelly of Arizona and five other Democrats for releasing a video statement that members of the military ought to “refuse illegal orders”. The DoJ’s abortive prosecution came as an infuriated Trump labeled the Democrats’ message “seditious behavior punishable by death”.

The DoJ’s heavy politicization, say ex-prosecutors, was apparent in January, when the FBI, along with the national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, raided the Fulton county election office in a criminal inquiry that seems to rely heavily on debunked claims by Trump that election fraud in 2020 led to his loss.

Before the FBI raid, Trump turned up the pressure on the DoJ. At Davos in January, he telegraphed his desire to see prosecutions for his 2020 election loss that he again charged was “rigged”, and predicted “people will soon be prosecuted for what they did”.

Separately, the DoJ’s criminal inquiries into Powell, whom Trump has often attacked publicly for failing to cut interest rates fast enough, and Walz, whom Trump clashed with over federal immigration agencies’ harsh anti-immigrant tactics that led to two killings in Minneapolis, have fueled strong criticism from ex-prosecutors and both men.

Officially, Powell is under scrutiny about congressional testimony involving the renovation of Fed headquarters, while Walz and other Minnesota officials are being investigated over whether their public comments involved a conspiracy to obstruct federal immigration enforcement.

To add pressure on the DoJ, Trump, early in February, charged that a multibillion-dollar price tag of the renovation of the Fed’s Washington headquarters over several years is due to “either gross incompetence, or it’s theft of some kind, kickbacks. I don’t know what it is.”

Powell has strongly disagreed, saying the DoJ investigation was driven by the Fed making its rate-setting decisions “based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president”.

“The weaponization of the DoJ has been truly breathtaking,” said Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for eastern Michigan who now teaches law at the University of Michigan.

“They are looking for crimes to pin on their political rivals. Investigations against Jerome Powell, Tim Walz and others seem to be efforts to intimidate them into submission. DoJ prohibits this kind of fishing expeditions to smear people without factual predication that a crime has been committed.”

McQuade’s points are underscored by the genesis of the FBI’s Fulton county raid and related DoJ actions. An FBI affidavit, for instance, used to justify the extraordinary Fulton county raid indicated it “originated from a referral sent by Kurt Olsen”, a leading election denier of the 2020 results and far-right lawyer whom Trump has installed in the White House as “director of election security and integrity”.

The FBI raid followed a DoJ lawsuit against Fulton county in December seeking to obtain records including ballot stubs and signature envelopes from the 2020 election.

Despite lacking clear legal authority, Bondi has sued 30 states, including five on 26 February, seeking their voter registration lists, which contain personal information, in moves that seem to overlap with Trump’s bogus accusations of widespread voting fraud in many states.

But a Michigan judge appointed by Trump ruled this month that the state did not have to comply with the DoJ’s lawsuit, and judges in a few other states have issued similar rulings.

From Trump and Bondi’s perspective, the DoJ moves against Trump’s enemies stem from their allegations that the justice department under Joe Biden was weaponized unfairly against Trump and his allies.

In a blunt and revealing memo last February, Bondi wrote that all DoJ employees must “zealously advance, protect and defend” the interests of Trump in his role as the nation’s chief executive.

Early on last year, Bondi set up a weaponization taskforce that has facilitated some legal moves against Trump’s foes and until recently was led by Ed Martin, a hard-driving Trump loyalist and the DoJ’s pardon attorney who did legal work for some of the January 6 insurrectionists.

To former DoJ inspector general Michael Bromwich, these and other DoJ moves reveal how “the administration’s attacks on the rule of law, led by the Department of Justice, are unrelenting”.

Bromwich said he has been dismayed by multiple moves by Trump’s DoJ, including searches of reporters’ homes, search warrants to pursue false claims of 2020 election fraud, convening grand juries in favorable jurisdictions to investigate non-crimes and failures to investigate killings by federal law enforcement officers. “Each one of these steps is unprecedented. Taken together, they constitute a coordinated subversion of the criminal justice system.”

Still, Bromwich stressed that judges appointed by both Democrats and Republicans “are calling out DoJ for its lawless positions and hollow arguments in the strongest language I have ever seen”.

Neither Trump nor Bondi seem fazed by any criticism of their actions.

Trump used his Truth Social platform last fall to put pressure on Bondi to file charges against Comey and James weeks before they were charged by Lindsey Halligan, a neophyte US attorney who came from the White House and lacked prosecutorial experience.

Halligan was pushed for the post by Trump after Erik Siebert, the sitting US attorney, declined to file charges against Comey and James, and was forced to resign.

The indictments against Comey and James were dismissed by a judge who ruled Halligan was not appointed properly. But the DoJ this month appealed against the ruling to the fourth circuit, seeking to revive the cases.

Likewise, Trump has kept up a drumbeat of calls for investigating 2020 election fraud as he did in Davos with his unorthodox signals that criminal charges regarding alleged fraud in that election were coming. “People will soon be prosecuted for what they did” in 2020, Trump said at Davos.

Notably, Trump’s Davos comments preceded the FBI’s raid on Fulton county’s election office, where troves of original ballots and records were taken, sparking legal challenges from Fulton county and civil rights groups.

In a highly unusual move the day after the raid, Gabbard, at Trump’s request, reportedly phoned him with some Atlanta FBI agents present so Trump could thank them, ask them questions and give them a pep talk for their work.

The FBI raid and other moves by Trump and the DoJ to sow doubt about the 2020 election results could affect the upcoming elections, experts and former government officials warn.

Bondi, for instance, sparked criticism for writing a letter to Walz in January suggesting that, among other things, if he turned over the state’s voter files, the violent attacks by federal immigration enforcement agencies could end, legal experts say.

“It seems clear that Trump has successfully weaponized the DoJ to act as his personal legal army to defend his actions and attack those he labels his political enemies,” said Larry Noble, a former general counsel at the Federal Election Commission who now teaches law at American University.

“It’s very possible that the claims being made by Trump and his Department of Justice of widespread voting fraud in multiple states are part of an effort to set the stage for challenging election results if they don’t like [them].”

Noble’s concerns were underscored by a February podcast after the FBI raid, during which Trump called for Republicans to “nationalize” elections, and soon after told reporters in the Oval Office that “the federal government should get involved” in elections, citing a list of cities where he claimed without evidence there was voter fraud in 2020.

Other election experts voice strong concerns about what the Fulton county raid portends for this year’s elections.

“The election officials in Fulton county and throughout the state of Georgia – and throughout the nation – not only didn’t commit a crime; they performed admirably, somehow managing the highest turnout in American history in the middle of a global pandemic,” David Becker, executive director and co-founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said in a press briefing this month.

Looking ahead, Becker stressed that Trump’s threats to nationalize the election would be “unconstitutional, and I am very confident that the courts will restrain the executive in any effort to exercise a constitutional authority over the states’ control of elections, as they have already”.

In a similar vein, Eliason, the former federal prosecutor, said important opposition to the DoJ’s radical politicization is coming from court rulings that are rejecting prosecutions they see as badly flawed, such as the one against Kelly and five other congressional Democrats.

But Eliason also said: “The decision not to pursue a case at all, even when the facts and law would seem to require it, is another enormous power the justice department has that is largely beyond review. We see that, for example, in the refusal to undertake appropriate investigations into the Minnesota shootings.”

Likewise, the FBI has drawn fire for refusing to turn over evidence to Minnesota’s top investigative agency about the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Not surprisingly, there has been dissent among some veteran prosecutors who have resigned or were fired in key offices including in Minneapolis, according to federal data and reports.

Overall, the DoJ’s workforce dropped by 8% from November of 2024 to November 2025, according to statistics from the US office of personnel management.

DoJ veterans are appalled at the significant losses of talented prosecutors in response to the department’s weaponization under Trump.

“It is at the same time heartbreaking and encouraging to see so many experienced and respected prosecutors resign from DoJ,” said Bromwich.

“They simply could not abide a department run by political pawns of the White House, who direct career apolitical prosecutors to do the unthinkable and forbid them from doing what their oath requires. Their departures – from Virginia to Minnesota to Los Angeles – leaves DoJ weakened and with its credibility in the legal community and with the judiciary at a low ebb.”