Turning DOJ into a “conservative” attack dog

“This was done by the Biden administration in order to wound or hurt an opponent.” It’s tedious to fact-check such claims — the MAGA movement doesn’t care what’s true and what’s not — but President Biden had nothing to do with the state case brought by Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney. And as if to underline Biden’s refusal to interfere in Justice Department decisions, the federal prosecution of the president’s son Hunter Biden begins this week. In spinning this fantasy about Biden, Trump is telegraphing that, should he return to the White House, he will try to use the Justice Department in exactly the way he’s pretending it was used against him.

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The point here is not that Trump and his lackeys are lying about his record; it would be more newsworthy if they weren’t. What’s important is that Trump has already tried to use the power of the presidency to harass his enemies, and his allies have since identified the choke points in the system that previously thwarted him. As Reuters reported, people close to Trump have a two-part plan to “turn the nation’s top law enforcement body into an attack dog for conservative causes.” First, they want to flood the Department of Justice “with stalwart conservatives unlikely to say ‘no’ to controversial orders from the White House.” Then they want to restructure it “so key decisions are concentrated in the hands of administration loyalists rather than career bureaucrats.”

Republican caterwauling about Trump’s felony conviction provides rhetorical cover for this planned transformation of America’s justice system by making it seem like that transformation has already been accomplished by Democrats.

Michelle Goldberg, Trump’s Second Term Would Be Even More Corrupt and Vindictive Than His First