Among the many problems that have emerged in federal law enforcement over the last six weeks is the campaign against key personnel. Indeed, there’s been an unsubtle campaign to purge federal law enforcement of prosecutors and FBI officials who worked on cases that Donald Trump didn’t like.
Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested this week that these efforts are ongoing — and likely to get worse. USA Today reported:
The Justice Department has fired all of Jan. 6 special counsel Jack Smith’s staff and is working to ‘root out’ anyone at the department and FBI who it believes doesn’t like President Donald Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi has confirmed. … Over eight minutes, she described a scorched-earth effort currently underway to purge the 115,000-employee Justice Department of any staffers involved in investigating Trump during or after his first term in office and other perceived enemies of the president.
“Well, first and foremost, we got rid of the Jack Smith team. Gone. Those people are gone,” the increasingly hyper-partisan attorney general said. “We’re still trying to find … a lot of people in the FBI and also in the Department of Justice who despise Donald Trump, despise us, don’t want to be there.”
Bondi added, “[W]e’re going to root them out. We will find them, and they will no longer be employed.”
AG Bondi: "There are a lot of people in the FBI & DOJ who despise Donald Trump, despise us, don't want to be there. We will find them. Bc you have to believe in transparency, you have to believe in honesty, you have to do the right thing. We're gonna root them out & they will no longer be employed."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-03-04T02:44:17.964Z
Just so we’re all clear, the nation’s chief law enforcement official isn’t talking about identifying Justice Department employees who are necessarily bad at their jobs. Rather, Bondi appeared to describe a process in which law enforcement personnel who disagree with Trump will be hunted down and kicked out of the department.
When it comes to matters of law and politics, I tend not to agree with National Review’s Ed Whelan on much, but the conservative lawyer’s take on the attorney general’s comments rang true.
“Career DOJ lawyers who do their jobs (most of which have nothing to do with politics) should not be rooted out because they ‘despise’ the president,” Whelan explained online. “That’s true of those who despised Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Biden just as it’s true of those who despise Trump. It’s very bad that AG Bondi either doesn’t understand this or needs to pretend she doesn’t.”
During his tenure as attorney general, Merrick Garland went to extraordinary lengths to avoid appearing partisan or political in any way, often to the frustration of Democratic lawmakers and the party’s base. Garland had seen what had transpired during Trump’s first term, and by all accounts, he was determined to restore integrity to the office. The idea that he’d go on national television and vow to “root out” conservative critics of the Democratic White House at the Justice Department is ridiculous. And yet, here we are, watching his successor infuse her office with partisan politics at a breathtaking pace. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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