Why DOJ is facing the 'gravest crisis of its 150-year history': legal scholar

29 January

President Donald Trump is making a concerted effort to fill the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) with staunch loyalists.

Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a longtime Trump defender, appears to be on track to be confirmed as U.S. attorney general. And a far-right MAGA conspiracy theorist Kash Patel, Trump's nominee for FBI director, openly calls for retribution against Trump's foes. Patel's confirmation hearing is scheduled for this Thursday, January 30.

In a sobering article published by The New Republic on January 29, Harry Litman — a legal scholar and former federal prosecutor — warns that they DOJ is facing "the gravest crisis of its storied 150-plus year history."

"Intent on not repeating his previous failure to roll the (Justice) Department," Litman argues, "Trump already has stacked the deck by installing lackeys to issue the orders. Note that the current acting attorney general, James McHenry, who temporarily led a Justice Department unit dealing with immigration during Trump's first term, carried out Trump's order to fire 12 career prosecutors who had worked for (former DOJ special counsel) Jack Smith."

Litman notes that efforts to corrupt the DOJ in the past were ultimately unsuccessful, including President Richard Nixon's infamous Saturday Night Massacre and Trump's attempt to use the Justice Department to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

"The first episode was the famed Saturday Night Massacre of 1974 during the investigation of Watergate, when President Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox," Litman explains. "Both Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, refused the president's order and resigned. It was Robert Bork, the then- solicitor general, who ultimately carried out the order. The refusals led more or less directly to Nixon's resignation. It was a defining moment for the (Justice) Department, still invoked today as one of its finest hours."

The former DOJ prosecutor continues, "The second episode occurred in 2021, at the end of Donald Trump's first administration. Trump sought to strongarm the Department into writing a false letter to Georgia election officials to further the plot to steal the election. In a dramatic Oval Office showdown, the entire Department leadership, led by Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen, told Trump that they would all resign if he installed Jeff Clark as a puppet AG and went ahead with his plans. Trump relented, and again, the Department reaffirmed its institutional strength."

In 2025, Litman warns, the DOJ is facing a "crisis" that is even "more threatening" than Watergate as Trump and his MAGA allies "pursue their relentless campaigns of reprisal."

"I will have much more to write," Litman says, "but it's critical to keep foremost in mind that this is a Manichean battle between forces of good and forces of evil. One side is correct and righteous; the other is lying and wicked. If history, or political culture, or congressional courage, or all of the above, can't suffice to deliver an eventual repudiation of Trump's scurrilous claims, the Department (of Justice) will have been permanently crippled."

Harry Litman's full article for The New Republic is available at this link.

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