'Pure corruption': Trump's effort to gut anti-corruption units bashed
U.S. President Donald Trump gestures, as he attends the annual National Memorial Day Observance in the Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., May 26, 2025. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno
Reaction on social media was swift to an NBC story outlining how thoroughly President Donald Trump gutted U.S. Department of Justice divisions dealing with white-collar fraud.
“Trump aides have forced out most of the lawyers in the Justice Department’s main anti-corruption unit, the Public Integrity Section, and disbanded an FBI squad tasked with investigating congressional misconduct,” NBC News reported. “They have issued a series of directives requiring federal law enforcement agencies to prioritize immigration enforcement. And they have ended a 50-year policy of keeping the Justice Department independent of the White House in criminal investigations.”
On top of that, NBC News reports Trump fired most of the independent agency watchdogs responsible for fighting corruption and waste, even as Trump’s Justice Department was dropping a corruption case against the mayor of New York in what a judge said was a “breathtaking” political bargain.
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“He’s dismantling not just the means of prosecuting public corruption, but he’s also dismantling all the means of oversight of public corruption,” former senior homeland security official Paul Rosenzweig told NBC News. “The law is only for his enemies now.”
The internet appeared to agree with Rosenzweig on Tuesday.
“In 150 days, Donald Trump has casually destroyed a belief in the necessity of incorruptibility built over 250 years,” posted Dartmouth political scientist Brenden Nyhan, echoing another of Rosenzweig’s quotes from.
“What Foreign Corrupt Practices Act? What DOJ Public Integrity Section?” NBC News Legal Affairs Reporter Gary Grumbach snidely posted on X.
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“It’s pure corruption,” scolded Former NFL Executive and Talk Host Upton Bell on X.
“ … which, for an utterly corrupt administration, makes sense,” quipped author, podcaster, and former WSJ, NYT, and CNN journalist John Harwood.
Other online critics, including Atlantic journalist David A. Graham, casually mused, “Huh, I wonder why [Trump did that]?” on Bluesky, while 31-year law enforcement veteran Ed Byers demanded “Are we winning yet?” on X.
Read the full NBC News report here.
