Jeanine Pirro in the White House Oval Office on May 28, 2025 (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian/Flickr)
During his first presidency, Donald Trump famously clashed with two conservative U.S. attorneys general: Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, who resigned from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) when Trump pressured him to help overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. But Trump, now almost a year into his second presidency, has a staunch MAGA loyalist in U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. And he has appointed other MAGA loyalists to DOJ as well, from Deputy AG Todd Blanche to U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro.
In a biting article published by the conservative National Review on January 13, journalist Jim Geraghty stresses that Trump and his allies are wasting DOJ resources by using them as a "tool for partisan vengeance."
"The U.S. Department of Justice keeps trying to indict the president's foes, and grand juries keep concluding that there isn't sufficient evidence for an indictment — even though during grand jury proceedings, no one speaks on behalf of the accused," Geraghty explains. "No grand juror hears a counterargument to the prosecutor's argument. Under Trump, federal prosecutors keep standing before a grand jury, making their best argument, and losing to an opponent who isn't even in the room."
The conservative journalist continues, "The indictment against former FBI Director Jim Comey got thrown out after a judge ruled that interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan was not lawfully appointed…. Back in December, a federal grand jury rejected a bid by the Trump Justice Department to reindict New York Attorney General Letitia James. Twice…. Hey, remember Lisa Cook, that member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors who had allegedly lied on her mortgage documents?.... The Department of Justice still hasn't indicted her."
On Sunday, January 11, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell revealed that he is the subject of a DOJ criminal investigation.
"You don't have to be the world's greatest detective to figure out what's going on here," Geraghty argues. "Trump wants revenge. He has at times explicitly instructed Bondi to go after his political enemies. She tells federal prosecutors to find something to justify an indictment, and then federal prosecutors must scramble to find something that could qualify as a crime…. Alas, the evidence that Trump's enemies have broken the law remains scant in these particular cases, and so, prosecutors march into court with an exceptionally weak case, and the grand juries remain unconvinced.… When do we go back to not using the U.S. Department of Justice as a tool for partisan vengeance?"
Read Jim Geraghty's full National Review article at this link.
