Consider the following screed: “If any other President had the ability, foresight, or talents necessary, to build this ballroom, which will be one of the greatest, safest, and most secure structures of its kind anywhere in the World, there would never have been a lawsuit. But, because it is DONALD J. TRUMP, a highly successful real estate developer, who has abilities that others don’t … this frivolous and meritless lawsuit was filed. Again, it’s called TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”
The rant, with its tantrum of capitalization, has all the trademarks of a typical post from the president’s Truth Social account. But that is not its source. Rather, the tirade appeared in an official legal document filed by the Department of Justice on 27 April seeking a court order that would lift legal barriers to the construction of Trump’s controversial East Wing ballroom.
Although of minor significance against the larger erosion of the nation’s commitment to the rule of law, the justice department document provides disturbing insight into the deformation of the department into Trump’s private agency of grievance and vindictive score-settling. Having sacrificed its independence, impartiality, honesty and integrity to Trump, the department has now surrendered its voice. The facade of the Department of Justice’s building bears the words qui pro Domina Justitia sequitur – “who prosecutes on behalf of our Lady Justice” – but Lady Justice has been in effect replaced by the “very stable genius” whose visage hangs in front of the department’s main entrance in the form of a gigantic, multi-story banner that would be the envy of Big Brother.
Drearily unsurprising, then, is the news that the former FBI director James Comey has been reindicted. Trump has had it in for Comey dating from the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, interference that was amply documented. Comey’s first indictment was tossed out on the grounds that the federal prosecutor who filed charges had been unlawfully appointed and so lacked authority to bring the case in the first place. This type of prosecutorial incompetence – and not any reluctance to bow to Trump’s demands for revenge – resulted in Pam Bondi’s unceremonious boot from her perch as attorney general. Now the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, presumably campaigning for permanent status, has proven himself more resourceful in deploying the awesome coercive apparatus of the federal government to go after Trump’s perceived enemies.
Comey’s offense? Posting on social media an image of seashells arranged on a North Carolina beach forming the numbers 86 47. Beneath the image, Comey humorously commented, “Cool shell formation on my beach walk” – as if the formation were a natural occurrence. “47” obviously refers to Trump, the 47th president. As for the other two-digit number, my Webster’s tells me that to “86” is “to remove”, as in the “bartender had the rowdy guest 86’d.” Like examples follow: “The private club eighty-sixed a member who exposed himself at a party.” “The actor [name] was 86’d by the Academy.” Presumably, these statements mean that the guest was booted from the bar, that the club terminated the flasher’s membership, and that the Academy snubbed the actor.
Or maybe they mean something altogether more sinister. Perhaps the bartender had the guest murdered, the club killed off the flasher, and the Academy had the actor rubbed out. That, in any case, is the gloss offered by Trump’s justice department. In defending a justice department charge that Comey “knowingly and willfully made a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States,” acting AG Blanche soberly insisted: “Threatening the life of the President of the United States is a grave violation of our nation’s laws.” Going once step further, the FBI director, Kash Patel, feverishly declared: “James Comey disgracefully encouraged a threat on President Trump’s life and posted it on Instagram for the world to see.”
How did we arrive at this Putinesque situation, where public servants can face prosecution for the most serious crimes for having crossed the Great Leader, while malefactors who enjoy the president’s good graces receive reprieves and rewards? We are powerfully reminded that institutions are only as principled as those occupying the levers of power. Since the beginning of Trump’s second term, the justice department has been gutted of principle and talent. Close to 3,000 lawyers have quit, retired or been forced from office, representing over a quarter of the department’s pre-2025 corps of lawyers. Add to that the thousands of agents and staff who have likewise left or been terminated.
But the loss of prosecutorial talent and expertise is only half the story. William Barr, who served as attorney general in the first Trump administration, was considered a fierce Trump loyalist, but Barr, to his credit, had his red line. He refused to back the president’s great lie – that fraud had cost him the 2020 election. Measured against today’s justice department, Barr looks like a heroic defender of the constitutional order. Indeed, the litmus test of service in today’s department is a willingness to defend the big lie. And so, as Jeffrey Toobin has recently documented in the Times, Trump’s present crop of nominees to serve in critical prosecutorial roles share two things in common: a staggering lack of critical experience and a boundless willingness to do the president’s bidding. Indeed, the two traits work in tandem. For only cravenness can make up for an obvious lack of qualification.
The threat posed by this unrelenting assault on the rule of law extends well beyond those who have earned Trump’s ire. The president’s cratering popularity suggests that Trump will work all the more tirelessly to interfere with the 2026 midterms. The possibility – no, the likelihood – that the Department of Justice will be a handmaiden to these efforts should be a source of the deepest alarm to all Americans.
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Lawrence Douglas is the author, most recently, of The Criminal State: War, Atrocity, and the Dream of International Justice. He teaches at Amherst College
