In a week marked by high-stakes political theater and growing concerns about the independence of American law enforcement, President Trump’s administration has thrust the Department of Justice and the FBI into the national spotlight once again. The events of mid-October 2025 have offered a revealing glimpse into the shifting power dynamics and the complicated relationship between the White House, federal law enforcement, and Big Tech—a relationship that is drawing heated debate across the political spectrum.
On Wednesday, October 15, Attorney General Pam Bondi, her top deputy Todd Blanche, and FBI Director Kash Patel joined President Trump in the Oval Office for what was billed as a public show of unity. According to reporting from The New York Times, the gathering quickly took on a more pointed tone as Trump tossed out the names of three individuals he wanted prosecuted: Special Counsel Jack Smith, who had brought two criminal indictments against Trump; Andrew Weissmann, a former FBI official and prosecutor in the investigation of Trump’s 2016 campaign; and Lisa Monaco, the Deputy Attorney General under President Biden. “Deranged Jack Smith, in my opinion, is a criminal,” Trump declared, as the assembled officials nodded along. “His interviewer was Weissmann — I hope they’re going to look into Weissmann, too — Weissmann’s a bad guy. And he had somebody, Lisa, who was his puppet, worked in the office, really, as the top person. I think she should be looked at very strongly.”
This episode was more than just second-term Trump theatrics. It underscored, as The New York Times noted, the administration’s lopsided power dynamic: a president bent on controlling federal law enforcement and appointees who rarely push back. “Nothing like what we see now has ever gone on,” Jack Smith remarked during an October 8 interview with Andrew Weissmann. “There are rules in the department about how to bring a case — follow those rules. You can’t say: ‘I want this outcome. Let me throw the rules out.’”
But the pressure from the top is not just rhetorical. The Justice Department, at Trump’s urging and sometimes over the objections of its career prosecutors, has recently secured indictments against former FBI Director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Both Bondi and Blanche reportedly warned that there was insufficient evidence for conviction, but the indictments went forward. Meanwhile, charges against former national security adviser John R. Bolton over alleged mishandling of sensitive materials are expected soon—a case that, according to former officials, gained momentum under the Biden administration and is seen as more grounded in evidence.
Trump’s calls for investigations don’t stop with his direct legal adversaries. He has also demanded that the Justice Department go after Senator Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who led impeachment efforts against him. At the Oval Office meeting, there was no pushback from Bondi, Blanche, or Patel—on the contrary, their silence seemed by design. Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist who now leads the FBI, publicly thanked the president for helping the bureau catch fugitives and for arranging pay for agents during the government shutdown. Patel’s repeated displays of gratitude have become routine, a far cry from the protective distance maintained by his predecessors, as Pulitzer Prize-winning Hoover biographer Beverly Gage told The New York Times: “A central part of Hoover’s career, and the careers of subsequent F.B.I. directors, is that the bureau’s authority comes from its independence, not from its subservience to the White House.”
The Justice Department’s changing posture has not gone unnoticed. Bondi and Blanche have frequently commented on ongoing investigations, sometimes echoing White House talking points and demonizing prosecutorial targets. Earlier this week on Fox News, Bondi suggested—without evidence—that protesters opposing immigration enforcement raids were members of “organized crime” syndicates, likening them to the notorious MS-13 gang. This rhetoric has drawn criticism from the judiciary as well. The judge overseeing the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, an immigrant deported to El Salvador in violation of a court order, publicly rebuked Blanche for his comments about the case.
Meanwhile, the administration’s approach to social media and Big Tech has exposed deep-seated double standards and political opportunism. On Tuesday, October 14, Bondi announced on X (formerly Twitter) that, following outreach from the Department of Justice, Facebook had removed a large group page called “ICE Sightings—Chicagoland.” The group, which had more than 90,000 members, was used to share information about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in Chicago. Bondi claimed, “The wave of violence against ICE has been driven by online apps and social media campaigns designed to put ICE officers at risk just for doing their jobs. The Department of Justice will continue engaging tech companies to eliminate platforms where radicals can incite imminent violence against federal law enforcement.” However, as Jen Psaki pointed out on her show “The Briefing,” Bondi provided no evidence to support her claims of doxxing or targeting ICE agents.
The removal of the Facebook group has sparked debate about free speech and government influence over tech platforms. Psaki, who was named in a 2022 lawsuit by Republican attorneys general accusing the Biden administration of pressuring social media companies to suppress Covid-19 misinformation, noted the irony. “MAGA Republicans like Cruz have screamed for years about how ‘Big Tech censorship is the single greatest threat to free speech in America.’ And yet, when Big Tech actually censors people at the request of Donald Trump’s Justice Department, and the attorney general literally says she will use the power of the federal government to continue to get ‘tech companies to eliminate platforms’ — it’s crickets. The outrage suddenly disappears,” said Psaki, as reported by MSNBC.
The tech companies themselves have not escaped criticism. In 2024, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee that he regretted cooperating with the Biden administration on content moderation, calling it a “wrong” move and pledging to resist similar pressure in the future. Yet, as Psaki observed, Zuckerberg has remained silent amid the recent actions by the Trump administration—a silence that many see as telling.
All of this unfolds against the backdrop of a broader debate about the independence of American institutions. The Trump administration’s willingness to blur the lines between law enforcement, politics, and digital speech has alarmed critics and emboldened supporters. For some, the public displays of loyalty and the targeting of political enemies represent a dangerous erosion of norms. For others, they are a necessary corrective to what they see as years of partisan overreach by previous administrations and an unaccountable tech sector.
As the dust settles on this tumultuous week, one thing is clear: the battle over the soul of American law enforcement, and its relationship to both politics and technology, is far from over. The choices made now will echo for years to come, shaping not just the fate of individual officials, but the very fabric of American democracy.
