On August 11, 2025, a press conference in the White House Press Briefing Room marked a pivotal moment for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, flanked by President Donald Trump, announced the deployment of federal law enforcement agents in Washington, D.C., a move she said would bolster local police presence. But behind the official statements and the optics of unity, a far deeper transformation was underway—one that, according to legal scholars and commentators, has shaken the very foundations of American justice.
David French, a columnist for The New York Times, has become one of the most prominent voices raising the alarm. He argues that President Trump has not just nudged the DOJ toward partisanship, but has fundamentally recast it as a tool for personal and political retribution. "Donald Trump has blown through all of this," French wrote, referring to decades of established DOJ norms and procedures intended to ensure fairness and impartiality across administrations.
French’s warnings are not without precedent. He recalls the furor in 2016 when Bill Clinton met briefly with Attorney General Loretta Lynch on an airport tarmac while Hillary Clinton was under FBI investigation. Even Democrats, like Senator Chris Coons, admitted the meeting "sends the wrong signal." Yet, as French notes, "how quaint" that controversy now seems. In 2025, the standard is no longer about the appearance of impropriety, but about open, frontal assaults on the integrity of the DOJ itself.
Central to French’s concern is the unique power the presidency wields over federal law enforcement. The president can fire the Attorney General at will and holds the constitutional power to grant pardons—a vestige, French notes, of royal authority. This combination, he warns, can create a two-tiered system of justice: "For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law." It’s a dynamic that has haunted American politics since the Nixon era, but French argues that Trump’s second term has taken these risks to new extremes.
From the beginning of his renewed tenure, Trump has exercised his pardon power with an unprecedented boldness. He granted clemency to some of the most violent participants in the January 6, 2025, Capitol riot, including individuals convicted of seditious conspiracy. Simultaneously, Trump’s DOJ launched a sweeping purge of prosecutors responsible for investigating and prosecuting those same rioters, effectively dismantling the internal checks that once protected the department from overt politicization.
The pattern has extended beyond January 6. In a controversial move, the DOJ dropped charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, citing interference with Trump’s immigration enforcement priorities. A federal judge described the decision as one that "smacks of a bargain," so egregiously at odds with DOJ standards that it triggered multiple prosecutor resignations. According to The New York Times, this incident, while dramatic, has been overshadowed by a steady drumbeat of similar scandals.
Trump’s DOJ has also shown a marked willingness to favor certain constituencies while targeting others. Earlier in the summer, the department sought a notably light sentence for a Louisville police officer convicted of civil rights violations in the Breonna Taylor case, while simultaneously ramping up aggressive deportations of migrants, sending hundreds to a notorious El Salvadoran prison without due process. These actions, critics argue, reflect a broader pattern of selective prosecution and leniency determined by political loyalty or vulnerability.
Transparency and restraint—two hallmarks of DOJ procedure—have also eroded. Traditionally, the FBI and DOJ avoided publicizing ongoing investigations or naming uncharged individuals, to preserve the presumption of innocence. But in 2025, FBI Director Kash Patel tweeted triumphantly about a search of former Trump adviser John Bolton’s home, declaring, "NO ONE is above the law." Vice President JD Vance publicly confirmed Bolton was under investigation. These public pronouncements, French notes, break with the standards designed to protect reputations and ensure fairness, especially when no charges have been filed.
This disregard for process has not been limited to Trump’s political opponents. Public accusations have been leveled against figures like Senator Adam Schiff, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook—again, without adjudication. In Cook’s case, Trump fired her based on unproven allegations, a move that may have violated laws requiring "cause" for the dismissal of Federal Reserve governors.
Perhaps most striking is the administration’s use of federal agencies to target political adversaries. Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, was reportedly directed to conduct targeted examinations of Democrats’ financial records for suspected mortgage fraud. While investigating legitimate claims is part of the DOJ’s mandate, singling out political opponents for special scrutiny is, as French puts it, "a gross abuse of justice."
The rhetoric has grown increasingly incendiary. On August 27, Trump declared on Truth Social that Democratic Party funder George Soros and his son should be charged under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO)—a statute typically reserved for organized crime. As French observes, "This is what authoritarian regimes do. They don’t simply declare that they’re prosecuting political opponents, they go ahead and do it—through trumped-up charges or selective prosecution."
French is not alone in his assessment. Jack Goldsmith, a conservative Harvard Law School professor and former assistant attorney general, described the changes at the DOJ as "an atomic bomb dropped on the department." Speaking at a recent panel, Goldsmith lamented, "This administration has systematically and ruthlessly and successfully eliminated, with one exception, all internal legal resistance. It is simply not acceptable to offer an opinion contrary to the one that the president, who is not a lawyer, wants to push."
For critics, the implications are profound. The DOJ, once a bulwark against corruption and abuse, is now seen by many as an extension of the president’s will. Statutes and regulations that once protected prosecutors and FBI agents from arbitrary dismissal have been swept aside. The result, according to French and Goldsmith, is a justice system where professionalism and impartiality have been replaced by political calculation and personal loyalty.
Defenders of the administration argue that Trump is merely responding to a DOJ already "weaponized" against him. They point to past prosecutions and investigations as evidence of longstanding bias. Some even note that not all legal actions against Trump have been equally justified, citing the overturning of a $500 million fraud judgment on appeal, though the underlying fraud finding was upheld. Yet, as French contends, the most serious DOJ cases against Trump—those brought by special counsel Jack Smith—were legally sound and would have been pursued against any other defendant in similar circumstances.
Ultimately, the debate over the DOJ’s future is playing out in real time, with the stakes higher than ever. As Goldsmith put it, "We are watching Donald Trump break the Department of Justice right before our eyes." The question now is whether Americans—across the political spectrum—will demand a return to impartial justice, or whether the "atomic bomb" dropped on the department will leave lasting scars on the nation’s most important legal institution.
The events of 2025 have made one thing clear: the integrity of American justice depends not just on laws and regulations, but on the willingness of leaders and citizens alike to uphold them, even—and especially—when it is inconvenient to do so.