Trump administration ratchets up its use of Justice Department for political leverage

President Donald Trump’s efforts to leverage the Justice Department for political purposes and to exact retribution against his perceived foes haven’t suffered from a series of setbacks.

We’ve seen little in the way of major cases against left-leaning political people and groups that Trump has suggested could or should be targeted. And as prosecutions of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James struggle to get back off the ground after Trump’s handpicked prosecutor was disqualified, there’s a real risk of the whole thing backfiring.

But Trump and his administration don’t appear deterred.

In fact, as the last few days have shown, they appear to be ratcheting things up.

The last week has featured two remarkable new fronts in Trump’s ongoing assault on Justice Department independence.

One is a newly reported criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. The other is an announcement last week of a new assistant attorney general to investigate fraud, that reports directly to the White House.

Jerome Powell
The big news is, of course, Powell.

The probe into the Fed chair, who has not been charged with a crime, follows the now-scrapped indictments of Comey and James. While Trump’s precise role in launching this investigation isn’t known — and he told NBC News Sunday night he doesn’t “know anything about it” — he has publicly aired the same allegations that are invoked here, involving renovations Powell has overseen at the Fed headquarters. And he’s floated civil action against the chair.

The Justice Department probe also comes after many months of Trump deriding Powell and his decisions on monetary policy – specifically, failing to lower interest rates more quickly. He’s even floated firing him. It’s been no secret this investigation is the kind of thing Trump might want to see, especially since it’s not clear he has the authority to actually fire Powell.

In her first public comments on the probe, DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro alleged on X Monday evening that her office had contacted the Federal Reserve on “multiple occasions to discuss cost overruns and the chairman’s congressional testimony, but were ignored, necessitating the use of legal process—which is not a threat.”

She added: “None of this would have happened if they had just responded to our outreach.”
But some Republicans were quick to cast the probe as an obvious political ploy.

Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina quickly connected the Powell investigation to Trump’s efforts to “end the independence of the Federal Reserve.” Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska called it “nothing more than an attempt at coercion.” Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said it appeared to be politicized “on the surface.”

And several other Republicans quickly expressed skepticism of the allegations against Powell, including some key members of the Senate Banking Committee, which plays a major role in confirming picks for the Fed. Even Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has told people that he is unhappy with the decision to criminally investigate Powell, a source with knowledge of the matter told CNN.

In one key way, the pursuit of Powell is different from that of James and Comey.

In those situations, the target was an old Trump foe who did something he didn’t like – specifically, investigate matters involving Trump. The idea seemed to be that the president would get back at them and send a message to others who might run afoul of him in the future.

But when it comes to Powell, this is someone serving in the federal government who is making high-profile decisions that Trump would very much like to change. The practical impact of the probe could be immense – to the extent anything becomes of it and/or this kind of pressure becomes the new normal.
This isn’t the first time the administration has targeted the Federal Reserve in an apparent effort to wrest political control of it. Last year, Trump tried to fire a member of the Fed’s board of governors, Lisa Cook, over questionable mortgage fraud allegations. This has led to a lengthy court battle that will culminate in Supreme Court arguments next week.

And the higher stakes of the Powell probe were evident in some of the initial reactions from Republicans. While we haven’t seen a large-scale GOP backlash yet, the pushback so far has been more pronounced and more likely to tie this move to politics.

The new assistant attorney general

This one flew a little under the radar last week, because we learned about it while the country was focused on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent shooting and killing Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis.

But it’s also hugely significant.

In a White House briefing Thursday that was largely focused on the ICE shooting, Vice President JD Vance announced the creation of a new assistant attorney general role in the Justice Department.
The new assistant AG will be focused on issues of fraud, he said, connecting it to a growing fraud scandal in Minnesota.

But here’s the kicker: Vance also said the new assistant AG “will be run out of the White House, under the supervision of me and the President of the United States.”

This is not normal. Indeed, the arrangement appears to formalize the breakdown of the wall between the White House and the DOJ’s conduct of investigations.

Trump has broken post-Watergate norms by publicly requesting specific people be charged and by taking actions to help facilitate those charges, at least for Comey and James. And he’s done so in a much more direct way than it was ever established Joe Biden did with Trump’s indictments (despite Trump blaming his predecessor Biden for those charges).

But this new position takes things to a new level. If Vance’s description is accurate, this would be the president having direct oversight of someone conducting investigations that happen to be of great political interest to Trump.

(Trump and his allies have repeatedly sought to play up the fraud scandal in Minnesota, tying it to the state’s Democratic governance and immigrants, given many recent allegations focus on the large Somali community.)

When NBC News asked Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche last month whether DOJ was taking direction from Trump about whom to prosecute, Blanche responded: “No, of course we’re not.”
Fast forward less than a month, and it’s looking increasingly like the Trump administration is turning that into the new normal.

By CNN