One of the problems with assessing President Donald Trump’s legal retribution campaign against his foes is the many things we don’t know.
We don’t know, for example, what evidence the administration actually has against all these people. The fact that it has now launched investigations into key figures involved in every major probe of Trump sure suggests that this is about retaliation.
And its attempts to turn these investigations into public spectacles really give away the game — as was seen most recently on Friday morning as the FBI was searching the home of former Trump national security-adviser-turned-critic John Bolton.
Over and over again, the administration has not just probed Trump critics, but it’s made a show of it – often in ways that run afoul of legal ethics.
Those ethics rules hold that prosecutors and investigators should not seed unwarranted suspicion of people. They should instead speak through legal filings and keep their public comments to a minimum.
The idea is that the legal process is not used to impugn people whom the government doesn’t have the goods on.
But the Trump administration has obliterated that norm. That raises the prospect that these people are not necessarily being targeted for prosecution, but for a public shaming and to send a message to others. And a top DOJ official has even acknowledged publicly that could be the goal.
The Trump administration’s flouting of these rules and norms really kicked up a notch Friday morning.
Right around the time the FBI started searching Bolton’s home, FBI Director Kash Patel took to social media. “NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission,” he posted on X at 7:03 a.m..
“Public corruption will not be tolerated,” FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino added 13 minutes later.
“America’s safety isn’t negotiable. Justice will be pursued. Always,” Attorney General Pam Bondi added at 7:45 a.m.
It’s all quite a contrast to 2022, when the FBI searched Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago looking for classified documents.
It took two days for then-FBI Director Christopher Wray to become the first senior DOJ official to comment, saying the search was “not something I can talk about”; he instead talked about threats against FBI officials.
Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland didn’t comment for three days. When he did speak, it was a just-the-facts-ma’am recitation of how the search came about. Garland took care to emphasize Trump’s “presumption of innocence.”
There were no leading allusions to how this was justice being served or references to “public corruption” or nobody being above the law – at least from top DOJ officials.
But the public comments about the Bolton search are very much in keeping with how the Trump Justice Department and other top administration officials have conducted business. They’ve often used these investigations to seed suspicion about Trump’s foes by making extraordinary public comments.
Last week, top DOJ official Ed Martin was photographed by the New York Post outside the home of another target, New York Attorney General Letitia James, clad in a trench coat. He later appeared on Fox News and suggested it hadn’t been a planned photo-op.
But after The New York Times wrote a story about how Martin’s actions had appeared to violate Justice Department ethics guidelines, he posted a photo of himself apparently outside James’ house.
“Good morning, America. How are ya’?” Martin said.
The president’s allies often point to how James, a Democrat, once seemed to pre-judge investigations of Trump, promising to go after him while she was campaigning for her job. James’ comments at the time earned rebukes even from some Democrats.
But those kinds of statements and actions have been much more commonplace with key Trump administration officials.
In late July, Bondi posted on social media about an ethics complaint the DOJ had filed against a judge who had ruled against the Trump administration, pointing to comments he had made at a judicial conference. But the ethics complaint misconstrued the comments of the judge, James Boasberg.
In early June, Bondi used a news conference announcing criminal charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man the administration wrongly deported to El Salvador, to surface uncharged allegations against him.
Bondi mentioned allegations from a supposed “co-conspirator” about Abrego Garcia soliciting nude photos and video of a minor and even playing a role in a murder. When a reporter noted such charges weren’t in the indictment, Bondi acknowledged they weren’t.
The Justice Department’s ethics manual states that “prosecutors should strive to avoid unnecessary public references to wrongdoing by uncharged parties.”
When former FBI Director James Comey in May posted an image of shells organized to read “86 47,” a series of top Trump administration officials leapt to accuse him of a crime. (Comey said he didn’t know some interpreted “86” to mean violence and deleted the post.)
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard quickly said Comey should be “put behind bars for this.” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced an investigation of the matter, while prejudging it as Comey having called for Trump’s “assassination.”
Comey still hasn’t been charged with anything of the sort; he’s instead being investigated for something else.
Many of these apparent breaches of prosecutorial protocol have involved Martin, who formerly served as interim US attorney for the District of Columbia, before his nomination was pulled in the face of some GOP opposition. Martin now leads the DOJ’s so-called “Weaponization Working Group.”
Martin has been unapologetic about using his authority to apply pressure in extraordinary ways, from the earliest days of the Trump administration.
He has posted about DOJ officials being “Trumps’ [sic] lawyers,” which isn’t what they are supposed to be. He pledged to go after critics of then-top Trump administration official Elon Musk even when their conduct was merely unethical, rather than illegal. He has publicly suggested Trump critics could be investigative targets. He has used politically charged language like alluding to January 6, 2021, defendants as “Jan. 6 prisoners.”
And one comment Martin made near the end of his time as interim US attorney stands out. It’s from May.
“There are some really bad actors, some people that did some really bad things to the American people. If they can be charged, we’ll charge them,” Martin told reporters. “But if they can’t be charged, we will name them. And we will name them, and in a culture that respects shame, they should be people that are ashamed.”
He added: “That’s the way things work.”
That’s not how the Justice Department is supposed to work. But at least it’s transparent.
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