BAKU, Azerbaijan, December 30. It began on the first day of his second term, with instructions to the Department of Justice (DOJ) to end the "weaponisation" of prosecutorial power TurkicWorld reports via aljazeera.
But with those first strokes of his pen, President Donald Trump instead launched a year of dramatic changes to the Justice Department, the government body responsible for enforcing federal law in the United States.
Traditionally, the Department of Justice has cultivated an aura of "prosecutorial independence". Though the department is part of the executive branch, its investigations and prosecutions are meant to be free from political taint, unswayed by the pressures of the presidency.
But critics warn that Trump has corroded the longstanding barrier between the department and the White House, in order to leverage prosecutorial power for his own aims.
“The overriding story is the effort to turn the Justice Department into a political tool and make it an instrument for pursuing the president’s political enemies,” said David Sklansky, a professor at Stanford Law School.
Former employees have been among the loudest to sound the alarm against the erosion of the Justice Department's norms.
“It’s been reckless and shocking and terrifying,” said Stacey Young, who worked at the Justice Department for 18 years.
Young resigned in January, only days into Trump's second term, anticipating attacks on the department's workforce.
She has since founded Justice Connection, a watchdog organisation that advocates for former and current Justice Department employees.
"For the rule of law to survive, the DOJ needs to be impartial, and it needs to adhere to constitutional principles and the law," Young said.
A newfound 'openness'
The trouble with prosecutorial independence, however, is that it has not been codified in US law.
Instead, it is a norm that has developed over more than a century, stretching back to the earliest days of the Justice Department.
While the role of the attorney general dates back to 1789, the Justice Department itself is a more recent creation. It was established in 1870, during the Reconstruction period following the US Civil War.
That period was marked by an increasing rejection of political patronage: the system of rewarding political allies with favours and jobs.
Reformers argued that, rather than having law enforcement officers scattered across various government agencies, consolidating them in one department would make them less susceptible to political influence.
That premise, however, has been tested over the subsequent decades, most notably in the early 1970s under then-President Richard Nixon.
Nixon courted scandal by appearing to wield the threat of prosecutions against his political rivals — while dropping cases that harmed his allies.
In one instance, he allegedly ordered the Justice Department to drop its antitrust case against the company International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) in exchange for financial backing at the Republican National Convention.
Key Justice Department officials were also implicated in the Watergate scandal, which involved an attempted break-in at Democratic Party headquarters.
But Sklansky, the Stanford Law professor, noted that Nixon tended to operate through back channels. He avoided any public calls to prosecute his rivals.
“He believed that, if he called for that openly, he would've been pilloried not just by Democrats but by Republicans," Sklansky said. "And that was undoubtedly true at the time."
But Sklansky believes the second Trump administration has abandoned such discretion in favour of a public display of power over the Justice Department.
“Trump’s openness about the use of the Justice Department to go after his enemies is really something that is quite new," he said.
'Choosing its targets on political grounds'
Peter Shane, a professor at New York University's School of Law, said he expected the second Trump administration to place pressure on the Justice Department.
After all, there had been warning signs. Just 10 days into Trump's first term, for instance, the president fired acting Attorney General Sally Yates for failing to defend one of his executive orders.
Yates responded with an opinion column warning that Trump was attempting to "destroy the time-honored independence of the Justice Department".
Trump also repeatedly demanded that the Justice Department investigate his election rival Hillary Clinton during his first term.
But observers like Shane say the president has proven more successful at directing the department during his second term. Shane added that he never expected the situation to be so "openly bad".
He pointed to a Truth Social post Trump wrote in September, pressuring Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute three of his critics: former FBI director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Democratic Senator Adam Schiff.
Within weeks, the Justice Department brought indictments against two of those critics, Comey and James. The charges were later dismissed, though the Trump administration has appealed that decision.
“If I were a corrupt president and wanted to influence particular cases and promote prosecutions of my adversaries, no matter how much merit or demerit, I would sort of want to keep that on the down-low,” Shane said.
“I wouldn’t be screaming at the attorney general on social media to prosecute people.”
A long-held axiom in the Justice Department has been to prosecute crimes, not people. But critics say that, under Trump's leadership, that norm has become inverted.
“It’s completely apparent and all but explicit that the Justice Department is choosing its targets on political grounds," Sklansky said.
A tool for political favour?
Beyond meting out punishments, there has also been speculation that the Justice Department has been leveraged to curry political favour for Trump.
In February, for example, the department ordered its prosecutors to drop their criminal charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a centrist politician who had grown close to Trump.
Then-Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, a Trump appointee, argued the move was necessary to support the president's "support critical, ongoing federal efforts" against "mass migration".
That led to a string of resignations, as prosecutors protested what they considered to be a politically motivated decision.
The Justice Department's cases, they argued, should be guided by US law, not policy goals.
"The Department has decided that obedience supersedes all else, requiring us to abdicate our legal and ethical obligations in favor of directions from Washington,” three assistant US attorneys wrote in their resignation letter. "That is wrong."
Trump has denied ordering the Justice Department to drop the Adams case.
The Justice Department did not respond to Al Jazeera's request for comment by publication time.
Blurring government and personal interests
Another departure from Justice Department norms has come in the form of its employee base.
More than 10,000 lawyers work at the Department of Justice, most of them nonpartisan career employees. They serve under the leadership of political appointees, chief among them the attorney general.
Typically, attorney generals and top-level appointees have prosecutorial backgrounds, in line with the day-to-day demands of the Justice Department.
But during Trump's second term, Shane said the president has elevated “lawyers whose main distinctions had been working for him as personal attorneys".
“People who have not impressed upon him, apparently, the difference between counselling the president in his office in his official capacity versus working for Donald Trump, the private wheeler and dealer,” Shane said.
One of those personal lawyers includes Attorney General Bondi. Prior to joining the current administration, she represented Trump during his 2020 impeachment trial.
Bondi, however, does have a prosecutorial background, having served as a district attorney and later as a two-term attorney general in the state of Florida.
Some of Trump's other picks have not brought the same type of experience, though.
Alina Habba, for example, represented Trump in civil cases before becoming his pick to serve as acting US attorney for New Jersey.
Lindsey Halligan, another one of Trump's personal lawyers, had a background in insurance law. She was selected to serve as interim US attorney for eastern Virginia, where she spearheaded the short-lived indictments against Comey and James.
Both Habba and Halligan were ultimately forced to step down amid questions about the legality of their appointments.
Danger of losing public confidence
Meanwhile, the Justice Department has fired hundreds of nonpartisan career lawyers from its ranks, many of whom with links to cases Trump disagreed with from past administrations.
They include more than a dozen lawyers who investigated crimes related to the riot on January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol to protest his 2020 election defeat.
Experts warn that the purge of career professionals within the department will have immediate consequences, leaving a dearth of experience that will be difficult to replace.
The tumbling numbers of employees could also result in fewer prosecutions and slower timelines.
“The work has slowed down in many critical parts of our department,” Young, the former Justice Department employee, explained.
Experts also question whether the concept of the nonpartisan prosecutor will endure.
In a February memo, Bondi told Department of Justice employees that their role was to "zealously advance, protect and defend" the interests of the president, whom she referred to as their "client".
The shifting expectations about what a federal prosecutor should do have not only transformed the Justice Department's relationship with the White House but also the court system.
At times, over the past year, federal judges have scolded Justice Department representatives for stretching the truth or outright lying.
In February, for instance, District Judge Tanya Chutkan reminded department lawyers “of their duty to make truthful representations to the court".
In November, Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick also warned that recent misstatements and missteps in the Comey case "may rise to the level of government misconduct".
Legal experts like Sklansky fear the result will ultimately be a partisan system that craters public trust in the judicial process.
“The low repute of the judicial system today — not just the Justice Department but the courts as well — is something new. It's a departure from anything I’ve seen in my lifetime,” Sklansky said.
“The danger is that we will lose confidence in a system that’s designed to help us live together across ideological boundaries.”
