From Day One, the Trump Regime Made DOJ a Tool of Political Leverage

When people believe prosecutions are political — and politics are prosecutorial — trust collapses.

The Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are no longer functioning primarily as law enforcement agencies. Instead, they are being used as tools for political leverage — a purpose for which they were not designed, violates department and ethical rules and policies, and endangers all of us.

Together we spent decades at the Department of Justice, whose intended mission we believe in deeply: to enforce federal laws equally and independently, without fear or favor. We worked alongside some extraordinary public servants who, along with their families, sacrificed higher pay and private comforts because they believed in the rule of law and the importance of the department’s mission. That’s why what we are seeing now is not just troubling. It is devastating.

(Dragon Claws/iStock)

The use of DOJ’s powers for political leverage was evident in the very first days of this Trump administration. In February 2025, DOJ dismissed the prosecution against New York Mayor Eric Adams in exchange for the mayor’s “cooperation” on immigration matters. The district court judge overseeing the Adams case, Judge Dale Ho, called it what it was: a “quid pro quo” — a direct trade of prosecutorial power for cooperation on a political matter. That is not discretion, that is not policy oversight. That is wielding criminal power — the power to take away someone’s liberty, or not — to get something that the political arm of the executive branch wants. Once prosecutors begin trading charging decisions for policy concessions, the criminal justice system ceases to be a system of justice. It becomes a tool of political control.

The Justice Department playbook used in the Adams case: Threaten criminal exposure, offer restraint in exchange for cooperation, call it discretion, dare the courts or Congress to stop it.

This leverage of DOJ’s power in this corrupt way did not stop with the Adams case — in fact, it has escalated to more dangerous levels, as we are seeing in Minneapolis. There, the department has repeatedly deployed the threat of investigation, prosecution, or enforcement — not to vindicate the law, but to extract political compliance. The Justice Department has launched criminal investigations of the Minnesota governor and the Minneapolis mayor, not based on an articulated good-faith predicate of criminal wrongdoing, but, as Attorney General Pam Bondi’s letter implied, to extract voter registration rolls and policy compliance.

The decision to investigate not the federal immigration officers who shot and killed two American citizens (at least initially — they have now, finally, opened one into the killing of Alex Pretti after a massive backlash even by Republicans), as should be done, but rather to investigate the victims and shield the officers, is its own form of leverage — commit violence on behalf of the policy goals of this administration, and we will protect you. Protest or resist, and we will come after you.

The most recent examples — an FBI raid of Fulton County, Georgia, looking for voter fraud that has been repeatedly rejected over and over by courts, and charging two journalists with a criminal conspiracy for covering events, which is what journalists do even if the events are illegal — again are forms of retribution and leverage.

This is not law enforcement. This is wielding power in a way more appropriate for the Mafia organizations we prosecuted, not the Justice Department. Using the threat of criminal prosecution to extract policy concessions violates core rules of professional responsibility, including prohibitions on coercion, conflicts of interest, and conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice. The line between aggressive enforcement and improper coercion isn’t blurry here. It’s being erased.

This did not begin with Adams. It did not begin with Minneapolis. It began on Day One — when enforcement in the Justice Department shifted from a neutral application of the law to transactional use of power and the leadership of DOJ not only went along with it but endorsed it. The establishment of the so-called Weaponization Working Group, with a stated mission to target certain people the president considers enemies, and being explicitly encouraged, if not directed, by Trump and his political team, is on its face an unprecedented and open use of DOJ’s powers to target individuals for retribution.

Once that line was crossed, everything that followed became inevitable. If prosecutors can trade dismissals for immigration compliance, as in the Adams case, they can trade restraint for voter data, as they are attempting to do in Minneapolis. If investigations can be conditioned on political cooperation, they can easily be brought against political opponents, as they have been. If law enforcement becomes a negotiating tool, every prosecution becomes a bargaining position.

Perhaps the most telling evidence of this transformation comes from inside the Justice Department itself. Over the past year, career prosecutors, senior officials, and line attorneys have resigned in unprecedented numbers — many in direct response to direction they were given by DOJ leadership to use their discretion and tools as a prosecutor to carry out political extortions. These are not political appointees. The prosecutors of the Southern District of New York and from the Public Integrity Section of the DOJ understood that dismissing the Adams case in that way was a misuse of DOJ’s powers and refused to be part of it. At least nine of them, including the interim U.S. Attorney of SDNY, resigned. These are professionals who devoted their careers to the DOJ’s mission — and who no longer recognize the institution they faithfully served. Prosecutors in Minnesota recognized that the way the powers of their office and the FBI were being wielded was also corrupt, and six prosecutors and an FBI supervisor resigned, and the remaining part of the office is protesting vocally to leadership. No career prosecutors signed the indictment against Don Lemon. Prosecutors have resigned in the Eastern District of Virginia and refused to work on the cases against New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey.

When dedicated public servants, the people who know the system best, are walking away, that is not noise. That is a red flashing signal. The most dangerous consequence is not any single investigation, like the Adams, James, and Comey cases, or even the investigation of the Minnesota governor or Don Lemon. It is the erosion of legitimacy of the rule of law itself.

When people believe prosecutions are political — and politics are prosecutorial — trust collapses. Compliance becomes coercion. Law becomes leverage. Justice becomes a strategy. And once that happens, the rule of law becomes something far more fragile: a rule of power.

Courts must continue to call out abuse when it appears, as Judge Dale Ho did in the Adams case and as many other federal judges have done. Congress must reassert oversight and restore guardrails. The legal profession must refuse to normalize what is happening and speak up more broadly and loudly — it is part of our professional obligation.

But ultimately, accountability rests with the public. Because no system of justice can remain independent if the people tolerate its conversion into a political weapon.

The Justice Department can be restored. But only if we are honest about what it has become — and refuse to accept it as normal. This isn’t a deviation. This is the system now.

And unless it is confronted, it will only get worse.

Mimi Rocah was the district attorney of Westchester County, New York, from 2021 to 2024 and was a federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York from 2001 to 2017. Her book, “Justice Under Siege: Trump's Political Takeover of Our Legal System and the Heroes Who Are Fighting Back," will be published in the fall. Perry Carbone, an adjunct professor of law at Pace Law School, was assistant U.S. Attorney and deputy chief of the Special Prosecution Division for the District of New Jersey from 1994 to 2003 and assistant U.S. Attorney and chief of the Criminal Division and White Plains Division in the Southern District of New York from 2003 to 2025.

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