The D.C. takeover proves Democrats are the true law-and-order party

Trump is diverting the only people in our country with the training and experience to stop the next terror attack or serial murderer for a made-up crime problem in D.C.

Evidence in an FBI fraud investigation. (FBI)

When federal agents deploy to the streets of our cities, we naturally focus on what we see them doing—the arrests, the unmarked cars, the men with masks—and what it means for civil liberties and constitutional democracy in America.

But there is an equally important question Americans should be asking about President Donald Trump’s performative diversion of FBI, DEA, ATF, and other federal law enforcement personnel to street-level crime patrols and petty immigration enforcement. What are these highly trained men and women NOT doing while they’re hanging out on Washington, D.C., street corners?

Just last week, the New York Times reported that the Justice Department announced that Russia had hacked the computer system of our federal courts, possibly gaining access to sensitive information about sources and witnesses in national security related cases. Protecting America against such cyber-espionage—as well as from cyber-attacks on critical energy infrastructure, banks, and businesses—is part of the FBI’s real mission.

The FBI is also America’s main line of defense against terrorist attacks, whether by foreign groups such as ISIS and al Qaeda or by domestic extremists. It keeps us safe from organized crime and gangs, from child trafficking and exploitation, from white-collar corruption and fraud, and from foreign spies. It backs up police in solving the most serious crimes, like kidnapping and serial murders. The Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, meanwhile, are responsible for keeping deadly drugs from our country and guns from criminals.

I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that preventing the next 9/11-style terror attack and saving children from fentanyl is important to most Americans. And that it might not be a great idea to divert the only people in our country with the training and experience to stop the next bin Laden to catching Uber drivers who might have overstayed their visa.

Yet, in addition to forcing federal agents to do all night street duty in Washington, the Trump Justice Department has ordered 45 percent (!!!) of agents at the FBI’s 25 largest field offices to work on immigration full time. It has reassigned to immigration enforcement numerous agents from its Domestic Terrorism Operations Section, which prevents attacks by anti-government extremists and militia groups inside the United States, and considered disbanding this unit altogether.

Meanwhile, it has fired dozens of federal prosecutors and FBI agents for helping to bring Jan. 6, 2021, rioters to justice, including a former acting director of the FBI, the assistant director in charge of the bureau’s Washington Field Office, and about 40 prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. The Justice Department has crippled its Public Integrity Section—the unit responsible for prosecuting corrupt politicians—and ordered prosecutors to stop pursuing foreign bribery cases and scale back investigation of crypto-currency fraud. Over 4,500 Department of Justice employees have taken early retirement under Trump, including over 600 at the FBI.

When Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel wake up in the morning, does anyone believe their first thought is about America’s vulnerability to cyberattacks, terrorism, or corruption, rather than what Trump might have posted on Truth Social overnight? They’re paid to focus on his grievances, not on our security, and will keep their jobs based on how they protect their boss, not their country

As for the professionals still working for them—imagine you’re an FBI agent who gets a tip about right-wing extremists (say the Proud Boys or the growing Aryan Freedom Network) planning violence, or about a Russian intelligence operation targeting America. Do you ask your supervisor to dedicate resources to those threats, knowing that other agents have been fired for focusing on them?

Given these facts, it’s hard to understand why, in the words of a recent New York Times headline, Democrats are “treading cautiously” in response to Trump’s diversion of federal law enforcement to his performative show in Washington. First, a note to my fellow Democrats: whenever you’re “treading cautiously,” you’re losing; Trump has never “tread cautiously” on anything, and he beat us last year.

Second, you should be playing nothing but offense on these issues, repeating again and again that Trump is the most anti-law-enforcement president in American history. This is a man who has called the same federal agents he’s now misusing on our streets “dirty cops,” “fascists,” “Marxist thugs,” and the “Gestapo." He appears to have sold pardons to fraudsters in exchange for campaign cash. He pardoned the thugs who viciously attacked cops on Jan. 6. He hired one of them—a man caught on tape shouting “kill ’em” as rioters attacked law enforcement—to a position at the Justice Department, while purging talented, dedicated prosecutors and FBI agents for not being personally loyal to him. He is literally defunding the police, including the same Washington, D.C., police department he now claims to be helping.

Democrats should be saying that if there is a terrorist bombing or crippling cyberattack on the United States, Donald Trump will be 100% responsible for having diverted our homeland defenders from their real jobs to petty tasks. We should be talking now about the threats not being addressed, the criminals not being caught, and the enemies not being deterred because he is forcing federal law enforcement agencies to play act as his personal, partisan police force instead of securing America.

Yes, there are people on the far left who also attack police officers. But no Democratic president would ever call them patriots or pardon them for the crimes. Nor has any Democratic elected official vilified or defunded a law enforcement agency for prosecuting corrupt politicians.

We are the only party of law, order, and national security America has left now. We should embrace that as a moral virtue and turn it into a political advantage.

Tom Malinowski is a former member of Congress from New Jersey who was an assistant secretary of state in the Obama administration.

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