After four years of injustice inside the U.S. Department of Justice, there’s a new sheriff in town.
Following her confirmation last week on a mostly party-line vote (Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman was the only Democrat to vote with Republicans), Attorney General Pam Bondi is wasting no time cutting the wires of a weaponized Justice Department. On her first day at the helm, Bondi signed 14 directives aimed at making law enforcement fair and effective again.
“I will restore integrity to the Justice Department and I will fight violent crime throughout this country and throughout this world, and I will make America safe again,” Bondi said upon being sworn in as the nation’s 87th attorney general.
President Donald Trump, the man who nominated the former Florida AG to lead the DOJ, said he believes Bondi will “take crime out of the system.”
‘Political Objectives’
To that end, one of Bondi’s memos to DOJ employees announces the creation of a task force to look into the Biden administration’s use of the department to go after the left’s political enemies, Trump most notably. As the president has said, and congressional investigative records corroborate thus far, the Biden administration “and allies throughout the country engaged in an unprecedented, third-world weaponization of prosecutorial power to upend the democratic process.” The Federalist has extensively reported on the lawfare employed by the left in an attempt to neutralize the threat of its No. 1 political enemy.
DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group will review “the activities of all department and agencies exercising civil or criminal enforcement authority of the United States over the last four years … to identify instances where a department’s or agency’s conduct appears to have been designed to achieve political objectives or other improper aims rather than pursuing justice or legitimate governmental objectives.”
The review will include an examination of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s $50 million-plus federal cases targeting Trump and the prosecutors and law enforcement agents involved in the “unprecedented” raid on the president’s Florida home. It will also investigate DOJ cooperation with the bogus cases brought against Trump, his family, and businesses by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and others. And the working group will look into “improper investigative tactics and unethical prosecutions” related to the accused and convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021 riots at the Capitol.
“No one who has acted with a righteous spirit and just intentions has any cause for concern about efforts to root out corruption and weaponization,” the attorney general’s memo states. “On the other hand, the Department of Justice will not tolerate abuses of the criminal justice process, coercive behavior, or other forms of misconduct.”
‘Political Infection’
On Monday, the chairmen of the Senate and House judiciary committees said the DOJ’s efforts to eliminate weaponization of justice is a “common sense and much needed approach.”
“If you’ve followed our oversight, it shouldn’t come as news to you that political infection has saturated the DOJ and FBI in recent years,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said in a joint statement. The judiciary committees have raised myriad concerns about Smith’s politically tinged investigations, “baseless attacks on Catholics practicing their faith,” repeated retaliation against whistleblowers, and other “politically-infected conduct by the DOJ.”
The chairmen vowed that their committees’ oversight work “will continue at full.”
New to the Senate Judiciary Committee this session is Sen. Eric Schmitt, former Missouri attorney general. The Republican led the successful federal lawsuit against the Biden administration’s sustained attack on the First Amendment through its collusion with Big Tech to silence conservatives and other opponents of its policies.
Schmitt recently was tapped to lead the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, perhaps little known but possessing “great constitutional power,” according to the National Constitution Center. The subcommittee holds jurisdiction over nine key areas, including oversight of the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ and the enforcement and protection of constitutional rights. It could have much to say on the abuse of power that stained the Biden Department of Justice and in ensuring such abuses never happen again.
Schmitt said being a watchdog in particular for Americans’ First Amendment rights will be critical.
“What we’re seeing playing out … are the real threats to the republic, the assaults on the First Amendment from the administrative state that is antithetical to the founders’ conception of the separation of powers,” the senator said.
‘Restore Integrity and Credibility’
If shaky-kneed and gelded Republican senators don’t succumb to the left’s barrage of fear-fueled attacks against Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee for FBI director should be confirmed this week. Patel’s confirmation would bring an essential ally to the campaign to clean up the troubled Federal Bureau of Investigation.
If reluctant senators need more evidence of Patel’s worthiness to lead the FBI, they need only look at the people attacking him. Among the Deep Staters and Never Trumpers are the likes of The Washington Post, long serving as the leading public relations firm for the Deep State and big-government preservationists. The Post, which has cheered on the politically driven prosecutions of Trump and covered for his 2020 presidential election opponent, has lashed out against Patel, who makes the Deep State very nervous.
Lobbying the Senate to reject the nominee, the Post’s editorial board on Monday hypocritically insisted Patel “appears eager to seek retribution against President Donald Trump’s perceived enemies, including those inside the bureau, Republican critics, the news media and alumni from the first Trump administration.” In other words, as FBI director Patel would do unto the retributionists as they did unto Trump.
As Bondi noted in her directive to DOJ employees, time is of the essence.
“The Department of Justice must take immediate and overdue steps to restore integrity and credibility with the public that we are charged with protecting, and to ensure that the Department’s personnel are ready and willing to faithfully implement the policy agenda of the duly elected President of the United States,” the attorney general wrote.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
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