A Tipping Point at the Department of Justice

Trump and his enablers have crossed a new bridge into autocratic territory

By Mimi Rocah

My heart broke a little bit watching the spectacle that occurred in the Great Hall of the Department of Justice last Friday. I know I am far from alone in feeling this way. There were so many awful things about the event—nominally about fentanyl trafficking—that it is hard to know where to begin. But as a nearly 17-year veteran of the DOJ, I can come to only one conclusion: that the event marks the end of an independent Department of Justice—at least for now.

Let's talk first about Attorney General Pam Bondi’s remarks. When introducing President Trump on Friday, she lauded him as “the greatest President our country has ever seen,” and said that “he will never stop fighting for us and we will never stop fighting for him.” This statement alone, in any other time, would send shock waves throughout the country and federal law enforcement.

All DOJ employees know that they take an oath to fight for the Constitution and democracy, not for a particular leader. Past Attorneys General have taken pains to underscore this duty. Janet Reno, in her farewell speech, spoke about our “fragile democracy” and lauded the career attorneys who “are willing, day in and day out, to carry on with government;” who, regardless of presidential administration, “continue to do [their] duty as [they] see it, based on the evidence, the law, and particularly our magnificent Constitution.” When welcoming interns to the Summer Honors Program (which the Trump Administration abruptly canceled this year), Attorney General John Ashcroft spoke in the Great Hall of justice as one of the “causes and principles and values that transcend us” and the “extraordinary responsibility…to serve this nation with honor and integrity.” When Michael B. Mukasey was installed as AG in 2007 by President George W. Bush, he said, “We do law, but the result is justice. And that is why our ultimate client—the people of this country—can and do rest secure in the knowledge that our unswerving allegiance is to the law and the Constitution, and that the result of faithful performance of our duty is justice.”

By contrast, AG Pam Bondi said nothing about democracy, the Constitution, or even justice per se: she spoke almost solely in terms of loyalty for (her) particular leader and in no way tried to lift up the Department she leads or the people working there. In fact, the Trump Administration has demonized and ​​fired dozens of DOJ career public servants.

Next, let’s look at the words of Todd Blanche, DOJ’s number 2, the Deputy Attorney General (DAG). I know Blanche—or, rather, I knew him. I first met him in 2001 when he was a paralegal in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, going to law school at night. He was hard working, ambitious, and likeable. We all rooted for him to become an Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA), and he did. He later led the office’s Violent Crime Unit; he was there to put away violent criminals, but also to be fair and do the right thing. When I took over as head of the White Plains Division in 2012, I requested Blanche be named my Co-Chief and we were inseparable for almost two years.

You wouldn’t know any of that history from Blanche’s words in the Great Hall last week, spoken not to career prosecutors, as is typical for gatherings like this, but to political appointees and elected officials whom Blanche made sure to thank. He barely mentioned his eight years as a prosecutor and spoke more proudly of his time as Trump’s personal criminal defense counsel— hardly a qualification AUSA Blanche would have held in high regard for the Deputy Attorney General. And the DOJ of which Blanche spoke is not the one that he and I knew together. He spoke about Trump’s pledge to bring violent criminals to justice as if this was a new goal. But, of all people, Blanche knows his suggestion is misleading: he led the SDNY unit and a Division that pursued violent gangs, drug organizations, and cartels, prosecuting these types of cases under both Republican and Democratic Administrations. To suggest Trump is breaking new ground is false and unfair to the thousands of DOJ employees around the country who have given their sweat to fight fentanyl and violent crime, including Blanche’s own former colleagues.

And now we turn to Trump’s speech. In the past twenty five years, only two presidents besides Trump even went to the DOJ to deliver remarks, and their addresses were ceremonial. This speech was much different: a political rally from start to finish, complete with songs from Trump’s campaign and comments about political topics well outside the realm of DOJ and justice policies. Trump slammed former DOJ officials as “scum” and unleashed attacks on private attorneys. And then he did the unthinkable: he called for people he perceives as political enemies to be “held accountable,” even “​jailed.”

Now I know this isn’t something new for Trump to say; but to say it in the halls of DOJ, the place where the power of “accountability” lies, is a tipping point into autocratic territory. Trump is asking for the machinery of American justice to launch baseless investigations, to harass, and even possibly to criminally charge people at his whim. While this Administration has already severely eroded the rule of law by taking revenge on prosecutors who worked on certain cases, and punishing law firms who had clients, cases or partners he did not like, to make this blanket threat at the headquarters of U.S. prosecutions is more serious still. Republicans with any conscience and regard for the rule of law must take it as the giant step too far that it is. And all of us simply cannot let ourselves become numb to this rhetoric.

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Mimi Rocah was the district attorney of Westchester County, New York, from 2021 to 2024 and was a federal prosecutor from 2001 to 2017.