WASHINGTON — Pam Bondi insisted at her Senate confirmation hearing that as attorney general, her Justice Department wouldn't "play politics."
Yet in the month since the Trump administration took over the building, a succession of actions raised concerns the department is doing exactly that.
Top officials demanded the names of thousands of FBI agents who investigated the Capitol riot, sued a state attorney general who had won a massive fraud verdict against Donald Trump before the 2024 election, and ordered the dismissal of a criminal case against New York Mayor Eric Adams by saying the charges handicapped the Democrat's ability to partner in the Republican administration's fight against illegal immigration.
Even for a department that endured its share of scandals, the moves produced upheaval not seen in decades, tested its independence and rattled the foundations of an institution that long prided itself on being driven solely by facts, evidence and the law.
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As firings and resignations mount, the unrest raises the question of whether a president who raged against his own Justice Department during his first term can succeed in bending it to his will in his second.
"We have seen now a punishing ruthlessness that acting department leadership and the attorney general are bringing to essentially subjugate the workforce to the wishes and demands of the administration, even when it's obvious" that some of the decisions have all the signs "of corrupting the criminal justice system," said retired federal prosecutor David Laufman, a senior department official across Democratic and Republican administrations.
He spoke not long after Manhattan's top federal prosecutor, Danielle Sassoon, resigned in protest following a directive from Emil Bove, the Justice Department's acting No. 2 official, to dismiss the case against Adams.
In a letter foreshadowing her decision, Sassoon accused the department of acceding to a "quid pro quo" — dropping the case to ensure Adams' help with Trump's immigration agenda. Though a Democrat, Adams for months positioned himself as eager to aid the administration's effort in America's largest city, even meeting privately with Trump at Trump's Florida estate just days before the Republican took office.
Multiple high-ranking officials who oversaw the Justice Department's public integrity section, which prosecutes corruption cases, joined Sassoon in resigning.
On Friday, a prosecutor involved in the Adams case, Hagan Scotten, became at least the seventh person to quit in the standoff, telling Bove in a letter that it would take a "fool" or a "coward" to meet his demand to drop the charges.
Bove and department lawyers in Washington ultimately filed paperwork Friday night to end the case.
Though the circumstances are significantly different, the wave of resignations conjured memories of the 1973 "Saturday Night Massacre" when multiple Justice Department leaders quit rather than carry out President Richard Nixon's orders to fire the Watergate special prosecutor.
"Even though there may not be more resignations, a clear message has been sent about the objectives and the expectations of the department," said Alberto Gonzales, who served as attorney general under Republican President George W. Bush until his 2007 resignation in the wake of the dismissal of several U.S. attorneys.
"The purpose of the department is to ensure that our laws are carried out, that those who engage in criminal wrongdoing are prosecuted and punished," Gonzales said. And to some it may appear "that if you have some kind of relationship with the White House, there may not be consequences for doing something that ordinary Americans engaged in similar conduct would be punished."
Bove, a former New York federal prosecutor himself who represented Trump in his criminal cases, pointedly made no assessment about the legal merits of the case against Adams. Bove cited political reasons, including the timing of the charges months before Adams' presumed reelection campaign and the restrictions the case had placed on the mayor's ability to fight illegal immigration and violent crime.
In a letter to Sassoon, Bove said case prosecutors would be subject to internal investigations.
Bondi defended the decision to drop the case, asserting in a Fox News interview Friday that Adams was targeted after he criticized the Biden administration's immigration policies. Her chief of staff, Chad Mizelle, said prosecutors who refused the dismissal order have "no place at DOJ."
At the White House on Friday, Trump claimed he was "not involved" in the Adams case and knew "nothing" about it.
The New York showdown follows a separate dispute between Bove and the acting FBI leadership over his demands for a list of agents involved in the investigations of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol so the Justice Department could determine whether personnel action was warranted.
The request was seen by some as a precursor to possible mass firings, but it was also consistent with Trump's fury over those criminal cases, which he erased with sweeping pardons soon after his inauguration.
Bove referred to the acting FBI director's resistance to his directive as an act of "insubordination" and said agents who "simply followed" orders would not lose their jobs but those who acted with "partisan intent" were at risk.
