President Trump’s Justice Department recently reached a nadir when two prominent Democrats, New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, and Senator Adam Schiff of California, were placed under criminal investigation for their personal financial dealings. They are the wrong targets chosen for the wrong reasons in a case supervised by the wrong prosecutor. But there’s not much either of them can do about it.
The process leading up to the investigation demonstrates how this president has eroded longstanding ethical norms governing the relationship between the White House and the Justice Department. As the head of the executive branch, the president has authority over all the agencies in his cabinet, including the Justice Department; but since the abuses of Watergate, all subsequent presidents have taken steps to remove themselves from individual prosecutorial decisions while still leading on policy matters.
The Justice Department manual instructs that “the legal judgments of the Department of Justice must be impartial and insulated from political influence. It is imperative that the department’s investigatory and prosecutorial powers be exercised free from partisan consideration.” To that end, the manual sharply restricts contacts between prosecutors and the White House in criminal cases. With Mr. Trump using his social media megaphone, those limits don’t exist.
Ms. James earned the president’s ire by accusing him and the Trump Organization with fraud in connection with the valuation of real estate and winning a $454 million judgment against them (Mr. Trump is appealing). Mr. Schiff was a leader, in his days as a member of the House of Representatives, of the investigation of Russia’s efforts to help Mr. Trump win the 2016 election, and he became the lead House manager in Mr. Trump’s first impeachment.
Among many other insults, Mr. Trump has reposted a call for Ms. James to be “placed under citizens arrest” for “blatant election interference and harassment,” and over the years he’s denounced “Shifty Schiff,” demanding that he be “questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason.”
If there were any doubt that these investigations amount to political hit jobs against two of President Trump’s most indefatigable political adversaries, the issue was settled with Attorney General Pam Bondi’s pick to lead the inquiries — Ed Martin, the Justice Department official who was so unqualified and partisan that he couldn’t win confirmation in the Republican Senate to be the United States attorney in Washington. As a consolation prize for that failure, Mr. Trump appointed him to lead the so-called Weaponization Working Group, the Orwellian name for the prosecutorial payback operation designed to build cases against those who investigated Mr. Trump during the Biden administration. Some of Mr. Martin’s first targets are Ms. James and Mr. Schiff. Far from displaying the open mind that honorable prosecutors should demonstrate, Mr. Martin said his goal was to “stick the landing” against the two Democrats.
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The post Adam Schiff, Letitia James and Trump’s Payback Plan appeared first on New York Times.
