President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has committed a “cardinal sin” in a recently launched investigation and betrayed the department’s fundamental mission in the process, according to one legal expert.
Harry Litman, a former federal prosecutor, argued in a new Substack essay that the Trump DOJ’s investigation into Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who is married to California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, betrays one of the most fundamental ethical standards in the legal practice. Litman noted that the agency was yet another example of the DOJ exercising its prosecutorial powers, which have also been described as “the most dangerous powers,” to go after people the president doesn’t like.
“Critically, a prosecutor who has taken that step—chosen the person whom they dislike or desire to embarrass and then hunts for the crime to pin on them—has already committed the cardinal sin,” Litman wrote.
The Trump DOJ launched an investigation into Siebel Newsom’s taxes and connections to nonprofit entities in California in mid-June, a probe that quickly expanded to involve people close to the Newsoms. It was launched at a time when Newsom was considered a front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 2028, according to some polls.
The Newsoms have denied any wrongdoing.
“The Justice Department has already committed the abuse that Robert Jackson identified as the gravest danger and abuse of prosecutorial power,” Litman wrote. “They have ‘picked the people’ they think they should get, ‘rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted.’”
“It’s as fundamental a statement of DOJ’s defining mission as we have, and generations of prosecutors took it as sacrosanct,” he added. “Todd Blanche has trashed it, stomped on it, and then shredded it for good measure, and he has done so proudly, invoking the superior and ultimate authority of the president for whom he has publicly proclaimed his love.”
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