Stephen Miller, a top aide for President Donald Trump with no law degree, has secretly seized control of the Justice Department, according to a report in The New York Times.
While the DOJ has historically operated with a degree of independence from the White House, Attorney General Pam Bondi has received her marching orders from Miller since her first day on the job, current and former Trump aides told the Times.
Bondi helps two of Trump’s personal criminal defense lawyers—Emil Bove and Todd Blanche—run the Justice Department’s day-to-day operations based on the White House’s directives, the Times reported.
“The decisions are being made at the White House, and then they’re being pushed down to the Department of Justice, which is very, very atypical,” said Elizabeth Oyer, a former chief pardon lawyer at the DOJ who was fired in March after she declined to restore actor Mel Gibson’s gun rights, in an interview with the Times.
“It feels like she is just performing a part,” Oyer added, referring to Bondi. “She is like an actor, in a way.”
Her deference is atypical for an attorney general. “I can’t recall an attorney general who seemed willing to be subordinate to White House staffers,” Edward Whelan, a conservative former DOJ official, told the Times.
Unlike her predecessors, Bondi has embraced the role of a fierce and fanatical media mouthpiece, appearing regularly on Fox News to hit the president’s talking points.
Miller, 39, has emerged as one of the president’s most influential and visible advisers during his second term. He was the key policy architect behind Trump’s mass deportation effort. Despite being the real power at the DOJ, he is not a lawyer.
Bondi’s chief of staff, Chad Mizelle, defended his boss’ subservience to the White House to the Times, arguing that close alignment is necessary to battle the DOJ’s “liberal” staffers. He said that under former President Joe Biden, the Justice Department was “willing to blindly implement“ the White House’s agenda.
Bove told the Times that Bondi has focused the agency on its mission to take criminals off the streets. During her tenure, the DOJ “has arrested terrorists, cartel kingpins and gang leaders, helped secure the border, gotten drugs off the street at a historic rate and assisted in the removal of thousands of criminal aliens,” he said.
The White House and the DOJ did not immediately return the Daily Beast’s request for comment on the Times’ reporting.
Publicly, Bondi—59, a longtime Trump loyalist—is an uncritical supporter of her boss’ agenda.
She has defended his refusal to return an accidentally deported man from a Salvadoran megaprison, touted the arrests of protestors who vandalized Tesla vehicles, and co-signed Trump’s decision to accept a $400 million jet as a gift from Qatar.
“Mr. President, your first 100 days has far exceeded that of any other presidency in this country,” Bondi fawned in a televised April Cabinet meeting, before bragging about the number of death warrants she was signing.
Behind the scenes, though, tensions have flared.
Miller and Bondi butted heads after she asked Trump if he would do her the favor of naming Florida sheriff Chad Chronister, a Bondi ally, to head the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Times reported.
Trump acquiesced—but the nomination was later yanked after reports resurfaced about the fact that Chronister had arrested a pastor who ignored COVID restrictions. Miller let Bondi know his displeasure with her pick, the Times reported.
She also urged the president to limit pardons for Jan. 6 insurrectionists to those who were nonviolent, according to the Times. Trump wound up pardoning all the rioters.
Bondi was initially uncomfortable with the fact that she would be managing the Justice Department’s operations alongside Trump’s hand-picked personal lawyers, the Times reported.
She has since warmed up to the arrangement, becoming so close to Bove that she refers to him as “Sweet Emil,” multiple officials told the paper.
Bondi has been consulted on important decisions—like how to respond to court orders calling for the return of deportees—and has been given gradually greater say over personnel, according to the Times.
However, she has continued to lack a major role in shaping the administration’s broader strategic planning for its legal moves, the Times reported.
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