NEW YORK CITY, NY – In an opinion piece this past week, This is Not Restoring the Way the Justice Department is Supposed to Work, published in National Review last Sunday, Andrew C. McCarthy argued that Attorney General Pam Bondi’s new initiative called the “Weaponization Working Group,” politicizes law enforcement and infringes on the ethical duties of the justice system.
Newly-appointed Bondi has implemented Trump’s Department of Justice model, which puts “conviction first and trial later– if ever,” in the words of McCarthy.
In a recent turn of events, Biden DOJ special counsel Jack Smith, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Manhattan District Attorney Alivn Bragg have been named for crimes that remain unnamed. McCarthy said these three people are “Trump’s principal prosecutorial nemeses” and those who assisted them are “guilty by association.”
As McCarthy recalls, for the past four years, President Donald Trump has continuously stated lawfare against him was “treasonously corrupt (because) President Joe Biden was directing and monitoring it from the White House,” a point to which McCarthy is sympathetic.
McCarthy states the Justice Department under Biden was also politicized, noting, “The Biden DOJ labored to shield its friends from the punitive wringer they made of the investigative process.”
Moreover, McCarthy adds there was corruption in Biden’s administrative practices, which were experienced by the Democrat’s “political pinatas” – groups like January 6 defendants and anti-abortion protestors.
From this corruption during the Biden-Harris administration, McCarthy draws the conclusion that both sides—Republicans and Democrats alike—use lawfare in their favor, protecting their allies and targeting their political opponents.
Though McCarthy sympathizes with Trump’s statement about corrupt lawfare, he does not excuse Trump’s actions, though he makes a distinction between misconduct and criminality.
“Trump engaged in serious misconduct, regardless of whether it was actionable misconduct,” McCarthy states. Additionally, he acknowledges that Trump’s reelection into office “doesn’t mean the misbehavior didn’t happen, or it wasn’t misbehavior.”
After reviewing the Mar-a-Lago documents, McCarthy acknowledges there was legal misconduct, as Trump’s handling of the classified documents involved actionable obstruction, though he argues that “Biden should have pardoned Trump on the classified information charges,” and other arguments—such as the cases raised by Bragg and Smith—were “atrocious” and “ill-conceived.”
McCarthy discusses his views on how the Trump and Biden administrations dealt with the January 6 riot, stating he disagrees with how both of them handled it.
He criticizes the Biden DOJ for being “oppressive and excessive in its prosecutorial tactics,” raising the controversial use of Section 1512(c)(2) of the Penal Code, but he also disagrees with Trump’s pardons, calling it “shameful.”
McCarthy points out that pardoning the rioters was a miscarriage of justice because they “assaulted cops and damaged property at the Capitol.”
According to McCarthy, the Attorney General’s duty is to “advance whatever good faith there is of the government’s conduct.”
He forewarns that if current AG Bondi “spouts Trump’s grievances without putting the Justice Department’s response to egregious behavior in context, then she’s engaging in partisan law enforcement.”
McCarthy adds the Justice Department has to prove misconduct, and this process of proving misconduct can’t occur without “the imperative of a quiet, competent, comprehensive investigation that looks at all sides fairly and impartially.” He believes Bondi’s weaponization directive fails to do that.
Suggesting “the directive certainly is part of a purge” within the Justice Department, McCarthy reasons that while the purge is happening for political reasons, it is also Bondi’s “attempt at damage control after another mess caused by Emil Bove,” the former Attorney General.
When Bove was Attorney General, he ordered the FBI to “name names of anyone who touched the Capital riot cases in any way.” As a former prosecutor, Bove knew the inter-workings of the FBI, and as McCarthy suggests, knew that the “list of names would include something close to all 37,000 (FBI) employees,” explained McCarthy.
The order created panic among the FBI, said McCarthy, adding although most of the cases relating to the J6 riots were routine scout work, bureau employees and agents now believed they were the subjects of a criminal investigation.
Although this was not Bove’s intention, it was the outcome of the misimpression many people had of his order, McCarthy detailed.
According to McCarthy, initiating the weaponization directive was Bondi’s attempt to restore order. In her two-page directive, Bondi wrote, “No one who has acted with a righteous spirit and just intentions has any cause for concern about efforts to root out corruption and weaponization.”
In her two-page directive, Bondi references the J6 investigations, McCarthy wrote. Bondi stated the Weaponization Working Group aimed to “examine the pursuit of improper tactics and unethical prosecutions relating to events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 – as distinct from good-faith actions by federal employees simply following orders from superiors.”
Bondi did not include the actions that resulted in the J6 prosecutions, such as the assault of police officers, which McCarthy cites as an example of how the Justice Department has the power to create a different narrative.
“The weaponization directive is doing politics, not removing politics from law enforcement. Plainly, the ‘Weaponization Working Group’ exists to settle the president’s scores and rewrite dark chapters of his history… (that) is now the Justice Department’s core mission,” McCarthy writes.
