The Judiciary Under Donald Trump's Control

Correspondence from New York

In his first administration, Donald Trump often attacked his attorneys general and other department heads because – while upholding the Constitution and acting in accordance with ethical principles – they stood in the way of implementing his ideas.

This time, to make his job easier, Trump has filled the Justice Department with loyalists like Pam Bondi and lawyers he previously privately employed in numerous lawsuits. They are operating under his command, echoing the president's assertion that the Democratic Party has used the Justice Department as a weapon against conservatives, and their mission is to reverse that. "I will fight every day to restore trust and integrity in the Justice Department and all its branches. Partisan divisions will disappear," Bondi, who has faithfully implemented Donald Trump's policies, said during her inauguration.

One of the architects of the new order at the Justice Department is Emil Bove III, Donald Trump's former lawyer, who defended him in a criminal case in New York. His actions have sparked complaints and criticism from veterans of the department. He orchestrated the firing of employees and forced a district court to dismiss corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who had promised to help the president implement anti-immigration policies in the city.

According to one source, it was Bove who suggested that government lawyers could ignore court orders to implement the president's immigration policies.

Last week, Bove was sworn in for life on the highly influential federal appeals court, just one rung below the Supreme Court. "This is a dark, dark day in the history of our country's judiciary," Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer said of the appointment.

The Trump administration is using underhanded tactics to appoint loyalists to federal attorney general positions in individual states. In New Jersey, the Justice Department has appointed Alina Habba, who, like Bove, previously worked on Donald Trump's defense in three lawsuits, to the interim position.

The Senate failed to confirm her nomination within 120 days, and the state's judges refused to keep Habba in the position permanently because she lacked the necessary experience. Habba has also become known as a politically biased figure who has openly stated that her mission is to turn New Jersey into a Republican state.

As a prosecutor, she launched investigations into Democratic Governor Phil Murphy and State Attorney General Matt Platkin, and filed a lawsuit against Democratic Congresswoman LaMonica McIver and the mayor of Newark, the state's largest city, for attending a protest against the roundup of immigrants.

The state bench appointed her deputy, the experienced and respected prosecutor Desiree Grace, to replace her. But then-department head, Attorney General Pam Bondi, fired Grace, offering Habba the interim prosecutor's position for another 210 days. "Donald Trump is the 47th president. Pam Bondi is the attorney general. I am now the federal prosecutor for New Jersey," Habba concluded with satisfaction on the X portal. The Trump administration has made similar moves in Nevada, California, and New York.

This maneuver, which the Trump administration defends as constitutionally authorized, may be part of a broader plan as the terms of dozens of other interim prosecutors he has chosen approach, with their 120-day terms expiring in the coming months, the Washington Post reports.

With loyalists at various levels of the judicial system willing to bend the rules to suit the president, Donald Trump feels he can increasingly get away with it. Among other things, his administration is filing formal complaints against judges whose rulings do not go his way. It has also filed a lawsuit against the entire federal court in Maryland.

“Judges have no right to check the legitimate power of the executive branch,” Vice President J.D. Vance argued in response to rulings that halted the enforcement of presidential executive orders. President Trump, however, calls them “radical left-wing judges who are trying to undermine the president’s powers .”

Hundreds of lawsuits have been filed against the Trump administration since January. A comprehensive analysis by The Washington Post reveals dozens of examples of administration disobedience, delays, and dishonesty that experts say pose an unprecedented threat to the American legal system.

Justice Department lawyers and the agencies they represent are ignoring rulings, providing false information, failing to turn over evidence, quietly bypassing court orders, and inventing excuses to carry out actions that have been blocked.

Erez Reuveni, who worked at the Department of Justice for 15 years representing federal agencies in lawsuits, discusses how this works in practice in a podcast on "The Daily." In March, he was involved in the high-profile case of immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported from the United States to El Salvador.

He says that instead of admitting their mistake and repatriating Garcia, Homeland Security officials pressured the Justice Department to designate the immigrant as the leader of the dangerous MS-13 gang and, therefore, a terrorist threat. They publicly promoted this narrative.

“The problem is that there was no evidence to support these accusations,” says Reuveni, who was suspended from his duties on April 5 because he refused to give false testimony in court, as his superiors asked him to do.

Unfortunately, judges, while agreeing with these disturbing observations, are not taking punitive action to force the administration to comply. The US legal system is slow to punish those who fail to comply with its rulings.

According to experts, such behavior by the presidential administration is unprecedented and undermines the role of the judiciary as a tool to check the executive branch, which in this case grants itself broad powers, testing the limits of the law and the constitution.