Justice Department Turmoil Bubbles Up to the Surface

In 2006, George W. Bush fired seven of his U.S. attorneys, primarily because they refused to prosecute bogus voter fraud cases (or they were not “loyal Bushies,” as one administration official put it). Bush replaced them with Republicans deemed more loyal. What resulted was a popular outcry, a protracted investigation and hearings in Congress, and the eventual resignation of the sitting attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, along with eight other top officials.

In 2025, Donald Trump fired a U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, because he refused to prosecute two of his political enemies, former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. He installed Lindsey Halligan, an insurance lawyer with no prosecutorial experience, who was also on his personal legal team, to get the job done. Within a few days of taking over the office, Halligan scrambled to get a grand jury to indict Comey for one false statement and obstruction of an investigation, before the statute of limitations runs out next week. More U.S. attorneys, like Kelly Hayes in Maryland, are under threat too if they don’t file charges against Trump’s foes.

The Justice Department isn’t being weaponized as much as it’s being honed into a razor-sharp poleax and hurled in the direction of any enemy of the government, while shields are passed out to the government’s friends. Pam Bondi, who has throughout her history been exceedingly willing to ignore the law and exercise raw power on behalf of whoever’s paying her, has offered either enthusiastic support or token resistance to this politicization. Today, we don’t have a legal system as much as a retribution system.

But behind the bravado, cracks are emerging at the DOJ, the biggest being the surprise resignation of Bondi’s chief of staff Chad Mizelle, who is deeply implicated in his own form of political favor-trading. The difference in Mizelle’s case is there’s a mechanism to bring that corruption all out into the open, which suggests that he deserted before the edifice toppled.