5 reasons to worry Trump is undermining the Justice Department’s independence

The DOJ held onto its political independence in Trump’s first year. Is that changing?

By Andrew Prokopandrew@vox.com  Jan 9, 2018, 8:30am EST

A series of recent news stories raise questions about how much longer the main US federal law enforcement bodies can hold out against Trump’s authoritarian instincts when it comes to rule of law.

Just last week, we learned both that the Justice Department was reexamining the Hillary Clinton email case, and that the FBI had revived a dormant investigation into the Clinton Foundation. The Trump administration installed its own appointees to several important US attorney posts without getting the Senate’s approval, and has recently sidelined several career officials in the FBI or DOJ who Trump dislikes.

On top of that, two Republican senators referred the author of the “Steele dossier,” which claimed collusion between Trump and Russia, to the Justice Department for potential criminal prosecution.

It’s possible that there are reasonable explanations for each of these moves. For instance, the new investigations and the criminal referral could be based on legitimate evidence, or they could end up not resulting in any action at all. Perhaps Trump’s new appointees could prove to be defenders of the Justice Department’s independence.

But when viewed in the context of Trump’s many public demands that his political and even bureaucratic opponents be investigated and charged with crimes — and his already-known efforts to interfere with Justice Department investigations — all this makes for a disturbing pattern.

“Many people in our Country are asking what the ‘Justice’ Department” is going to do about “Crooked Hillary,” Trump tweeted in December. The department “must finally act” against former FBI Director James Comey and former Clinton aide Huma Abedin, he tweeted last week. And in November, he asserted that the Democratic Party had violated “campaign finance laws and money laundering” during its 2016 primary, and asked, “Where is our Justice Department?”

Throughout most of Donald Trump’s first year in office, his efforts to bend the law enforcement agencies of the United States to his will seemed to fail — seemingly demonstrating the resilience of American institutions against a president with authoritarian instincts. When he fired Comey, he only ended up with special counsel Robert Mueller. His repeated public demands for the FBI and Justice Department to investigate his political opponents seemed to be falling on deaf ears.

But the big question in the coming year is whether Trump will succeed in demolishing the norm of Justice Department independence and at contorting the rule of law to better advance his own political interests. Here are five recent stories that show troubling signs on that front.

1) The Justice Department is looking into Hillary Clinton’s emails again
2) The FBI is investigating the Clinton Foundation again
3) The Trump administration made temporary appointments of key US attorneys — skirting the Senate confirmation process
4) Two Republican senators referred the “Steele dossier” author for potential criminal prosecution
5) The top DOJ and FBI officials Republicans have targeted for criticism are leaving or being sidelined

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https://www.vox.com/2018/1/9/16863000/trump-doj-clinton-emails-russia-appointees