"Under Donald Trump, the Department of Justice increasingly seems to be acting as his personal law firm-his deputized goon squad, seeking vengeance on everyone who ever crossed him, on whatever charges they can cobble together. The institution that once aspired to norms of nonpartisanship and fact is rapidly buckling under the not inconsiderable weight of falsehood and misrepresentation. Judges who could once take for granted that the Justice Department worked in the interest of something resembling justice are now openly questioning whether department lawyers are even telling the truth. On this week's Amicus podcast, Dahlia Lithwick spoke to Joyce White Vance, who served as the U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Alabama from August 2009 until January 2017, and whose Substack, Civil Discourse, has charted the many blows to the rule of law for the past several years."
"I really wanted to check in with you about these prosecutions and indictments of former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and former Trump national security adviser John Bolton. I think you have some granular sense of what has been happening in the Eastern District of Virginia with these cases that many of us may have lost in the fog of war."
Under Donald Trump, the Department of Justice increasingly functions as a personal legal instrument that pursues political adversaries through selective prosecutions. Institutional norms of nonpartisanship and fidelity to fact have eroded as falsehood and misrepresentation burden institutional credibility. Judges are openly questioning whether department lawyers are truthful, and trust in prosecutorial motives has declined. Recent prosecutions and indictments include James Comey, Letitia James, and John Bolton in the Eastern District of Virginia. These developments pose serious dangers to democratic norms and to public safety by normalizing politicized legal action.
Read at Slate Magazine
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