In her first hours after being sworn in Wednesday as nation’s top law enforcement official, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a directive Wednesday establishing a “Weaponization Working Group” that she says will be tasked with reviewing “politicized” actions of officials who investigated President Donald Trump at both the state and federal levels.
Bondi’s memo mandates that the group reviews the prosecutions of Trump brought by special counsel Jack Smith and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, as well as the civil fraud case brought against Trump in New York by the state’s attorney general Letitia James.
The review, according to the memo, will be led by the Office of the Attorney General and supported by the Deputy Attorney General and other divisions of the department, and will “provide quarterly reports to the White House regarding the process of the review.”
The order further directs the working group to review any instances of “prosecutorial abuse” regarding the DOJ’s investigation into the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, as well as reports regarding whether the FBI politically targeted Catholics, and the DOJ’s prosecutions of anti-abortion protesters accused of impeding access to reproductive health clinics.
The directive is an early indication of how Bondi’s tenure as attorney general will seek to boost President Trump’s political goals of framing the justice system as “weaponized” against him, while furthering his campaign pledge to investigate those who prosecuted him for offenses ranging from criminal hush money payments to obstruction and mishandling of classified documents, as well as his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
Bondi, in an interview with Fox News last year, vowed to prosecute “bad” prosecutors at the DOJ and to investigate those “hiding in the shadows” of the so-called “deep state.”
In her confirmation hearing, Bondi subsequently assured lawmakers that she would only bring prosecutions based on proper predication and not based on politics.
Pam Bondi, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Justice Department as attorney general, appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee for her confirmation hearing, at the Capitol in Washington, Jan. 15, 2025.
Ben Curtis/AP
Former Attorney General Merrick Garland has repeatedly stood by the work of his Justice Department and Smith, who he said followed the facts and the law in reaching the determination to prosecute Trump. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., previously declined to dismiss his federal election subversion case based on the arguments from Trump’s lawyers he was a victim of vindictive prosecution.
A separate directive issued by Bondi orders DOJ employees to adhere to “zealous advocacy” of the Trump administration’s policies.
“The discretion afforded Justice Department attorneys with respect to those responsibilities does not include latitude to substitute their personal political views or judgments for those that prevailed in the election,” the memo says.
The memo notes that when DOJ attorneys “refuse to faithfully carry out their role” by signing briefs, “it undermines the constitutional order and deprives the President of the benefit of his lawyers.” The extraordinary language, describing career DOJ attorneys as “lawyers” directly for the president is reflective of the views of the incoming Trump-appointed leadership at the department, many of whom represented Trump personally as his defense attorneys.
The memo says those who resist signing on to legal briefs due to ideological differences with the department could be subject to discipline and even termination.
Trump was sentenced to an unconditional discharge — without prison, fines or probation — after a New York jury found him guilty last year in his criminal hush money case. He was fined $354.8 million plus approximately $100 million in interest after a New York judge ruled in 2023 that he had repeatedly inflated his net worth to secure better loan terms.
Trump’s federal classified documents case and his Jan. 6 case were both dropped following Trump’s reelection in November due to a longstanding Justice Department policy prohibiting the prosecution of a sitting president.
Trump denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty in all cases.