Attorney General Pam Bondi sworn in, vows to end 'weaponization' of Justice Department
WASHINGTON – Moving swiftly to align the Justice Department with President Donald Trump’s agenda, Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday issued a flurry of directives including the creation of a “Weaponization Working Group” to investigate federal and local prosecutions of Trump that she said were overly politicized.
Bondi burst into action after her swearing-in Wednesday, signaling that the DOJ will spearhead a broad array of Trump's efforts to reverse core Justice Department policies, including many enacted by the administration of former President Joe Biden.
Although the department historically has insisted on remaining independent of the White House, Bondi made clear that she was working to overhaul a DOJ that Trump has insisted is both biased against him and against political conservatives in general.
The “Weaponization Working Group” will look at everything from the investigations into Trump’s actions before, during and after his first term in office, cases brought against him by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James. It will also look at DOJ’s investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol by a violent mob of Trump supporters.
Those aims are outlined in an official memorandum titled Restoring the Integrity and Credibility of the Department of Justice.
The DOJ issued 13 more memos as well on Bondi’s first day in office on a range of issues, just hours after she was confirmed by the Senate on Tuesday night. Among the memos:
∎ One ended DEI practices in the enforcement of federal civil rights laws.
∎ Another revived the federal death penalty and lifted the moratorium on federal executions.
∎ A third ended funding to state and local “sanctuary city” jurisdictions that Bondi said “unlawfully interfere with federal law enforcement operations.
∎ A fourth rescinded certain “environmental justice” policies that Bondi said prioritized the enforcement of environmental laws in cases affecting "overburdened and underserved communities," including low-income communities, communities of color, and Tribal and Indigenous communities.
The moves came on the same day that Bondi was sworn in as the nation’s top law enforcement officer in a ceremony at the White House by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. At that ceremony, Trump lavished praise on Bondi, his former criminal defense attorney who was also a two-term Florida attorney general.
Investigating ‘unethical prosecutions’
During her confirmation process, Bondi said she would not politicize the Justice Department. But she also made clear that she believed DOJ had unfairly targeted and prosecuted Trump.
According to her new memo, the Weaponization Working Group will “identify instances where a department's or agency's conduct appears to have been designed to achieve political objectives or other improper aims rather than pursuing justice or legitimate governmental objectives.”
“No one who has acted with a righteous spirit and just intentions has any cause for concern about efforts to root out corruption and weaponization,” Bondi said in the memo, which like the others was issued to all DOJ employees.
“On the other hand,” it said, “the Department of Justice will not tolerate abuses of the criminal justice process, coercive behavior, or other forms of misconduct.”
In her memorandum, Bondi made it clear that the working group would focus aggressively on the investigations and prosecutions brought by special counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed by Biden administration Attorney General Merrick Garland to take over ongoing probes of Trump after he said he would run for president.
Smith and his team ultimately brought two criminal cases against Trump, both of which were dropped after Trump’s election to a second term last November. Bondi said the group would also review “unethical prosecutions” stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Bondi said DOJ will provide quarterly reports to the White House regarding the progress of the review.
'Shameful' moratorium on executions lifted
The department oversaw a rush of 13 federal executions in the final year of Trump's first term. During Biden's years in office, Garland declared a moratorium on federal executions. Biden commuted the sentences of 37 men in late December, leaving three inmates on federal death row at the start of Trump's second term.
Those three were well known: Robert Bowers, convicted in the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue mass shooting in Pittsburgh that killed 11 people; Dylann Roof, convicted in the mass shooting of nine congregants at Mother Emanuel, an African American church, in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing in that killed three people and injured more than 260.
Bondi noted in her memo that, "Throughout much of its nearly 155-year history, the Department of Justice career prosecutors and political leadership have appropriately secured federal death sentences against the very worst criminals."
She added that "recently, however, the Department's political leadership disregarded these importantresponsibilities and supplanted the will of the people with their own personal beliefs,” she said, failing to seek death sentences against “child rapists, mass murderers, terrorists” and other criminals.
"This shameful era,” Bondi said, “ends today."
'Environmental justice' revoked in favor of 'even-handed' enforcement
Another memo referenced her plan to rescind, on Trump's behalf, environmental justice measures established by previous administrations.
Bondi rescinded two memos issued in 2022 supporting the Biden administration’s emphasis on pursuing environmental justice for low-income communities, communities of color and Tribal and indigenous communities, stating she wanted “to ensure that the Department engages in the even-handed administration of justice.”
Going forward, the memo concluded, the department “will evenhandedly enforce all federal civil and criminal laws, including environmental laws.”
Environmental justice advocates have decried the Trump measures, expressing concerns about the nation’s history of ignoring harmful industry impacts in Black and Indigenous communities and the restriction of programs that they say could clean up the results of decades of failure to protect and clean up those communities.
DOJ's DEI policies violate 'longstanding civil rights laws'
Before Bondi took the helm at Justice, Trump issued an executive order shuttering DEI programs at federal agencies and banning policies that “violate the text and spirit of our longstanding civil rights laws."
Bondi took steps to ensure those directives would be carried out.
“As the United States Supreme Court recently stated, eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” the memo from the longtime prosecutor read.
Trump has thrown the full weight of the White House behind growing Republican opposition to diversity measures that he says discriminate against white Americans.
Following that lead, Bondi directed the Justice Department to confirm the elimination of DEI programs by March 15. She also ordered the Justice Department to remove all references to DEI in training programs and to refocus on hiring and promotion guidelines solely on merit.
Refusing to advance arguments ‘on behalf of Trump’ a firing offense
In another memo titled, General Policy Regarding Zealous Advocacy on Behalf of the United States, Bondi said prosecutors could be fired for refusing to sign onto briefs or appear in court to “advance good-faith arguments on behalf of the Trump administration.”
“The responsibilities of Department of Justice attorneys include not only aggressively enforcing criminal and civil laws enacted by Congress, but also vigorously defending presidential policies and actions against legal challenges on behalf of the United States,” Bondi wrote.
”The discretion afforded Department attorneys entrusted with those responsibilities does not include latitude to substitute personal political views or judgments for those that prevailed in the election.”