New message from top Democrats: The U.S. Justice Department can’t be trusted

Leading Democrats have issued a stark new message that the U.S. Department of Justice cannot be trusted.

“Let’s be really clear: We cannot trust anything the Department of Justice does. The Department of Justice is corrupt. They are corrupt on every important issue before this country,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, said at a news conference in his district Friday.

“We cannot trust the Department of Justice. They are currently an illegitimate organization led by the United States.” [Atty. Gen.] “It’s at the direction of Pam Bondi and Donald Trump,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (DY) said at his own press conference in Washington, D.C.

Those remarks, which carry profound implications in a bipartisan democracy meant to be protected and served by an impartial justice system and which a White House spokesman called “disgraceful,” followed a week of equally dramatic actions by the Justice Department, in which President Trump appointed staunch loyalists, including Bondi, to high-ranking positions.

In recent days, the Justice Department has resisted launching a civil rights investigation into the shooting deaths of U.S. citizens by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis. It has since reversed course and launched such an investigation into the second incident, in which 37-year-old Alex Pretti was shot while unarmed on the ground surrounded by agents, but has stood firm in its decision not to investigate the earlier shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good, who was shot while trying to escape a tense exchange with agents.

On Wednesday, the FBI raided the polling station in Fulton County, Ga., long the target of Trump’s baseless and debunked claims that widespread voter fraud helped Democrats steal the 2020 election, and seized voter ballots and other information. Bondi, like other Justice Department appointees, was an early supporter of these baseless allegations.

On Friday, federal agents arrested former CNN host Don Lemon and other journalists after covering a protest at a conservative church in Minneapolis. Justice Department officials rejected the defense that Lemon and other journalists were exercising their 1st Amendment rights as journalists and accused them of violating the rights of churchgoers.

Also Friday, Justice Department officials released more documents from the Epstein files, records of late billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of minors. Democrats argued that the evacuations were still not completed, in violation of a law passed by Congress that requires their release to the public.

In a statement to The Times, White House press secretary Anna Kelly dismissed Jeffries’ and Garcia’s comments as “disgraceful comments made by Democrats applauding Joe Biden’s weaponization of the Justice Department against his political enemies, including President Trump,” and said Trump, Bondi and other administration officials were “rapidly making America safe again by taking violent criminals off the streets, cracking down on fraud, holding bad actors accountable and more.”

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment, but officials have broadly argued that the department’s actions were not only justified but necessary to ensure the rule of law and hold alleged criminals accountable.

Thad Kousser, a political science professor at UC San Diego, said both the Justice Department’s actions and Democrats’ recent statements raise the stakes in the nation’s already tense political stalemate because institutions like the Justice Department “must be trusted over the long term” if American democracy is to succeed.

“Trust in people in institutions has ebbed and flowed throughout history, but there has been a fundamental level of support for our Constitution, the way our government is constructed, and the seal on the building, even if people don’t trust who is in that building,” Kousser said. “If people think that the power of the federal government is being used to pursue the narrow agenda of a single party or a single leader, what we risk as a country is losing trust in the building.”

Jeffries’ claim that the Justice Department cannot be trusted came as he condemned Lemon’s arrest. Jeffries said there was “zero basis for arresting” Lemon and that the arrest was an attempt by the Trump administration to weaponize the government against people they disagree with.

Jeffries added that distrust of the federal agency is one of the reasons House Democrats are pushing for legislative action requiring independent investigations by local and state law enforcement in cases where federal agents are involved in violent incidents and accused of misconduct, such as the shootings in Minneapolis.

Other prominent Democrats also criticized the Justice Department for the detention of journalists.

“The American people deserve answers for why Trump’s lawless Justice Department is arresting journalists for simply doing their jobs,” said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.).

“Arresting journalists for covering a protest is a grave attack on the 1st Amendment and freedom of the press,” said Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). “And proof that the Trump administration is not deescalating.”

Garcia’s comments came at a wide-ranging news conference in which he also discussed taking a leading role in the impeachment proceedings against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who oversaw the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts, including the deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agents to Minneapolis, Los Angeles and other major cities.

Garcia condemned the Trump administration’s handling of the Good and Pretti shootings and argued for the need for independent investigations — investigations he said were conducted following police shootings in Long Beach when he was mayor.

“Or they should bring in a private lawyer [or] “a kind of special master who will oversee an independent investigation,” he said.

That’s especially necessary, he said, given that Noem and other administration officials were quick to malign Good and Pretti as violent actors who threatened agents before any facts were gathered, directly contradicting video evidence from the scenes.

“What happened to Renee Good and Alex Pretti is a murder committed by our own government, and our committee is currently working on a comprehensive report on both incidents to hold those responsible accountable,” Garcia said.

He also called Lemon’s arrest “appalling,” saying Lemon was “out there making news” and is now “essentially under attack” by the Justice Department. “Don Lemon’s arrest may be the greatest attack on the free press and the 1st Amendment of the modern era.”

Garcia said the Justice Department initially consulted multiple judges about Lemon’s arrest, who refused to issue a warrant for his arrest. Administration officials said a federal grand jury filed an indictment against the journalist, but Garcia argued the indictment was obtained fraudulently, based on the government citing information “we couldn’t trust.”

Decisions regarding the two shootings in Minneapolis and the arrests of journalists would go through the Deputy Solicitor’s office. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

Dhillon did not respond to a request for comment Friday. But he defended his office’s actions widely online. In the days before Lemon’s arrest, he had harshly criticized Lemon’s actions, writing to X that he and Bondi “will not tolerate harassment of Americans during worship, especially harassment by agitators posing as ‘journalists’.”

Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, has broadly defended the department’s actions in Minneapolis, where he said the civil rights investigation into Good’s shooting was misplaced, and in the Epstein files, which he said were released in accordance with the law and Trump’s own demands for transparency.

The latter was an issue Garcia also opposed Friday, criticizing the Justice Department for continuing to withhold some files.

“Donald Trump and the Department of Justice have now made it clear that they plan to withhold approximately 50% or half of the Epstein files while claiming to fully comply with the law. This is outrageous and incredibly concerning,” Garcia said.

He said the committee had subpoenaed all the files over the summer and Bondi had yet to comply with the subpoena, violating the law.

Previously released Epstein recordings included allegations that Trump was involved in Epstein’s schemes to molest young women and girls; but Trump – once a friend of Epstein – vehemently denied this.

The Justice Department also took the unusual step of directly defending the president on the issue, including issuing a statement saying the documents released last month “contain untrue and sensational allegations against President Trump.”

“To be clear: the allegations are unfounded and false, and if they had any credibility they would certainly have been used as a weapon against President Trump,” the department’s statement said.

Kousser, the politics professor, noted that this is not the first time concerns have been raised about partisanship within the Justice Department. He said similar concerns were voiced by many Republicans when the Justice Department prosecuted Trump during the Biden administration.

He said such arguments raise serious alarms, regardless of which direction they are politically directed.

“If people think the Justice Department is just doing the bidding of whoever won the last election, that turns it from a law enforcement agency into a political operation in the eyes of average Americans,” he said. “And that would be a huge loss for our democracy.”