New leaders of US Justice Department move to assert control over agency

WASHINGTON – The new leadership of the Justice Department moved swiftly on multiple fronts Feb 5 to assert control over the FBI and marshal the power of federal law enforcement to investigate those who investigated President Donald Trump.

Pam Bondi, who was sworn in as attorney general in an Oval Office ceremony, signed a memo creating a working group to review the “weaponisation” of the criminal justice system by officials who brought criminal charges or civil suits against Mr Trump. It was one of 14 directives that shuttered department task forces, restored the federal death penalty and, above all else, mandated obedience to Mr Trump’s agenda.

Ms Bondi, a former attorney general of Florida, arrived at a moment of profound and disruptive conflict between the department and its historically independent and powerful investigative arm, the FBI.

Hours before she was sworn in, the department’s current No 2 official, Emil Bove, escalated his growing conflict with the interim leadership of the FBI – accusing the acting FBI director and his top aide of “insubordination” after they resisted his efforts to identify agents who investigated the Jan 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

Ms Bondi’s first day on the job appeared to have been modeled on Mr Trump’s, an intense blizzard of policy pronouncements intended to reverse Biden-era policies in a single swoop – coupled with accusations about the weaponisation of the department under Democratic control.

The attorney general, who had promised at her confirmation hearing last month that “politics will not play a part” in her investigative decisions, said she planned to scrutinize the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg; former special counsel Jack Smith; and the New York attorney general, Letitia James.

Little information was given about the new working group’s mandate, composition or powers – or how it squared with another memo she signed Feb 5 ending political “weaponization” at the department.

In a memo sent to the entire FBI, Mr Bove said that the repeated failure of top FBI officials Brian Driscoll and his deputy, Robert C Kissane, to provide the names of bureau employees on the “core team” that prosecuted the rioters forced him to ask for a broader list of employees who investigated the riot.

His broadside came at a time of deepening crisis in the FBI, the result of the Trump team’s push to identify and possibly purge nonpartisan career bureau employees – from supervisors to line agents to analysts – involved in the Trump and Jan 6 investigations. NYTIMES