Department Of Justice

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has a long and noble history. That history began with the creation of the Office of the Attorney General pursuant to the Judiciary Act of 17891 and has continued through the creation of the department in 1870,2 the formation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1908,3 reforms following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and to the pres- ent day. Properly understood within the framework of a constitutional republic that values ordered liberty, the Department of Justice has two primary functions: protecting public safety and defending the rule of law.

Unfortunately, the department has lost its way in recent years and has forfeited the trust of large segments of the American people. Large swaths of the depart- ment have been captured by an unaccountable bureaucratic managerial class and radical Left ideologues who have embedded themselves throughout its offices and components. The department also suffers from institutional inattentiveness to its core functions. Instead of being perceived as possessing the utmost impartiality and fairness as it advances the national interest on behalf of the American people— fighting crime and defending the rule of law—the DOJ has become a department that 46.6 percent of Americans recently indicated is, in their view, “too political, corrupt, and not to be trusted.”4

The weight of the publicly available evidence indicates that there are many rea- sons for this lack of trust. For example:

The FBI knew that claims of collusion with Russia were false,5 collaborated with Democratic operatives to inject the story into the 2016 election through strategic media leaks, falsified Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant applications, and lied to Congress.6

The DOJ engaged in conduct to chill the free speech rights of parents across the United States in response to supposed “threats” against school boards,8 yet it failed to engage in any concerted campaign to protect the rights of Americans who actually were terrorized by acts of violence like those perpetrated against pregnancy care centers.9

The FBI tasked agents with monitoring social media and flagging content they deemed to be “misinformation” or “disinformation” (not associated with any plausible criminal conspiracy to deprive anyone of any rights) for platforms to remove.10

Personnel within the FBI engaged in a campaign to convince social media companies and the media generally that the story about the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop was the result of a Russian misinformation campaign—while the FBI had possession of the laptop the entire time and could have clarified the authenticity of the source.7

The FBI engaged in a domestic influence operation to pressure social media companies to report more “foreign influence” than the FBI was actually seeing and stop the dissemination of and censor true information directly related to the 2020 presidential election.11 The department has devoted unprecedented resources to prosecuting American citizens for misdemeanor trespassing offenses or violations of the FACE Act12 while dismissing prosecutions against radical agents of the Left like Antifa.13

The department has consistently threatened that any conduct not aligning with the liberal agenda “could” violate federal law—without actually taking a position that the conduct in question is illegal—using the prospect of protracted litigation and federal sanctions to chill disfavored behavior such as with state efforts to restrict abortion14 or prevent genital mutilation of children.15

The department has sued multiple states regarding their efforts to enhance election integrity.16

The department has failed to do its part to stop the flood of fentanyl and other deadly drugs that are flowing across our borders and decimating families and communities across the United States.17 The department has abdicated its responsibility to assist in the enforcement of our immigration laws and has engaged in wholescale abandonment of its duty to adjudicate cases in the immigration court system.

These actions stand in stark contrast to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s assertion before taking office that “there [must] not be one rule for Democrats and another for Republicans, one rule for friends and another for foes.”18 While it is true, as it is with other federal departments and agencies, that there are committed career personnel across the department who perform their duties faithfully and with the best intentions, this small sampling of scandals illustrates that the DOJ has become a bloated bureaucracy with a critical core of person- nel who are infatuated with the perpetuation of a radical liberal agenda and the defeat of perceived political enemies. It has become a Cabinet-level department whose leadership appears to care more about how they are perceived in the next Politico or Washington Post article, or their stature with any number of radical leftist organizations, than they do about justice and advancing the interests of the American people.

It is essential that the next conservative Administration place a high priority on reforming the DOJ and its culture to align the department with its core purposes and advance the national interest. Critically, this must include the FBI. Anything other than a top-to-bottom overhaul will only further erode the trust of significant portions of the American people and harm the very fabric that holds together our constitutional republic. At a practical level, not reforming the Department of Jus- tice will also guarantee the failure of that conservative Administration’s agenda in countless other ways.

Successful reform will require more than minor peripheral adjustments. It will require a holistic, energetic, leadership-driven effort to remedy the damage that has been done and advance the national interest. Additionally, some needed reforms will not be possible without legislative changes from Congress. While it is true that certain offices and components—like the FBI or the Civil Rights Division—will require more attention than others, committed direction from the department’s political leadership can restore the department’s focus on its two core functions: protecting public safety and defending the rule of law.

This chapter features prominently the things the department must do to restore its focus on these functions. Of course, there are other important reforms that do not necessarily fit within either of those core functions, so this chapter includes an additional section to address those areas.