White House officials repeatedly deploy the slogan "No one is above the law" to justify opening criminal investigations into Donald Trump's opponents. The tagline functions as a retort claiming parity with prior actions toward Trump. Biden installed Merrick Garland at the Justice Department, a bipartisan figure who appointed a special counsel to insulate federal investigations from political influence. Trump nominated Pam Bondi, a crony with minimal Democratic support, and later installed a loyalist FBI director after briefly keeping a Trump-chosen director. Conservatives counter that Biden preserved only an appearance of independence while secretly influencing prosecutions.
The first problem with this argument is that the Biden administration did not politicize law enforcement-in fact, it went out of its way to avoid doing so. Biden put the Justice Department in the hands of Merrick Garland, a widely respected figure who had bipartisan support and who pledged to operate independently, and who followed through on that pledge by appointing a special counsel to insulate the federal Trump investigations from political influence.
Trump nominated Pam Bondi, a crony with almost no Democratic support and who doesn't even pretend to value the department's independence. "We are so proud to work at the directive of Donald Trump," she declared in March. (Trump nominated Bondi only after his first crony with no Democratic support, Matt Gaetz, proved too noxious even for some Republican senators.) Biden kept in place an FBI director chosen by Trump; Trump then replaced him with a cartoonish loyalist.
#politicization-of-law-enforcement #justice-department-independence #trump-administration #biden-administration
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