'Tool of politics': DOJ alumni rip Trump appointee for violating department 'protocols'

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the members of the media before boarding Marine One to depart for Scotland, on the South Lawn at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 25, 2025. REUTERS/Kent Nishimura

During former President Joe Biden's four years in the White House, the word "institutionalist" was often used to describe then-U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. And that word was also applied to then-FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, who was a conservative Republican appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term but remained throughout Biden's presidency.

Democrat or Republican, Biden favored institutionalists for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI — not political figures or loyalists.

But Trump, during his second term, has filled DOJ with MAGA loyalists — including Edward R. Martin, appointed by Trump as an interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

In an article published on August 19, New York Times reporters Jonah E. Bromwich, Glenn Thrush, Alan Feuer and Michael S. Schmidt examine the ways in which, according to critics, Martin is violating DOJ norms by overtly politicizing it.

"Days after Mr. Martin, a Trump-aligned activist, was tapped by the Justice Department to investigate the New York attorney general, Letitia James, he wrote a letter to her lawyer saying he would take it as an act of 'good faith' if she were to resign," the Times reporters explain. "Mr. Martin followed up this breach of prosecutorial protocol by showing up outside Ms. James' Brooklyn home, clad in a trench coat and posing for pictures for The New York Post…. The request that Ms. James resign is particularly unusual because it appears the Justice Department is trying to harness its criminal powers to accomplish one of Mr. Trump's political goals."

The journalists continue, "Mr. Martin's conduct is part of an emerging pattern from Mr. Trump's administration over the past two months in which top officials seek to use the federal government's vast intelligence gathering and law enforcement authority to cast the specter of criminality on Mr. Trump's enemies without demonstrating that they might have committed crimes that rise to the level of an indictment…. The behavior may ultimately be so outside the bounds that it could undermine any criminal case, according to legal experts."

Barbara McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor, former federal prosecutor, and legal analyst for MSNBC, fears that "public trust" in DOJ will be eroded "because people will see the department as yet one more weapon and tool of politics instead of the independent law enforcement agency it's supposed to be."

McQuade told the Times, "I'm tempted to describe their conduct as amateurish, but the consequences can be grave because they have enormous power at the Justice Department."

Read the full New York Times article at this link (subscription required).