Firings, pardons and policy shifts have gutted DOJ anti-corruption efforts, experts say
For decades, the FBI and the Justice Department have been the main enforcers of laws against political corruption and white-collar fraud in the United States. In four months, the Trump administration has dismantled key parts of that law enforcement infrastructure, creating what experts say is the ripest environment for corruption by public officials and business executives in a generation. Trump aides have forced outmost of the lawyersin the Justice Department's main anti-corruption unit, the Public Integrity Section, anddisbanded an FBI squadtasked with investigating congressional misconduct. They have issued a series of directives requiring federal law enforcement agencies to prioritize immigration enforcement. Andthey have endeda 50-year policy of keeping the Justice Department independent of the White House in criminal investigations. All of that came after Trumpfired most ofthe inspectors general — the independent agency watchdogs responsible for fighting corruption and waste — and the Justice Department dropped a corruption case against the mayor of New York in what a judge said was a "breathtaking" political bargain. And it came after the Trump administration Justice Department pulled back on enforcement of foreign bribery and lobbying statutes, as well as cryptocurrency investigations. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has issued a steady stream ofpardons to allbut one Republican member of Congress convicted of felonies over the last 15 years. "He's dismantling not just the means of prosecuting public corruption, but he's also dismantling all the means of oversight of public corruption," said Paul Rosenzweig, a George Washington University law professor who was a senior homeland security official in the George W. Bush administration. "The law is only for his enemies now." A spokesman for the Justice Department said in a statement, "This Department of Justice has ended the weaponization of government and will continue to prosecute violent crime, enforce our nation's immigration laws, and make America safe again." The White House declined to comment. The Biden Justice Department also came under criticism from groups that considered it soft on white-collar and corporate crime.A reportby the public advocacy group Public Citizen said President Joe Biden's Justice Department successfully prosecuted only 80 corporations last year — a 29% drop from the previous fiscal year and fewer than in any year for the previous three decades. Andan analysispublished last month by the Transactional Records Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, which uses Justice Department records to examine enforcement and sentencing trends, found that white-collar prosecutions have been declining since 2011. U.S. attorneys' offices filed 4,332 prosecutions for white-collar crimes in fiscal year 2024, less than half of the 10,269 prosecutions filed three decades earlier in fiscal year 1994, the report found. But TRAC analysts, other experts and Democrats say the Trump policy changes — coupled with a mandate that FBI agents spend significant time on immigration enforcement — mean corporate fraud and public corruption enforcement is expected to plummet faster and further. "President Trump has ushered America into a golden age of public corruption," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, a senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, told NBC News in a statement. "Trump quickly cleared out the watchdogs responsible for policing corruption cases at home and abroad by gutting the Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section and the anti-kleptocracy teams." Last month, the head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, Matthew Galeotti, announced ina memoanda speechthat the Justice Department was "turning a new page on white-collar and corporate enforcement." While he said that "white-collar crime also poses a significant threat to U.S. interests," he said the Biden administration's approach has "come at too high a cost for businesses and American enterprise." Big law firmsinterpreted his messageas saying the Trump administration will still prosecute corporate misconduct, at least under certain circumstances. But three lawyers who represent large corporations in dealings with the Justice Department told NBC News that over the last several months, corporate compliance investigations of their clients have dropped. They declined to be named or to cite specifics, citing client confidentiality. In his memo, Galeotti said the Justice Department will prioritize corporate violations relating to drug cartels, immigration law, terrorism, trade and tariff fraud, and corporate procurement fraud. "Too often, businesses have been subject to unchecked and long-running investigations that can be costly — both to the department and to the subjects and targets of its investigations," he added in a speech at an anti-money-laundering conference. All presidential administrations set broad policy direction for the Justice Department. But more than a dozen current and former Justice Department officials and legal experts said in interviews that the Trump administration has unleashed a revolution in policies, personnel and culture across the department unlike anything in the last five decades, including Trump's first term. Trump, they say, has fundamentally changed the nature of the post-Watergate Justice Department, in the process driving out hundreds of senior lawyers who helped form its backbone. The shift began even before Attorney General Pam Bondi took office, when Trump's acting U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C.,fired several prosecutorswho had worked for Jack Smith, the special counsel who filed now-dismissed charges against Trump. Trump aides said the Smith prosecutors were fired because they could not be counted on to carry out Trump's orders, because they had prosecuted him.Never before, experts said, had so many career civil servants been sacked simply because they worked on a case the president disliked. When Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, a former Trump defense lawyer, was acting deputy attorney general, he ordered federal prosecutors in New York to drop corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, a move that was seen as another signal that the second Trump term would be different. The move triggeredseveral resignationsby prosecutors, and a federal judgeultimately ruledthat there was no evidence to support the reasons the Justice Department gave for dropping the charges. The judge, ultimately, decided he had no choice but to dismiss the charges. Bondi alsopaused enforcementof a law prohibiting U.S. corporate executives from bribing foreign officials, an area of U.S. law so well-developed that major law firmshad entire sectionsdevoted to advising clients about it. She alsodisbanded the FBI task forcedevoted to combating foreign influence and aJustice Department groupthat sought to confiscate the assets of Russian oligarchs. She also ordered apullback on enforcingthe law requiring foreign agents to register with the government and disclose their activities. Several weeks later, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche ended an effort by the Justice Department to police crypto-related violations of banking secrecy and securities laws. Finally, one of the most impactful moves the Trump administration has made was to slash the size of the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section, which has dropped from roughly 35 lawyers to four to five, according to two former members of the unit. Lawyers who work in the Public Integrity Section consult with U.S. attorneys around the country on official corruption matters. Their role is twofold — to assist in cases when needed or when U.S. attorney's offices' prosecutors faced conflicts of interest and to ensure politically appointed U.S. attorneys followed the rules in some of the most politically sensitive cases the government brings. Some of the corruption cases the section was working on are continuing, former officials said. For example, a retired four-star admiralwas convicted last monthof bribery, but many cases are in limbo, and some have been dropped. And Justice Department officials say a policy that requires the Public Integrity Section to approve corruption charges against members of Congress is under review. They also noted that the policy was not followed when the acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Alina Habba, another former Trump attorney, broughtassault chargesagainst a New Jersey congresswoman last month. The Public Integrity Section has made its share of mistakes over the years, and some Trump supporters wish it good riddance. "President Trump's justice system is focused on protecting the rule of law and combating crime, which is what the American people elected him to do," Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement to NBC News. "My public oversight has shown that the DOJ and FBI sections responsible for public integrity inquiries were a hotbed for partisan investigations against President Trump and his allies." But by shrinking the Public Integrity Section, dropping corruption charges against Adams and pardoning political allies convicted of federal crimes, Trump has sent an unmistakable message, current and former Justice Department officials say. "Public corruption investigations are being politicized like we've never seen before," said a former Justice Department official, who declined to be named for fear of retaliation. "What prosecutor or FBI agent is going to want to work on a case they think Donald Trump isn't going to like? To witness the destruction of the institution is just infuriating and disheartening." Rosenzweig, the law professor, said the damage to America's image as a country built on the rule of law is not easily fixable. "Good governance is really a shared myth — it happens only because we all believe in it," he said. "People are good because they share a mythos that expects them to be good. When that myth is destroyed, when you learn that it's just a shared dream that isn't mandatory ... it's really, really hard to rebuild faith." Rosenzweig added, "In 150 days, Donald Trump has casually destroyed a belief in the necessity of incorruptibility built over 250 years."
Firings, pardons and policy shifts have gutted DOJ anti-corruption efforts, experts say For decades, the FBI and the Justice Department have...
