Despite pushback from some Democrat senators, who intimated that she may weaponize the Department of Justice against President Trump’s political opponents, Pam Bondi, who is now the nation’s attorney general, was clear in her confirmation hearing: ”The partisanship, the weaponization, will be gone,” and “America will have one tier of justice for all.”

When he took office on Jan. 20, President Trump confirmed this as well by signing an executive order against the weaponization of government.  Per the order, “the Attorney General, in consultation with the heads of all departments and agencies of the United States,” shall “review the activities of all departments and agencies exercising civil or criminal enforcement authority ... identify any instances where a department’s or agency’s conduct appears to have been contrary to the purposes and policies of this order, and prepare a report.”

That’s encouraging, because for the past four years, Biden’s DOJ has functioned as a full-service political weaponization arm of the White House.  Any justice it might have dispensed along the way through this weaponization was strictly incidental.  A main purpose of this 115,000-employee, $50-billion-a-year agency, as demonstrated by its actions, was to conceal Biden’s failures, boost his electoral prospects, and advance his political agenda.

Consider the DOJ’s activism against Trump himself.

Right before Trump’s inauguration, former special prosecutor Jack Smith released his report against Trump, and 10 days before Trump got sworn in, a Manhattan criminal court finally sentenced the incoming president with an unconditional discharge.  These actions came perhaps to the surprise of Biden himself, who, per December reports, told his advisers that he regrets selecting Merrick Garland as his attorney general, stating that Garland was too slow to prosecute Donald Trump and too quick to prosecute his son, Hunter.  Never mind that in the Trump case, federal indictments were brought swiftly, and high-profile investigations were carried out under intense public scrutiny, whereas the DOJ seemed to stall its investigation of Hunter Biden for years.

Or how about how the Biden DOJ helped the Biden administration pin the blame for rental inflation — a top campaign issue — on property owners’ pricing software instead of the White House’s inflationary policies?

To most Americans, it was obvious that runaway government spending was the primary driver of the 20% increase in consumer prices over the past four years.  Biden couldn’t admit that, though, so the Biden DOJ blamed landlords’ pricing software in a lawsuit that Biden repeatedly cited in press releases and on the campaign trail.  One Trump adviser said, “This suit attracted the attention of senior Trump campaign staffers for being a transparently obnoxious case of politically motivated lawfare.” 

Then there were the events that followed the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision, which returned the issue of abortion to the states.

Although Biden quickly called for legislation to codify Roe v. Wade, he was unable to push it through the Democrat-controlled Senate.  With failures piling up, the president seemingly turned to A.G. Garland to administer lawfare against citizens who advocated a sincerely held position on the abortion issue that was different from his. 

Garland responded by weaponizing the rarely used FACE Act against the pro-life movement.  By disingenuously arguing that they had violated the law’s ban on ”violent, threatening, damaging, and obstructive conduct intended to injure, intimidate, or interfere with the right to seek, obtain, or provide reproductive health services,” he imposed draconian federal prison sentences on peaceful protesters.  Yet when pro-abortion extremists responded to the SCOTUS decision by vandalizing and firebombing hundreds of pro-life pregnancy centers— which are also protected by the FACE Act — the DOJ was nowhere to be found.  Regardless of what position an American takes on the abortion issue, a fundamental tenet of our free society is that its citizens may express their views without fear of reprisal from government officials who disagree with those views. 

Although President Biden got what he seemingly wanted all along — Trump sentenced before he left office — his criticism of A.G. Garland moving too slow seems to be an example of what lawyers call an “admission against interest.”  By voicing frustration that the DOJ didn’t act quickly enough in prosecuting the president’s enemies, Biden implicitly acknowledged that they were doing his bidding, just not on his timeline. 

Thankfully, this misuse of the Justice Department will end under Pam Bondi.  At her confirmation hearing, Pam Bondi promised to rebuild the department’s reputation.  If only Democrats and the leftist establishment could follow suit in Congress, the individual states, and the larger judicial system, where lawfare seems to be an increasingly acceptable reaction to losing an election or not getting one’s way.

Pam Bondi is doing the right thing in restoring confidence and justice and ensuring that the department serves the people — not politicians’ personal ambitions.  That will be a refreshing and much-needed change for the nation, long overdue.

Troy Cumings is a lawyer who serves as the Michigan statewide chair of the Republican National Lawyers Association.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.