You’d think that the Trump administration would at least try to pretend that the Department of Justice retains the traditional independence it has always been known for, if for no other reason than everyone surrounding President Donald Trump just loves telling risible lies.
But in a world where the DOJ is slapping an enormous banner of Trump’s glaring visage on the side of the building, and where Trump personally orders the department to persecute and prosecute his enemies via Truth Social tantrums, why bother to pretend any longer?
So the federal agency is choosing to just lean into it, letting DOJ aide Aakash Singh boss all 93 U.S. attorney offices around and tell them that Trump is their daddy now.
Well, Singh didn’t quite put it that way. What he really told all 93 U.S. attorney offices was that Trump is their “chief client”—and if they don’t like it, they should quit.
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Well, they are quitting, my guy. In droves. You might have noticed that one of them, formerly an incredibly well-respected assistant U.S. attorney in Minnesota who handled major fraud investigations, is now representing Don Lemon, who the DOJ arrested for the crime of doing journalism.
Coincidentally, Singh is the person who has demanded that federal prosecutors pursue a series of high-profile malicious prosecutions, including former FBI Director James Comey and Lemon. Singh was also the person coordinating the disgusting push for Minnesota prosecutors to investigate Renee Good’s widow for, presumably, the crime of being the widow of someone murdered by ICE.
To be fair, Singh is extremely experienced by the standards of current high-level DOJ types. He’s 33, but he did spend five years as an assistant United States attorney, making him exponentially more qualified than top Trump picks like Lindsey Halligan and Alina Habba, who were eventually laughed out of their jobs .
But none of Singh’s experience seems to have translated into ethical behavior. Rather, Singh “relishes telling chief federal prosecutors to get in line with Trump’s agenda.” Trump’s agenda, of course, includes things like engaging in the vindictive prosecution of Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia after the administration mistakenly deported him, and the courts ordered his return. Per Singh, bringing those charges was a “top priority.”
Destroying the DOJ's independence and turning it into Trump’s personal retribution machine is, without a doubt, the biggest issue here, but Singh’s fetish for flashy high-profile revenge promotions highlights an additional problem.
Stuffing morally flexible unqualified randos into high-level positions for the sole purpose of exacting Trump’s revenge leads to things like Halligan bringing two—count ‘em, only two—big cases during her regrettable time pretending to head the U.S. Attorney Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. It leads to things like leaving the Minnesota office entirely unprepared for an ICE surge that buried the place in so many habeas cases that federal prosecutors had to stop working on the criminal cases they normally handle.
Republicans in Congress seem perfectly fine with this erosion—more of an obliteration, really—of the DOJ’s independence. It’s a far cry from the unhinged howls of rage that erupted when former President Bill Clinton talked to then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch for a few minutes on a tarmac in 2016 after a chance meeting.
Indeed, you might recall that one of the howler monkeys was … Trump himself.
In 2016, Bill Clinton, of course, was no longer president and had no role in government. His wife was running for president and no longer had any role in government, but the mere specter of a brief chat led to an actual official inspector general investigation that spanned years.
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All pretense that the DOJ isn’t just Trump’s personal law firm is now gone. And if Trump is the “chief client,” it seems pretty likely that the agency is going to sign off on his demand for $230 million for having been investigated back when the DOJ was actually doing its job.
