Biden’s Politicization Of The Department of Justice

Despite only being president for less than five months, Joe Biden is already making major moves to politicize the U.S. Department of Justice. 

To start, just days into his presidency, Biden asked over 50 Trump-appointed U.S. attorneys to resign. Each of these attorneys had been previously approved by the Senate, oftentimes by bipartisan margins. Biden’s assumption that attorneys that were approved by the Senate should not be allowed to serve solely because they were appointed by Trump is dangerous and seeks to erode the independent status that U.S. attorneys should have.

In another early move as president, Biden signed an executive order that restarted the policy of third-party settlements at the Department of Justice. The policy allows the federal government to force those they settle litigation with to pay authorized outside organizations instead of the U.S. Treasury. The policy began under Obama but was ended back in 2017 by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The dangerous policy of third-party settlements at the Department of Justice has previously allowed for billions of dollars that should have been directed to the U.S. Treasury to instead be funneled to shadowy left-wing activist groups. This, however, does not bother Biden or the Democrats as they are direct beneficiaries of the policy.

Biden is also exploiting the Department of Justice to enact radical gun-control measures. At the directive of Biden, the Department of Justice recently proposed a new rule that would label “weapons parts kits” as “firearms.” This rule would subsequently require all Americans that wish to purchase part kits for their weapons to pass a National Instant Criminal Background Check System check. It would also mandate many parts of the weapons kits to possess traceable serial numbers. According to a statement from the National Rifle Association (NRA), the proposed rule could “destroy the American firearms industry.”

Perhaps most disturbingly, Biden’s Department of Justice utilizes its resources to wrongfully target former President Trump’s political allies. In April, the FBI conducted warranted raids at the houses of Rudy Giuliani and Victoria Toensing. Both Giuliani and Toensing are highly regarded lawyers that were instrumental in investigating the Biden family’s potentially illegal dealings in Ukraine. There is currently no evidence to suggest that either Giuliani or Toensing committed any crime. Despite this, the FBI seized multiple communications devices from the two individuals during their raids.

These aggressive tactics from the Department of Justice against key conservatives differ dramatically from their treatment of key liberals. For example, the FBI never raided Hunter Biden’s house, despite a magnitude of evidence suggesting that he is guilty of an array of crimes. The FBI never obtained warrants to search Hillary Clinton’s estate either, regardless of the fact that her private email server illegally contained a multitude of classified information. In fact, declassified emails show that the leaders at the FBI hindered efforts to perform surveillance on the Clinton campaign back in 2016, further sheltering the prominent Democrat from potential scrutiny or legal issues.

Biden’s substantial efforts to politicize the Department of Justice mimic efforts made by former President Obama.

Between 2009-2011, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) allowed almost 2,000 firearms to be illegally bought and sold for upwards of $1.5 million. The ATF was supposed to go after the purchasers and sellers of the illegal firearms but instead lost track of them. The botched program was referred to as “Operation Fast and Furious.” Many of the weapons that were sold during the operation were later discovered in cities across America and Mexico. In 2010, one of the guns was even used to murder Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in Arizona. Following these major revelations, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee began to investigate Operation Fast and Furious. However, former Attorney General Eric Holder did not comply with many aspects of the investigation and withheld key evidence from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. As a result, Holder was cited for Contempt of Congress. Instead of respecting this citation, Obama protected Holder by claiming executive privilege over the documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious, effectively hiding the documents from Congress and thwarting the completion of Congress’s investigation into the matter.

During investigations into potential corruption at the Clinton Foundation, Obama’s Justice Department denied the FBI access to critical emails and materials that highlighted widespread corruption. Obama’s Justice Department also protected Democrat allies by denying the FBI access to the physical devices and servers that the Democratic National Committee alleged were hacked back in 2016. Why did Obama’s Justice Department deny the FBI access to these Democrat organizations and allies if there is nothing to hide?

Obama allowed his Department of Justice to be blatantly politicized when former President Clinton secretly met with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch on the tarmac of the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in June of 2016. At the time of the meeting, Lynch was overseeing the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s improper handling of highly classified information. The meeting lasted approximately 30 minutes. Following the meeting, former FBI director James Comey testified to the Senate Intelligence Community that Lynch asked him to publicly refer to the Clinton email investigation as a “matter” instead of an “investigation” in an overt attempt to minimize its severity in the eyes of the public.

Lastly, like Biden, Obama weaponized his Department of Justice to inappropriately target Donald Trump, his campaign, and his associates. In 2016, Obama’s Department of Justice obtained multiple FISA warrants to spy on Trump’s campaign and its associates. However, unbeknownst to the FISA judges that granted the warrants, the basis for which these warrants were granted was Democrat-funded opposition research. In April of 2016, research firm Fusion GPS began working to produce a dossier that contained a plethora of baseless allegations that Trump and his campaign were in cahoots with the Russian government throughout the 2016 presidential election cycle. The debunked dossier is now known as the “Steele dossier.” As records prove, the dossier was funded by both Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, with the two organizations providing up to $9.2 million to Fusion GPS in exchange for the production of the dossier. Obama’s Justice Department knew this, and they intentionally hid this critical information from the FISA court on at least four occasions in an orchestrated effort to conceal Democrat ties to the debunked dossier.

In June of 2017, former FBI Director James Comey admitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee that the dossier was “salacious and unverified.” This means that the basis for which the FBI obtained warrants to spy on Trump’s campaign and its associates was illegitimate, as were any subsequent investigations that were sparked by the illegitimately obtained FISA warrants. It should also be noted that the FISA court was established to subvert foreign terrorists, not for domestic spying operations. The fact that Obama’s Department of Justice abused America’s judicial system and withheld critical information from the FISA court with the sole intent of suppressing Democrat connections to the dossier so Obama’s officials could spy on Obama’s political enemies is abhorrent.

Biden is essentially serving Obama’s de facto third term, with half of Biden’s cabinet appointees previously serving under Obama. Obama is well aware of this fact and even went as far as publicly admitting it in a recent interview with The New York Times. To quote Obama: “I think that what we’re seeing now is Joe and the administration are essentially finishing the job…Ninety percent of the folks who were there in my administration, they are continuing and building on the policies we talked about.”

Since the integrity of the Department of Justice barely survived eight years of Obama, it is highly unlikely it will be able to survive another four years of Obama’s repugnant policies under the guise of Biden.