Presumably because the Justice Department is now run by people who don’t actually have any idea what attorneys do, it dropped a giant data demand on all 93 offices Monday—with a deadline of Wednesday.
What does the DOJ want? Not much, really. Just for every U.S. attorney to provide comprehensive data on how much they’ve warped their offices into racist revenge machines.
Attorney General Pam Bondi
Yes, the top federal prosecutor in each district probably didn’t have much to do this week and can definitely spend their time answering what is basically a duplicate of Elon Musk’s “5 things” email.
It’s not like U.S. attorneys are overseeing offices handling hundreds—if not thousands—of criminal cases each year. Never mind that each federal district is also juggling hundreds or thousands of civil matters. And pay no attention to the fact that U.S. attorney offices are responsible for collecting all criminal debts.
Also, please just skip over the part where those offices are so jammed up that, in September 2024, there were more than 76,000 pending criminal matters and 87,000 civil matters across all 93 offices.
U.S. attorneys definitely have lots of free time to screw around with proving to the DOJ how much they love President Donald Trump—because that’s really what this request is.
It’s a demand that each office prove compliance with Trump’s law enforcement priorities, which are just based on Trump’s usual hatreds rather than any real concern about fighting crime.
So what, exactly, are the U.S. attorneys supposed to show and tell—how many investigations into “organized political violence” have been opened? Sure, but not all organized political violence.
Trump’s Sept. 25 executive order, issued after Charlie Kirk’s murder, makes clear that only left-wing political violence is to be investigated.
FBI agents search for the killer who assassinated Minnesota Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman—what some might call “organized political violence.”
Don’t forget that Trump declared “antifa”—which is not an actual organization—to be a domestic terrorist organization—which is not an actual thing in U.S. law.
So essentially, U.S. attorneys are being asked to prove how many leftist organizations they’ve investigated for the crime of being leftist organizations.
The U.S. attorneys also need to give a book report about any cases with a “nexus to a drug cartel.” Well, not all nexuses to drug cartels, of course.
The DOJ only wants to know how many indictments have been brought against nationals of Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, and the Dominican Republic. No need to hear about any U.S. citizens with a nexus to drug cartels, even though U.S. citizens are by far the biggest group of people smuggling drugs into the country.
This demand is especially ridiculous in light of the fact that, since the administration has reassigned thousands of federal personnel to its immigration efforts, narcotics investigations have plummeted.
U.S. attorneys are also obliged to show how hard they’re fighting sanctuary cities that “remain in defiance” of Trump’s executive order. Responsible U.S. attorneys would likely decline going after sanctuary cities, given that they are actually legal.
And they’re also required to prove the number of adult sponsors of unaccompanied minors they’ve investigated and prosecuted.
Let’s unpack this for a minute: The biggest criminals the administration can think of—so horrendous that it warrants special tracking by every U.S. attorney—are the people who choose to care for children who have no other adults to care for them. Such monsters.
A cartoon by Mike Luckovich.
Meanwhile, again, thanks to redirecting thousands of staff to immigration enforcement, federal agents are spending far less time investigating sex trafficking and abuse against children. Priorities!
But you know who should not be investigated these days, per the DOJ? So much so that each U.S. attorney must prove they’re most definitely not investigating them? The cryptocurrency industry.
At least that one makes sense. If U.S. attorneys targeted crypto scammers, they’d be going after Trump’s pardon pals and crypto bros. We can’t have that.
This is a full-scale attack on the independence of U.S. attorney offices, turning them into an arm of Trump’s corrupt and compromised DOJ and pulling them away from fighting actual crime.
This isn’t going to sit right with U.S. attorneys who are actually qualified, but you can bet that the foursome of interim appointees who the courts have ruled to be illegally in their jobs will be perfectly fine with it.
After all, they understand the assignment—to serve Trump no matter what.
