() A congressional committee on Wednesday examined the Department of Justice’s treatment of former President Donald Trump under the Biden administration.
Trump faces a myriad of legal troubles at the state and federal level, but the federal prosecution of Trump has been under special scrutiny since it has been carried out by the DOJ under the supervision of President Joe Biden, Trump’s political rival.
Trump’s prosecution is uncharted political and legal territory for the U.S., and witnesses at a hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government raised concerns about its implications.
Gene Hamilton, a lawyer and leader at the Trump-connected America First Legal Foundation, blasted the DOJ, saying it has become politicized, and not just for its prosecution of Trump.
“Prosecution and charging decisions are infused with racial and partisan political double standards,” he said in prepared testimony.
“Immigration laws are ignored,” he continued. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation harasses protesting parents (branded ‘domestic terrorists’ by some partisans) while working diligently to shut down politically disfavored speech on the pretext of its being ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation.’”
Hamilton went on to highlight additional instances of the brazen double standard at the DOJ.
“A department that prosecutes numerous FACE Act cases while ignoring dozens of violent attacks on pregnancy care centers and/or the coordinated violation of laws that prohibit attempts to intimidate Supreme Court Justices by parading outside of their homes has clearly lost its way,” he said.
“A department that has twice engaged in covert domestic election interference and propaganda operations—the Russian collusion hoax in 2016 and the Hunter Biden laptop suppression in 2020—is a threat to the Republic,” he added.
Democrats panned the committee’s work as overly politicized, alleging it was simply doing Trump’s bidding, and sought to deflect from the criticisms of their ethical lapses using diversionary tactics.
“We’re here at the beck and call of Trump fanatics,” claimed Rep. Stacey Plaskett, D-N.Y.
Leftists attempted to stir up a frenzy on social media surrounding Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s framework for government reform in an incoming Trump administration, in which Hamilton had a role.
Bombastic Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, suggested that the plan to drain the Swamp and restore some semblance of government accountability to the corrupt bureaucracy was a “playbook for authoritarianism as well as the next dictator to come in.”
Crockett details the horrors of Project 2025, which one of the Republican witnesses is involved with pic.twitter.com/GNwXYjjixl
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 15, 2024
Longtime New York lawyer Robert J. Costello also testified at the hearing, echoing Trump’s complaint that the cases against him were unusual and politically motivated.
“I have been a lawyer for 51 years,” Costello said in his prepared testimony.
“During that time, I have been involved in many different types of cases, but I have never seen the types of politically motivated cases that have been brought in this presidential election season,” he continued. “These political cases are being used as a weapon of war to damage, defeat or impede political adversaries and their allies.”
Costello made an apparent reference to New York Attorney General Letitia James, who promised during her 2018 campaign to go after Trump if elected to the office.
This is the corruption my father and our family is fighting in New York! The system is weaponized, broken and disgusting pic.twitter.com/ds6PkXDNjd
— Eric Trump (@EricTrump) October 5, 2023
“Prosecutors are supposed to investigate crimes and prosecute those who commit them—not announce targets first and investigate until they can bring some charge, no matter how tenuous,” Costello continued. “But these days, you see individuals running for prospective office who claim that if you elect me, I will bring down this public figure or that public figure who disagrees with my political philosophy.”
Trump’s criminal charges for holding on to classified documents has been under particular scrutiny since Biden was not charged in what was arguably a more egregious offense.
Biden—who lacked any presidential declassification authority when he removed documents, some of which dated back to his time as a U.S. senator, prior to 2008—also maintained them in several far less secure environments than Trump, including his home garage, and offered to grant access to a biographer who lacked the appropriate security clearance.
Former DOJ attorney Jim Trusty said in prepared testimony Wednesday that Trump’s handling of the documents was not that different from past presidents of both parties. However, the federal response certainly “took a distinct departure from history,” he noted.
While the National Archives had given other presidents free rein to decide what documents to keep at their own discretion, a radicalized librarian instead colluded with the Justice Department to wage the lawfare attack on Trump—likely at the behest of the White House or its puppet-masters with the predetermined outcome of an FBI raid and special-counsel investigation in mind.
“DOJ’s decision to use criminal enforcement tools in an exaggerated dispute about document retention was unique and simply wrong,” Trusty said. “I have personally seen the Sept. 11, 2018 letter from representatives of the Barack Obama Foundation to the director of NARA in which President Obama’s representatives casually refer to their post-presidency possession of a vast quantity of documents—specifically including classified ones.”
The witnesses raised a range of problems with the DOJ’s handling of Trump’s legal problems, but for now they remain in place and Trump faces an array of court proceedings.
“When individuals entrusted with power believe that the ends justify the means, we are left with a weaponized political agent, cheered on by partisans and those blinded by dislike of candidate Trump,” Trusty said in his prepared testimony, alluding to a notorious Marxist slogan that seemed equally apropos to the modern era.
“If they succeed, we begin a new age where even old hands at criminal justice like me will not recognize the perversion of justice and … will descend into attacks and counterattacks launched by power-hungry politicians masquerading as agents of fairness.”
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
