Trump Justice Department with Private Attorneys after First Term of Loyalty Complaint

President Donald Trump has not attended the swearing-in ceremony of his cabinet officials for the past two weeks, leaving Vice President JD Vance and others to attend the ritual moment – until Wednesday , Attorney General Pam Bondi was sworn in.

It was a notable shift as he welcomed the new attorney general, whose confirmation process focused primarily on whether Bondi, a Florida Republican and former member of Trump’s personal legal team, would make a decision independently of the White House.

This is not the first time these questions are raised when the president brings an individual attorney or ally to the Justice Department.

William French Smith is the clearest precedent for choosing a private lawyer to do top jobs, and he is the first attorney general after Ronald Reagan became a real estate lawyer. Perhaps no president and attorney general took office with stronger personal connections, and President John Kennedy nominated his 35-year-old brother, Robert F. Kennedy, to the position. President Richard Nixon and John Mitchell, the law firms that Mitchell worked as law firms before Nixon's 1968 campaign, served as prosecutor general Long, then quit Nixon's infamous 1972 campaign.

Now it's Bondi, the former Florida Attorney General who represented Trump in his first impeachment trial and was involved in the law trying to overturn the 2020 election team. Trump also appointed his chief defense attorney in the Hush Money case in New York, Todd Blanche, who also served as Bandy in other federal criminal cases in 2023 and 2024. Deputy. Blanche’s co-lawyer Emil Bove was appointed chief deputy deputy attorney general and has been deputy attorney general, while Blanche awaits confirmation. John Sauer successfully argued that Trump was appointed deputy attorney general in the Supreme Court, where he would file a case in the High Court.

“I think she will be as fair as possible,” Trump said of Bundy on Wednesday. “I know I should say she will be completely fair to the Democrats, and I think she will be as fair as a person. I don't Determine if it is possible to be as always available as possible.”

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who served in the George W. Bush administration, said whether Trump’s nominee had the “courage and courage to say no to the president”. ”, will determine where the Justice Department is from here.

Gonzales, the only person to serve as White House attorney and attorney general, said that building a personal relationship with the president “may be a big benefit” as long as one can stand up with the president when necessary.

“When he asks you to do something that violates the interests of justice, there is a close concern with the president, such as whether to start or stop investigating or prosecution… Then you have to have a backbone to suggest not to do something against your better judgment , and explain to the president why you suggest taking action. “And if he continues to pressure you, you have to decide whether to agree to be the president who wants to object to your better judgment or decide to simply resign. ”

Relationship and justice

NBC News spoke with several legal experts who feared that the group of nominees would not have the “backbone” that Gonzalez said.

Bob Bauer, who served as President Barack Obama's White House attorney and also served as Joe Biden's personal attorney, fears Trump believes he “passes Choose 'My Guy' to surround the Department of Justice's norms and ethics.”

“They's relationship with him is entirely a personal lawyer, a private practice lawyer, and they represent him until the inauguration, representing him personally and matters that are important to him, and are now in the Justice Department. “Bauer said, commissioning It's not Donald Trump, but the U.S. government.

While Trump is not the first president to name a private lawyer at the Supreme Department of Justice, the nature of his representation does make them unique.

John Yoo said Blanche and Blanche and Bove were especially defending Trump, “in criminal cases brought by the current party,” John Yoo said. John Yoo said he had said at George W. Yoo that it gave their nomination “a more aggressive partisan flavor”, which he said was partly Biden’s fault.

“I think there is only the difference between the president's advice for winning his will and trust and the fight against the U.S. government itself in criminal courts, and the DAS in New York and Georgia,” Yoo said.

When Smith was nominated for office under Reagan in 1981, the senators pressed him to see whether their relationship would affect his impartiality. Smith promises to comply with a firm review policy.

“I had to be very aware that the situation could be problematic because of this relationship,” Smith said at the time. “Of course, if it involves a President or his family or someone else in a sensitive situation, I would quit myself in the process of participating,” he said. or deal with any aspect that may develop in this case.”

Jed Shugerman, a law professor at Boston University who studies the history of nepotism in American politics, said that the particular “infringement” of appointing a brother as the attorney general is like John F. . Kennedy) did that in 1961. Ultimately, he pointed out that Robert F. Kennedy made important achievements in federal civil rights.

Mitchell's close relationship with Nixon ended up playing a role in both downfalls in the Watergate scandal. Mitchell colleagues testified that he oversaw the financing of the Nixon campaign’s “dirty tricks”, including a break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee that undermined the scandal. Mitchell was jailed and Nixon resigned from the presidency.

Lead the Ministry of Justice

Gonzales believes Bondi and Experience are eligible to be attorney general, but he told NBC News that he can't guarantee she's willing to let the White House refuse decisions related to the president's request for investigation and prosecution. He stressed that one of the most important tasks of the Attorney General is to defend this work and the men and women of the Justice Department and to work to clear out the January 6 Capitol riot case or the person who investigated Trump when Bondy experiences She confirmed it.

Gonzales was disappointed when he heard Bondi telling the Senator at a confirmation hearing that “the department has been weapons for many years.”

“I think it's wrong. I think it's harmful,” Gonzalez said. “I think it’s harmful to hear that for professionals them Already a weapon, them The Ministry of Justice has been politicized. In an organization with more than 100,000 employees, some make mistakes, or make mistakes from time to time or have problems, but it is wrong to condemn the entire department. ”

“Loyalty as defined by the commitment to the president’s management plan is perfectly appropriate,” Ball said, “but “very personal loyalty is different.”

“Given our knowledge of Trump,” Yoo said, “he would be shocked if he didn't pick every job that was loyal to him.” He added that Trump was in the first transition in 2017 It may have been “overcorrected” when he “picked someone he didn’t know and had nothing to do with.”

During Trump's first term, the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller subverted President Trump's relationship with his first Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions withdrew his oversight of the Russian investigation in March 2017, which put Mueller in charge of the investigation at the time attorney general Rod Rosenstein.

Later that year, in an interview with The New York Times, Trump said: “Sessions should never retreat, and if he was going to withdraw himself, he should have told me before he finished the job, I Will choose someone else.”

He told NBC News in 2019 that choosing a meeting was the “big mistake” in his first term.

“Several professionals at Jeff Sessions continue to take on the Justice Department role, and that's part of the reason we conducted the Mueller investigation,” Shugerman said.