WASHINGTON (AP) — A crucial and contentious midterm election arrives next week, and President Donald Trump’s Justice Department has been scrambling with a blitz of headline-making actions and cases that defense lawyers, Democrats and other critics say is no coincidence and reeks of politics — in both the timing and the targets.
This month alone, the Justice Department escalated an investigation into Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar with a search of
her home; brought criminal charges against two former FBI officials accused of falsely downplaying their knowledge of investigations involving Hunter Biden; revealed a fresh attempt to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey; and made an unsuccessful attempt to indict a former White House aide who delivered dramatic but disputed testimony about Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
That’s on top of lawsuits in Alaska and California related to next week’s voting.
The moves are notable not only because of the timing but also because they largely have been directed at outspoken critics of Trump or issues that have animated the Republican’s base.
The Justice Department has also employed unusual maneuvers to lock down charges, bypassing grand juries to file what are effectively placeholder cases against Comey and the ex-FBI officials in the heavily Democratic nation’s capital — where prosecutors over the past year have repeatedly struggled to secure indictments.
"Never in the modern history of the Department of Justice has there ever been such a brazen disregard for time-honored norms and protocols in conceiving of or undertaking politically sensitive investigations," said David Laufman, who served as a senior Justice Department official across Democratic and Republican administrations and helped oversee the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
The Justice Department, in a statement, said it is "following the facts and the law, not anyone’s political timetable.”
The law enforcement agency has a long-accepted practice of avoiding overt investigative actions against candidates in the weeks before an election, or other public steps that could be perceived as attempting to influence a political outcome.
It’s such a foundational principle that successive attorneys general have issued departmentwide memos during election cycles reminding employees not to make an investigative move designed to help or hinder any particular candidate.
Responding to questions about the recent investigative moves, the Justice Department said in a statement that it was an informal practice, not a written rule, to avoid overt actions within 60 days of an election. The practice is meant to prohibit prosecutors from choosing the timing of an action to affect an election, the department said.
“The standard is purpose, not proximity to Election Day. Department policy does not require the Department to stop ongoing work during an election season,” the department said.
That practice was famously tested in 2016 when Comey, then the FBI director, told Congress 11 days before Election Day that the bureau was revisiting its investigation into Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information because of newly discovered emails. Comey has said he felt he picked the least destructive option available, but his decision-making was harshly criticized by Democrats — and the Justice Department inspector general.
Attorney General Todd Blanche, for his part, has not been shy about his view that the Justice Department does not exist independent of the White House and has insisted he is no different from his predecessors in serving a president. He has denied that the department’s investigative decisions are political. Yet even before this month, the Justice Department had initiated multiple inquiries into the president’s perceived adversaries.
That includes a Florida-based investigation that Trump allies had hoped would prove a right-wing theory that former law enforcement and intelligence officials who scrutinized the president over the last decade had conspired against him.
That investigation has shown signs of faltering amid a spate of staff turnovers and delays. Investigators in recent weeks have put off scheduled grand jury testimony of multiple witnesses, according to multiple people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
Among the most politically delicate moves this month came when federal agents searched the home of Omar, one of the most outspoken congressional critics of the president. She is on the ballot Tuesday for another term representing Minnesota's 5th District. Federal agents seized Omar’s phone in the search and have issued more than a dozen grand jury subpoenas, including to some of her relatives, as investigators probe issues related to her immigration paperwork.
Blanche has defended the timing of the search, which was approved by a federal judge. He told reporters last week, “I can tell you unequivocally that the decision to seek a search warrant had nothing to do with what’s happening in November."
The Justice Department later charged two former FBI officials with making false statements to Congress about their knowledge of a laptop the department says belonged to former President Joe Biden's son Hunter. The case emerged from an investigation that began immediately after a July speech on election security by Trump and was ordered by FBI Director Kash Patel, according to testimony Tuesday from an FBI agent assigned to the probe.
The Justice Department charged the two former officials by complaint instead of a grand jury indictment — a move the magistrate judge overseeing the case described as unusual. Prosecutors then left the judge dumbfounded when they tried to add another charge by filing a new criminal complaint on the court docket without the required judicial sign-off that probable cause exists.
“Everything is a little sideshow on top of a sideshow,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui told prosecutors.
On Monday, newly unsealed court papers in a separate case revealed that prosecutors are attempting to bring the third criminal case against Comey since Trump returned to the White House, accusing him of leaking classified information a decade ago. With the statute of limitations set to expire earlier this month, prosecutors used an uncommon legal tactic in an attempt to extend the time in which they can seek a grand jury indictment.
Comey's legal team has described it as legally invalid and politically motivated, and is pushing the judge to dismiss it. A judge is set to hear arguments Friday.
Asked about the latest case against the former FBI director, Trump said this week that he didn't know anything about it. But the president added, “He’s a dirty cop, James Comey."
For his part, Comey seemed unsurprised. “Well, they’re back — again,” he said in a video statement Monday. “It would almost be funny if it weren’t such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice — one that we cannot become numb to. Nothing’s changed with me; I’m still innocent, I’m still not afraid of these people — and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary.”
