The Department of Justice no longer represents the best interests of the American people. Under Bondi, it has been transformed into little more than a cog in the authoritarian machine doing Donald Trump’s bidding. It has abandoned independent judgment and fealty to the law and replaced it with unquestioned obedience to the White House.
After only five months in office, Trump has transformed the Department of Justice into an instrument for voter suppression. This should come as no surprise.
When Trump nominated Pam Bondi as Attorney General, Democracy Docket described her as an “election denier” who helped spread “voting conspiracy theories and false allegations of election fraud.” Meanwhile, The Washington Post editorialized that she should be confirmed because she was “qualified” and “serious.”
Sadly, we were right, and much of the corporate legacy media was woefully wrong.
Since taking office, Bondi has appointed Harmeet Dhillon, a Republican lawyer with her own history of supporting anti-voting litigation and election denialism, as head of the Civil Rights Division. The most recent addition to the voter suppression team is Maureen Riordan, who recently helped lead a prominent anti-voting legal group. As Democracy Docket reported, she is now the acting head of the Voting Rights Section.
The first sign of the new regime’s focus came last week in North Carolina. Republicans spent six months trying to steal a state Supreme Court election by throwing out more than 65,000 ballots, claiming the voter registrations were incomplete.