Unease grows at the Justice Department as Trump's threats get even more blunt [View all]

Source: NPR

September 22, 2025 4:24 PM ET


President Trump is openly directing the Justice Department to go after his political adversaries, adding to a sense of unease inside the department about job security and ethical obligations. Even in an era of nonstop social media posts, Trump's weekend update stopped many government attorneys in their tracks. The president said he wanted to see justice served.

"We can't delay any longer, it's killing our reputation and credibility," he wrote. What Trump said couldn't wait are criminal investigations of his most prominent critics: former FBI Director Jim Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff. His post emerged only hours after the top federal prosecutor in northern Virginia left his job under pressure. Erik Siebert had worked closely with Trump's top DOJ leaders this year, but he concluded he could not seek criminal charges the president wanted against James.

Now Lindsey Halligan, who had been serving as a special assistant to the president, was sworn in Monday as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, though she has no prosecutorial experience. Most recently, she's been helping Trump remove what he calls "improper ideology" from the Smithsonian museums.

"This attorney general sent a memo on Day 1 that made it clear that Justice Department lawyers were the president's lawyers, and we are now seeing how that's playing out and how dangerous it is — how it disintegrates the rule of law," Stacey Young, a former DOJ attorney who now leads a group called Justice Connection that helps Justice Department workers, said of Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Read more: https://www.npr.org/2025/09/22/nx-s1-5550132/trump-justice-department-comey-letitia-james-virginia