While running for president in 2020, Joe Biden accused then-President Trump of turning the Department of Justice (DOJ) into his “own private law firm.”
On another occasion during the campaign, Biden labeled the Trump administration, “the most corrupt administration in modern American history.”
At the same time, Biden vowed that if he won the presidency, he would ensure the DOJ would be “totally independent” and he would “not direct them who to prosecute, what to prosecute, how to prosecute,” nor would he “inject” his personal opinion into what cases the DOJ pursues.
That was then. This is now.
Over the past few months, many questions have arisen concerning how “independent” Biden’s DOJ actually is.
First, we saw the DOJ coordinate with the National School Boards Association in an attempt to label parents concerned over critical race theory (CRT) and other relevant issues as “domestic terrorists.”
In a letter, Attorney General Merrick Garland wrote the FBI and other federal law enforcement organizations should use the Patriot Act against parents who disagree with the teaching of CRT in public schools.
If that is not the embodiment of a politicized DOJ, what is?
Second, and more recently, we have witnessed two reprehensible actions by the DOJ that again calls into question just how “independent” Biden’s DOJ truly is.
The first example occurred when journalist James O’Keefe, of Project Veritas, was the victim of an early-morning raid by federal law enforcement officials because he purportedly had access to President Biden’s daughter’s diary.
There is no evidence linking O’Keefe or anyone at Project Veritas with the theft of said diary, but that does not matter. O’Keefe and Project Veritas have been a thorn in the side of the Biden administration (and the left, in general), so Biden decided to sic the FBI on his political enemy.
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Even the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), hardly a champion of right-leaning groups like Project Veritas, admonished the DOJ’s nakedly partisan attack on a member of the press.
Per the ACLU, “the precedent set in this case could have serious consequences for press freedom. Unless the government had good reason to believe that Project Veritas employees were directly involved in the criminal theft of the diary, it should not have subjected them to invasive searches and seizures. We urge the court to appoint a special master to ensure that law enforcement officers review only those materials that were lawfully seized and that are directly relevant to a legitimate criminal investigation.”
The second, most recent example of Biden’s politicized DOJ occurred when former Trump advisor Steve Bannon was forced to surrender to authorities on a nebulous contempt of Congress charge.
Keep in mind, Bannon is the first American citizen to be criminally charged over failing to comply with a congressional subpoena in almost four decades.
Interestingly, the DOJ had quite a different standard when then-Attorney General Eric Holder was held in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate during the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal in 2014.
After Holder was let off the hook by a federal judge, Brian Fallon, a DOJ spokesperson said, “We are pleased that the court rejected the committee's latest stunt.”
Yet, seven years later, the DOJ is going to great lengths to ensure that anyone associated with the Trump administration who refuses to comply with congressional subpoenas be charged to the fullest extent of the law.
What’s more, Holder was in charge of the DOJ as he walked away scot free. Bannon, on the other hand, is a private citizen, without any pull or sway inside Biden’s DOJ.
Like O’Keefe, Bannon has been an outspoken critic of the Biden administration. It is more than reasonable to assume that the DOJ is clamping down on him for his antipathy towards the administration’s policies rather than his refusal to play ball with Congress.
History is chock full of examples in which the implementation of justice has been hijacked for partisan ends. To this point, the United States, in general, has refrained from blurring the lines between blind justice and blatant partisanship.
However, like all things, this is not set in stone. Actually, it is more the norm than the exception that justice and politics go hand in hand as opposed to being wholly separate from one another.
In less than a year, the Biden administration has obliterated the notion of equal justice under the law. Americans, be afraid. Be very afraid.
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