Trump stocks Justice Department with personal lawyers after loyalty complaints during his first term

President Donald Trump did not attend the oath of the cabinet of cabinet officials in the past two weeks, as Vice President JD Vance and others have participated in the festive moments-until Wednesday, when the Public Prosecutor Bondi led to a section of his position.

This was a noticeable transformation as he welcomed the new public lawyer, which was the confirmation process that revolves around whether Bondi – Republican in Florida and former member of the Trump Personal Legal Team – would make decisions independently of the White House.

This is not the first time that these questions appear when the president is a personal lawyer or an ally of the Ministry of Justice.

The clearest precedent for the selection of personal lawyers for the highest jobs in the Ministry of Justice is William Fernish Smith, who was the first public prosecutor for President Ronald Reagan after he held the position of his lawyer. Perhaps no president and public lawyer may have assumed a stronger personal link than it was when President John Kennedy nominated his 35 -year -old brother, Robert F. Kennedy, in this position. President Richard Nixon and John Mitchell were colleagues at the law firm before Mitchell managed the Nixon campaign in 1968, worked as the public prosecutor and then resigned to operate Nixon’s necklace campaign in 1972.

Now he is Bondi, a former state lawyer in Florida who represented Trump in the first dismissal trial and was involved in the legal team who sought to cancel the 2020 elections. Trump also appointed Todd Blanche, the main defense lawyer in the New York Money case, who also worked on criminal cases Other Trump’s federalism in 2023 and 2024, to be Bondi’s deputy. Planch Company, Emile Bouv, won the title of Deputy Prosecutor, the main assistant public prosecutor, while Blanche was waiting for confirmation. John Sawir, who successfully argued in the case of Trump’s presidential immunity before the Supreme Court, was exploited to be a public lawyer, as he was arguing with cases before the Supreme Court.

“I think it will be as neutral as possible,” Trump said on Wednesday. “I know that I am supposed to say it will be completely neutral with regard to the Democrats, and I think it will be neutral like a person. I am not sure if there is completely possibility, but it will go as a total as possible.”

“The courage and steadfastness to say no to the president will determine where the Ministry of Justice goes from here.” They will determine where the Ministry of Justice goes from here.

Gonzalez, the only person who works at all as a consultant at the White House and the general lawyer, says that having a personal relationship with the president “can be a great benefit” – as long as one has the ability to stand up to the president when necessary.

“Anxiety about being close to the president arises when he asks you to do something that contradicts the interest of justice, such as whether you will start or stop the investigation or claim … then you must have the backbone of the recommendation not to do something and Gonzales said, He is now the Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Palmont, for NBC News: “If you continue to press you, you must decide whether you will agree to do what the president wants against your best rule, or decide to resign simply.”

Relationships and neutrality

NBC News spoke to many legal experts who were concerned that this group of candidates would not have the “spine” that Gonzales says they need.

Bob Power, who held the position of White House lawyer for President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden’s personal lawyer, Trump worries that he “wanders in standards and ethics from the Ministry of Justice by choosing” my comrades. “

“Their relationship with him is completely the relationship of personal lawyers and lawyers in the private practice they represented, until the opening, representing him in personal matters and they are very important to him, and now he is placed in the Ministry of Justice, Power said, as the agent Donald Trump will not be but the United States government.

While Trump is not the first president to call personal lawyers for the best jobs in the Ministry of Justice, the nature of their representation makes them unique.

John Yu, who held the position of Deputy Assistant Prosecutor of the Office of the Legal Adviser in the framework of the George W. Bush administration, said Blanche and Bouv in particular, defending Trump “in the criminal cases brought by the current party.” It gives their nominations “a more sad flavor,” Yu, who said this is partially wrong.

Yu said: “There is a big difference, as I think, between the mere advice to a person who wins the presidency in their will and their trust, in exchange for fighting in the criminal court hall against the United States government itself, and DAS in New York and Georgia.”

When Smith was nominated for service during the Reagan era in 1981, Senators pressed him on whether their relationship would affect his neutrality. Smith is committed to cohesion of a fixed refusal policy.

“I must be very aware of the situations in which it can show that because of this relationship, a problem may be created,” Smith said at the time. “Certainly, if a position arises that involve the president, a member of his family, or others in a sensitive position, I will return myself from participating or dealing with any aspect that may develop from this situation.”

“It is a” infringement “in particular to appoint one brother as a general lawyer, as John FF did. Kennedy in 1961. that Robert F. Kennedy has made important achievements of federal civil rights.

It ended with Mitchell’s document relationship with Nixon to play a role in all of their fall in the Watergate scandal. Mitchell Associats has witnessed that he supervised the financing of “dirty tricks” of the Nixon campaign, including the storming at the headquarters of the National Democratic Committee that broke the scandal. Mitchell went to prison, and Nixon resigned from the presidency.

Leadership of the Ministry of Justice

Gonzalez believes that Bondi is well qualified to be the prosecutor by virtue of experience, but he told NBC News that he could not witness her willingness to keep the White House from decisions related to investigations and trials if he requested the president. He stressed that one of the most important jobs for the public lawyer is to defend work and that men and women in the Ministry of Justice – and the efforts made to clarify the people who worked on January 6 of riots in the Capitol or investigations in Trump were already ongoing as Bondi passed through its confirmation.

Gonzalez was disappointed to hear Bondi to tell the members of the Senate in her confirmation session that “the administration has been armed for years.”

“I think it’s wrong. Gonzalez said:” I think it is harmful. “I think it is harmful to professional people hearing this they Its weapon, they She politicized the Ministry of Justice. In an agency that includes more than 100,000 employees, some people will make mistakes or do something wrong or doubtful from time to time, but condemning an entire section is wrong. ”

“Loyalty, as is determined by adhering to the ruling president’s program, is completely suitable,” said Power, but “absolute loyalty of a very personal type varies.”

Yu said that “looking at everything we know about Trump”, it will be “completely shocking if not everyone who was loyal to him in every job.” He added that Trump might be “correct” from his first transfer in 2017, when “he chose people who did not know him and had no relationship with them.”

During the first period of Trump, the investigation of Special Counselor Robert Muller raised President Trump’s relationship with the first public prosecutor, Jeff Sessions. The sessions retreated from the supervision of the investigation in Russia in March 2017, leaving the then -public prosecutor, Rod Rosenstein, for Muller’s status in charge of this investigation.

Later that year, during interview With the New York Times, Trump said: “The sessions should have ever devoted himself, and if he would receive himself, he should tell me before he took the job and I had chosen another person.”

he NBC News said In 2019, the selection of the sessions was “the biggest mistake” in his first term.

“There were many professionals during the reign of Jeff Sishn who continued their roles in the Ministry of Justice, and this is part of the reason for our investigation in Muller,” said Shukerman.