New York Times Fairy Tale: Biden's Justice Department is Independent

Here was the headline this last week in The New York Times: 

The Radical Strategy Behind Trump’s Promise to ‘Go After’ Biden

Conservatives with close ties to Donald J. Trump are laying out a “paradigm-shifting” legal rationale to erase the Justice Department’s independence from the president.

The essence? The lefty paper was agog - I say again, agog! - at the idea that the former president and his conservative crew were plotting how to “erase the Justice Department’s independence from the president” if and when Trump were to become president again.

One of the eternal astonishments about the liberal media is the shortness of its memory. Assuming, that is, that what they say results from a short memory rather than a convenient memory.

Note well that the central thesis of that Times piece is that the Department of Justice has “independence.”

What a joke.

To refresh the Times, they should read this Washington Post article that mentions the Justice Department - and more - back there on January 31, 2017. January 31, 2017, recall, was a mere eleven days after Donald Trump had been inaugurated as president. The headline: 

Resistance from within: Federal workers push back against Trump

The Post lovingly front-paged this piece, which said the following: 

The signs of popular dissent from President Trump’s opening volley of actions have been plain to see on the nation’s streets, at airports in the aftermath of his refu­gee and visa ban, and in the blizzard of outrage on social media. But there’s another level of resistance to the new president that is less visible and potentially more troublesome to the administration: a growing wave of opposition from the federal workers charged with implementing any new president’s agenda. 

Less than two weeks into Trump’s administration, federal workers are in regular consultation with recently departed Obama-era political appointees about what they can do to push back against the new president’s initiatives. Some federal employees have set up social media accounts to anonymously leak word of changes that Trump appointees are trying to make. 

At the Justice Department, an employee in the division that administers grants to nonprofits fighting domestic violence and researching sex crimes said the office has been planning to slow its work and to file complaints with the inspector general’s office if asked to shift grants away from their mission. 

‘You’re going to see the bureaucrats using time to their advantage,’ said the employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Through leaks to news organizations and internal complaints, he said, ‘people here will resist and push back against orders they find unconscionable.’

The resistance is so early, so widespread and so deeply felt that it has officials worrying about paralysis and overt refusals by workers to do their jobs.

Got that? Right there on the front page of The Washington Post is the bold admission that the employees of the Department of Justice, not to mention the federal government bureaucracies in general, are going out of their way -out of their way! - to sabotage the Trump presidency. There is zero reference to the Justice Department being “independent” from the president. To the contrary.

In fact, the Post went to none other than former GOP Speaker Newt Gingrich (what were they thinking!) for comment. The former Speaker, well versed on this issue from experience, said this:

…Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), a Trump adviser and longtime critic of the bureaucracy, said the pushback against the new administration reveals how firmly entrenched liberals are and how threatened they feel by the new regime. He cited an analysis by the Hill newspaper that showed that 95 percent of campaign donations from employees at 14 federal agencies went to Hillary Clinton last fall. 

‘This is essentially the opposition in waiting,’ Gingrich said. ‘He may have to clean out the Justice Department because there are so many left-wingers there. State is even worse.’

So contrast. 

On the one hand, there is the Times this last week with its fairy tale claiming the Department of Justice is “independent.” This the same week that, for the first time in American history, the DOJ has just indicted an American president who not so coincidentally happens to be running against the president they work for. 

Yet there is no acknowledgement by the Times of what any sentient observer is aware, as amazingly was the Washington Post a handful of days after Donald Trump was inaugurated in 2017. Which is to say the Justice Department that is prosecuting Trump is filled to overflowing with left-wing career bureaucrats who are on record as hating Trump. Who, per the Post in 2017, were going out of their way to resist him when he became president. Contrary to the Times fairy tale, the DOJ is decidedly not “independent.” It is a cesspool of a bureaucracy corrupted by left-wing employees.

But now there’s a problem for the media and their Democrat allies. Having weaponized and defended the Justice Department to try and intimidate and silence Trump, they have launched a growing movement from Republicans to massively reform the federal government, including cutting the DOJ down to size.

Back there when the DOJ launched the raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, this was the reaction from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The reaction was headlined by the alarmed leftist rag HuffPost: 

Republicans Promise Retaliation Against Justice Department Over Trump Raid 

The story reported: 

Congressional Republicans vowed payback for the Justice Department after federal law enforcement agents searched former President Donald Trump’s home in Florida.

‘The Justice Department has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization,’ House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in a statement.

…McCarthy said that if Republicans win control of the House in November’s midterm elections, they will task committees with investigating the Justice Department’s investigation of Trump.

‘When Republicans take back the House, we will conduct immediate oversight of this department, follow the facts, and leave no stone unturned,’ McCarthy said.

To Attorney General Merrick Garland, McCarthy said, ‘preserve your documents and clear your calendar.’

In short, The New York Times, in the paper’s latest attempt at pushing the blatant untruth of left-wing propaganda, is telling its readers that the DOJ is “independent” and that independence is under a looming threat from Trump allies plotting and seeming to remove that independence.

In fact, as no less than the Washington Post illustrated vividly back there in 2017, the reality of what goes on at Justice is exactly the reverse of the Times fairy tale. And in the latest installment of the DOJ leftists - the indictment of the former president - the backlash and efforts to reform the DOJ has begun.

Whether the New York Times and the rest of the liberal media wants to acknowledge it or not.

Imagine that.

https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/jeffrey-lord/2023/06/17/new-york-times-fairy-tale-bidens-justice-department-independent