By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on February 11, 2025
An Editorial Opinion
After he was sworn-in as the 47th President of the United States, Donald Trump ordered his Department of Justice to drop the public corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. On Monday, DOJ notified a federal judge overseeing the case that it was no longer pursuing bribery charges against Adams.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove justified the decision to dismiss the charges by saying the timing of the charges against Adams and “more recent actions” by Damian Williams, the former U.S. Attorney who led the office, “have threatened the integrity of the proceedings, including by increasing prejudicial pretrial publicity that risks impacting potential witnesses and the jury pool."
Bove also said the pending prosecution had “unduly restricted” Adams’ ability to “devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime that has escalated under the policies of the prior Administration."
Of course, Bove made these statements to provide political cover for Donald Trump's decision to save Eric Adams from a federal criminal prosecution.
Trump is Right About One Thing -- The President is the Chief Law Enforcement Official in the Federal Criminal Justice System
Despite his many personal and political flaws, Donald Trump is absolutely right about one thing -- the president of the United States is the chief law enforcement official in the federal criminal justice system.
Trump was harshly and repeatedly criticized for interferring with the operation of the DOJ during his first term in office from 2017 to 2021. He has continued to meddle in DOJ prosecutorial decisions since the start of his second term.
This criticism of Trump, which has found a very receptive audience in the court of public opinion, is off-base and wrong for several reasons.
First, the president appoints the U.S. Attorney General as a member of the executive branch of government. The Attorney General is a cabinet member just like the 24 other cabinet members who serve at the pleasure of the president. Nothing in the U.S. Constitution places the Attorney General beyond the supervisory reach of the president. He/she is directly answerable to the president.
Attorneys General at the state level are constitutional officers who run for statewide office and operate independently of the governor in their respective states. They are directly answerable to the people, and only the people.
Second, the Attorney General's job in the federal system is to advance and protect the president's public policy initiatives using the federal legal apparatus to achieve this result. The Attorney General also has a concomitant duty to enforce the labyrinth of more than 8,000 federal civil and criminal laws.
Contrary to popular opinion, an unelected U.S. Attorney General is not free to detach himself/herself from the president who appointed him/her so that he/she can implement a separate, independent, and unsupervised federal law enforcement agenda. The Attorney General does not join the president, Congress, and federal judiciary as a fourth branch of government.
Third, the U.S. Constitution gives the president carte blanc authority to nullify the work of the Attorney General in the enforcement of federal criminal laws, with no questions asked. The president enjoys the unilateral and unreviewable right to pardon convicted federal inmates, commute their sentences to time served, and/or grant them executive clemency.
Fourth, the president appoints Article III federal judges who, once they are confirmed by the U.S. Senate, serve in their jobs for life. The Founders believed that lifetime tenure in office would insulate federal judges from political pressure as they protected the rights of individuals from possible tyranny by the local, state, and federal governments.
Two hundred and fifty years later, most federal judges have abandoned the protection of individual rights and have assumed the role of unabashed political operatives who use their courtrooms as theaters for advancing partisan agendas. They engage in social, economic, and political engineering that is beyond the reach of electoral accountability to American voters.
Within this paradigm, one of the president's main jobs is to "check and balance" runaway political activism on the federal bench.
Presidential/Attorney General Pairings Matter in Today's Political World
America is best served when its President and Attorney General are both strong personalities and are in sync with each other. Our system of federal laws has always been used as a tool to drive or undergird public policy.
John Kennedy placed his brother Robert in the Attorney General's job to cover his back and push his presidential agenda. Both men were rich, strong, and powerful leaders.
Lyndon B. Johnson had a strong Attorney General in Nicholas Katzenbach. Their personal strength and aggressive leadership styles produced the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. No successor pairings of President and Attorney General have come close to matching Johnson's and Katzenbach's personal strengths, vision for the future, and domestic accomplishments for Americans of color and poor people.
Richard Nixon was a strong president, but he was also a crook. John Mitchell, Nixon's Attorney General, was a crook, as well. Nixon resigned from office, but Mitchell went to jail for the criminal acts he committed while in office.
Jimmy Carter was weak on every level. Yet, Carter's Attorneys General, Griffin Bell and Ben Civiletti, were moderately strong.
Ronald Reagan was a strong president and so was Ed Meese, his Attorney General. Working together, they ramrodded Reagan's political agenda through Congress and the federal judiciary.
George H.W. Bush appointed Richard Thornburg as Attorney General. Bush was weak and ineffective in office, while Thornburg was moderately strong in his job.
Bill Clinton chose Janet Reno as his Attorney General. Clinton's ferocious appetite for sex with a young White House intern, his groping some of his female donors, and his flirting with the wife of a fugitive he was pardoning, made him a weak and compromised president. Reno was highly competent, but chauvinistic and sexist Republicans resented Reno because she was the first woman to hold the job.
George W. Bush was weak and inept in office, but he had John Ashcroft as his Attorney General. Ashcroft was strong and highly competent. This helped Bush win re-election with ease after he fumbled America's chance to prevent the 911 terrorist attacks.
Barack Obama selected Eric Holder as his Attorney General. Both of these men were highly likeable, but weak and ineffective in office. In their minds, Obama and Holder mistakenly confused celebrityhood with political strength. Lyndon B. Johnson and Katzenbach accomplished more for African-Americans than Obama and Holder ever attempted.
Trump appointed Jeff Sessions as his first Attorney General. While Trump has a super-strong personality, Sessions was extremely weak and intellectually challenged in the job. Trump replaced Sessions with William Barr, who was a strong Attorney General.
Joe Biden was weak and tired, and so was his Attorney General, Merrick Garland. In many instances, Merrick Garland retained Trump appointees and modern-day white supremacists in key DOJ positions during Biden's entire 4 years in office.
Trump selected Pam Bondi as Attorney General during his second term. Bondi, who was the former Attorney General of Florida, is an experienced and strong top prosecutor.
Epilogue
Presidents select their cabinet members, including the Attorney General. Once these appointees are confirmed by the Senate, the ultimate political accountability for what a U.S. Attorney General does in office, or fails to do, rests with the president who appointed him/her.
If the appointed Attorney General does a great job, this becomes a positive factor in determining whether to support a president's election bid. If the Attorney General fails in his/her job, the president must shoulder the blame at the polls for this failure.