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daniel goldman
'Crooked Cops' Report Details Trump-Led Corruption of Justice Department
"Trump is trying to turn this government into his own personal fiefdom," warned Rep. Daniel Goldman.
Oct 09, 2025
The Not Above the Law Coalition on Thursday released a report documenting how President Donald Trump's administration has been corrupting every aspect of federal law enforcement.
The report, titled Trump's "Crooked Cops": The Corruption of Federal Law Enforcement, said that the president has "gone to extreme lengths to appoint top officials with no compunction about abusing their power to pervert justice to punish political enemies and favor political friends," before showing how these appointees have swiftly eliminated their agencies' independence from White House political pressure.
"Law enforcement that serves the political interests of the president rather than the public eliminates a core tenet of democracy, namely that we are a country of laws, not of men," the report emphasizes.
The report begins by recounting how Attorney General Pam Bondi followed direct orders from the president to file criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey, while at the same time noting that she has overseen "a department-wide purge of career officials who were assigned to Trump’s criminal cases or who were suspected to be insufficiently loyal to Trump personally."
Other Trump officials who feature prominently in the report include FBI Director Kash Patel, who is facing a lawsuit from former agents who have alleged they were fired as part of a "campaign of retribution"; Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who conducted an interview with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, and then moved her "to more comfortable, low-security accommodations" after she told him that Trump had no involvement in her former partner Jeffrey Epstein's criminal activities; and White House border czar Tom Homan, who was allegedly caught on video accepting a $50,000 cash bribe from undercover FBI agents.
The report also takes a swipe at Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, who publicly pressured ABC to take late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel off the air mere hours before the network decided to suspend him.
"This was by no means the first instance of Carr weaponizing his regulatory enforcement power for political ends," the report says. "His threats have been all the more significant as many media companies have business interests pending before the administration.
During a conference call announcing the report, Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) described the Trump administration's actions as "so distressing and so disturbing," and vowed that he was "not going to stand by while the Department of Justice is used to subvert the rule of law."
Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY), a former federal prosecutor, said on the call that it was "personally devastating" to watch the corruption of the Justice Department, and he vowed that House Democrats would be ready to go with oversight investigations should they return to the majority after the 2026 midterm elections.
"Trump is trying to turn this government into his own personal fiefdom," said Goldman, who later described the weaponization of the Department of Homeland Security as "downright scary."
"We're losing the fabric of our country," he said.
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Critics Say Trump 'Should Be Impeached' If He Fires US Attorney for Not Charging NY AG
"This would be another red line crossed," said one legal expert.
Sep 19, 2025
Multiple legal experts are expressing alarm at a new report that US President Donald Trump is planning to fire a federal prosecutor for failing to bring criminal charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James.
ABC News reported on Thursday night that Trump planned to fire Erik Siebert, the US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, because he could not find sufficient evidence to conclude that James had committed mortgage fraud when she bought a home in the state in 2023.
Siebert was appointed by Trump as US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia just four months ago, and ABC News' source said that "the administration now plans to install a US attorney who would more aggressively investigate James."
James successfully sued Trump for serial financial fraud committed by the Trump Organization back in 2023, and ultimately won a $354 million verdict against him and his business.
Trump has reportedly been pressing the Department of Justice to file charges against James in an apparent retribution campaign, and many legal experts said that going so far as to fire the US attorney investigating her would be a dangerous new step.
Joyce Vance, a former federal prosecutor and current professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, outlined why Trump firing Siebert would be damaging to the rule of law.
"This would be another red line crossed: Career prosecutors aren’t political people," she wrote on X. "They’re trained to look at the facts and the law and determine whether admissible evidence is sufficient to prove a crime. But Trump wants revenge prosecutions, whether there is evidence or not."
Anthony Foley, former head of public affairs at the US Department of Justice under President Barack Obama, marveled that Trump would fire the man whom he'd appointed simply because he came up empty trying to prosecute a political foe.
"When even the people you appoint say there’s no there there," he wrote. "Good prosecutors are trained to follow the facts... to go where the facts tell them to go. Good prosecutors don’t start investigations with a pre-determined outcome in mind."
Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota and vice-chairman for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, also expressed alarm and compared Trump's reported plan to "the way prosecutors are used in dictatorships—to pursue political enemies."
Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth, wrote on Bluesky that Trump "should be impeached and removed from office for this alone" if he goes through with firing Siebert.
Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY), a former federal prosecutor, pointed the finger at his Republican colleagues whom he accused of providing cover for the president.
"You," he wrote on X, "are complicit in Trump’s actions."
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