The Tree Gets Poisoned – TPM – Talking Points Memo

January 30, 2025

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The DOJ moved to drop charges against three prominent people on Wednesday: two Trump employees charged in the Mar-a-Lago records case, and ex-Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE).

None of these cases were political prosecutions. The Mar-a-Lago defendants were charged for allegedly helping Trump illegally retain national defense records while out of office; Fortenberry was fighting a 2022 conviction on lying to the FBI and concealing foreign campaign contributions.

The DOJ is set to be run by some of the attorneys who defended Trump in his criminal cases. They include Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, nominated for the number two and three spots.

All this sends an important signal, one that Trump himself made explicit in a Truth Social post: “I am very proud of our Department of Justice, something I have not been able to say for many years!”

The signal is that Trump has the power to stop (and potentially start) any criminal case. Nobody else in modern American history has really wielded this power in the way that we’re likely to see over the coming months and years.

We are beginning to see the fruit of that poison tree. In countries with corrupt prosecution systems, whether or not someone is under indictment does not send a clear signal about them. It may very well be that an indictment, if anything, is positive: evidence of an independence or unwillingness to bow down to an autocrat.

That’s no reason to avoid general skepticism of prosecutors, but it’s the kind of shift that makes it harder to discern what is real and what is bogus. Take the prosecution of ex-Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), sentenced on Wednesday to 11 years in prison. The saga of Gold Bars Bob was a real public corruption case. We covered it.

But it highlights the issue: ending real cases and bringing fake ones makes it very difficult to tell who is actually a bad actor.