Growing Peril for Letitia James and James Comey as Trump Justice Department Reorganizes Weaponization Group To Get ‘Results’

The reboot of the Department of Justice’s “Weaponization Working Group,”is a result of setbacks in the Trump Administration’s prosecutions of several current and former public officials. The reset, though, is hardly good news for New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, the former director of the FBI, James Comey, Senator Adam Schiff, and other targets. President Trump’s former defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, now deputy attorney general, is personally stepping in to, as the New York Times puts it, achieve the goal of “getting results.”The weaponization group, which reports to Attorney General Pam Bondi, was created via a “Day One Memo” to investigate “all departments and agencies exercising civil or criminal enforcement authority of the United States over the last four years” in order to “identify instances where a department’s or agency’s conduct appears to have been designed to achieve political objectives or other improper aims.”The group’s remit was to investigate government officials and elected lawmakers who, conservatives believe, used the law to persecute the Trump family, January 6 protesters, conservative Catholics and evangelical Christians, among other groups, during the four years when President Biden was in the White House. During that time some elected Democratic state prosecutors filed civil and criminal charges against a then-weakened Mr. Trump.So far, though, the weaponization group has not published a single page. Meanwhile, the Justice Department’s prosecutions of New York’s attorney general, Ms. James, as well as Mr. Comey, have been dismissed by federal judges after the lead prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, was disqualified as unlawfully appointed by Ms. Bondi. Those failures have in turn led to pressure on the attorney general to execute the president’s agenda. Now, the leader of the working group, Ed Martin, is out — though he will continue to serve as Pardon Attorney — and CNN reports that the group is “expected to start meeting daily with the goal of producing results in the next two months.” The Times assesses that administration officials came to see Mr. Martin as “ineffective in pursuing cases Mr. Trump has demanded be acted upon immediately.” Attorney General Bondi speaks to the media, Friday, June 27, 2025, at the briefing room of the White House at Washington. AP Photo/Jacquelyn MartinThe decision to remove Mr. Martin came from Ms. Bondi’s primary deputy at the DOJ, Todd Blanche. His power at the DOJ appears to be growing. If anything, Mr. Blanche could determine that the prosecutions of Mr. Comey, Ms. James, and others — like Senator Adam Schiff — could benefit from more direct control by the upper echelons of Main Justice. The Times writes floridly that Mr. Trump’s “thirst to seek revenge against his perceived political enemies remains unslaked after a year in office.”Mr. Blanche represented Mr. Trump in both the hush money case brought by the district attorney of Manhattan, Alvin Bragg, as well as the documents case prosecuted by Special Counsel Jack Smith. He resigned from his partnership at an elite New York City law firm in 2023 after the firm’s management objected to his representing Mr. Trump. The former Democrat purchased a Palm Beach home in 2024 and registered as a Republican. Now his deputies will be tasked with charting a course forward for the cases, first and foremost, of Ms. James and Mr. Comey.Reviving those prosecutions will not be easy. The statute of limitations has expired for the charges against Mr. Comey, who is accused of lying to Congress in 2020. Though precedent appears to suggest that such charges can be revived if a case was dismissed “for any reason,” any attempt to further pursue Mr. Comey will likely be faced with stiff resistance. Two further attempts to indict Ms. James after Ms. Halligan’s dismissal ended in failure when grand juries refused to approve charges. The government has appealed the dismissals of the cases against Mr. Comey and Ms. James to the Fourth United States Appeals Circuit. The DOJ has also appealed, so far unsuccessfully, the disqualification of the United States attorney for New Jersey, Alina Habba to the Third United States Appeals Circuit. The administration could eventually decide on a Supreme Court appeal. That task would fall to Solicitor General John Sauer, a respected high court litigator with a track record of success. Then there is the investigation of Mr. Schiff, who is also accused of lying on his mortgage applications, and who is despised by many conservatives for his starring turn in the first Trump impeachment. Mr. Schiff lives in Maryland’s DC suburbs — or Burbank, California, as he has represented on different forms — and so is in the sights of a different United States attorney. There is also the DOJ investigation of the federal reserve governor, Lisa Cook, a liberal economist who’s accused, like Mr. Schiff and Ms. James, of lying on her mortgage applications. The Supreme Court is currently considering whether to uphold Mr. Trump’ so far unsuccessful bid to fire Ms. Cook for cause, and the investigation is believed to still be open.A refocused DOJ could also pursue a case against Mr. Smith, who claimed during his public testimony last month that Trump administration lawyers “will do everything in their power” to indict him. Mr. Trump has called Mr. Smith “a criminal” who ought to be “put in prison.”

Growing Peril for Letitia James and James Comey as Trump Justice Department Reorganizes Weaponization Group To Get ‘Results’

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