Today, the ever insightful Michelle Goldberg writes, in the New York Times, There’s No Escaping the Rot in This Justice Department. She observes,
In the face of Trump’s attempts to turn the Department of Justice into his legal praetorian guard, many career employees seem to think they can keep their heads down and wait out their new masters. “We are the mole people now,” one department employee told the New York Times reporter Devlin Barrett in his forthcoming book, “The Department of Revenge: How Trump Took Control of American Justice.” But at a certain point, it may be impossible to serve both the cause of justice and an unjust government. …
The White House’s demands for political prosecutions “are putting career prosecutors into very, very difficult situations,” Barrett told me, forcing people to constantly ask where their red line is. Some in the Justice Department, he said, make a “Lord of the Rings” analogy. “Most of the people there can still do their jobs well and do good, meaningful work in law enforcement until the Eye of Sauron turns to you,” he said, meaning you get pulled into one of Trump’s vendettas. The problem is that even before that happens, you’re still working for the orcs.
Facing MAGA 