There was never any chance Donald Trump would self-correct his unrestrained, gleeful political abuse of the Justice Department. And despite initial hopes that Todd Blanche – once a thoroughly decent and respected prosecutor in the Southern District of New York – might restore some ballast, the Acting Attorney General has only made it worse as he panders to the boss in an effort to win the permanent job.
But sometimes our system is capable of imposing meaningful, if imperfect, restraints. And in the wake of a series of jaw-dropping acts of corruption by the Justice Department, we’ve seen resistance from two key governmental institutions: the courts and, more unexpectedly, Congressional Republicans.
It’s less surprising that the judiciary, writ large, has stood as a bulwark against DOJ’s barrage of overtly political prosecutions. On Friday, federal district court Judge Waverly Crenshaw in Tennessee dismissed the indictment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Garcia, you’ll recall, was improperly deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration last year, which triggered a heated legal and political dispute over immigration and Due Process. The Supreme Court eventually ordered the government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States to enable him to properly contest his removal proceedings. The Trump administration dragged its feet and adopted a myopic interpretation of “facilitate” until it stumbled on a nifty solution: We’ll bring him back alright – in handcuffs, under indictment.
The criminal case against Garcia was an obvious pretext – an overhyped, incoherent mess borne of a desire for payback. As I wrote in this space in June 2025, “because the administration got caught in a screwup, and then chose to flip off the Supreme Court rather than to faithfully comply with its directive, they created a political mess. The indictment became the easy way to mop it up.” Judge Waverly, in dismissing the case, saw it the same way: “The objective evidence here shows that, absent Abrego’s successful lawsuit challenging his removal to El Salvador, the Government would not have brought this prosecution… The evidence before this Court sadly reflects an abuse of prosecuting power.”
The Abrego Garcia case joins an expanding roster of Justice Department retribution efforts that have been stymied by the federal courts. In November 2025, a judge threw out the indictments of New York Attorney General Letitia James (for alleged mortgage fraud) and former FBI Director James Comey (on some convoluted theory of perjury). When DOJ tried to re-indict James, two separate grand juries rejected the government’s proposed charges. And Blanche’s new indictment of Comey – for allegedly threatening the President’s life with a social media posting of seashells spelling out “86 47” – is laughably flawed and obviously doomed. It won’t even make it to a jury.
The list goes on. A grand jury rejected the Justice Department’s effort to indict Senator Mark Kelly and other congressional Democrats for posting an internet video reminding soldiers that they can disobey illegal orders. A judge rejected D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s strongarm subpoena to the Federal Reserve, and DOJ eventually folded its futile effort to indict former Fed Chair Jerome Powell on nonexistent crimes. A trial jury rejected laughable misdemeanor charges against a man who hurled a salami sandwich at a Customs and Border Patrol officer, and a succession of grand juries rejected proposed charges against even less menacing behavior by other protesters.
It’s unlikely Blanche and his Justice Department will ever get the message. The Acting AG seems more focused on the sugar high of the announcement of an indictment than the crash when it gets thrown out. We should expect the onslaught to continue as Blanche makes his case for nomination by placing cheap, shiny totems on the President’s desk. The courts can’t control who gets investigated or charged; all the Judicial Branch can do is reject those bogus cases when they arrive. And thus far, federal judges, grand juries, and trial juries have done just that.
The shocker is that, suddenly, Congressional Republicans have taken a stand against the madness that has infected the Justice Department (one strain of it, at least). Democrats – and virtually every other human with a brain and a pulse – were immediately outraged last week when DOJ unveiled a $1.776 billion (Get it? 1776??) “Anti-Weaponization” fund which would serve as a cash trough for January 6th rioters – including those who were convicted of seditious conspiracy and assaulted police officers – among others. Don’t fret, though. As Blanche confidently reassured CNN’s Paula Reid, “Just to be clear, people who hurt police get money all the time, okay?” (Okay. Name one.)
But outrage from the minority party in Congress mostly generates rhetoric and headlines. It takes the party in power to actually do something. And late last week, initial tremors from Congressional Republicans swelled into a full-blown earthquake. Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune tiptoed cautiously at first towards dissent, noting that he was “not a big fan” of the fund and that “our members have very legitimate questions” about it. One of those members, Senator Thom Tillis, phrased it better: “I think it’s stupid on stilts.”
The situation devolved quickly for Blanche. The New York Times reported that the Acting AG’s frantic effort to reassure Senate Republicans — who might someday vote on his confirmation — went quite poorly. The meeting turned into “a two-hour blowup in which dozens of Republican senators vented their anger and concern about the president’s fund at Mr. Blanche. They questioned its legal basis, whom it would pay and how the process would work. And they made it clear they wanted no part of the plan, the product of a deal struck between Mr. Trump’s lawyers and his own administration.” Senator Ted Cruz confirmed that Republican lawmakers were “screaming” at Blanche and that the Trump administration’s slush fund could provoke “a full-on revolt in the Senate.”
Now Blanche finds himself in a tricky spot. He can’t stand behind the slush fund and still realistically hope to be confirmed by the Senate as Attorney General, should he be nominated. Republicans hold a 53-47 edge, but already at least four Republican Senators are on record against the fund in its current iteration. So Blanche will either have to stick with the scheme and sacrifice his own shot at the top job – unlikely, given that he’s already shown he’ll do whatever it takes to advance – or he’ll have to back off. Whether that means modifying the plan or abandoning it altogether, it’s increasingly unlikely the slush fund ultimately will become reality as presently constituted.
Nobody outside the Justice Department can entirely prevent it from abusing its vast discretion, and real people will continue to bear real costs from Trump and Blanche’s abuse of power. But the courts have done admirable work to reject the Justice Department’s worst prosecutorial excesses. And now Blanche has pushed so far that even his own party’s Congressional leaders have drawn a line. The safeguards in our system aren’t perfect, and they’re often maddeningly difficult to activate. But we’re seeing that, when a President and a Justice Department go too far, the courts and Congress are capable of fighting back.
