US attorney general Todd Blanche on Sunday declined to assure that the federal justice department he helms would always act independently of the White House and Donald Trump.
“No, I’m not going to pledge that,” he said when asked about the topic by NBC’s Meet the Press host, Kristen Welker. “And no attorney general should ever pledge that.”
Blanche also claimed Trump would never ask him to do something that crosses an ethical or legal line – after the president dismissed his predecessor, Pam Bondi, having become frustrated over insufficient action from the justice department against Trump’s political foes.
The DOJ is not an independent branch though. It’s part of the executive branch. At this point I think law enforcement probably should be an entirely separate 4th branch, or made part of the judicial branch, but that’s not how the Constitution is written.
To me this is one of the biggest flaws of the constitution. It gives the president too much power. There was never anything but decorum and precedent making the DOJ independent of the president, and even then it was incredibly weak since all the most powerful people in the DOJ are appointed by the president, and can be fired by the president arbitrarily.
Structurally, no. In spirit it is. That’s why 75% of the DOJ left over 2025, because they do not want to deal with the eventual fallout of how Trump is managing this DOJ. It’s not a case they are confident they will get out of cleanly (with their license to practice law).
Yes, the constitution was kept small on purpose and a lot was left to the honor system. Under the logic that a truly tyrannous leadership could tear it down no matter how many loopholes it tries to close. Was that the right call? I can’t really say.