Part III—The Unethical Criminal President: The Enablers

The DOJ & 3 Attorneys General, A Wimpy, Greedy Press, and a Gutless Congress

When the Wall Street Journal recently reported that Donald Trump was told in May 2025 that his name was in the Epstein files, I shrugged. Who is surprised that Trump’s name is in the Epstein files?

As laid out in Parts I and II of this series, we’ve known for decades that Trump is a serial sex abuser, a fraud, and a criminal. We voted for him anyway. Why? In Part III of our series, we’ll discuss Trump’s most powerful enablers, three justice departments, several attorneys general, the press, broadcast, and online media, and an absolutely gutless United States Congress.

THE DEPARTMENTS OF JUSTICE

In 2016, Donald Trump appointed Jeff Sessions as his attorney general. Sessions was one of the first Republicans to support Trump’s first run for president. When the Russia investigation came along, Sessions recused himself and appointed Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller. Trump never forgave him for it. After the midterm elections went the Democrats way, Sessions resigned, at Trump’s request. A month later, political veteran Bill Barr became attorney general.

To Trump’s dismay, the investigation continued and resulted in guilty pleas or conviction from the president’s campaign chair, national security advisor, and personal attorney. As usual, multiple officials around Trump were convicted, but Trump escaped unscathed. A judge later ruled that Barr’s justice department withheld key portions of a justice department memo, and an appeals court ruled that Barr made "misleading public statements" to spin the investigation's findings in favor of Trump and had shown a "lack of candor."

A year later, Trump was gone, defeated in the 2020 election by Joe Biden. Even a cursory review of Trump’s conduct in office would have revealed a pattern of criminal, unethical and dangerous activity by Trump and most legal observers believed the Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland would investigate. They were sadly mistaken.

From the beginning, Garland, inexplicably, dropped the ball, delayed pursuing referrals, and decided not to pursue or prosecute the Trump-Ukraine bribery case. Worse, he slow-walked the January 6^th petitions. Many congressional referrals resulted in no DOJ action. Critics accused him of waiting for political space rather than leading an investigation into serious charges.

Trump’s history is a mosaic of credible civil, unethical, and criminal behavior, juxtaposed with public revelations that reinforce a pattern of conduct. A president’s office demands far more integrity from its occupant. Levels of proof varied; some of the cases, like Carroll and Daniels, were legally confirmed, others, like January 6^th, Russia, Ukraine, and Epstein, remained somewhat unresolved, begging to be investigated, but the DOJ did not consistently follow through.

Garland’s worst derelictions of duty relate to the investigation into January 6^th. Had a proper and thorough investigation been commenced immediately after Garland took the lob, Trump might be sitting in prison today instead of in the oval office. A PBS report noted that the DOJ under Garland “initially resisted opening an investigation into former President Donald Trump and his associates’ role on January 6 for over a year.” Why? Were millions in property and artifact damage, multiple serious injuries, and four deaths not enough to spur an investigation?

Whether Trump was involved was beside the point. Criminal actions on that day and before, by the president or others, demanded a prompt and thorough investigation. Inexplicably, there was no real DOJ investigation for over a year. And when he finally began to investigate, he commenced bottom-up, targeting only lower-level rioters.

This was a huge mistake. The DOJ could have and should have pursued the rioters, Trump, and other co-conspirators in parallel. Instead, the DOJ spent precious time chasing peripheral actors, not only allowing Trump’s potential exposure to fade, but permitting him to regroup, regain political influence, and successfully run for president again. Had a fast and fair prosecution taken place, Trump’s name would never have appeared on the 2024 ballot.

Garland waited nearly two years to appoint Jack Smith as special counsel on the classified documents and January 6^th cases. Too little, too late—Trump’s very serious financial, sexual, and seditious crimes required immediate action by the DOJ. Did it not occur to Garland, and Joe Biden, for that matter, that Trump might run again? And win? After all, it was running for president and winning that made all of Trump’s criminal problems disappear. Trump’s decision to run was totally predictable, the Trumpian thing to do. By delaying decisive action, the DOJ permitted Trump to operate politically unscathed through key election cycles.

Post Joe Biden, with Trump in office again, another round of pro-Trump, questionably qualified candidates now hold cabinet positions. One of those is Pam Bondi, our current Attorney General. A former attorney general of Florida and legal arm of the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute, she was invited to participate in a lawsuit filed by the attorney general of New York over tax fraud allegations related to Trump University. At the time, Bondi was running for re-election. After the Donald J. Trump Foundation donated $25,000 to her campaign, she declined to get involved. In 2020, she supported Trump’s debunked claims of “large-scale voter fraud” in three states. So much for Pam Bondi’s devotion to the rule of law.

As attorney general, Bondi’s mandates have resulted in the resignations or dismissals of several department lawyers over her questionable ethics and conflicts of interest. She apparently perceives her job as serving the president, not the people, and has consistently acted to prioritize Trump’s political agenda over enforcing the rule of law, adhering to ethical standards and obligations, and taking appropriate action.

One example of this is her dismissal of fraud and bribery charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. The lawyers who resigned claim that she did this as a quid pro quo for Adams to change NYC’s immigration policies. Another was her termination of Erez Reuveni, the former acting deputy director of the DOJ's Office of Immigration Litigation, who admitted that Kilmer Abrego Garcia should never have been removed from the United States.

The most glaring example, though, has been her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case and the so-called sexual offenders “list.” As Florida AG, she accepted Epstein’s pardon and demurred on releasing the lists. As head of Trump’s DOJ, she has slow-walked the investigation, Three weeks ago, the DOJ issued a statement that Epstein died by suicide and that no further records would be released. Most reports conclude that Donald Trump’s name is on the list and that the president was a frequent traveler on Epstein’s private jet. Bondi has publicly stated that she has “a truckload” of Epstein files. And after pledging “no withholdings or limitations, they have yet to be released. She has leveraged Epstein disclosures for political show, not substantive accountability, while concealing the documents.

She has ended DOJ policies protecting reporters, set up a DOJ working group to assert that the January 6 and classified documents cases were politicized, a targeted DOJ critics James Comey and John Brennan. In essence, Pam Bondi has turned the DOJ into a tool for political reprisal, not justice, a place where loyalty supersedes justice.

The Justice Department belongs to the people, not the president, but in the Trump cases, politicians are protected, not prosecuted. Reforms are needed to bolster DOJ independence and prevent political influence in the future. To restore trust, we need structural changes, automatic bipartisan special counsels for presidential investigations, tenure protection for non-political staff and ethics advisors, a restoration of media protections, clear rules on politicization, and stronger oversight. Does anyone see any chance for meaningful reform?

CONGRESS

When Trump first ran for president, many Republicans were outraged. Mitt Romney called him a “phony and a fraud” and said his promises were “as worthless as a degree from Trump University.” Lindsey Graham remarked: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed…and we will deserve it.”

After Trump was elected, Romney voted to convict him once and Graham became one of his closest allies. On January 6^th, Graham famously said, “count me out,” but was “back in” within a week. Fears of being primaried and losing power resulted in a total collapse of Republican moral spine. During subsequent investigations, congressional Republicans frequently crossed the line from oversight to political interference, consistently undermining the rule of law. Jim Jordan, Mike Johnson, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz are prime examples of these spineless Republicans.

Democrats are not blameless. From Joe Biden down to the lowest ranked member, they were late, legalistic, and weak. “Let Mueller finish his work,” some said. “Let Congress investigate.” “Let the voters decide.” Like Merick Garland, they were uniformly unaggressive; even after January 6, with a Democrat in the White House and a Democratic DOJ, they waited too long to act. The wimpy Democrats treated Trump like a slippery defendant when they should have treated him like a national emergency. Former federal judge, J. Michael Luttig, was correct when he said:

“Donald Trump and his allies are a clear and present danger to America democracy.”

Trump didn't become a criminal when he became president. He just took the same playbook from his business empire and applied it to the White House—with the same enablers and the same impunity. Dems knew who and what he was when he first came down the escalator, and the failed to label him as he successfully labeled Hillary Clinton.

Democrats and Republicans in Congress share the blame for Trump. What happens to democracy when the person at the top is never held accountable? Over 70% of Republicans still believe that Trump won the 2020 election, a fiction endorsed by many Congressional Republicans. Most Republicans voted for him in 2024, largely because his party endorsed his candidacy. He ran virtually unopposed and his primary opponent and biggest critic, Nikki Haley, became a supporter. He ran for president with the full support of his party, while under indictment in multiple states—a feat that would once have been unthinkable. Republican cowards and Democratic wimps should be ashamed.

THE MEDIA

The most frequent critique I hear about the media is that our views are shaped by what networks we watch. When I was a young man, news choices were limited to ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS. There was no cable, no Internet, no “apps,” and no streaming services. Money and ratings were far less important to national and political broadcasts than they are today.

The national new media is culpable, giving billions in free political coverage to Donald Trump while downplaying his racism, fraud, and sexual misconduct. Former CBS CEO, Les Moonves said it best:

“Trump may not be good for America, but he’s damn good for CBS.”

Reporters laughed at Trump’s ‘antics.’ Networks broadcast his rallies, uncut, unfiltered, and unchallenged. They normalized his behavior and felt compelled to report both sides: Did Trump lie? Biden says ‘yes,’ but Trump says ‘no.’ Reporting was that stupid.

Even after January 6, networks hired Trump officials as paid contributors. Major newspapers gave Trump soft focus rebrand interviews. Journalistic sources report that major networks profit spectacularly from Trump’s political presence. In 2016, Trump received upwards of $2 Billion in free media coverage during his campaign, more than double Hillary Clinton. At the start of his campaign, he accounted for 25% of the reporting on the three major networks, a remarkable level of exposure with hardly any editorial scrutiny.

Scholars and media critics note how Trump’s media coverage became pure “politainment”—less about investigative journalism, more about spectacle. He regularly drew airtime with outrageous statements, knowing it played well for ratings, Mainstream media treated Trump as a cash cow—and by doing so, failed to responsibly assess his unfitness for office. They normalized Trump’s outrageous behavior, hesitated to identify threats to democracy, and monetized the chaos instead of challenging it. And things have changed much circa 2025.

Conservative media was even worse. Fox News knew Trump lost the election and privately mocked him. But news hosts still aired election lies to pump up ratings. Tucker Calrson once texted:

“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I hate him passionately.”

On air, as we all know, Carlson was staunchly supportive.

Sean Hannity sent dozens of text messages expressing concerns about Donald Trump’s plans for January 6. He apparently had detailed knowledge about Trump’s intentions and reported nothing to the public. While Hannity publicly condemned the actions of rioters and called for their arrest and prosecution, he never criticized Trump’s incitement and support of the rioters. According to Jan 6 Committee member Adam Schiff, Hannity was less of a news host and more of a confidant, adviser, and campaigner for Trump.

The bottom line? Conservative media used to claim they were the conscience of the movement. Then Trump came along, and they sold their conscience to the highest bidder.

The DOJ, Congress, and the media are culpable, each for its own reasons, in enabling Donald Trump’s rise to power and the systematic destruction of democratic norms. They are not alone. The cultural class, religious leaders, corporate leaders, and the everyday voting public are equally complicit for allowing whatever their private or personal issue to interfere with doing what was right for our country and our democracy. We’ll discuss the culprits in Part IV of The Unethical Criminal President.