Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, said on Tuesday he was withdrawing a proposal to create a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people claiming to be victims of unfair prosecution, amid a revolt among Republicans who saw it as an ethical and political disaster. “We’re not moving forward with the fund, period,” Mr. Blanche told…
Jack Smith, the special counsel who twice indicted President Trump, accused the Justice Department of having been “corrupted” by Trump loyalists he claimed were demolishing its credibility and seeking to undermine the rule of law. Mr. Smith’s remarks, made last month in a private discussion at the Cosmos Club in Washington, represented his sharpest criticism…
To the Editor: Re “Comey Targeted for Second Time With Indictment” (front page, April 29): The Trump Justice Department’s securing of an indictment of James Comey, the former F.B.I. director, over an Instagram post of seashells on a seashore is as ludicrous as it is bone-chillingly dangerous. Anyone who’s worked in an American restaurant or…
President Trump has made no secret of his desire for total control over the historically independent Justice Department, publicly directing prosecutions and declaring that government lawyers must follow his interpretation of the law. It is a norm-busting approach that has resulted in criminal investigations into several of his perceived political enemies. But his extraordinary influence…
The gunman who sprinted through a security checkpoint on Saturday night at the Washington Hilton believed that the Secret Service was poorly prepared to guard top administration officials against him, according to writing he left behind. Agents, in turn, stopped him in a matter of seconds. The episode raised fresh questions about whether the Secret…
A man armed with knives, a shotgun and a handgun was barreling through security at a full sprint, heading toward the ballroom at the Washington Hilton. At that moment on Saturday night, President Trump and many of America’s top government officials and journalists were one floor down, crammed into the ballroom for a black-tie dinner….
The Trump administration said on Friday that it would allow firing squads and readopt lethal injection as part of a broader push to revive the death penalty. The moves come after President Trump signed an executive order on his first day back in the White House to renew capital punishment in the federal prison system….
Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, is doing what he can, as quickly as he can, to shed the “acting” label. Mr. Blanche, who ran the day-to-day operations of the Justice Department as the top deputy to his predecessor, Pam Bondi, before her unceremonious ouster this month, has long been a target of pro-Trump influencers…
