Firings, pardons and policy changes have gutted DOJ anti-corruption efforts, experts say

President Trump's changes to the Justice Department have fostered what critics say is the ripest environment for corruption by public officials and executives in a generation
For decades, the FBI and the Justice Department have been the main enforcers of laws against political corruption and white-collar fraud in the United States. In four months, the Trump administration has dismantled key parts of that law enforcement infrastructure, creating what experts say is the ripest environment for corruption by public officials and business executives in a generation.
Trump aides have forced out most of the lawyers in the Justice Department’s main anti-corruption unit, the Public Integrity Section, and disbanded an FBI squad tasked with investigating congressional misconduct. They have issued a series of directives requiring federal law enforcement agencies to prioritize immigration enforcement. And they have ended a 50-year policy of keeping the Justice Department independent of the White House in criminal investigations.
All of that came after Trump fired most of the inspectors general — the independent agency watchdogs responsible for fighting corruption and waste — and the Justice Department dropped a corruption case against the mayor of New York in what a judge said was a “breathtaking” political bargain. And it came after the Trump administration Justice Department pulled back on enforcement of foreign bribery and lobbying statutes, as well as cryptocurrency investigations.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has issued a steady stream of pardons to all but one Republican member of Congress convicted of felonies over the last 15 years.
“He’s dismantling not just the means of prosecuting public corruption, but he’s also dismantling all the means of oversight of public corruption,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a George Washington University law professor who was a senior homeland security official in the George W. Bush administration. “The law is only for his enemies now.”
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