Despite Trump’s Pressure on Justice Dept., Certain Safeguards Are Beyond His Reach

In the past few days, President Trump has bulldozed the already faltering tradition of Justice Department independence from the White House.

First, he ousted a U.S. attorney who failed to file charges against his political enemies. Then he followed up that extraordinary move with two others, demanding — in public — that his attorney general go after his adversaries and replacing the career prosecutor who did not meet his demands with an inexperienced loyalist.

But while the president has openly pressured the Justice Department into charging those he sees as his foes, the criminal justice system he is seeking to control has a few guardrails that lie beyond his reach and could ultimately stop or delay him.

Mr. Trump might want to snap his fingers and see opponents like Letitia James, the New York State attorney general, and James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, quickly charged, convicted and put behind bars, but that is not the way the system works.

“Federal criminal prosecutions require ‘robust procedural safeguards,’” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote last summer in her stinging dissent to a Supreme Court ruling granting Mr. Trump broad immunity from criminal charges.

“Bare allegations of malice would not make it out of the starting gate,” Justice Sotomayor went on. “Although a private civil action may be brought based on little more than ‘intense feelings,’ a federal criminal prosecution is made of firmer stuff.”