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The department’s current No. 2 official, Emil Bove, escalated his growing conflict with the interim leadership of the F.B.I.
- Feb. 5, 2025Updated 5:00 p.m. ET
The new leadership of the Justice Department moved swiftly on multiple fronts Wednesday to assert control over the F.B.I. and marshal the power of federal law enforcement to investigate those who investigated President Trump.
Pam Bondi, who was sworn in as attorney general in an Oval Office ceremony, signed a memo creating a working group to review the “weaponization” of the criminal justice system by officials who brought criminal charges or civil suits against Mr. Trump. It was one of 14 directives that shuttered department task forces, restored the federal death penalty and, above all else, mandated obedience to Mr. Trump’s agenda.
Ms. Bondi, the former attorney general of Florida, arrived at a moment of profound and disruptive conflict between the department and its historically independent and powerful investigative arm, the F.B.I.
Hours before she was sworn in, the department’s current No. 2 official, Emil Bove, escalated his growing conflict with the interim leadership of the F.B.I. — accusing the acting F.B.I. director and his top aide of “insubordination” after they resisted his efforts to identify agents who investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.
Ms. Bondi’s first day on the job appeared to have been modeled on Mr. Trump’s, an intense blizzard of policy pronouncements intended to reverse Biden-era policies in a single swoop — coupled with accusations about the weaponization of the department under Democratic control.
The attorney general, who had promised at her confirmation hearing last month that “politics will not play a part” in her investigative decisions, said she planned to scrutinize the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, the former special counsel Jack Smith and the New York attorney general, Letitia James.
