- There’s a pattern of President Donald Trump’s Justice Department investigating key figures who were on the other side of major legal issues against him.
- The latest example is the Justice Department investigating E. Jean Carroll, the former magazine columnist who successfully sued Trump.
- And there could be more — acting Attorney General Todd Blanche hasn’t disputed the premise that people who prosecuted Trump need to be investigated.
AI-generated summary was reviewed by a CNN editor.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has said it’s “absolutely not true” that the Justice Department is assisting President Donald Trump in a retribution campaign against his enemies.
But the evidence suggesting otherwise is getting more incontrovertible.
CNN’s scoop Wednesday that the Justice Department is investigating E. Jean Carroll, the former magazine columnist who successfully sued Trump for sexual abuse and defamation, builds out the unmistakable pattern.
That pattern: Trump’s DOJ has taken investigative steps against key figures who were on the other side of most of Trump’s major legal issues in recent years.
It would be a remarkable coincidence that people involved in each of these matters just happened to be involved in alleged criminal matters that were worth probing in the first 16 months of the second Trump administration. But that’s where we’re at.
In addition, the allegations against these Trump foes have often been shown to be rather thin when scrutinized.
The Carroll investigation involves examining whether she committed perjury as part of her two civil lawsuits against Trump. Her legal team has not yet commented. (Trump has appealed the sexual abuse case judgment to the Supreme Court and has pledged to do the same with the defamation case.) CNN reported that Blanche has been recused from this matter because he worked as one of Trump’s personal attorneys on the Carroll appeals.
Carroll isn’t the first participant in a major civil lawsuit against Trump to subsequently find herself targeted, of course.
New York Attorney General Letitia James was indicted last year over rather thin claims of alleged mortgage fraud after winning a major civil fraud judgment against Trump and his business in 2024. When that indictment was thrown out over prosecutorial problems, the DOJ tried and failed to re-indict James two more times. Then, The New York Times reported in January that DOJ was investigating different allegations involving James.
The pattern extends to criminal investigations involving Trump, too.
Then-FBI Director James Comey and then-CIA Director James Brennan were both key figures in the early stages of the Russia investigation that dogged Trump in the beginning of his first term.
Comey was indicted for alleged perjury last year, before that was thrown out for the same reasons as the James indictment. Then Trump’s DOJ last month secured another indictment against Comey — but for a completely separate issue, a supposed threat against Trump that many legal experts are highly skeptical of.
An investigation of Brennan for allegedly lying to Congress has also been percolating for a long time, with CNN’s Evan Perez and Hannah Rabinowitz reporting this month that prosecutors are still struggling to satisfy the White House’s thirst for criminal charges.
Trump’s government has also probed key figures in indictments against him, though that seems to be a slower process.
Former special counsel Jack Smith, who secured Trump’s two federal indictments, has been the subject of an Office of Special Counsel investigation for allegedly violating the Hatch Act, which limits political activities of government officials. (The two “special counsels” are not the same thing.)
And the Times reported in October that DOJ was scrutinizing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who in 2023 secured an indictment of Trump and his allies for allegedly interfering in the 2020 election.
The Times said it had reviewed a subpoena related to a trip Willis took to the Bahamas. (Her office said the trip was for leadership training and no government funds were used.)
And finally, the administration has also taken investigative steps against key figures in congressional investigations against Trump and impeachments of him.
On his first impeachment, the Washington Post has reported that then-interim US Attorney Ed Martin last year sent letters probing a business led by Democratic Rep. Eugene Vindman of Virginia and his brother, Alexander Vindman, who’s running for US Senate in Florida — both central players in the allegations against Trump and his 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
And Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard last month sent the DOJ a criminal referral seeking a probe of then-intelligence community inspector general Michael Atkinson, who played an important role in sharing a whistleblower complaint that set off the scandal.
The Justice Department has also probed allegations of mortgage fraud against Sen. Adam Schiff of California, who managed the House’s first impeachment of Trump and later chaired the House January 6 committee.
Indeed, at this point it’s difficult to find a legal matter involving Trump where his DOJ hasn’t tried probing principal actors involved.
About the only major one where there are no reports of investigative steps being taken against key figures would seem to be Trump’s 2024 local criminal conviction in Manhattan on 34 counts of falsifying business records.
Of course, Trump has suggested prosecutors involved in the cases against him should be investigated.
And it doesn’t sound like it’s off the table.
During an appearance in March at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Blanche was asked if “justice” was coming to Willis, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and “this cast of characters.”
Blanche didn’t dispute the premise that these people needed to be probed. In fact, he leaned in on the idea.
“Well, yes. I mean, of course, like, look, yes,” Blanche said to applause. “Look, you have these district attorneys across the country – those are by far the best examples … of the pure weaponization by the left of our system of justice.”
Blanche, who was then deputy attorney general, added: “The attorney general and myself, every day, seven days a week, are focused on bringing justice. And it will come.”
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