A convicted felon now in charge of the country, Trump is moving quickly to end law enforcement as we know it

Letter sent to federal law enforcement officials who worked on the criminal cases against convicted felon and now U.S. President Donald Trump. The two federal cases against him were for his attempts to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election and for hoarding classified and top secret government documents and refusing to return them to the federal government. The letter notifies federal law enforcement employees they are being fired because their investigations did not please Trump.

The following analysis of Trump’s ongoing mass purge of federal law enforcement officials was taken from Rachel Maddow’s show 1/31/25 show, starting at 17:12 into the show (video). I transcribed her presentation and then lightly edited the text to make it clearer as a written, rather than a spoken piece. I also included links to further information. I chose to highlight Maddow’s presentation because it is perhaps the fullest, clearest and most concise explanation of the current state of affairs ongoing on under Trump that has been broadcast so far. (Note: Italicized, bolded and capitalized emphasis are mine.):

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Trump is punishing law enforcement officials at the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) who pursued violent January 6 criminals to gain revenge on law enforcement personnel who participated in a previous investigation that is now over. The point of Trump’s actions is to permanently, irrevocably change law enforcement in the United States so FBI and prosecutors will no longer pursue criminal investigations and cases against suspects if the suspected criminals are associated with Trump and his supporters.

Trump is trying to get rid of American law enforcement as we know it.

They are trying to get rid of the very idea of an independent “justice-is-blind” system that makes America who we are. It is hard to see how this can be corrected or undone.

This is a really serious thing.

Rachel Maddow in 2018 (Photo: Wikipedia) Maddow, a  political commentator, graduated from Stanford University with a degree in public policy, was a Rhodes Scholar and earned a Ph.D. in Politics from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.

Trump and his loyalists have already fired the prosecutors who worked on the special counsel’s investigation that brought charges against Trump for hoarding and mishandling classified documents, and for illegally trying to overthrow the results of the 2020 election. They [Trump loyalists] already fired the prosecutors involved in those investigations. Now they are attempting a mass purge of all of the prosecutors who worked on all the other January 6 cases, the cases of the people who attacked the Capitol on Trump’s behalf. Approximately 30 prosecutors who worked on the January 6 rioter cases have all been fired. But beyond this, they are now also carrying out a mass purge of the FBI. At least a half dozen senior leaders of the FBI have already been told to resign or be fired on Monday.

Beyond this, Trump loyalists are also trying to remove normal FBI line agents — potentially hundreds, or even thousands of them. In an instruction that appears to have originated at the White House, Trump’s handpicked acting officials at the Justice Department directed FBI headquarters to hand over internal files from the Jack Smith cases. They were told to hand over the files so they can make a list of all FBI line agents and supervisors who were involved in those cases in any way, so personnel action can be taken against them, and they can consider firing them. Agents were told to prepare for the White House to publicly release the names of all the agents who worked on Trump’s two criminal cases on Monday, and that those agents would be terminated the same day. So rather than just firing them, they are planning to just tell Trump supporters, including those who were just let out of prison by Donald Trump, “Hey, here are the name of FBI agents who were part of all the January 6 investigations, but don’t worry because they are no longer agents. We’re firing them today so go ahead and have at ’em.”

A memo sent by the acting director of the FBI to all FBI personnel indicates that they are planning a massive purge beyond this — a purge not just of the agents who participated in the two Jack Smith cases, but of all the FBI agents who participated in any aspect of the January 6 rioter prosecutions cases, which was the largest criminal investigation ever in FBI history. If they’re going to try to purge all FBI personnel who took any part in these cases, this means they will be purging most of the FBI. They’ve demanded a list of every FBI agent in the entire country who worked on any aspect of the FBI’s January 6 cases in any way at all. They say the reason is to review it for potential personnel action against all those agents. That means they are targeting hundreds of FBI agents all across the U.S.

To be clear on what this means, this is not an “if” situation.

On his first day in office, Trump, himself a convicted felon who was also found liable for sexual abuse, pardoned over 1,500 violent criminals, even those convicted of violently assaulting police officers during the riot of his supporters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. While many of the people he released had no prior criminal convictions, dozens of them do have prior convictions or pending charges for crimes including rape, sexual abuse of a minor, domestic violence, manslaughter, production of child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking, according to an investigation by National Public Radio.

We’ve already seen it in the firings they’ve already made. If career law enforcement officials and agents are having their careers threatened and are being fired because they took part in lawfully-predicated criminal investigations, in which grand juries handed down indictments, in which judges signed search warrants and juries returned convictions, if they nevertheless are fired for taking part in those lawful, proper, criminal law enforcement actions because the president now in power doesn’t like those cases, that is not Nixon, or a president who is trying to stop investigations of himself. That is END of independent law enforcement as a core value of who we are as a country. That’s an END to the idea of law enforcement that pursues justice without regard to favors and preferences dictated by the people who are in power.

Here’s how the New York Times put it: “If the administration follows through, it would be a singular moment in the FBI’s history, and fly in the face of decades worth of civil service laws that are meant to protect the integrity and professionalism of the government workforce.”

If you lose all those things, if you lose the independence and professionalism of law enforcement, that means Trump is rewiring the FBI and federal prosecutors so they will now only carry out arrests, searches, investigations and prosecutions that please the president, regardless of who it is committing the crimes. These firings, which are now under way, are changing one of the fundamental things that makes us the kind of country that we are. This is very bad.

Rep. Jamie Raskin said, “If allowed to proceed, Trump’s purge of our federal law enforcement workforce will expose America to authoritarianism and dictatorship.”

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Rep. Jamie Raskin, U.S. Congressman from Maryland and ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability

Here is an excerpt of House Rep. Jamie Raskin’s public statement on Trump’s ongoing purge of federal law enforcement agencies:

“Trump’s moves have already left the Justice Department and the FBI rudderless and adrift by ousting their career senior ranks. Now, these unprecedented purges of hundreds of prosecutors, staff and experienced law enforcement agents will undermine the government’s power to protect our country against national security, cyber, and criminal threats.

The loyal friend of autocrats, kleptocrats, oligarchs and broligarchs, Trump doesn’t care about the requirements of democracy, national security and public safety. His agenda is vengeance and retribution. If allowed to proceed, Trump’s purge of our federal law enforcement workforce will expose America to authoritarianism and dictatorship.”

  4 comments for “A convicted felon now in charge of the country, Trump is moving quickly to end law enforcement as we know it

  1. I am under the impression that hundreds of people were hired specifically to investigate the J6 insurrection, seditious conspiracy, attempted overthrow of the American Republic and parading.

    Or do you think they had a bunch of agents sitting around, pushing their pencils who reluctantly got off their asses to investigate 1600 cases and break down doors…not to mention submitting the invoices for all those handcuffs?
    And if those agents were already there, they need to go find more meaningful employment.

    • Right. We wouldn’t want anyone investigating insurrection, seditious conspiracy, overthrowing the republic and parading. Unless they’re investigating Democrats, right?

  2. I guess the geniuses, Rachel Maddow and Jamie Raskin and Anne Landman don’t realize that now that “the biggest investigation in DOJ history” is over, people’s jobs are going to be redundant…unless you want to unnecessarily bloat the size of the government workforce.

    • Are you under the impression that hundreds of agents were hired for the specific purpose of investigating Trump? This is simply crippling the FBI’s ability to do their job, which of course, as a criminal Trump is all in favor of.

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