The independence of the Department of Justice has long been a hallmark of American democracy. In contrast to despotic and dictatorial regimes around the world, the U.S. insulates from political influence prosecutors who possess the immense power to arrest, charge and potentially imprison.
We know of what we speak: One of us was suspended as a state attorney in Florida by Gov. Ron DeSantis; the other was dismissed as a U.S. attorney by the George W. Bush administration. Many have described our removals as blatantly political acts.
Thursday’s indictment of John Bolton, following the charges brought against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, highlights the danger of destroying that longstanding guardrail. Situated within a pattern of political prosecution, this latest act fundamentally blurs the line between criminality and constitutionally protected political dissent.
Trump has blatantly and publicly seized control of the Justice Department for his political and personal agendas.
Bolton is an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump who previously served as his national security adviser. They have been entangled in a feud since Bolton left the first Trump administration in 2019. One of us previously explained how the execution of a search warrant of Bolton’s home on Aug. 22 should be a wake-up call for every American: using law enforcement to target political opposition was a new front for authoritarianism.
The president, however, has faced no legal repercussions for his politicization of the justice system, which has emboldened him further. Last month, he ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute three of his political enemies: Comey, James, and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. Erik Siebert, a career prosecutor whom Trump nominated as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, resigned after pressure from the White House to bring charges against James and Comey. (The president claimed he fired Siebert.) Trump installed Lindsey Halligan — one of his former personal attorneys, who had no prosecutorial experience — to make sure the charges were brought.
Bolton’s indictment is not the same prosecutorial theater as the indictments against Comey and James. Halligan personally presented and signed the latter two indictments, which is highly unusual for the U.S. Attorney to do without other prosecutors. Both charging documents are also extremely light on facts: Comey’s contains nothing other than the statutory language, and James’s has only slightly more information.
By contrast, Bolton’s prosecution is being handled by the acting U.S. Attorney in Maryland, Kelly Hayes, who spent 12 years rising through that office’s ranks. Unlike Halligan, Hayes was joined on the indictment by prosecutors from DOJ’s National Security Division. The 18-count indictment charges Bolton with improperly transmitting and retaining classified information, and it includes the detailed factual allegations typical of a federal charging document. Bolton allegedly shared more than a thousand pages of information about his daily activities as the national security advisor with two members of his family between April 2018 and August 2025. “Diary-like entries” sent during this period form the basis for eight counts. The remaining ten counts allege that Bolton kept classified information, including printed versions of the diary entries, in his Maryland home, that were recovered during the August 22 search.
In all three cases, the full picture of what happened (or did not) will emerge as the prosecutions proceed. Like all defendants, Comey, James and Bolton are presumed innocent until proven guilty. But the Bolton indictment, at this initial stage, appears to be more substantive and more likely to succeed than the other two.
We are adrift on uncharted waters wisely avoided by previous presidents.
Unfortunately, whether Bolton actually mishandled classified information may be beside the point. Despite the stark differences between the Bolton prosecution and those against Comey and James, the political context for this prosecution taints the case. With the painfully obvious retaliations against Comey and James, Trump has blatantly and publicly seized control of the Justice Department for his political and personal agendas. Those high-profile political prosecutions, along with Bolton’s, are entirely in line with the broader activity of this Justice Department, which appears to base its activity on satisfying vengeance, not justice.
Earlier this month, for example, a federal judge in Nashville found a “realistic likelihood” that the Justice Department charge against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who made national news after he was wrongly deported to El Salvador and then returned to the U.S., constituted a “vindictive” prosecution. U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw found that the evidence suggested that senior officials from DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security induced the local federal prosecutor to charge Abrego not due to the virtues of their case against him, but in retribution for his successful lawsuit challenging his wrongful deportation.
Trump’s politicization of the Justice Department makes it hard to distinguish between fiction and reality — between justifiable prosecutions and political hit jobs. Had Trump not repeatedly conflated political dissent with criminality, urged the prosecution of his foes, or put his finger on the scales of justice in other cases, then we would have more confidence that Bolton — or any other defendant with whom the president has an axe to grind — was not being unfairly targeted or baselessly prosecuted.
We are adrift on uncharted waters wisely avoided by previous presidents. The inability to distinguish criminal prosecutions from political persecutions is a death knell for democracy. The latter erode trust in the system and make it harder to convict criminals who threaten public safety and achieve justice for victims. It confers immunity for people with financial, political and familial ties to the president – and those who supported him by storming the Capitol. Conversely, the powerful can target whomever they want, for whatever reason they decide. In such societies, the law becomes a dead letter, deserving nothing but contempt from the public it was meant to serve.
Congress can take steps to restore prosecutorial norms, such as by codifying DOJ’s independence or strengthening oversight. Yet in the short term, those fixes are scarcely relevant while this president remains in office. We are heartened by the brave men and women of DOJ who have refused to yield to tyranny — some at the cost of their jobs — but the ultimate solution lies with the public. Americans must demand that prosecutors remain independent from presidential power mongering. Only then can we preserve the integrity of our justice system, bolster confidence in the fair administration of justice, and restore the rule of law to our republic. Otherwise, we will have surrendered to the corruption of justice for political ends — and risk a descent into the abyss of failed democracies.
