In a healthier political environment, June 4, 2025, would be recognized as one of the most important days of Donald Trump’s presidency. It was on that day that the Republican incumbent took a step no American president had ever before taken: He directed the Department of Justice to launch a wide-ranging investigation into Joe Biden, based on Republican conspiracy theories about the Democrat’s mental acuity.
This was the first time in the nation’s history that an incumbent American president publicly ordered a federal probe into his predecessor.
There was a degree of irony to the circumstances. After his defeat in the 2020 election, Trump spent years insisting that Biden had ordered an investigation into him — an odd conspiracy theory for which there is literally no evidence. As of last June, however, it was Trump who did exactly what he falsely accused his predecessor of doing.
A day later, the Republican conceded that he had no evidence whatsoever of Biden doing anything wrong. “You know, it’s just one of those things,” Trump said, trying to justify the DOJ directive.
Whatever happened to this presidential directive? Nine months later, we appear to have an answer. The New York Times reported:
The Justice Department, after calls by President Trump to investigate former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., scrutinized whether Mr. Biden and his aides broke the law in using the autopen to sign presidential documents, but was ultimately unable to move forward with making a case, according to three people briefed on the matter.
MS NOW has not independently confirmed the reporting, though NBC News had a nearly identical report, noting that the case against the former president was “shelved.”
For those committed to the rule of law and the integrity of federal law enforcement, the reports may offer a sigh of relief: Trump demanded that prosecutors go after Biden, only to discover that prosecutors couldn’t find anything, causing the baseless crusade to evaporate.
But while the outcome is reassuring, the underlying process reflects one of the great Justice Department scandals of the modern era. Federal prosecutors pursued a criminal case against a former president, not because of evidence of wrongdoing but because the incumbent president, obsessed with retaliating against his perceived political enemies, barked unjust orders at the DOJ.
University of Michigan law professor Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney and an MS NOW legal analyst, described this as “a disgusting abuse of power” — an assessment that is more than fair, given the circumstances.
Making matters worse is the degree to which these abuses have become the new norm since Trump returned to power. It was, after all, just last week when the public learned that Trump’s Justice Department also tried and failed to secure felony indictments against six members of Congress (two Democratic senators and four Democratic House members) because they appeared in a video urging military service members to disregard illegal orders.
The move didn’t turn out well — regular citizens on a grand jury rejected the ridiculous gambit — but the fact that such an effort was made against a group of military and intelligence veterans who’d done nothing wrong was similarly indefensible.
What’s more, the apparent demise of that case didn’t negate the fact that Team Trump is still pursuing cases against a lengthy list of Democrats, including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Sen. Adam Schiff of California, Rep. Eric Swalwell of California, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.
A couple of months ago, the president denied having weaponized the criminal justice system, suggesting instead that he merely directs the Justice Department, which he controls, to prosecute members of his enemies list — preferably quickly — without regard for evidence or legal merits. That he was effectively confessing to weaponizing the DOJ appeared lost on him.
Soon after, Main Justice unfurled a giant banner featuring the president’s face on its facade. The move removed a pretense that no one took seriously anyway. As The Wall Street Journal summarized in November, this is a Justice Department in which the president, not the attorney general, “calls the shots.”
The criminal investigation into Biden is powerful evidence in support of the thesis, though it’s a big piece of a larger puzzle.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
