From the moment President Trump was re-elected, he has muscled his way into the driver\u2019s seat at the Justice Department, leaving tread marks on its time-honored independence from the White House by demanding, and sometimes directing, investigations into his enemies.<\/p>\n
But his tight grip on the steering wheel has often threatened to lead the department off a cliff.<\/p>\n
Last week offered a particularly vivid portrait of the consequences of Mr. Trump\u2019s meddling, which, in the span of only a few days, imperiled one criminal case, set the stage for sanctions in a second and gummed up the chances that his pick for attorney general will be confirmed by the Senate.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump has long believed that he is his own best adviser and that, as the leader of the executive branch, he enjoys complete control over the agencies beneath him. But there is a reason the department in charge of federal law enforcement has traditionally stood outside of the president\u2019s personal purview, said Norman L. Eisen, a lawyer involved in some of the recent cases who, earlier in his career, worked on the Obama administration\u2019s \u201cno contact\u201d policy with the Justice Department.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen presidents meddle in the department,\u201d Mr. Eisen said, \u201cit tends to disrupt its normal functioning.\u201d<\/p>\n
The problems last week began on Wednesday, when lawyers for James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, filed court papers<\/a> revealing that Secret Service agents who questioned their client about a photograph he posted showing seashells on a beach arranged to read \u201c86 47\u201d were ordered to quickly send a summary of the interview to Mr. Trump on Air Force One. The interview was \u201ca hot topic on the plane,\u201d and the president was \u201cvery interested,\u201d the filing said. In fact, it added, Mr. Trump wanted to use the agents\u2019 notes as fodder at a coming media appearance even though they presumably contained sensitive and unverified investigative information.<\/p>\n The request for the notes was a shocking breach of the distance that most presidents have kept from the day-to-day oversight of criminal investigations and indicated the intensity of Mr. Trump\u2019s personal involvement in the pursuit of Mr. Comey, one of his most reviled political adversaries.<\/p>\n But his insistence on interfering with the case could come back to haunt him. After all, Mr. Comey\u2019s lawyers pointed to the episode as evidence that the Justice Department had indicted him \u2014 on charges of making threats against the president \u2014 only as an act of retribution. If that claim is proven true, it would result in the case being dismissed.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump\u2019s intrusive instincts also played a role last week in the demise of another criminal case, one that accused the former Olympic canoeist David Hearn<\/a> with vandalizing one of the president\u2019s pet projects, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.<\/p>\n When Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in Washington, announced the indictment of Mr. Hearn last month, she made it clear that the charges had been brought, at least in part, because Mr. Trump wanted them.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not only a priority for the president,\u201d she told reporters, \u201cbut for myself.\u201d<\/p>\n On Friday night, however, the case fell apart in a spectacular fashion<\/a>. Ms. Pirro, in a court filing, suddenly acknowledged that new information from Mr. Trump\u2019s Interior Department had made her realize that shoddy construction, not anything that Mr. Hearn had done, caused the problems with the pool\u2019s lining.<\/p>\n But even that confession did not stop Mr. Trump from doubling down<\/a> on the vandalism narrative. On Saturday morning, he posted a message on social media saying that he disagreed entirely with Ms. Pirro, a veteran prosecutor and a friend of his for more than 40 years.<\/p>\n Updated\u00a0<\/p>\n Aug. 3, 2026, 6:46 p.m. ET<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know what she was thinking?\u201d Mr. Trump wrote.<\/p>\n While Mr. Hearn’s lawyers have not disclosed what they might do next, the case\u2019s collapse gives them an opening to argue that the president\u2019s stubborn statements about the matter suggest the prosecution was vexatious, frivolous or brought in bad faith.<\/p>\n Should a move like that succeed, it would add to the roster of Ms. Pirro\u2019s failures to go after Mr. Trump\u2019s enemies \u2014 a list that already includes six Democratic lawmakers accused of sedition<\/a> by the president after they posted a video reminding military personnel of their obligations to ignore illegal orders. It would also allow Mr. Hearn to recoup legal fees for the cast of lawyers he hired to defend himself.<\/p>\n The president also intervened on another important bit of business at the Justice Department: the effort to confirm Todd Blanche, Mr. Trump\u2019s former personal lawyer, as attorney general.<\/p>\n As the week came to an end, Mr. Blanche seemed well on his way to removing the main hurdle to his appointment, calming the concerns expressed by two Republican senators \u2014 John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina. The lawmakers have repeatedly voiced unhappiness with the $1.8 billion compensation fund and the extraordinary personal tax protections that emerged this spring<\/a> from Mr. Trump\u2019s deal to drop his lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service.<\/p>\n But as the weekend neared, the president seemed to throw Mr. Blanche under the bus that he himself was driving, issuing a series of confusing and contradictory messages.<\/p>\n On Friday, he appeared to step back<\/a> from his earlier threat to withdraw Mr. Blanche\u2019s nomination and repeated his support for creating the fund, which Mr. Blanche had already said was dead. On Saturday, Mr. Trump again asserted that he would revive the fund<\/a>, which could be used to compensate rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, if the Senate did not confirm Mr. Blanche.<\/p>\n Mr. Tillis, for one, seemed baffled and dispirited by Mr. Trump\u2019s chaotic interference in the confirmation process, holding out hope that the president\u2019s back-and-forth approach would end before the Senate went on summer recess early this week.<\/p>\n