When Authoritarians Seize the Courts

From the DOJ brain drain to shadow regimes, Trump is following a global and historical playbook. The warning signs are flashing red.

You don’t need to squint to see the pattern anymore. The Department of Justice under Donald Trump isn’t just flailing, it’s decaying. Career prosecutors are fleeing in droves. Entire divisions are hollowed out. Janine Piro, of all people, is now the chief U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, appearing on Fox to beg for applicants like she’s hiring for a used car dealership. Alina Habba, recently removed by federal judges in New Jersey for incompetence, simply refuses to leave her post. She insists on camera that she is not a “hack,” even as her legal filings include typos, errors of law, and constitutional illiteracy that would make a second-year law student blush. This isn’t just about egos or MAGA cosplay. It’s about something far more dangerous: the systematic capture of legal institutions. If this all feels familiar, that’s because it is, eerily so.

Every authoritarian regime worth its jackboots eventually turns its eyes to the courts. In Hitler’s Germany, the judiciary was purged of Jews and political dissenters in the 1930s, replaced with Nazi loyalists who pledged their oaths not to the constitution, but to the Führer himself. In Putin’s Russia, prosecutors exist to silence journalists, bankrupt opposition leaders, and rubber-stamp whatever fabricated charges the Kremlin dreams up. In Erdogan’s Turkey, thousands of judges and prosecutors were fired after the failed coup attempt, clearing the way for a judiciary that treats dissent like treason. In Hungary, Orbán has created parallel courts designed to handle politically sensitive cases, insulating his cronies while jailing critics. In Modi’s India, the Central Bureau of Investigation now functions like an arm of the ruling party, with anti-terror laws deployed not against terrorists, but against student protesters and opposition leaders. We’d like to think we’re immune in the United States, but history begs to differ.

This country is no stranger to using the law as a weapon. The Japanese internment camps of World War II weren’t built in defiance of the legal system, they were built with its blessing, upheld by the Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States. The FBI’s COINTELPRO program systematically surveilled, harassed, and sabotaged civil rights leaders, anti-war activists, and Black liberation groups from the 1950s through the early ‘70s, all in the name of “national security.” The Jim Crow courts of the segregated South didn’t simply fail to protect Black Americans, they actively facilitated racial terror and white supremacy for generations. And let’s not forget that Guantánamo Bay remains open to this day, a legal black hole carved out by executive fiat where due process goes to die. What Trump is doing now is not inventing a new strategy. He’s repurposing an old one, one with a long, bloodstained lineage.

The civil rights division of the DOJ has reportedly lost the majority of its staff. These aren’t political appointees or partisan showboats. These are people who dedicated their legal careers to protecting voting rights, combating discrimination, and enforcing the Constitution and they’re walking away, not because they’re weak, but because they refuse to be complicit. In some cases, attorneys have openly cited the administration’s directives as incompatible with their ethical obligations. Others fear they’ll be forced to sign off on briefs that defy precedent, misrepresent facts, or advocate unconstitutional policies, risking not just their reputations, but their law licenses. And for what? To defend fascist executive orders scrawled out on the back of a McDonald’s receipt?

It is not an isolated exodus. The office charged with defending Trump’s executive actions, the Federal Programs Branch, has seen two-thirds of its attorneys resign or announce their intent to leave. This is a department once described as “the elite of the elite,” drawing graduates from Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Georgetown. A stint in that office used to be a launchpad to federal judgeships or top-tier law firms. Now it’s radioactive. Lawyers are leaving mid-case, mid-career, sometimes mid-paycheck because they don’t want to be part of a machine that spits on the rule of law while demanding absolute loyalty.

Federal judges are starting to notice and begun to question whether the attorneys appearing before them even understand the basic mechanics of litigation, how to file a motion, cite precedent, or introduce evidence. These are systemic failures born of a DOJ staffed by loyalty hires, TV personalities, and Twitter-brained ideologues.

And into that vacuum walk the zealots. Trump loyalists like Paul Ingrassia, a first-year lawyer who has praised Vladimir Putin, trafficked in antisemitic dog whistles, and parroted conspiracy theories about Hamas and Ukraine, now heads the Office of Special Counsel. His first act wasn’t to investigate government corruption or threats to national security. No, it was to launch a retaliatory investigation into Jack Smith, a widely respected career prosecutor known for his nonpartisan record and adherence to facts. It’s revenge by memo, lawfare by loyalty.

Career prosecutors are watching all this unfold and making a choice: resign with your integrity intact, or stay and surrender your ethics for a White House press pass. Many are choosing the door. Because they’ve seen what happened to Jeff Clark, Trump’s DOJ stooge during his first term. He’s now facing disbarment for attempting to overturn the 2020 election, and his legal defense is little more than “but the boss said it was okay.” That argument doesn’t work with bar associations. It doesn’t work with history. And it sure as hell doesn’t work with people who actually believe in the Constitution.

And so the real lawyers are leaving. The ones who know the difference between prosecuting a case and persecuting an enemy. The ones who understand that the Department of Justice isn’t supposed to be the President’s personal law firm. They’re walking out because the door is the only honorable option left.

The Epstein cover-up alone is emblematic of what happens when a corrupted justice system bends to protect power. Maxwell gets immunity. Prosecutors get fired or reassigned. Files get redacted into oblivion. Todd Blanche, formerly Trump’s criminal defense attorney, now holds the number two spot in the Department of Justice, using that perch not to root out sex trafficking conspiracies, but to bury them. If you can’t see how that same system could be used to disappear political enemies, you’re not looking closely enough.

Some might still comfort themselves with the notion that the courts will stop him. But the courts are only as strong as the people in them. And right now, those people are being replaced at alarming speed. The DOJ pipeline, once fed by top-tier law schools and public servants committed to the Constitution, is now clogged with ideologues, opportunists, and pseudo-lawyers who think “F the Justice Manual” is a legal strategy. Many of the brightest legal minds have already left. And unlike prior eras, they’re not just retreating into private practice, they’re running for office, giving speeches, and ringing every alarm bell they can.

And the rest of us need to pay attention. When the law becomes a tool of the regime rather than a shield for the people, democracy doesn’t vanish overnight, it bleeds out slowly. Case by case. Judge by judge. Oath by broken oath.