Feb. 18, 2026, 4:03 a.m. ET
- The Trump administration’s Department of Justice has failed to secure indictments against several of President Trump’s political opponents.
- Recent failures include an attempt to prosecute six members of Congress and two failed attempts to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James.
- These unsuccessful prosecutions are seen by some as eroding the credibility and prestige of the Department of Justice.
The Trump administration is struggling in court, failing to secure indictments and convictions against a growing list of the president’s enemies. Most recently, against six members of Congress for making a video telling members of the military they do not have to follow illegal orders.
It is embarrassing for our Department of Justice to sink resources into such obviously frivolous cases, and this only further contributes to the general sense that President Donald Trump‘s administration has the wrong priorities.
But that’s not the worst of it. Trump’s DOJ’s lackluster record when it comes to securing indictments and convictions is eroding the prestige of the Justice Department as a core American institution and only deepening the toxic cycle of lawfare in this country.
Trump’s DOJ is making a mockery of itself
I think a lot of Americans glossed over the fact that Trump’s DOJ attempted to prosecute six sitting members of Congress for a video that, on its face, contained true statements – even if I did take issue with some of the messaging.
Grand jury indictments are relatively easy to obtain, and the DOJ secures them at an extremely high rate. In 2016, out of 155,000 cases, federal prosecutors only failed to secure an indictment in six of them. Some prosecutors apparently go their entire careers without failing to secure an indictment like this.
Thus far in Trump’s second term, his DOJ has failed to secure dozens of indictments. In addition to the six members of Congress, the DOJ has failed to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James twice (with a third successful indictment being tossed for an improper appointment), failed to indict a man who threw a sandwich at a federal officer on felony charges before then failing to even convict him on the accompanying misdemeanor case, as well as many more cases against protesters against Trump’s operations around the country.
Even many of the revenge cases that are getting through are having difficulty securing convictions. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has vowed that those charged with assaulting federal officers in Trump’s immigration and national guard surges would suffer “severe consequences,” but her department has dropped the felony charges in many of these cases and failed to even convict many more of even misdemeanors.
Not only are these prosecutions struggling because the directives are of little merit, but also because of the types of people whom Trump has found to pursue such attempts at lawfare. People such as Bondi, Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for Washington, DC, or Lindsey Halligan (whose appointment wasn’t even valid) are clearly in over their heads.
Thankfully, the justice system is standing strong against Trump’s agenda
The good news in all of this is that the system is working: Trump’s wave of retributive lawfare has amounted to little more than an inconvenience for its targets or, at worst, reputational damage ‒ rather than any real threat of prison time.
That in itself is no small miracle. There are extraordinarily few societies throughout human history that could withstand someone like Trump reaching the highest office in the land, let alone for this long.
The bad news is that these still-failing prosecutions undermine the credibility of the Department of Justice, which has historically benefited from its high conviction rate. When defendants and their lawyers see an extremely high conversion rate on federal prosecutions, they are far more likely to settle.
I thought plenty of the lawfare from the Biden administration against Trump was bad, and I criticized it at the time. But what Trump has done in response far exceeds that. All of the legal arguments are so transparently pretextual that our federal law enforcement system hasn’t been this beholden to a president since at least when President John F. Kennedy nominated his own brother to be attorney general.
Additionally, the same thing I told Democrats at the time applies here, which is that this will be used against you. There is no reason to believe that the cycle of escalation stops with Trump.
Trump’s abuse of the DOJ gives license to other bad actors to do even worse later, moving the Overton window for what America accepts as far as a politicized Justice Department.
My warning then has unfortunately panned out; I have no reason to think I’d be wrong this time.
Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.
