From courtrooms in New York City to South Texas and central Florida, politicians facing criminal charges are testing out their own versions of President Donald Trump’s “weaponization of the Department of Justice” argument.
In the latest attempt, New York Mayor Eric Adams filed a new motion on Wednesday to dismiss the fraud and corruption charges against him by alleging “prosecutorial misconduct.”
“Astonishingly, the former interim U.S. Attorney’s plan amounted to a cover up of her prior boss’s weaponization of the justice system to further a baseless prosecution and save face now that the house of cards has predictably crumbled,” Adams’ legal team wrote in a motion about a leaked letter from the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York to the new attorney general, Pam Bondi.
Trump has spent years claiming a corrupt justice system came after him. Several politicians are taking the same tack, arguing their own legal troubles are an attempt at payback for their political views and actions.
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Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar could soon benefit from a lawfare argument in a case alleging that he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes. His legal team told NBC News in May that the timing of the charges ahead of the election “undermines the electorate and puts a thumb on the scale.” Trump has boosted this effort: He said after Cuellar’s charges that President Joe Biden was leading a “bunch of D.C. thugs” in the FBI and DOJ to target Cuellar.
“He was for Border Control, so they said, ‘Let’s use the FBI and DOJ to take him out!’ This is the way they operate,” Trump wrote on Truth Social last May.
Florida state Rep. Carolina Amesty, a Republican, is incorporating the argument into her legal defense for allegedly stealing COVID relief funds.
Attorney General Bondi’s brother Brad Bondi, who is also an attorney, is pleading Amesty’s case and wrote a letter to Republican senators on the Judiciary committee alleging that the charges were another example of “weaponization.”
“We write to bring to your attention an eleventh-hour prosecution by the Biden administration brought on January 16, 2025 — just four days before the change of administration — that we believe is emblematic of the weaponization of the Department of Justice by the last administration,” Brad Bondi wrote to Sens. Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, last week, according to a letter Amesty shared on Facebook.
The senators’ offices did not respond to a request for a response, nor did Bondi provide an update. But Hawley told NOTUS, in general, “lawfare” isn’t a solid defense on its own.
“You have to look at this case by case. Some people who have ethics charges brought against them probably deserve it,” Senate Judiciary Republican Josh Hawley told NOTUS.
“I’m sure every politician will say that, well, this is unfair and blah, blah, blah. And that may be the case in some cases,” Hawley said, pointing to charges against Trump, “but in other cases — like Sen. Menendez — I mean, was that lawfare? No, that was, he broke many, many, many, many federal laws.”
Former Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez was sentenced to 11 years in prison last month after he was convicted on federal corruption charges. After the sentencing in January, he reiterated his own claims of political prosecution to reporters.
“President Trump is right. This process is political, and it’s corrupted to the core,” Menendez said.
Some critics see the claims of weaponization under Biden’s presidency as part of a broader strategy by the Trump administration.
“There is now an effort to draw a false equivalency between these actions over the last
month and those of recent administrations, either to argue that what is happening now is nothing new, or if it is, that it is deserved retribution. This attempt at equivalence is a mistake,” Brendan Ballou, a DOJ attorney who helped prosecute Jan. 6 rioters, Brendan Ballou, said during a Tuesday House hearing on “Ending the Weaponization of the Justice Department.”
Ballou pointed to Trump pardoning Capitol rioters and Bondi shifting DOJ enforcement priorities away from foreign influence. “The only people who benefit from these actions are vigilantes and militias, corrupt politicians and executives, agents of foreign governments and oligarchs.”
Correction: This story previously misidentified the title of the interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
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Claire Heddles is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. John Seward contributed reporting.
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