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• The department has failed to do its part to stop the flood of fentanyl and other deadly drugs that are flowing across our borders and decimating families and communities across the United States.”

• The department has abdicated its responsibility to assist in the enforcement of our immigration laws and has engaged in wholescale abandonment of its duty to adjudicate cases in the immigration court system.

These actions stand in stark contrast to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s assertion before taking office that “there [must] not be one rule for Democrats and another for Republicans, one rule for friends and another for foes.”'®

While it is true, as it is with other federal departments and agencies, that there are committed career personnel across the department who perform their duties faithfully and with the best intentions, this small sampling of scandals illustrates that the DOJ has become a bloated bureaucracy with a critical core of personnel who are infatuated with the perpetuation of a radical liberal agenda and the defeat of perceived political enemies. It has become a Cabinet-level department whose leadership appears to care more about how they are perceived in the next Politico or Washington Post article, or their stature with any number of radical leftist organizations, than they do about justice and advancing the interests of the American people.

It is essential that the next conservative Administration place a high priority on reforming the DOJ and its culture to align the department with its core purposes and advance the national interest. Critically, this must include the FBI. Anything other than a top-to-bottom overhaul will only further erode the trust of significant portions of the American people and harm the very fabric that holds together our constitutional republic. At a practical level, not reforming the Department of Justice will also guarantee the failure of that conservative Administration’s agenda in countless other ways.

Successful reform will require more than minor peripheral adjustments. It will require a holistic, energetic, leadership-driven effort to remedy the damage that has been done and advance the national interest. Additionally, some needed reforms will not be possible without legislative changes from Congress. While it is true that certain offices and components—like the FBI or the Civil Rights Division—will require more attention than others, committed direction from the department’s political leadership can restore the department’s focus on its two core functions: protecting public safety and defending the rule of law.

This chapter features prominently the things the department must do to restore its focus on these functions. Of course, there are other important reforms that do not necessarily fit within either of those core functions, so this chapter includes an additional section to address those areas.

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PRIORITIZING THE PROTECTION OF PUBLIC SAFETY

Ordered liberty is at risk when our citizens lack physical safety, when career criminals do not fear the law, when foreign cartels move narcotics and illegal aliens into our nation at will, and when political leaders call citizens “domestic terrorists” for exercising their constitutional rights. The Department of Justice—in partnership with state and local partners—must recommit in both word and deed to protecting public safety.

The overwhelming majority of crimes in the United States are properly handled at the state and local levels,’® but the DOJ can provide critical technical support for local law enforcement and play a critical agenda-setting role. With respect to the Department’s core responsibilities—enforcing our immigration laws, combating domestic and international criminal enterprises, protecting federal civil rights, and combating foreign espionage—the federal government has primary authority and, accordingly, accountability.

The evidence shows that the Biden Administration’s Department of Justice has failed to protect law-abiding citizens and has ignored its most basic obligations. It has become at once utterly unserious and dangerously politicized. Prosecution and charging decisions are infused with racial and partisan political double standards.” Immigration laws are ignored.”' The FBI harasses protesting parents (branded

“domestic terrorists” by some partisans) while working diligently to shut down politically disfavored speech on the pretext of its being “misinformation” or “disinformation.””? A department that prosecutes FACE Act cases while ignoring dozens of violent attacks on pregnancy care centers and/or the coordinated violation of laws that prohibit attempts to intimidate Supreme Court Justices by parading outside of their homes” has clearly lost its way. A department that has twice engaged in covert domestic election interference and propaganda operations—the Russian collusion hoax in 2016 and the Hunter Biden laptop suppression in 2020—is a threat to the Republic.”*

• Restoring the department’s focus on public safety and a culture of respect for the rule of law is a gargantuan task that will involve at minimum four overriding actions:

• Restoring the FBI’s integrity.

• Renewing the DOJ’s focus on violent crime.

• Dismantling domestic and international criminal enterprises.

• Pursuing a national security agenda aimed at external state and non-state actors, not U.S. citizens exercising their constitutional rights.