Most importantly, there is no DOJ appointee in place to play the role of Richardson or Rosen by standing up for the Constitution above the president. Intent on not repeating his previous failure to roll the department, Trump already has stacked the deck by installing lackeys to issue the orders. Note that the current acting attorney general, James McHenry, who temporarily led a Justice Department unit dealing with immigration during Trump’s first term, carried out Trump’s order to fire 12 career prosecutors who had worked for Jack Smith.
A more breathtaking example here is Ed Martin, the just-appointed acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, who has ordered up an ill-defined “investigation” of some of the conduct of the January 6 prosecutions, demanding a “comprehensive and assertive” interim report by Friday—a laughably short turnaround that precludes any sort of thorough analysis. And he ordered the top officials in the office to oversee the investigation of their colleagues, adding a graceless insult to the injury of the project itself.
Martin is a charter stop-the-steal election denier, who represented Proud Boys and other rioters and served on the board of the “Patriot Freedom Project,” a group dedicated to raising money to support the marauders. He attended the January 6, 2021, rally and tweeted that there was “nothing out of hand” about what happened at the Capitol that day. He has no business being involved in any department investigation involving the offenders.
