Pretending the Justice Department Was Never Partisan Under Democrats

Tim Graham on Oct 28, 2026

The most obnoxious lie that erupts routinely in the "independent media" is that Trump's Department of Justice is weaponized in a way that no Democrat has ever contemplated. It's like they all observed everything that the Biden Justice Department did to put Trump and his allies in jail and considered it to be the most nonpartisan thing imaginable.

Team Biden going after the opposing party is nonpartisan? This is the thoroughly partisan prism the leftist media use to distort our politics. Democracy is healthy when Democrats win. Autocracy is descending when Democrats lose.

See the latest claims of The New York Times editorial board: Trump "has dismantled the Justice Department's legacy as an impartial enforcer of federal law, turning it into an instrument of retribution against his adversaries while canceling investigations into his allies." Team Biden's lawfare against Trump and prosecution of over 1,500 people over the Jan. 6 riot was implausibly presented in this argument as "impartial enforcement," not Biden's "retribution."

You could see this reflexive reasoning in the analysis of the Trump Justice Department announcing they would be investigating the election in Alaska over the prank candidacy of "Daniel J. Sullivan," put on the ballot to ruin the reelection chances of Sen. Daniel S. Sullivan.

On the Oct. 23 "PBS News Hour," MS NOW host Jonathan Capehart face-planted: "One, the president of the United States should not be directing the Department of Justice to do anything." So the Department of Justice isn't in the Executive Branch? No previous president has ever directed this department to do "anything"? That's nonsensical.

Capehart doubled down: "Two, the executive branch and federal government have nothing to do with elections, period, anywhere." It's like he forgot the long-standing Justice Department mandate to ensure minorities are protected under the Voting Rights Act. Capehart has routinely denounced anyone watering down the act by suggesting America's less racist now than in the 1950s.

On the PBS News website on the same day, an article by PBS reporter Liz Landers came under the headline, "DOJ has monitored elections for decades. Here's why some state officials are concerned this year." Election monitoring is routine. It's just that when Team Trump does it, it's suddenly election-denying authoritarianism on the march.

These liberal talking points also bubbled up on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," as ABC host Jonathan Karl editorialized about the Alaska litigation plan: "It runs against a fundamental American value that justice is administered without regard to politics, that the Justice Department doesn't interfere in elections."

Capehart and Karl & Co. did not recall the previous example in Alaskan political history, when Republican Sen. Ted Stevens went on trial for allegedly failing to pay for a home renovation in 2008, causing him to lose his seat. The Justice Department later found that Stevens was innocent. Oops.

A search by immigration officials of the home of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) -- authorized by a federal judge -- was denounced by journalists for violating a "60-day rule" where there should be no legal actions against political actors just weeks before an election. They somehow all forgot that Biden-appointed Jan. 6 prosecutor Jack Smith uncorked a 165-legal brief against Donald Trump's "criminal scheme" in October 2024, after a number of states had already started (or were about to start) early voting.

Journalists should feel free to accuse Trump of using the Justice Department to set the table for campaign coverage in the closing weeks of an election. Despite the coverage sounding furiously anti-Trump, it still puts issues before the public. What journalists should not do is pretend this has never, ever happened before.

Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.