The Model for Fixing the DOJ
President Joe Biden is facing problems Gerald Ford would have appreciated. Like Ford in 1974, Biden has come into office following a president accused of criminality. Both Biden and Ford inherited a Department of Justice plagued by scandal and well-grounded charges of politicization. Both had to choose a nominee for attorney general knowing that recent occupants of that office contributed to partisanship and displayed a lack of integrity. And both took office while questions lingered about recent leadership of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a component of the DOJ.
Ford managed to make progress on all of these problems in just two and a half years. By the end of his presidency, he had laid the groundwork for a historic improvement in both the appearance and the reality of nonpartisanship and professionalism at the DOJ. Jimmy Carter’s one-term presidency continued the work. The 1970s ended in a much better place than they had begun, with solidly entrenched laws, rules, and norms that kept the DOJ largely—not entirely, but largely—free from partisanship and serious misconduct for decades.
Understanding the nadir reached at the department in the early 1970s, and the creative repair that took place under Ford and Carter, reveals how aberrational Donald Trump’s relationship with the department was, and, looking ahead, what problems and opportunities today face Biden and the new attorney general, Merrick Garland, as they attempt to move on from the past four years. Scandal can create political will for reform. Biden and Garland have an opportunity to both shore up the 1970s framework and address new problems revealed by the Trump presidency.
[David A. Graham: What’s the Justice Department actually for?]
In a certain sense, they have an easier task than their predecessors in the 1970s. The leadership failures at the DOJ were much worse in the previous era compared with today. James Comey mishandled the public disclosures about the Hillary Clinton email investigation, which might have affected the 2016 election, but he was an honorable and law-abiding FBI director—a far
