Justice Department once again caught between an election and doing its work

One month until voters head to the polls, the Justice Department is caught in a thorny intersection of election-year politics and continuing the work of the nation’s top law enforcement agency – trying to maintain its reputation for impartiality while also continuing to pursue the prosecution of Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate.

One month until voters head to the polls, the Justice Department is caught in a thorny intersection of election-year politics and continuing the work of the nation’s top law enforcement agency – trying to maintain its reputation for impartiality while also continuing to pursue the prosecution of Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate. That tension culminated Wednesday, when special counsel Jack Smith’s 165-page summation of evidence and an analysis of why Trump is not immune from federal prosecution for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election was made public by the judge overseeing the Washington, DC, criminal case against the former president. The brief’s timing is already being cast by some pundits as an “October surprise” – a political revelation coming the month before Election Day, filed after the Supreme Court’s ruling this summer granting the former president partial immunity. Trump has already lambasted the filing, accusing President Joe Biden’s Justice Department in several social media posts Wednesday evening of trying to influence the election in Vice President Kamala Harris’ favor. Trump claims Smith’s brief violates a long-standing department practice of keeping quiet before a national election. During the Justice Department’s so-called “quiet period,” prosecutors try to avoid any public statements and actions that could be perceived as political in the weeks before the November election. The quiet period is part of an effort to make clear that the Justice Department, and its investigations, are not motivated by politics. “THEY DISOBEYED THEIR OWN RULE IN FAVOR OF COMPLETE AND TOTAL ELECTION INTERFERENCE,” Trump wrote in one post.