by Steve Benen | Jun 4, 2026 | Crime & Courts, Criminal Justice, Maddowblog, News, Politics
At an Oval Office event on Wednesday afternoon, Donald Trump took some time to claim that restaurants in Washington, D.C., are “reopening,” thanks to his role in creating a “vibrant” capital. The president made similar claims at a White House Cabinet meeting last week, patting himself on the back, insisting that “everyone’s going out to dinner,” in large part because he positioned National Guard troops to keep local residents safe.
The rhetoric was part of a pattern that began last summer when the Republican deployed Guard troops to D.C. streets, followed immediately by claims of extraordinary success. “I’ve made Washington, D.C., just an incredible place in literally four days,” he boasted during a Fox News appearance in August. The comments came the day after the president wrote on his social media platform, “People are flocking to D.C. again,” pointing to a trend he apparently made up.
In the weeks and months that followed, polls showed broad public skepticism about Guard troops patrolling civilian streets, but Trump nevertheless repeatedly boasted that, thanks to his Guard deployments, lawbreaking was a thing of the past in the nation’s capital. Even during his State of the Union address, delivered in February, the president assured the public that “we have almost no crime anymore” in Washington.
Though I wish that were true, there’s evidence to the contrary. NPR reported:
President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Washington, D.C. has reduced petty property crimes, but has had little to no effect on violent crime, despite the high cost to taxpayers, according to a new analysis from the nonpartisan think tank Niskanen Center.
The study’s findings were published just weeks after
by Steve Benen | Jun 4, 2026 | Crime & Courts, Criminal Justice, Maddowblog, News, Politics
Donald Trump has made no effort to hide his contempt for John Bolton, who served as the president’s White House national security adviser in his first term, and his desire to see Bolton punished for becoming a Trump critic.
With this in mind, the president will likely be thrilled with the latest developments in Bolton’s criminal case: MS NOW’s Ken Dilianian and Carol Leonnig report, citing two people familiar with the matter, that Bolton has agreed to plead guilty to a single count of retaining classified information contained in a private diary entry.
The plea deal calls for up to 60 months in jail and a $2.25 million fine, according to the sources. It would resolve a massive indictment that threatened Bolton with millions of dollars in legal fees and decades in prison. CNN was first to report on the plea deal.
The apparent resolution of the Bolton case appears to be very similar to what happened with former CIA Director and retired Gen. David Petraeus, who also pleaded guilty in 2015 to a single count of retaining classified information for a diary that was shown to a co-author, reported MS NOW’s Dilanian and Leonnig.
The difference, however, is that Petraeus pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, while Bolton appears poised to admit to a felony.
The path to this point has been rocky and circuitous. Bolton, after having served at the president’s side for a year and a half, warned the public during the 2024 election cycle that Trump was “unfit to be president.” The Republican responded with an endless stream of insults and complaints about his former aide.
At one point, Trump even published an item
by Steve Benen | Jun 3, 2026 | Crime & Courts, Criminal Justice, Maddowblog, News, Politics
Two weeks after Election Day 2024, Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama assured the public that Donald Trump wouldn’t choose “a criminal” to serve in any key positions. Soon after, the president (himself a convicted felon) started adding politically aligned ex-cons to his administrative team.
But of particular interest are the Jan. 6 rioters who’ve been hired by the Republican administration, despite — or quite possibly, because of — the role they played in the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Last summer, for example, Trump’s Justice Department hired Jared Wise, a former FBI agent who not only participated in the Jan. 6 riot, he was also filmed urging his fellow insurrectionists to “kill” police officers. (Though Wise was criminally charged, federal prosecutors didn’t have time to proceed with the case before Trump started handing out pardons to rioters, including violent felons who clashed with police officers.)
Wise parted ways with the administration a couple of months ago, but as it turns out, he wasn’t the only Jan. 6 rioter to get a job on Team Trump. The Washington Post reported:
A convicted Jan. 6 rioter who later said that he regretted his participation in the U.S. Capitol attack has been hired by the Trump administration to work inside a Pentagon office that manages highly classified military operations, according to four people familiar with the matter.
The appointment of Elias Irizarry, who was 19 at the time of the riot in 2021, to a post in the Defense Department’s Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict office has raised alarm internally among staff who question how anyone convicted in the assault on American democracy could be trusted
by Steve Benen | May 14, 2026 | Criminal Justice, Justice Department, Maddowblog, News, Politics
In late 2024, when federal prosecutors secured an indictment against Gautam Adani, it wasn’t just another case. Adani, with a net worth of $104 billion, is India’s richest man with unparalleled influence in his home country, making the criminal indictment a matter of geopolitical significance.
In the United States, the Justice Department nevertheless concluded that he had allegedly overseen a bribery scheme, which he and his team lied about while trying to raise money from American investors.
According to new reporting from The New York Times, however, Donald Trump’s DOJ is prepared to abandon the case:
Now, according to several people with knowledge of the case, the Justice Department is planning to drop the charges altogether.
The reversal came after the Indian billionaire, Gautam Adani, hired a new legal team led by Robert J. Giuffra Jr., one of President Trump’s personal lawyers and the co-chairman of the prominent firm Sullivan & Cromwell.
The Times’ article, which has not been independently verified by MS NOW, added that the billionaire’s defense lawyer met directly with Justice Department officials last month, and he went through a series of slides intended to show what he characterized as weaknesses in the case.
One of the slides, however, stood out: “If prosecutors dropped the charges, Mr. Adani would be willing to invest $10 billion in the American economy and create 15,000 jobs, echoing a pledge he had made in the wake of Mr. Trump’s election.”
The Times’ reporting went on to note that Adani’s lawyer also took steps to resolve related cases from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Treasury Department, and “both of those agencies are now preparing to strike
by Barbara McQuade | May 10, 2026 | Criminal Justice, Opinion
Jack Smith has been speaking out. His words are welcome — even if they may be coming a little too late.
From the time he was appointed special counsel in 2022 until his resignation in January of 2025, Smith conducted himself with the kind of stoic silence we expected of the Justice Department at the time. He spoke only at formal press conferences — during which he announced criminal charges against Donald Trump — and even then, scrupulously followed DOJ’s guidance to discuss only facts contained within the four corners of the indictments.
His conduct mirrored that of Robert Mueller, who was similarly silent when serving as the special counsel investigating Russian election interference just a few years prior. In stark contrast, Trump’s current acting Attorney General Todd Blanche routinely uses television news interviews to discuss pending cases, such as the recent indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
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Blanche claims criminal charges against Comey extend beyond Instagram ‘seashell’ post
May 3, 2026 / 07:24
As Smith recently told an audience in Washington, D.C., “I grew up as a prosecutor in sort of the Robert Mueller mode of prosecutor. I speak in courtrooms. I do not speak on the courthouse steps. I don’t do media.”
But since leaving his post, Smith has begun to let those rigid prosecutorial walls come down a little, blasting Trump’s Department of Justice on multiple occasions. In April at a private event hosted by the Cosmos Club in Washington D.C., Smith stated that DOJ “targets people for criminal prosecution simply because the president doesn’t like them” and “fails to move on cases because they might uncover facts
by Steve Benen | Apr 27, 2026 | Criminal Justice, Justice Department, Maddowblog, News, Politics
During Joe Biden’s presidency, the Democratic administration took steps to end federal executions, including a measure that converted 37 death row inmates’ sentences to life in prison. Donald Trump vowed to reverse course and use federal powers to kill more people. To that end, the Republican president and his team have authorized seeking death sentences against 44 defendants.
But as important as these developments are, it’s also notable how, exactly, Team Trump is prepared to proceed with these executions. The Associated Press reported:
The Justice Department will adopt firing squads as a permitted method of execution as the Trump administration moves to ramp up and expedite capital punishment cases, officials said Friday. […]
The federal government has not previously included firing squad as a method of execution in its protocols, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Five states currently allow executions by firing squad: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah.
The policy shift was announced in a statement from acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, whose document spent a fair amount of time denouncing Biden as part of the Republican lawyer’s latest apparent attempt to make Trump happy.
It’s worth emphasizing that Trump’s Justice Department hasn’t explicitly said that it will start killing people with firing squads, but now this option is on the table as part of a new, streamlined process in which the administration intends to expedite death penalty cases.
Time will tell what becomes of the shift and whether there are related Eighth Amendment court fights, but the developments reminded me of something Rachel Maddow told viewers back in 2014, when Republican policymakers advanced similar measures at the state level.
“Over time, we’ve
