A former Justice Department insider is sounding the alarm after the agency moved to charge two former FBI officials in a highly unconventional way.
In late October, the DOJ filed charges against former FBI officials Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides for allegedly making false statements to Congress about the agency's investigation into former President Joe Biden's son, Hunter. A federal judge dismissed those charges on Monday, but that wasn't the end of the story, according to Jonathan Ross, a former U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama.
"This action is a troubling signal of how the DOJ might operate going forward," Ross argued in a new op-ed for Slate.
Ross noted that the DOJ decided to pursue a criminal complaint against the two former agents, a decision that Ross described as a "grossly political maneuver." Not only did pursuing a complaint elongate the case's timeline, but it also conveniently allowed the DOJ to avoid presenting their case to a grand jury, Ross explained.
The former prosecutor added that there are good reasons for the DOJ to use the criminal complaint process, like expediting the arrest of a criminal who poses a significant flight risk. But none of the factors justifying the complaint process exist in the case, according to Ross.
"Why, then, did the government charge the defendants in the way it did?" Ross wrote. "There appears to be no basis to support this strategy. Perhaps the government’s attorneys feared they might fail to obtain an indictment from a grand jury, as has occurred in other politically charged cases. However, this fear cannot explain their decision."
"These events remind me once again that this is not the department for which I proudly served. If the DOJ is nothing more than a mouthpiece of the White House, then it is unclear to me who is left to do the essential work of evenhandedly enforcing our nation’s criminal laws," he added.