Trump Administration Alters Justice Department's Approach to Corruption Cases

Two nearly simultaneous moves by the Trump administration on Monday signaled a new and more transactional approach to the Justice Department's handling of corruption cases.

In the evening, President Trump signed an executive order halting investigations and prosecutions of corporate corruption in foreign countries, arguing such cases hurt the United States' competitive edge. "It's going to mean a lot more business for America," he said of his decision to pause enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977.

Around the same time, a top Justice Department official directed federal prosecutors in Manhattan to drop bribery charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York. The stated justification for the demand had nothing to do with the evidence in the case and focused instead on politics.

The actions on Monday stunned current and former prosecutors and investigators who said the department was abandoning a tradition of holding public officials, corporate executives and others accountable for corruption in favor of an approach built on political or economic expedience.

That same day, Mr. Trump pardoned Rod R. Blagojevich, the former Democratic governor of Illinois who was convicted in 2011 of essentially trying to sell a Senate seat that was vacated by President Barack Obama. Mr. Trump had previously commuted Mr. Blagojevich's sentence.

Trump administration officials have also ordered the shutdown of an initiative to seize assets owned by foreign kleptocrats, dialed back scrutiny of foreign influence efforts aimed at the United States and replaced the top career Justice Department official handling corruption cases.

The moves by Mr. Trump and his Justice Department were somewhat in line with a critique by conservative lawyers of prosecutors. They argue prosecutors have long overused anti-corruption law to try to punish political behavior that, while unethical, unpopular, or unwise, is not criminal.

But to some current and former Justice Department officials, the steps reflect the degree to which Mr. Trump -- as a politician who has faced multiple indictments, and a real estate magnate who prioritizes deal-making -- is deeply antagonistic to law enforcement efforts to clean up politics and corporations.

The actions "send a message that going forward, you can get good contracts by paying bribes," said a former F.B.I. agent, Debra LaPrevotte. She added: "Having fought corruption for 28 years of my life, I don't think the efforts to fight kleptocracy and corruption have gone too far. We want to live in a world where rules apply."

Cutting back global anti-corruption efforts "is a bad thing," said Ms. LaPrevotte, a Republican. She added, "We want to lift people up to a place that doesn't include bribes, not bring ourselves down to a place where the only way to do business abroad is contributing to the corruption of another country."

In pressing the Southern District of New York to drop charges against Mr. Adams, who was accused of corruption on behalf of Turkiye, the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove III, suggested that the request was rooted in politics.

The case, Mr. Bove said, had "unduly restricted Mayor Adams's ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime that escalated under the policies of the prior administration," referring to former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Both the directive and its tone startled many current and former Justice Department officials. "The U.S. attorney community is in shock at the language of the memo, the political nature of the scores being settled," said Tim Purdon, a former U.S. attorney for North Dakota. "It's unfathomable."

While U.S. attorneys answer to Justice Department headquarters in Washington, there has always been a measure of independence for the more than 90 individual federal prosecutor offices around the country. None of those offices have a longer tradition of independence than the office in New York.

"No one is saying that there is not a chain of command, but independence of U.S. attorney offices from the politics of Washington is a crown jewel of our government, and I think this memo certainly sends a message that that crown jewel is under attack," Mr. Purdon said.

Other moves by the Trump administration seemed aimed at shutting down the kind of bribery investigations that have ensnared U.S. politicians or companies.

The executive order on Monday declared that the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a law intended to fight corruption among U.S. multinational companies, had been misused to the detriment of American business and the presidency itself.

"The president's foreign policy authority is inextricably linked with the global economic competitiveness of American companies," the order said. The current enforcement of the law "actively harms American economic competitiveness and, therefore, national security."

The law has led to major fines against some of the world's largest firms, including much of the $2.9 billion that Goldman Sachs paid to U.S. and other regulators in 2020 to resolve corruption allegations surrounding Malaysia. A year earlier, the Swedish telecom Ericsson paid more than $1 billion to resolve an investigation of bribes paid to local officials in multiple countries.

While those two settlements came during the first Trump administration, the president has previously griped that the law hurts American companies trying to compete for business overseas.

The order reflected how Mr. Trump in his second presidency has sought to handle federal agencies and the Justice Department in particular. No longer content to complain about what he does not like in government, Mr. Trump has acted quickly to change it, either with his own hand, or those of his top aides.

One possible side effect of the decisions by the Trump administration is the reassignment of dozens of F.B.I. agents who work in a handful of major U.S. cities handling foreign corruption cases.

Attorney General Pam Bondi and others have framed their efforts as righting misguided efforts by the previous administration. In a series of tough-talking memos, Justice Department leaders have accused their career staff of ignoring serious crimes to pursue improper of weak cases against Mr. Trump or his allies for fraud, illegal foreign influence work or lying.

In his first weeks in office, Mr. Trump has ordered the Justice Department to drop cases against the Jan. 6 rioters at the Capitol, said he would fire F.B.I. agents and has now issued explicit instructions to pause an entire category of corruption cases.

A directive issued last week by Ms. Bondi said that to "free resources to address more pressing priorities, and end risks of further weaponization" of the department, she was shutting down the foreign influence task force.

The same memo instructed prosecutors to dial down their use of criminal charges to punish suspected violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The law that has been used increasingly in recent years to prosecute people secretly acting on behalf of foreign governments inside the United States -- most prominently, Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump's former national security adviser.

David Laufman, a former senior Justice Department official who oversaw such cases, warned that Ms. Bondi would hobble the department's work in that area. The move, he added, "has now substantially eroded D.O.J.'s options by severely limiting the option to bring criminal prosecutions."