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In just over four months, the Trump administration has gutted the core infrastructure tasked with fighting public corruption and white-collar crime in the United States, according to former federal officials and legal experts — actions many say represent the greatest rollback of anti-corruption enforcement since the Watergate era.
Among the most consequential changes:
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The Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department, long responsible for prosecuting political corruption, has been reduced from 35 attorneys to fewer than five.
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The FBI’s team investigating congressional misconduct has been disbanded.
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Prosecutors working on cryptocurrency, foreign bribery, and lobbying violations have seen their cases shelved.
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Longstanding policies ensuring Justice Department independence from the White House have been abandoned.
“President Trump has ushered America into a golden age of public corruption,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). “He cleared out the watchdogs responsible for policing corruption cases at home and abroad.”
The sweeping changes began when Trump resumed office and installed loyalists across the DOJ. Former Trump defense attorney Emil Bove, serving briefly as acting deputy attorney general, ordered prosecutors to drop corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams — a move a federal judge criticized as a “breathtaking political bargain.”
Meanwhile, Attorney General Pam Bondi halted enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, disbanded the DOJ’s anti-kleptocracy unit, and cut back enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. She also dismantled a unit targeting Russian oligarchs’ assets and paused several crypto-crime investigations.
The result: a federal law enforcement apparatus increasingly hesitant to pursue political corruption, particularly where it may conflict with the administration’s interests.
Paul Rosenzweig, a former Bush-era homeland security official and law professor, said the Trump administration has obliterated both the tools and the culture of accountability.
“He’s dismantling not just the means of prosecuting public corruption, but all the oversight mechanisms. The law is only for his enemies now,” Rosenzweig said.
The administration has further undercut oversight by firing inspectors general across agencies and issuing sweeping pardons to nearly every Republican member of Congress convicted of a felony in the past 15 years.
A Justice Department spokesperson defended the changes:
“This Department of Justice has ended the weaponization of government and will continue to prosecute violent crime, enforce immigration laws, and make America safe again.”
But critics say the changes signal a shift toward selective law enforcement. A former DOJ official, speaking anonymously, warned that prosecutors now face political pressure to avoid sensitive cases:
“What prosecutor or FBI agent is going to want to work on a case they think Donald Trump isn’t going to like?”
White-collar prosecutions are already at historic lows. According to TRAC at Syracuse University, the U.S. filed just 4,332 white-collar crime prosecutions in FY 2024, down from 10,269 in FY 1994. While the decline began years ago, analysts say the Trump-era changes will accelerate the erosion of corporate accountability.
Even the Biden administration faced criticism for being too lenient, with only 80 corporate prosecutions in 2024, a 29% drop from the previous year, according to Public Citizen. But legal observers say the Trump administration’s policy overhaul represents a more profound and ideological dismantling.
In a speech last month, DOJ Criminal Division head Matthew Galeotti claimed the department was “turning a new page,” prioritizing only cases involving health care fraud, cartel-linked crime, and threats to national security — a focus viewed by critics as a pretext for avoiding politically inconvenient prosecutions.
Even some Trump allies defend the pullback. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said in a statement that DOJ public integrity units had become “a hotbed for partisan investigations” and applauded the shift toward crime-focused justice.
But former officials and ethics watchdogs warn that the abandonment of oversight has sent a dangerous message.
“Public corruption investigations are being politicized like we’ve never seen before,” said a former senior DOJ official. “To witness the destruction of the institution is just infuriating and disheartening.”
Rosenzweig put it more starkly:
“In 150 days, Donald Trump has casually destroyed a belief in the necessity of incorruptibility built over 250 years.”
