FILE PHOTO: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump gestures at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S., December 22, 2024. REUTERS/Cheney Orr/File Photo To match Special Report USA-MEXICO/CIA

When U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi angrily lashed out at Democratic lawmakers during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, October 7 — even implying, without any evidence, that Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), might be part of the militant far-left Antifa movement — she made it clear that she remains fully devoted to President Donald Trump and the MAGA agenda.

Yet within DOJ, not everyone is obediently going out of their way to please Trump. Some DOJ prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia made it clear that they saw no merit in the federal indictment of former FBI Director James Coney — a case that is being prosecuted by Trump loyalist Lindsay Halligan because others in the Eastern District want nothing to do with it.

Kristy Parker, a former federal prosecutor who is now serving as counsel for the group Protect Democracy, discussed the conflicts within DOJ during an appearance on The New Republic's podcast "The Daily Blast" posted on October 9.

Parker told host Greg Sargent, "(Trump) threatens somebody on a nearly daily basis with some form of retribution for opposing him — whether it's a person, whether it's an organization, whether it's a powerful person, whether it is an undocumented immigrant. He does it all the time, to the point where people become used to hearing it. And I think what's really important to do is to take a step back and ground ourselves in the fact that this is the United States of America."

Parker continued, "We have a Constitution. We have a democratic form of government based on the rule of law. And central to all of that has always been that people have a right to criticize their government, have a right to criticize the policies of the president. And even government officials have a right to push back and resist certain policies within the legal system. And the manner for the president to respond to that is through the legal system — and not by extrajudicial threats to just summarily put people in jail."

When Sargent noted that Trump chose "handpicked stooge Lindsay Halligan" for the Eastern District of Virginia, she noted that "nothing about" the Comey indictment "has any appearance of anything other than corruption."

"I mean, all the reporting that we have gotten, assuming that it is true, is that career professionals and political appointees alike looked at the evidence in this case and concluded that it was not sufficient to meet DOJ standards for bringing an indictment," Parker told Sargent. "Trump then publicly forced out that U.S. attorney and then, whether it was meant to be public or not, in a statement on his social media account that was published to the entire country, he made it very clear to the attorney general, (Bondi), that he wanted Comey, (New York State Attorney General) Letitia James, and various other people prosecuted — that it needed to be done, that it needed to be done because he had been himself indicted by these people and that his credibility was being destroyed as a result of all of it."

Parker, however, said that resistance to Trump in the Eastern District of Virginia is a positive sign.

The former DOJ prosecutor told Sargent, "You know, I think we can take some heart. I frankly was someone who was very concerned about, you know, Mr. Trump's agenda with respect to the DOJ and his desire to use the levers of law enforcement to retaliate against people is so clear that I have been a little bit concerned that people willing to stay and work on cases that involve these individuals that Mr. Trump has targeted, you know, might result in some people being willing to carry his water."

Parker continued, "But I do think we can take heart that people are paying attention to the fact that they have to protect themselves. Like, they have to think about whether what they are doing is legal and whether or not it is ethical. And they have to be willing to sacrifice their own careers and possibly put their own liberty in future jeopardy if they’re going to go forward with cases for which they just can’t find the evidence to prove a charge."

Listen to the full New Republic podcast at this link or read the transcript here.