Analysis-Trump's Justice Department hits the brakes on anti-corruption enforcement

By Andrew Goudsward and Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department has sharply stepped back its anti-corruption efforts under President Donald Trump, from loosening enforcement of laws meant to stop companies from bribing foreign officials to directing its prosecutors to drop a criminal case against New York Mayor Eric Adams.

It has disbanded an effort to enforce sanctions against Russian oligarchs and fired veteran public corruption prosecutors who played a role in the department's two criminal cases against Trump during his years out of office.

In pulling back from enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bans companies from paying bribes to build business in foreign countries, and firing over a dozen independent government watchdogs, the administration is taking on laws and institutions put in place after the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard Nixon's 1974 resignation.

Justice Department officials have said the moves are designed to implement Trump’s policies and readdress what they describe as a misuse of the criminal justice system to target Trump and his supporters over the last several years.

Attorney General Pam Bondi described a Justice Department effort to review legal cases brought against Trump as an attempt to "root out corruption and weaponization."

Legal observers said the moves signal an administration willing to align its decisions on criminal prosecutions with Trump's political agenda in a sharp break from historical practice.

"It’s the most basic proposition of law enforcement that it has to be neutral and apolitical for it to be fair and credible," said Peter Keisler, a senior Justice Department official under Republican President George W. Bush. "Otherwise, it’s just an instrument of a president who is trying to reward friends and punish enemies."

A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.

In ordering federal prosecutors in New York to drop the Adams case, acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove cited Adams' 2025 mayoral re-election campaign and the distraction of fighting criminal charges while trying to combat illegal immigration and violent crime.

Adams, a Democrat who curried favor with Trump, pleaded not guilty to fraud and bribery charges involving his interactions with Turkish officials.

PAUSING ANTI-BRIBERY ENFORCEMENT

When Trump on Monday directed prosecutors to pause enforcement of the U.S. law banning companies from paying bribes overseas, he cited the need for American companies to keep pace with foreign competitors and avoid punishment over what he called "routine business practices in other nations."

That law had led to some of the largest Justice Department cases against companies over the last 15 years.

A top Senate Republican expressed concern about Trump's orders on anti-bribery enforcement.

Senator Chuck Grassley, who heads the chamber's judiciary committee, said he had not discussed the moves with Trump and was only familiar with them from what he had read in the news media but planned to investigate further.

"We have laws that have high morals in our international trade and we shouldn’t compromise those high morals," Grassley told Reuters.

Bondi had earlier directed prosecutors to scale back the use of laws designed to counter foreign influence in the United States, which had been used in cases against Trump associates. Bondi said they had been part of the "weaponization" of government condemned by Trump.

Federal prosecutors have also dropped cases against a former Republican congressman, Jeff Fortenberry, who had been awaiting trial on charges accusing him of lying to the FBI, and against two Trump associates who had been charged alongside the president in the criminal case over his retention of classified documents.

“The inference that I draw is that it is a strategy that is intended to dismantle the impact of the laws and also the administrative processes that have been put in place to prevent corruption, to deter corruption and to hold who would engage in corruption accountable,” said Juliet Sorensen, a former federal prosecutor and law professor at Loyola University Chicago.

ETHICS OFFICIALS OUT

Multiple ethics officials have left the new administration or been fired in its first weeks.

The head of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, which handles investigations involving politicians and election issues, resigned after he was ordered to be reassigned to an immigration-related office.

Outside the department, Trump has expelled independent watchdogs that investigate wrongdoing within the federal government including 17 inspectors general and the leaders of offices focused on government ethics and whistleblowers. The head of the whistleblower office has been temporarily reinstated by a federal judge.

“My personal sense is the president doesn’t want an empowered Office of Government Ethics as an independent voice standing up for ethics and integrity," David Huitema, the former head of the Office of Government Ethics, whom Trump fired on Monday, said in an interview on Tuesday.

It is typical for a new administration to shake up Justice Department priorities and experts caution it is too soon to know the full impact of policy changes, some of which are temporary.

Politicians facing Justice Department scrutiny also increasingly appear to be appealing to Trump’s sense of aggrievement.

“President Trump was right,” former Democratic Senator Bob Menendez said last month after being sentenced to 11 years in prison following his conviction in a corruption case. “This process is political and it is corrupted to the core.”

(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward and Sarah N. Lynch; additional reporting by Gabriella Borter, Bo Erickson and Chris Prentice; Editing by Scott Malone and Leslie Adler)