A Striking Departure: The number of declinations marks a striking departure not only from the Biden administration but also the first Trump term, according to the ProPublica analysis.
An Unusual Order: Former DOJ prosecutors said that they regularly reviewed caseloads. But none could recall an order like the one in February to review cases.
Different Priorities: While Elon Musk’s DOGE operatives said they were rooting out federal waste, fraud and abuse, the DOJ declined over 900 cases of federal program or procurement fraud.
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
In the first days after Pam Bondi was appointed attorney general last year, the Department of Justice began shutting down pending criminal cases at a record pace.
The cases included an investigation into a Virginia nursing home with a recent record of patient abuse; probes of fraud involving several New Jersey labor unions, including one opened after a top official of a national union was accused of embezzlement; and an investigation into a cryptocurrency company suspected of cheating investors.
In total, the DOJ quietly closed more than 23,000 criminal cases in the first six months of President Donald Trump’s administration, abandoning hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime, drugs and other offenses as it shifted resources to pursue immigration cases, according to an analysis by ProPublica.
The bulk of these cases, which were closed without prosecution and known as declinations, had been referred to the DOJ by law enforcement agencies under prior administrations that believed a federal crime may have been committed. The DOJ routinely declines to prosecute cases for any number of reasons, including insufficient evidence or because a case is not a priority for enforcement.
But the number of declinations under Bondi marks a striking departure not only from the Biden administration but also the first Trump term, according to the ProPublica analysis, which examined two decades of DOJ data, including the first six months of Trump’s second term. ProPublica determined the increase is not the result of inheriting a larger caseload or more referrals from law enforcement.
In February 2025 alone, which included the first weeks of Bondi’s tenure, nearly 11,000 cases were declined, the most in a month since at least 2004. The previous high was just over 6,500 cases in September 2019, during Trump’s first administration.
Some of the cases shut down were the result of years long investigations by federal agencies such as the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration. For complex cases, the DOJ can take years before deciding whether to bring charges.
The shift comes as the DOJ has undergone an extraordinary overhaul under the Trump administration, with entire units shuttered, directives to abandon pursuit of certain crimes and thousands of lawyers quitting or, in some cases, being forced out of the agency.
In doing so, the DOJ is retreating from its mission to impartially uphold the rule of law, keep the country safe and protect civil rights, according to interviews with a dozen prosecutors and an open letter from nearly 300 DOJ employees who have left the department under Trump. The Trump DOJ, the employees wrote, is “taking a sledgehammer” to long-standing work to “protect communities and the rule of law.”
The change in priorities was outlined in a series of memos sent to attorneys early last year. Trump’s DOJ has said it is “turning a new page on white-collar and corporate enforcement” and emphasizing the pursuit of drug cartels, illegal immigrants and institutions that promote “divisive DEI policies.” Trump, in an address last March at the department, said the changes were necessary after a “surrender to violent criminals” during the past administration and would result in a restoration of “fair, equal and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law.”
The department prosecuted 32,000 new immigration cases in the first six months of the administration, which was nearly triple the number under the Biden administration and a 15% increase from the first Trump term. It has pursued fewer prosecutions of nearly every other type of crime — from drug offenses to corruption — than new administrations in their first six months dating back to 2009.
The DOJ has also closed hundreds of cases involving alleged crimes that the administration has publicly emphasized as enforcement priorities. Even as the Trump administration unleashed Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency operatives to root out waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government, the DOJ declined over 900 cases of federal program or procurement fraud. About three times as many cases of major fraud against the U.S. were declined under Trump compared with the average of similar time periods under prior administrations. And while the Trump administration has promised to “make America safe again,” its DOJ has declined more than 1,000 terrorism cases, also more than prior administrations.
Federal prosecutor Joseph Gerbasi had spent years in the department’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section helping build cases against major suppliers of fentanyl ingredients in India and China. After Bondi came in, he was left bewildered when his team was ordered to abandon its work.
“All of the building blocks of what would become successful prosecutions were pulled out,” said Gerbasi, who retired as the section’s acting deputy chief for policy in March 2025 after 28 years with the department.
The move had an “overwhelming deflating effect on morale,” he said.
After Trump’s Inauguration, the Department of Justice Turned Down a Record Number of Cases
The first quarter of 2025, and especially February of that year, saw the department declining to prosecute cases against thousands of defendants outside of its regular six-month review process.
Source: DOJ data provided by TRACKen Morales/ProPublica
Barbara McQuade, who worked as a federal prosecutor in Michigan for two decades until 2017 during Republican and Democratic administrations, said it was not unusual for new administrations to come to office with a few “pet priorities” — such as a focus on violent crime or drug trafficking. But she said those changes usually involved modest adjustments in policy and that most of the decisions on what crimes to focus on were typically made at the local level by the district U.S. attorney in coordination with the FBI or other agencies.
“We would revise those about every five years, not having anything to do with any administration, just because it made sense,” she said.
A DOJ spokesperson, in an emailed response to questions about the spike in declinations, said that in “an effort to clean, remediate, and validate data in U.S. Attorneys’ case management system,” the department reviewed all pending criminal matters opened prior to the 2023 fiscal year, which included updating the status of closed cases. “This Department of Justice remains committed to investigating and prosecuting all types of crime to keep the American people safe, and the number of declinations is a direct result of our efforts to run the agency in a more efficient manner.”
The agency did not respond to questions about the types of cases declined.
The spike of declined cases began in February 2025 when the department ordered prosecutors to review every open case launched prior to October 2022 and determine whether to close it. Such a review would typically take months, according to one attorney tasked with reviewing cases. A memo, which was described to ProPublica reporters, ordered the review to be completed within 10 days.
Former DOJ prosecutors told ProPublica that they typically reviewed caseloads every six months with supervisors and that closing out languishing cases wouldn’t ordinarily be cause for concern. They said the February directive, however, was unusual. None could recall a similar order.
The directive came as higher-ups in the department had begun making frequent demands for data about specific types of cases and charging decisions, such as the outcome of fentanyl cases, according to former prosecutor Michael Gordon. Gordon, who helped prosecute Jan. 6 cases before moving to white-collar crime prosecutions, said the “fire drills” from officials in Washington became so regular that he grew used to the forlorn look on his supervisor’s face when he showed up at Gordon’s door, apologetically delivering yet another frantic request.
“It was either ‘give us stats we can use to make ourselves look good’ or ‘give us the stats to show how bad things are in this area,’” Gordon said. “It was never productive fact-finding.”
Though Gordon didn’t see the memo, he remembered getting the request to review all cases that had been open for more than two years and report back on their status, entering into a master spreadsheet basic information about any that he wanted to keep pursuing.
“The office was pushing us to close everything by a certain date so that when they had to report up to D.C. they had a low number of open cases,” he said. “You really had to go to bat to keep open a case that was more than two years old.”
Gordon said he was fired by the DOJ last June. He has filed a lawsuit alleging his termination was politically motivated. The department did not respond to questions about Gordon’s comments or his lawsuit. The government filed a motion to dismiss the case late last year, arguing that the federal court did not have jurisdiction over the matter. The court has not yet ruled on that motion, and the case is still pending.
Investigations into individuals or corporations declined for prosecution are generally not reported to courts and usually only disclosed in summary form by the DOJ in annual reports. To conduct its analysis, ProPublica obtained declination data from the DOJ and the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a center that obtains data through Freedom of Information Act requests.
The DOJ Declined a Slew of Cases Shortly After Pam Bondi Was Confirmed as Attorney General
Nearly 11,000 criminal cases were declined during her first month in office.
Source: DOJ data provided by TRACKen Morales/ProPublica
Here are some of the areas most impacted by the spike in declinations.
Drugs
As president, Trump has spoken frequently about the “scourge” of drugs coming into the country. At the same time, the Justice Department has declined to prosecute nearly 5,000 cases of federal drug law violations, including trafficking and money laundering. The number of declinations were 45% higher than the average of the prior three new administrations.
Gerbasi, the counternarcotics prosecutor, declined to comment on specific cases that might have been declined in his office. But, he said, once Bondi was appointed, the priority in the office became building cases against Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan group that the Trump administration has labeled a foreign terrorist organization.
“Tren de Aragua was not anywhere close to the scale or impact of the cartels we were focused on,” Gerbasi said. “But we were told to generate those cases.”
He said his office had to scramble to fly people to investigate local gangs in small towns that were reportedly affiliated with Tren de Aragua. “They never would have merited a full-scale federal investigation,” he said.
“It told me that decisions were going to be based on political appearances and not based on the merits of where investigative resources should be placed.”
The DOJ declined to comment on Gerbasi’s remarks.
Trump’s DOJ Has Rejected Far More Cases Than Previous Administrations Across a Wide Range of Categories
Many of the dropped cases were in programs the DOJ has claimed were priorities.
Source: TRAC, DOJ
Note: “Other” primarily includes government regulatory offenses and theft. Comparison to average of past administrations only includes the first six months after a presidential administration change: Obama (2009), Trump (2017) and Biden (2021)Ken Morales/ProPublica
National Security
Under Bondi, the DOJ declined more than 1,300 cases involving terrorism and national security, nearly twice what was typical at the start of the most recent new administrations. While domestic terrorism was the hardest-hit program, just over 300 cases involving charges of providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations were also dropped.
The DOJ program handling matters relating to national internal security — which considers cases of alleged spy activity and the security of classified information — saw over 200 declinations, which is four times as many as typical in the first six months of a new administration. Some of the cases related to serving as an unregistered foreign agent, a charge Bondi ordered prosecutors to stop pursuing unless they involved “conduct similar to more traditional espionage by foreign government actors.”
Jimmy Gurulé, a former federal prosecutor and George W. Bush appointee to the U.S. Treasury Department who investigated the financing of terrorism, said the decline in terrorism cases was troubling.
“The Trump DOJ has been used as a political weapon,” he said. “It’s a question of prioritizing resources. Are they going to be used for national security threats or to prosecute his political enemies and critics?” The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment on Gurulé’s remarks.
Labor
The DOJ shut down over 60 union corruption and labor racketeering cases, 2.5 times the number in Trump’s first term. Nearly half of the cases turned down for those offenses were out of the New Jersey U.S. attorney’s office, which in the past has aggressively pursued alleged union corruption. All were noted as declined for insufficient evidence.
Most of those cases had been opened by Grady O’Malley, an assistant U.S. attorney who oversaw several prosecutions of union corruption while working in the New Jersey office over four decades. He retired in 2023 and was disturbed to learn from former colleagues that the office was shutting down the open union probes.
A Trump supporter, O’Malley said that while he doesn’t blame the president, he worries the decision to drop so many cases could embolden unions that he and his colleagues spent years working to hold accountable. “No one is assigned to do labor union cases, and the unions have every reason to believe no one is looking.”
The New Jersey U.S. attorney’s office said it had no comment on the declination of labor cases.
White-Collar Crime
The Trump administration has pledged to root out “rampant” fraud in federal benefit programs like food stamps and welfare. The controversial surging of federal agents to Minnesota in January began as a stated crackdown on noncitizens allegedly ripping off nutrition and child care programs.
The DOJ, however, shut down more than 900 cases of federal program or procurement fraud in the first six months of the administration, including one targeting a mortgage lender accused by several state regulators of defrauding the Federal Housing Administration. The case was dropped due to “prioritization of federal resources and interests.” The U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of Alabama, which declined the case, did not reply to a request for comment. The number of fraud cases closed was about double that in the same time period of the Biden and first Trump administrations.
The agency also closed over 100 health care fraud cases as a result of “prioritization of resources and interests” even though the Trump administration has said it is making this area of enforcement a priority.
Among other cases the DOJ determined weren’t a priority: the probe into the Virginia nursing home accused of abuse, as well as investigations in Tennessee into fraud at a national hospital chain and one of the largest Medicaid managed care companies.
The Western District of Virginia U.S. attorney’s office, through a spokesperson, declined to comment on the nursing home case. A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney in the Middle District of Tennessee said the office does not comment on investigations that do not result in public charges.
The DOJ’s Antitrust Division, which focuses on preventing big businesses from creating harmful monopolies, also declined an unusually high number of cases in Trump’s second term. More than 40 cases were dropped within the first six months of Bondi’s tenure. That’s more than double the number declined in the same time period by the prior three new administrations.
Despite the declinations, the department said it charged slightly more people with fraud in 2025 compared with the final year of the Biden administration, and those cases alleged larger financial losses.
Promises Kept
The DOJ under Bondi has also rapidly pursued many of the priorities laid out in Trump’s early executive orders and her own “first day” directives to staff.
Trump in February 2025 issued an executive order pausing new investigations under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits citizens and companies from bribing foreign entities to advance their business interests. The order asked the attorney general to review and “take appropriate action” on any existing probes to “preserve Presidential foreign policy prerogatives.”
In the first six months, Bondi’s DOJ shut down 25 such cases, which is more than the combined number dropped by the prior three new administrations over the same time period. One of the cases declined for prosecution involved a major car manufacturer, which had reported possible anti-bribery violations to federal investigators involving a foreign subsidiary. The DOJ declined the case for prosecution last June, citing the “prioritization of federal resources and interests.”
On her first day, Bondi ordered a review of criminal prosecutions under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, or FACE Act, which prohibits people from illegally blocking access to abortion clinics and places of worship. The department dropped as many cases under the act in its first six months as the past three new administrations combined, over the same time frame. Bondi’s order focused on “non-violent protest activity,” although at least one of the closed cases was being investigated as a violent crime. The DOJ has since charged protesters against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and journalists in Minneapolis under the FACE Act. The defendants in the case have pleaded not guilty.
The agency closed three times the number of cases alleging environmental crimes as the Biden administration did and one-and-a-half times as many as compared with Trump’s first term. The declinations came as the DOJ reassigned and cut prosecutors working on environmental cases. One-fifth of all of the dropped environmental protection cases were shut down for “prioritization of federal resources and interests.”
What I hate about this video and the way the members of the administration act is that they show complete disrespect to the democrats with the complete permission of the republicans. These administration figures mock, insult, and talk over, and give speeches refusing to address what was asked to instead praise tRump and insult Biden. Notice how Bondi simply pretends to ignore the democrats when they are talking by pretending to read her own documents. They freely lie and misdirect and the republican chair people let them. Boy I hope the democrats find some strength to stop this when we take back the government. It is sickening how she treats the Democrats on this committee. Horrific disregard for elected officials. When Jerry Nadler asks her a question she goes off on a tangent yelling at him, he demands she answer his question and she yells at an elected member of the House of representives no I will answer what I want to. Disgusting. Hugs
The lawless tRump and criminal gang Gestapo thugs in ICE do not want to be held accountable. They are demanding they have the right to lie and you must believe it. They think they would be allowed to get away with everything and anything to harm and terrorize people if no can see what they do. So they try to convince you it is a crime to record them. It is not a crime. But remember how racist cops tried to do the same thing after the George Floyd murder? We must not let them take our rights away from us and we must fight against the tyrannical dictatorship of a lawless government ruling a powerless public. Hugs
The Trump Administration Says It’s Illegal To Record Videos of ICE. Here’s What the Law Says.
The Trump administration believes you don’t have the right to record Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in public. This stance is both factually wrong and an attempt to chill free speech by conflating it with violence.
At a July 2025 press conference in Tampa, Florida, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem said, “Violence is anything that threatens them and their safety, so it is doxing them, it’s videotaping them where they’re at when they’re out on operations, encouraging other people to come and to throw things, rocks, bottles.”
In September 2025, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin called “videotaping ICE law enforcement and posting photos and videos of them online” a form of doxing. She added, “We will prosecute those who illegally harass ICE agents to the fullest extent of the law.”
These aren’t idle threats. The Trump administration strong-armed Apple into removing an app from its mobile store that tracked ICE activity and threatened criminal investigations into its creators.
The most aggressive application of this policy has come in Chicago under “Operation Midway Blitz,” where ICE officers have relentlessly targeted protesters, reporters, and clergy engaged in protected First Amendment activity.
In October, a group of journalists and protesters filed a lawsuit alleging “a pattern of extreme brutality in a concerted and ongoing effort to silence the press and civilians.”
In court filings, the plaintiffs stated that federal officials’ own testimony illustrated their point. For example, when ICE field director Russell Hott was asked if he agreed “that it’s unconstitutional to arrest people for being opposed to Midway Blitz,” he answered “No.”
“Similarly, [U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Greg] Bovino testified that he has instructed his officers to arrest protesters who make hyperbolic comments in the heat of political demonstrations, even though such statements—which do not constitute true threats—are protected speech,” the motion argued. (Hott and Bovino’s depositions were filed under seal, and those comments were later redacted in a corrected filing by the lawsuit plaintiffs, but not before others took screenshots of them.)
Based on voluminous evidence that feds in Chicago ignored her previous orders to curb their use of force, U.S. District Court Judge Sara Ellis issued a preliminary injunction against DHS in early November 2025, saying the government’s conduct “shocked the conscience.”
Ellis found much of the officials’ testimony not credible. Bovino, for instance, testified that he never used force against a protester he was filmed tackling, and in another instance, Ellis said, he lied about being hit with a rock before firing tear gas at demonstrators. Nor did evidence support the government’s claims that federal officers issued warnings before firing less-than-lethal projectiles at those protesters.
“Describing rapid response networks and neighborhood moms as professional agitators shows just how out of touch these agents are, and how extreme their views are,” said Ellis.
The Trump administration responded by calling Ellis an “activist judge,” but it is squarely wrong when it comes to recording and protesting the police. Cato Institute senior fellow Walter Olson points out that, “While the Supreme Court itself hasn’t yet faced the issue squarely, the sevenfederalcircuitsthathavedoneso…all agree that the First Amendment protects the right to record police performing their duties in public.”
Likewise, federal circuits have upheld the right to use vulgar language to oppose police without fear of retaliation, and to warn others of nearby police checkpoints or speed traps.
As Olson writes, the administration’s “attempt to alter reality by establishing new legal facts on the ground” ultimately serves as a green light for informal repression. “If the agents come to believe that they have blanket immunity [for] whatever they do, or that citizens have no right to record them, they are more likely to take aggressive informal action, such as grabbing phones or taking news reporters into custody on charges of obstruction (perhaps later quietly dropped).”
It’s not hard to find examples of this rotten agency culture in practice. In late October 2025, ICE officers broke out the window of a U.S. citizen’s car and detained her for seven hours after she followed and photographed their unmarked vehicles. DHS accused her of reckless driving, attempting to block in officers with her car, and resisting arrest—all claims that she and her lawyer deny. Prosecutors did not charge the woman with a crime.
Recording government agents is one of the few tools citizens have to hold state power accountable. Any attempt to redefine observation as “violence” is not only unconstitutional—it’s authoritarian gaslighting. When a government fears cameras more than crimes, it isn’t protecting the rule of law. It’s protecting itself.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio attend a cabinet meeting at the White House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 9, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Something dramatic has happened.
Many people who consider themselves non-political or independent, or moderate Republican, or who even voted for Trump last November, can’t avoid seeing what’s now come so clearly into the open.
They’ve watched Trump order the Texas National Guard into Portland and Chicago, over the objections of the mayors of those cities and the governors of Oregon and Illinois. They’ve heard him call for jailing the mayor of Chicago and governor of Illinois for opposing these moves.
They’ve heard him threaten to invoke the Insurrection Act and send federal troops all over America.
They’ve watched Trump’s ICE agents drag people out of their beds in the middle of the night, zip-tie them and their children, and haul them away.
They’ve seen Trump’s prosecutors indict the attorney general of New York state because she held Trump accountable for fraud. And seen him threaten to do the same to a California senator because he conducted hearings in the House exposing Trump’s role in the attack on the Capitol.
They’ve heard Trump say he can kill anyone who he claims is an enemy combatant trafficking drugs.
They’ve heard Trump direct the IRS, FBI, and Justice Department against liberal groups that oppose him — George Soros’s Open Society Foundation; ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising organization; Indivisible, the community-based resistance organization.
And they watched him take off the air comedians who criticize him — Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel.
All across America, millions of people who have avoided politics, or identified as independents or moderate Republicans or even Trump voters, are shaken by what they’re seeing and hearing.
It’s no longer Democrat versus Republican or left versus right.
It’s now democracy versus dictatorship. Right versus wrong.
It’s no longer a war on undocumented immigrants. It’s now a war on Americans.
It’s no longer a foreign enemy. It’s now the “enemy within.”
Across the land, average Americans are realizing that they too could be dragged out of their homes in the middle of the night by Trump’s ICE agents, or tear-gassed and arrested by Trump’s National Guard, or targeted by Trump’s prosecutors, or shot by Trump’s military.
The Big Reveal is that all of us are now endangered.
Multiple polls show Trump’s approval tanking, but I think it runs deeper than this.
Something dramatic has happened over the last two weeks — as America sees more vividly than ever who Trump is, where he and his trio of lapdogs (Miller, Vought, and Vance) want to take the country, and how we’re all potential targets.
The Big Reveal is impossible not to see. Trump and his lapdogs are doing all of this completely in the open. They have no shame.
Most Americans abhor what they see, because what they see is abhorrent.
This is how the great sleeping giant of America awakens, roars, and puts an end to it.
Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
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