Not so very long ago, the Justice Department stood as a bulwark of facts against Donald Trump's wildest claims. During his first term, a pattern emerged: Trump would make a bizarre assertion (say, that Barack Obama had illegally wiretapped Trump Tower), a litigant would point to this assertion in court to cast doubt on the Justice Department's arguments, and DOJ attorneys would be forced to explain to an irritated judge that the president's statements did not actually reflect the government's position on the matter. Checking Trump's comments against what a government lawyer was willing to swear in front of a judge was a handy way of demonstrating how Trump's version of reality measured up to the truth. In the second term, the Justice Department no longer sets itself at a polite distance from the baseless allegations shared by the president in his late-night Truth Social posts. This week, DOJ announced an 'anti-weaponization' fund of dubious legality, intended to pay back victims of...
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