The Justice Department’s “Weaponization Working Group” is the fruit of a yearslong right-wing effort to portray federal law enforcement against Donald Trump and his allies as criminal in nature. But if that task force fails to bring charges against Trump’s purported enemies, its head, the right-wing activist Ed Martin, is promising to publicly “name” and “shame” those individuals — a clear violation of longstanding DOJ policy which would provide chum for MAGA media while turning its targets into hate objects. 

“There are some really bad actors, some people that did some really bad things to the American people. And if they can be charged, we’ll charge them. But if they can’t be charged, we will name them,” said Martin, who recently stepped down as acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia when it became clear he could not secure Senate confirmation. “And we will name them, and in a culture that respects shame, they should be people that are ashamed. And that’s a fact. That’s the way things work. And so that’s, that’s how I believe the job operates.”

Martin may not actually realize this — he’s a political hack who represented January 6 defendants rather than an experienced prosecutor — but that is not how the job is supposed to operate. Indeed, as NBC News’ Ryan J. Reilly notes: “During Trump's first tenure, the justification given for Trump's firing of former FBI Director James Comey was that Comey had given a press conference in which he released ‘derogatory information’ about then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016.”

Martin’s proposal to “name” and “shame” rather than prosecute Trump’s foes seems on the one hand like a significant retreat — a sign that he doesn’t think that the purported crimes he and his colleagues happily detailed in their books, podcasts, and Fox shows can’t pass muster with a federal judge.

As Trump sought to brand the federal law enforcement officials who investigated him and successfully prosecuted several of his top advisers as the real criminals, a right-wing media ecosystem emerged to support his claims and try to flesh them out. Many of the key players in that ecosystem have since been appointed to the top ranks of the FBI and DOJ, no doubt at least in part because of their willingness to suggest that a reckoning was coming. 

For example:

• Martin hosted a podcast and radio show in which he “amplified Trump’s claims … that prosecutors may have violated federal criminal conspiracy laws” and led discussions which “revolved around Trump’s desire for ‘retribution’ against current or former department prosecutors,” The Washington Post reported.
• Fox host Jeanine Pirro, Martin’s replacement as interim U.S. attorney for D.C., called for a “cleansing” of the FBI and the Justice Department, which she said were full “of individuals who should not just be fired, but who need to be taken out in handcuffs.”
• Dan Bongino, the deputy director of the FBI, is a former Fox host and podcaster who called for an investigation into “special tyrant” Jack Smith and described special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe as “an obvious frame job and set-up” by the corrupt deep state.
• FBI Director Kash Patel said in a 2023 interview that a second Trump term would target “the conspirators, not just in government but in the media” who had “helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.” The appendix of his 2023 book “names more than 50 current or former US officials that he claims are ‘members of the Executive Branch deep state,’ which he describes as a ‘dangerous threat to democracy,’” CNN reported.
• Pam Bondi, now the attorney general, said in an April 2023 Fox appearance following Trump’s fourth indictment: “The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones. The investigators will be investigated.”

Martin wouldn’t be the first federal prosecutor to discover that right-wing claims of crimes committed by Trump’s foes collapse under scrutiny. Trump’s media allies — Pirro in particular — said Hillary Clinton’s role role as secretary of state in the sale of a uranium company featured massive criminality and demanded an investigation. The Trump appointee who conducted that investigation apparently found there was nothing to it, closing the probe without charges.

But what Martin appears to be planning now is unsettling. His “name” and “shame” strategy amounts to a public declaration from the federal government that the targets of an otherwise unsuccessful investigation are nonetheless Bad People. 

It is easy to predict the path that strategy might take based on what we’ve seen from this administration thus far. MAGA influencers could be called in to DOJ headquarters to receive exclusive access to reports that smear the president’s supposed foes. Pirro might give what amounts to a demagogic Fox monologue from behind a Justice Department lectern. Top federal law enforcement officials would fan out across right-wing outlets to smear the target of the failed probe. Trump himself would likely chime in from his social media accounts and in White House appearances. Perhaps a new executive order would be crafted seeking to damage the employer of an individual the government was unable to successfully charge with a crime. And the president’s media allies at Fox and elsewhere would devote themselves to regurgitating all of it to their audiences.

We’ve seen what can happen to those who come under sustained fire from Trump and his MAGA media allies — they become subject to harassment campaigns and death threats. Now those attacks will come with the imprimatur of the Justice Department.