No one is above the law.
Yesterday I reported on the dramatic Hawaii indictment of that state’s Lt. Governor and other top Democrat officials, describing it as part of a broader arrests effort. Here is that evidence. Last week, Bloomberg Law’s July 22nd exclusive reported, “Trump Targets State Officials Via New DOJ Public Corruption Team.” In other words, they’re just getting started.
JEFF CHILDERS
This is the Sunday paywalled version of Coffee and Covid
THE LEAD STORY POSTED IN THE COMMENTS
“The Justice Department is quietly recruiting prosecutors for a public corruption initiative within its White House-linked fraud division,” Bloomberg said, “potentially ramping up politically charged investigations of state officials ahead of the midterms.”
The story reported, mostly from anonymous sources, that JD Vance’s new fraud team is creating a “public corruption unit,” like a separate strike team within the larger anti-fraud department. Bloomberg recognized the same timeline I described yesterday: first, Trump dismantled the DOJ’s “public integrity section,” which existed to squash all investigations into Democrat officials before they got started.
“Without the public integrity section’s apolitical standards,” the article lied, “the new unit could seek out evidence that blue state officials are somehow culpable due to inattentiveness rather than their affirmative actions.” Bloomberg was suspicious. “The fraud division’s location within Main Justice would bring enforcement of state officials under closer scrutiny by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and his leadership team.”
Referring to the Fraud Task Force’s recent hiring spree of new prosecutors, DOJ spokesperson Matthew Tragesser explained, “The Division is fully committed to holding criminals accountable, including any public official who perpetrates fraud.”
According to Bloomberg’s sources, “The public corruption team is reviewing the intersection of state officials’ misconduct and any fraud perpetrated against government-financed programs.”
In short, it seems like Trump’s DOJ has replaced the old investigation-squashing “Public Integrity Section” with an aggressive “Public Corruption Team.”
Think of how big this news should be. Bloomberg reported that the Trump Administration is planning to target Democrat state officials (“politically charged investigations”) ahead of the midterms. So … why isn’t this bigger news? Why isn’t corporate media running breathless articles condemning weaponized prosecutions?
There’s a good reason why Democrats are not making more of a fuss, even as their top state officials keep getting indicted. Their hands are tied. According to a Brennan Center poll from last month, a whopping 92% of voters say corruption is a big problem in politics and government, with supermajorities of Republicans, Democrats, and independents all agreeing. Headline from the Brennan Center, June 2nd:
Overwhelming majorities. An April, 2025 Cato survey of 2,000 adults found 9 in 10 Americans (89%) support auditing and evaluating all federal government spending to identify and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse (Democrats 83%, independents 89%, and Republicans 99%).
It’s not even an 80/20 issue. Going after fraud is a 90/10 issue. It might be the most universally popular issue of them all, approaching consensus. Sorry, not approaching. A 90%+ favorability on any issue is already consensus. Last month, the Washington Reporter cited a Senate Republican Conference poll finding 61% of respondents of all parties supported the Vice-President’s task force, compared to only 23% who disapproved. Headline, June 3rd:
Fraud transcends party. It’s a consensus issue even if it mostly targets Democrats. (Who, to be fair, are generally found traveling in packs in areas where the most fraud seems to be located. Weird. Probably just a coincidence.) Once again, we see the Trump team flexing political muscles the Democrats simply do not appear able to mirror.
It’s all upside, if they don’t blunder. All the Trump team needs to do is step carefully and methodically. If they can retain broad credibility —by avoiding overreaches and too-thin prosecutions— and can manage the media cycle well, the fraud crackdown could be enormously popular among everyone but true partisans.
There’s another, even more irony-suffused reason Democrats can’t effectively protest a national anti-fraud task force targeting Democrat officials: the Trump lawfare. After four years of prosecuting the President and screaming “no one is above the law,” Democrats rhetorically disabled themselves from deploying “persecution” and “revenge” narratives.
The Republicans are taking full advantage. Consider this on-point Fox News headline from January:
Now, in 2026, every Democrat “weaponization” press conference invites the clip reel. The irony is even thicker because the predicate here is worse for them than many of the Trump process cases were for him. Feeding Our Future, Medi-Cal hospice rings, Hawaii’s abysmal zero-case Medicaid fraud record— these are theft from kids’ meals and Medicaid, with convictions and dollar totals, not a ‘hush-money’ bookkeeping theory or a documents dispute.
So the 2026 victim frame is not only hypocritical; it is harder to sell to a pro-crackdown public on the merits.
It’s so perfect, it’s almost like it was planned from the beginning. Certainly, President Trump wasted no time advantaging the opportunity. He might well have planned this during his interregnum. Before he could launch a national anti-fraud effort targeting Democrats, he first had to rebuild DOJ and handle the Epstein affair. It sure looks like a scripted timeline. Just connect the dots.