Last week I wrote about the reckless spending of taxpayer dollars by many members of the Trump administration. Today I want to focus on the frivolous spending of Trump’s Department of Justice, involving several nonsensical lawsuits filed during this term. These lawsuits have cost taxpayers literally millions of dollars when you factor in the time they take to develop, file, and litigate. Such costs do not begin to factor in the incalculable costs to the victims in terms of money and psychological stress.
Here is just a sampling of such lawsuits over the past 19 months.
Trump sued the IRS and the Treasury Department for $10 billion over a former contractor leaking his tax records during his first term. (Please keep in mind that public release of tax filings has become a norm in American politics.) The Judge issued a 56-page scathing ruling nullifying the settlement, stating the suit lacked adverseness because Trump controlled both sides of the litigation. The Judge also referred the Administration officials involved to the state bar associations for professional disciplinary review over their handling of the lawsuit.
The Trump Administration filed several retaliatory lawsuits against major independent law firms which court rulings found to be unlawful and unconstitutional before the DOJ ultimately dropped the cases.
Trump filed mortgage fraud charges against Letitia James, Lisa Cook, Adam Schiff, and Eric Swalwell. None of these so far have gathered any speed. Investigative reporters have revealed that on numerous occasions, Trump has listed different properties as his own principal residences and overinflated or underinflated his property values depending on which bank loans he sought.
The Trump administration accused John Bolton of unlawfully keeping classified information which he used for his tell-all book. Bolton reached a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty of one count of illegal retention of national security information and pay a $2.25 million fine. His sentence is scheduled for October, and he faces up to five years in prison. As you may recall, Trump kept literally truckloads of classified information at Mar-a-Lago in unsecured locations. The only reason the case was eventually thrown out was because he once again became President.
Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted over a controversial Instagram post which was a picture of seashells on a beach showing the numbers 86 47. Legal experts view the case as having no legal merit. Scholars across the political spectrum describe the prosecution as legally frivolous and vulnerable to a swift dismissal under First Amendment free speech protection. Before that indictment, Comey was indicted on now dismissed charges of making false statements to the Judiciary Committee in 2020.
Trump has charged several major universities with failing to protect Jewish students from antisemitism, promoting left-wing wokeness, and running discriminatory DEI or racial preference programs. The Administration has tied these charges to the withholding of federal research funds, multi-million-dollar legal settlements, and civil rights probes.
The U.S. Attorney’s office in D.C. sought but failed to secure indictments against six members of Congress—Mark Kelly, Elissa Slotkin, Jason Crow, Maggie Goodlander, Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan–for releasing a video in which they said that U.S service members could refuse illegal orders.
Federal prosecutors launched a criminal investigation into Former Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell related to his 2025 congressional testimony regarding the renovation of the Federal Reserve Building. The Judge threw out the lawsuit stating that there was zero evidence to support a criminal investigation.
Last week House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan issued a formal criminal referral to the DOJ asking federal prosecutors to charge Jack Smith with making false statements to Congress during a closed-door deposition. Smith’s team rejected the accusation, claiming the testimony accurately addressed the specific toll record subpoenas and called the referral a politically motivated attack on a public servant. A congressional criminal referral carries no legal force on its own and does not force the Justice department to file criminal charges.
The time and money spent on all these charges is calculated in several different ways, but we can conservatively say that they have resulted in costing billions of dollars of taxpayer money and literally thousands of hours of DOJ employees’ time.
Trump’s baseless claims against the stolen 2020 election alone are estimated to have cost taxpayers more than $520 million.
So why is all this reckless spending happening when one would hope the DOJ would focus on much more worthy causes? Retribution is the name of the game.
In fact, retribution has shaped hundreds of Trump’s official actions, personnel decisions, and institutional pressures which are aimed at his perceived political enemies. These targets have faced official scrutiny, funding freezes, and legal threats.
Reuters documented at least 470 targets of retribution from federal employees and prosecutors to universities and media outlets. And in addition to the immense charges to taxpayers caused by the retribution fixation, the prosecuted have spent millions of dollars defending their innocence.
Psychologists say that all this retribution is driven by a deep need to assert control and even the score. They also say that the neurological rewards of such retributions fade quickly leaving behind chronic rumination and fueling a continuous loop of conflict rather than true closure.
The Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius once wrote, “The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.” Let’s hope America votes to stop the retribution train in its tracks and move on down the road to a more productive focus, unlike the one currently in motion.
