‘Weaponization and Abuses’– Trump Administration Scraps Foreign Influence Task Force

Newly appointed US Attorney General Pam Bondi unveiled plans this week to eliminate two separate Department of Justice task forces that target foreign influence in US politics on behalf of adversarial countries and help enforce US sanctions.

In a memo sent to staff Wednesday, Bondi revealed she had disbanded the Foreign Influence Task Force, a unit dedicated to investigating violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), requiring such agents to register with US authorities, AFP reported, saying the decision was made to free up resources “to address more pressing priorities, and end risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion.”

Bondi, a former Florida Attorney General and a close conservative ally of US President Donald Trump, also on Wednesday announced what was termed a “Weaponization Working Group,” whose stated goal is to eliminate “politicized” actions of government officials who have investigated Trump, who is a convicted felon.

In his first two and a half weeks, Trump has made good on a number of the vendettas he promised at his rallies, and generally has instituted much of the vindictive agenda of the same right-wing manifesto “Project 2025” from which he attempted to distance himself on the campaign trail.

Paul Manafort, for example, Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, was indicted in a probe into Russian influence in that year’s US election and charged with a litany of offenses, including acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign principal and lying in FARA documents.

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FARA was also used to pursue Mike Flynn, Trump’s first national security advisor, whose tenure at NSA was the shortest in American history. In December of 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty in US District Court to “willfully and knowingly” making “false, fictitious and fraudulent statements” to the FBI regarding conversations with Russia’s ambassador.

He was pardoned by Trump at the end of the president’s first term.

Manafort also was ultimately pardoned by Trump, who called the whole affair a “Russia hoax”. The US House of Representatives did not see it that way, and in December 2019 handed Trump the first of his two impeachments, in this case for abuse of power and obstruction of justice.

AFP reported that Bondi, who previously registered herself under FARA for work she did with Qatar, said she was limiting criminal enforcement of the law to “alleged conduct similar to more traditional espionage by foreign government actors.”

Also on Wednesday, the day of her swearing-in, Bondi disbanded the Task Force KleptoCapture, an initiative started in 2022 to enforce sanctions on Russia.