Former Vice President Kamala Harris said she’s unsure whether Americans can trust the Department of Justice (DOJ) under President Trump.
“I don’t know if we can trust what’s coming out of the Department of Justice right now,” Harris told MSNBC on Sunday. “And that pains me to say that as someone who spent the majority of my career as a prosecutor where the work of a prosecutor should be to do justice.”
In recent weeks, former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James have been indicted by federal grand juries in the Eastern District of Virginia.
Comey is charged with making a false statement to Congress and obstruction of a congressional proceeding, while James faces charges of bank fraud and false statements to a financial institution. Both have denied wrongdoing.
Prior to the indictments, Erik Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, resigned amid pressure from the White House over his refusal to bring a case against Comey, James and other Trump foes.
The president then tapped Lindsey Halligan, a top White House aide, as the district’s interim U.S. attorney. He also publicly called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute Comey, James and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Ca.) last month, an order that reportedly was meant to be a direct message.
Harris said Sunday she believes Trump is on a “vengeance campaign” that is “exposing the petty nature of who he is and his deep level of insecurity.” Comey was dismissed by Trump in May 2017 and has since been a sharp critic of the president. James, in 2022, brought a civil fraud case against Trump, with a state judge ordering the president to pay $355 million in penalties. An appeals court voided the fine in August, a decision James appealed in September.
The former vice president, who lost to Trump in the 2024 election, said that those “who are manipulating the justice system” are impacting all Americans, not just those being prosecuted.
“This affects all of us who believe that, flawed though it may be, that a justice system is actually supposed to be blind in the way that it does its work not targeting people because of who they are or for that matter what they look like,” Harris added.
