Trump's DOJ Is Dropping Terrorism Cases. Guess What They're Doing Instead.
March 31, 2026
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8:54Now PlayingTrump's DOJ Is Dropping Terrorism Cases. Guess What They're Doing Instead.
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as posted by the channelJoseph Gerbasi spent 28 years at the DOJ building federal cases against fentanyl suppliers in China and India. The day Pam Bondi walked in, his team was ordered to abandon every case they had built. He retired in March 2025. Michael Gordon was fired. And Trump's DOJ quietly dropped 23,000 criminal investigations -- including over 1,300 terrorism and national security cases -- to make room for immigration theater.
Read More:
Trump's Justice Department Dropped 23,000 Criminal Investigations in Shift to Immigration (ProPublica, March 31, 2026)
In the first six months of Trump's second term, the Department of Justice quietly closed more than 23,000 criminal cases. The cases covered terrorism, drug trafficking, white-collar fraud, and espionage. In February 2025 alone, nearly 11,000 cases were declined -- the highest monthly total on record since at least 2004. Former prosecutors interviewed by ProPublica say the mass closures were driven by a ten-day deadline to review and close all cases open for more than two years, pushed not by prosecutorial judgment but by political pressure from Washington.
The numbers reveal the real priorities of the Trump DOJ. While the administration publicly promotes its war on drugs, nearly 5,000 federal drug cases were declined -- 45% above the average of prior administrations. While DOGE claims to fight waste and fraud, over 900 federal procurement fraud cases were closed. And while Trump campaigns on "make America safe again," more than 1,300 terrorism and national security cases have been dropped -- nearly twice what was typical at the start of recent administrations. At the same time, the DOJ filed 32,000 new immigration cases in the first six months, nearly triple Biden's rate. The safety platform is a performance. The dropped cases are the policy.
Joseph Gerbasi, who spent 28 years in the DOJ's Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section, said his team was ordered to abandon years of fentanyl supply chain investigations to generate cases against Tren de Aragua -- a gang that, in his words, "never would have merited a full-scale federal investigation." Michael Gordon, who helped prosecute January 6th defendants, described a DOJ operating on "fire drills" from Washington demanding stats to make the administration "look good." Gordon was fired last June and has filed a lawsuit alleging political retaliation. Former federal prosecutor and Bush appointee Jimmy Gurule -- who spent his career investigating terrorist financing -- called it directly: "The Trump DOJ has been used as a political weapon."
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