Historically, the Justice Department has been understood by both Democrat and Republican administrations as serving the people—not the president. As Ted Olson, Ronald Reagan’s chief legal counsel, wrote in a memo to the attorney general in 1982,

Although the department historically has insisted on remaining independent of the White House, Bondi made clear that she was working to overhaul a DOJ that Trump has insisted is both biased against him and against political conservatives in general.