Mr. Trump and the (Jewish) Law - The Jewish Standard

Donald Trump is a lucky man. If this nation were being run under Jewish law, he probably would have to spend most every weekday explaining to one rabbinic court after another why a particular action of his did not violate halachah.

Something of great consequence that has been going on ever since Trump returned to office just over a year ago would be grist for the halachic mill. Within weeks of taking office last year, the president completely undermined the independence and the integrity of both the Department of Justice and the FBI.

The DOJ has always been expected to operate independently of partisan politics. The same is true of its main investigative arm, the FBI, which in so many ways is the DOJ’s unofficial public face.

The public image of the FBI was first fashioned by the 409 episodes of “This is Your FBI,” which starred the very straightlaced, no-nonsense actor Frank Lovejoy. The series title was dictated to the production company by perhaps the most formidable man to ever run a government agency, J. Edgar Hoover. He insisted on the name as part of the price for cooperating with the show. It was part of his broader public relations campaign to present the FBI as belonging to the public, a trusted institution that served all of us, not the political interests that ran the federal government.

This image was carried forward in a truly big way in the mid-1960s, when ABC ran a series for nine years called “The FBI.” It starred another very straightlaced, no-nonsense actor, Efrem Zimbalist Jr. His character also was dictated by Hoover, and it represented Hoover’s notion of the ideal FBI agent. He was disciplined, unemotional, loyal, and above all, apolitical, just the image Hoover wanted America to see and the very image that America associated with the DOJ.

Today’s DOJ is run by Attorney General Pamela Bondi. The FBI is run by Kash Patel. Both were appointed for one reason only, and it has nothing to do with their experience in law enforcement. It has everything to do with their blind loyalty to the man who appointed them and the so-called Unitary Executive Theory by which he governs. That theory holds that a sitting president has absolute authority over the executive branch, and so neither the DOJ nor its FBI are independent or apolitical in any way. They serve to help the president carry out his agenda in any way necessary, including obeying any questionably legal orders.

I am writing this column on Sunday, January 18, 2026. In the 363 days since Trump took office, the administration has targeted more than 400 individuals and organizations that oppose many of Trump’s policies. The idea is to make defending the charges leveled at these individuals and organizations so costly and so ruinous to their reputations that they would agree to back off their anti-Trump efforts.

In September 2025, Trump also issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” The memo instructs joint terrorism task forces to investigate entities whose “common threads” include “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity… extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.” Critics, including the ACLU and NYU Law School’s Brennan Center for Justice, characterized the directive as effectively criminalizing political dissent.

The unitary executive theory, however, is only part of how this administration governs. There also is the retribution factor, a rejected theological concept that the administration has chosen to turn into a political weapon.

In his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 4, 2023, Trump signaled his intent when he said, “In 2016, I declared, ‘I am your voice.’ Today I add: ‘I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.’” He repeated that theme at the end of that month in his first major 2024 campaign rally, which was held in Waco, Texas, on March 25, 2023.

Understand what Trump meant when he said he would exact vengeance for “those who have been wronged and betrayed.” He was talking about himself and everyone in his CPAC audience who believed that Trump had won the 2020 election but that the Democrats had stolen the victory from under him.

According to one report, Trump’s adviser at the time, Steve Bannon, dubbed the speech the “Come the Retribution” speech, a play on “Come the Revolution.”

Retribution has been front and center of the DOJ’s and the FBI’s mission since Trump installed Bondi and Patel. Since their appointments, the DOJ has pursued a systematic campaign of investigations and prosecutions targeting people whom Trump has publicly identified as political adversaries. Among them are:

• Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who led the management team during Trump’s impeachment trial in his first term. The investigation centers on allegations of mortgage fraud for which no evidence has been found as yet despite prosecutors’ efforts.

• New York State Attorney General Letitia James, who won a $450 million civil fraud judgment against Trump and his family business. She, too, is being investigated for alleged mortgage fraud and also for whether she “deprived Trump or his children of their rights” by pursuing her civil case. Federal grand juries in Virginia declined to indict her, and a federal judge dismissed her initial indictment.

• Former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired in 2017. He was indicted on charges related to classified documents. The indictment was dismissed by a federal judge, but the DOJ is appealing that dismissal.

• Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, whom Trump has repeatedly criticized, became the subject of a DOJ criminal investigation just a few weeks ago. Supposedly, he is being investigated for giving false testimony in June before the Senate Banking Committee about the Fed’s $2.5 billion headquarters renovation project. As Powell said on January 11, the investigation is really about “whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic condition — or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.”

Other targets of announced investigations include former President Biden, Trump critic and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, among still others.

A rabbinic court (a beit din) would have a field day with this Trumpian behavior. Jewish law and tradition have very strict notions of the administration of justice, including about abusing the law for political purposes — retribution especially.

The Torah insists that justice must be impartial. “You shall not pervert justice; you shall not show partiality, and you shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and distorts the words of the righteous.” (See Deut. 16:19.)

The Talmud takes the work of judges very seriously. As the Babylonian Talmud tractate Sanhedrin 7a puts it, God sits among those who judge, and “every judge who does not judge according to absolute truth causes the Divine Presence to withdraw from Israel.”

What applies to judges also applies to prosecutors.

In BT Sanhedrin 18b, not only do our Sages of Blessed Memory insist that judges must not be swayed by personal animus or political considerations, they make it clear that the law applies to all equally — including the High Priest himself.

The Torah’s insistence on the need for two eyewitnesses to convict someone of a crime (see Deut. 19:15) is also a requirement that hard evidence is the only standard for conviction. In the verses that follow, the Torah also prescribes harsh punishment to those who conspire to convict someone based on false evidence. There is an illuminating discussion of this beginning in BT Makkot 5a.

There also is the issue of accusing someone falsely just to damage that person’s reputation, which is one of the goals National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, mentioned above. There is a huge category of Jewish law that specifically deals with this: ona’at devarim, verbal wrongs.

Perhaps the most relevant wrong under category this is motzi shem ra, defaming someone’s character by spreading false information intended to belittle him or her.

According to BT Pesachim 118a, “whoever gives false testimony against his neighbor should be thrown to the dogs, for it is said [in Exodus 22:30], ‘you shall throw it to the dogs,’ which is [immediately] followed by ‘you shall not raise a false report….’”

Alas, we are not governed by Jewish law in this country, so Trump will never answer for any of his misdeeds in a rabbinic court. Don’t hold your breath about him answering anything in any other court, either.

What a pity.

Shammai Engelmayer is a rabbi-emeritus of Congregation Beth Israel of the Palisades and an adult education teacher in Bergen County. He is the author of eight books and the winner of 10 awards for his commentaries. His website is www.shammai.org.

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