ACTL Statement on President Trump’s Call to Prosecute Political Opponents

NEWPORT BEACH, CALIFORNIA (September 24, 2025) — The American College of Trial Lawyers (ACTL), acting through its Executive Committee, opposes President Trump’s demand that Attorney General Pam Bondi prosecute his political opponents, including New York State Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI Director James Comey, and California Senator Adam Schiff. The President declared all three “guilty as hell” and claimed there was a “great case” against them.

The President’s effort to dictate whom the Department of Justice prosecutes represents a blatant attack on the bedrock principle that prosecutors must make decisions based on evidence, not political pressure or partisan considerations.

Moreover, the President’s demand erodes the presumption of innocence and the right to due process of law: He has declared his political opponents guilty without charges, without the right to assert a defense, without the presentation of evidence, and without a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of their peers.

As the late Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson cautioned in 1940, when he was Attorney General, “the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power comes from pressures to go after somebody, rather than to go after crime.”

Attorney General Griffin Bell, a Past President of ACTL, issued a similar warning in 1978, when he declared that the Department of Justice must operate as a “neutral zone” in which “neither favor, nor pressure, nor politics is permitted to influence the administration of law.”

Going forward, the President’s rhetoric poses the grave danger that individuals will be targeted for prosecution because they are perceived as enemies of the administration — not because a fair investigative process has led prosecutors to conclude there is sufficient evidence to charge them with a crime. Such targeting poses a clear and present danger to our democracy.

Throughout its 75-year history, ACTL has held that the United States is a nation governed by the Rule of Law, not the summary pronouncements of guilt by those in high office. We condemn in the strongest terms this abuse of power by the President.

To download the full Statement, click here.