Under AG Pam Bondi, the DOJ has dropped 23,000 criminal cases in just the first six months of Trump’s second term. Nearly 11,000 of those criminal cases were dropped in Feb. 2025 alone shortly after Bondi took office. For complex cases, the DOJ can take years before deciding whether to bring charges

Under AG Pam Bondi, the DOJ has **dropped 23,000 criminal cases while prosecuting 32,000 new immigration cases** in just the first six months of Trump’s second term. Of note:

→ The DOJ declined to prosecute nearly **5,000 federal drug cases**, including trafficking and money laundering, even as Trump has railed against drugs coming into the U.S. That’s a number 45% higher than the average of the prior three new administrations.

→ While Elon Musk’s DOGE operatives said they were rooting out waste, fraud and abuse, the DOJ declined **over 900 cases of federal program or procurement fraud**. The number of fraud cases closed was about double that in the same time period of the Biden and first Trump administrations.

→ Prosecutors also declined **more than 1,300 cases involving terrorism and national security**, nearly twice what was typical at the start of the most recent new administrations. Domestic terrorism was the hardest-hit program, but over 300 cases involving charges of providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations were also dropped.

→ Nearly 11,000 of those criminal cases were dropped in Feb. 2025 alone, shortly after Bondi took office. For complex cases, the DOJ can take years before deciding whether to bring charges. Prosecutors were given just 10 days to review every open case launched before Oct. 2022 and to determine whether to close it. None of the former DOJ prosecutors we talked to could recall a similar order.

A DOJ spokesperson said that in “an effort to clean, remediate, and validate data in U.S. Attorneys’ case management system,” the department reviewed all pending criminal matters opened prior to the 2023 fiscal year, which included updating the status of closed cases. “This Department of Justice remains committed to investigating and prosecuting all types of crime to keep the American people safe, and the number of declinations is a direct result of our efforts to run the agency in a more efficient manner.”

**Read the full investigation:** https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-doj-immigration-bondi-declinations-criminal-investigations