Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of Left podcast.

Today we explore how political revenge became official government policy.

The Department of Justice has dropped fraud cases while opening vindictive investigations into Trump's critics.

Judges who rule against him face death threats at home with no federal protection, and thousands of DOJ lawyers have walked out the door, leaving the agency hollowed out by loyalty tests and bent toward retribution.

For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our top takes in about 50 minutes today include The Beat with Ari Melber, 60 Minutes, NBC News, strict scrutiny, Democracy Now, MS Now, and

stay tuned with Prete.

Then, in the additional deeper dives half of the show, there will be more in four sections.

Section A, Department of Revenge, Section B, Malicious Prosecutions, Section C, Weaponized

Department, and Section D hollowed out.

And now, on to the show.

We begin with big news that runs through the crises that Donald Trump has been facing,

including credibility problems

at his Justice Department. The president basically announcing that he plans to nominate the acting

attorney general, who has been so controversial, just faced big pushback and losses on Capitol Hill,

including from the Republican Senate over this criminal fund they want to do.

Well, now he wants to turn him from acting AG to his actual attorney general, a Senate confirmed

position. Now, Lanch has been auditioning for this since Bondi was ousted in April and pushing to go

even farther than she would on cases that even if they ultimately lose or overturned

reflect Trump's demands for a partisan political revenge-oriented DOJ.

Obviously, I'm honored and humble that the president indicated he is going to nominate me today.

So I'm looking forward to working with the senators and getting them the information they need through the confirmation

process. That is Blanche referring to it. And you can hear the terms of art that we in the news

...