Trump’s Legal and Political Losses Mount as DOJ Drops Powell Prosecution Effort

On April 27, The Daily Blast podcast, produced by The New Republic and presented by the DSR Network, host Greg Sargent examined the growing list of setbacks facing Donald Trump across multiple fronts.

Sargent highlighted several key losses for Trump, including:

• The ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
• The failure of Trump’s attempt to oust Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
• The Supreme Court striking down his tariffs and likely ruling against him on birthright citizenship.
• The inability to prevent Virginia from passing a referendum adding House seats for Democrats.

Despite these failures, Sargent noted that Trump’s MAGA base continues to believe in his invincibility, with his team attempting to sustain the illusion of control through aggressive rhetoric and legal maneuvers.

DOJ Drops Effort to Prosecute Jerome Powell

One of Trump’s most publicized legal failures came when the Department of Justice (DOJ) dropped its attempt to prosecute Powell for allegedly lying to Congress about renovations at the Federal Reserve headquarters.

A federal judge previously dismissed the case as an effort to harass Powell, driven by Trump’s personal animosity toward him. The New York Times reported that prosecutors admitted they lacked evidence of any crimes but pursued the case anyway.

Sargent questioned whether this was an appropriate use of DOJ resources, to which Asawin Suebsaeng, senior political correspondent at Zeteo, responded:

“Something that really pisses me off about this stuff is if you go down the roster of the names that are publicly available of the lawyers at DOJ who are conducting this—these are not always people who used to be on Donald Trump’s personal legal team. There are a good number of them who have been there for a while, throughout multiple administrations, not just this one. So these hugely corrupt authoritarian efforts are not just defined by the pure-blooded Team Trump individuals. It is populated also by people who have been in the system for a long time and continue to stick with it when they could very well just do the ethical thing and resign.”

Suebsaeng emphasized that while some DOJ officials involved in these efforts may face no professional consequences, judges—even those appointed by Trump—often reject such baseless legal actions.