Historically, the Justice Department has been understood by both Democrat and Republican administrations as serving the people—not the president. As Ted Olson, Ronald Reagan’s chief legal counsel, wrote in a memo to the attorney general in 1982,

The Justice Department has put new emphasis on prosecutions and investigations with a focus on states that have helped undocumented immigrants.

That’s quite a first day for an attorney general who testified under oath at her confirmation hearing that “there will never be an enemies list within the Department of Justice.” Maybe she had her