The headaches have come from recent developments in long-running court fights, the wave of prosecutions stemming from the January 6th riot at the US Capitol, and a steady trickle of new revelations about the Trump era.
"What's happening to them is they keep bumping into this tension between all these really questionable decisions made in the Trump administration & the institutional prerogative of protecting the Justice Department going forward." - Neil Eggleston, ex-Obama White House counsel.
"That's what's causing the tension they're dealing with over and over again," Eggleston added.
More tension surfaced when the Washington Post, CNN, & The New York Times were informed that the Trump DOJ obtained reporters' phone records as part of leak investigations.
DOJ in May also landed in the unusual position of trying to shield one of the most significant legal episodes of Trump's presidency from becoming public.
The Justice Department appealed a federal judge's ruling to release, in its entirety, a legal memo that then-Attorney General William Barr cited in justifying his decision not to charge Trump with obstructing justice after the Mueller investigation.
DOJ is also testing the bounds of its independence by pressing forward Monday with a bid to defend Trump against a defamation lawsuit by a woman who accused him of rape.
There is no shortage of additional tests going forward as DOJ oversees a slew of politically sensitive investigations into everyone from Hunter Biden, the president's adult son, to prominent Trump allies like Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Jeffrey Cramer, a former federal prosecutor who spent 12 years at the Justice Department, pointed to the spectrum of cases and said they show AG Merrick Garland is "following the facts."
"We see him pursuing almost a third rail, if you're a Democrat, with respect to the Democratic firm and Burisma," Cramer said.
"He's not investigating Hunter Biden, per se, but he is investigating a Democratic lobbying firm that worked with a Ukrainian company that everyone who follows politics has heard about in the last year," Cramer added.
NEW: President Biden regularly convenes his crew of senior advisors in huddles for "small strategy group" discussions. It's an exclusive White House invite reserved for the president's inner circle. By @ngaudiano & @rbravender@thisisinsider ($) businessinsider.com/joe-biden-top-…
The roster includes mostly longtime Biden consiglieres, but also a few relative newcomers to BidenWorld who have gained clout with the president.
They represent a tiny fraction of the more than 300 staffers who work for the Executive Office of the President.
It's a crew that's tight-knit but also tight-lipped about relationships inside BidenWorld. It's a stark contrast to TrumpWorld, where reports of staff's internal bickering and power struggles regularly spilled into public view.
NEW: Donald Trump's hot vax summer is officially lit.
Since decamping to New Jersey from his Mar-a-Lago resort, the former president is filling his days with endless rounds of golf & emailed tirades against enemies. ($) @thisisinsider by @tomlobianco
Trump is likewise in entertaining mode, hosting a fundraiser for his super PAC last weekend at his Bedminster club. He also may be plotting a '24 comeback: issuing candidate endorsements, making quick NYC side trips, & planning campaign-style rallies over the coming month.
Nothing, it seems, will prevent Trump from doing Trump during his COVID-carefree summer: not even the massive legal storm clouds gathering on the horizon of Trump's gilded Garden State stomping grounds, nor the prosecutorial heat emanating from New York.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson is unsealing and releasing documents from the Paul Manafort case this AM. Here's one doc she just released with fewer black boxes than when it first came out back in December 2018.
Here's a side-by-side of the two versions and what was previously redacted re. Manafort's lies about his contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik:
New version on left released today; old version on right released back in Dec 2018:
Among the many exclusive nuggets in this story is a 7+ minute video of @mtgreenee speaking to her constituents at the 14th District Republican Convention in Dalton on May 15. She recounts her run-in a few days earlier with @aoc - who she dubs "Alexandria Ocrazyo-Cortez."
Greene on the AOC incident: "She stopped, turned, & threw her hands in the air, & then she kept going. Well the press that was present said that I was screaming at her & that I had behavior that's not becoming of a member of Congress."
Insider traversed Greene's congressional district over two weeks in May, including attending two GOP events in Dalton: a Patriots Unite Rally graced by the election conspiracist and lawyer Lin Wood, as well as the 14th District Republican convention where @mtgreenee spoke.
Wood’s speech focused on Gov. Brian Kemp and Sec of State Brad Raffensperger, who refused to play ball when Trump was seeking to overturn the presidential election. "Put them in front of a firing squad, and send them straight to hell," the attorney told the crowd.
NEW: The next two election cycles in America could be a roller-coaster ride for Republicans as Donald Trump and his namesake company face the prospect of criminal charges. A team effort from the @thisisinsider DC bureau ($) businessinsider.com/trump-indictme…
Political insiders are only starting to grasp this increasingly real possibility after NY AG Letitia James' recent statement confirming she's now linked up with the Manhattan DA who has been digging into Trump's financial records after securing that authority from SCOTUS.
Interviews with more than a dozen members of Congress and political operatives this week elicited incredulous looks, knee-jerk reactions, and wild speculation about what prospectively sidelining Trump would mean to the political world.