COLUMN: The U.S. Marshals Between Two Masters — When Politics Devours Federal Justice

Introduction: America's Oldest Agency in the Crosshairs

A two-century-old service at the center of a constitutional standoff

There is a federal agency in the United States that few people talk about but everyone depends on without knowing it. The U.S. Marshals Service was founded in 1789 by the Judiciary Act, under President George Washington himself. Its original mission was clear and unambiguous: execute the orders of the federal courts, protect judges, jurors, and witnesses, and ensure that justice could function unimpeded. Two hundred and thirty-seven years in existence, and now this institution finds itself on terrain it has never known: that of deliberate politicization.

In June 2026, the Marshals Service finds itself at the center of an unprecedented institutional crisis. On one side, federal judges are issuing arrest orders targeting members of the Trump administration for contempt of court. On the other, the White House and the Department of Justice — to which the agency directly reports — appear to want to redirect, slow down, or even weaponize this enforcement arm. America watches, stunned, as a war unfolds between two powers sharing the same armed agent.

When institutional dependency becomes a vulnerability

The structural problem has long been understood, but it has never been more visible. The U.S. Marshals Service is an agency of the Department of Justice, itself led by an Attorney General appointed by the president and removable at his discretion. Pam Bondi, the former Attorney General, herself declared that her actions would be influenced by the president's will — breaking with a decades-long tradition of the DOJ's formal independence from the White House. In other words, the agency charged with executing judicial decisions ultimately answers to the very man those decisions sometimes directly target.

Constitutional scholars like George Conway warned publicly as early as early 2025 that this conflict of authority would implode. Conway said bluntly: "There is only one way for courts to enforce their orders against recalcitrant parties: send the U.S. Marshals to arrest people. And who controls the Marshals? The Department of Justice, which answers to Donald J. Trump." The prophecy came true with terrifying speed.

June 18, 2026: The Day a Judge Said "Arrest Them"

A date that will remain in the annals of American justice

On Friday, June 18, 2026, a federal judge crossed the Rubicon. After the Trump administration's legal and administrative team failed to meet a compliance deadline set Thursday the 17th at 5:00 PM, the magistrate signed a formal contempt order. This was not a fine, not a warning, not a certified letter. It was an arrest authorization. The court order — 14 pages according to documents reviewed by journalists present — explicitly directed the U.S. Marshals Service to "take all necessary steps to achieve compliance, including the physical arrest of the responsible parties."

The Marshals Service received the directive at 6:00 PM that same Friday. The White House legal team was notified at 7:30 PM. Emergency calls were placed over the following twenty-six hours to at least three senior DOJ officials. The question being asked behind closed doors was not legal, it was political: would the Marshals actually execute the order? And if Trump asked the DOJ to stop them, what would happen?

Four individuals named by title, not by name

What made this order particularly explosive was its precision. The judge had identified four individuals by their official title — not by name — as responsible for the non-compliance. Individuals specifically targeted by a personal contempt order face potential incarceration, not merely financial penalties. The symbolic and legal scope was unprecedented: for the first time in recent American history, a federal court opened the path to the physical arrest of sitting senior executive branch officials.

The Court also designated an independent special master to oversee future compliance, and issued a separate order prohibiting the destruction, alteration, or transfer of documents related to the case, under penalty of renewed contempt exposure. The judicial architecture was clearly designed to withstand political pressure. On Wednesday, June 23, 2026, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals was due to rule on an emergency stay request filed by the government's attorneys — the same day this article was published.

The Newsom Affair: The DOJ as a Tool of Political Intimidation

When the threat of investigation replaces the electoral campaign

On June 15, 2026, California Governor Gavin Newsom publicly announced that the federal Department of Justice had opened investigations targeting him and his wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom. In a pointed video statement, Newsom said bluntly: "Donald Trump is not coming after me because of my critical tweets. He is targeting me because I am considering a presidential run." The nature of the alleged investigations — visits by federal agents to family friends and former associates — matched an already-documented operational pattern in other politically sensitive files.

Newsom described a particularly troubling scenario: federal agents demanding documents and "abusing the grand jury process, combing through years of irrelevant materials." For Newsom, the diagnosis was unsparing: "Donald Trump is the most corrupt person America has ever known. He has turned governmental power into personal tools to reward his allies and try to imprison his adversaries. His personal attorney now runs the Department of Justice." That last sentence deserves emphasis: Todd Blanche, the current Acting Attorney General, previously served as Trump's defense attorney in several of his criminal trials.

A troubling precedent for Western democracy

The West's partners are watching these developments with growing unease. When a democratic government uses its federal law enforcement agencies to investigate potential political adversaries, it crosses a line ordinarily associated with authoritarian regimes — the very ones the West spends its time condemning. The argument that "the investigations began a year ago, not at the DOJ" reassures nobody: what matters is the perception, the context, and the systematic pattern taking shape.

In the state of California, Newsom's office filed a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request to obtain DOJ documents concerning "President Trump's politically motivated investigation" against the governor and his wife. This recourse to transparency instruments, ordinarily used by journalists or NGOs, by a sitting governor to defend himself against his own federal government, illustrates how far institutional trust has collapsed.

Minnesota, or the Punishment of Uncooperative States

Subpoenas as an instrument of coercion

On June 22, 2026, Chief Federal Judge Patrick J. Schiltz, appointed by George W. Bush, quashed several subpoenas issued by the Trump administration against Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, State Attorney General Keith Ellison, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and other local officials. These subpoenas had been issued at the height of Operation Metro Surge, the large deportation operation conducted by the federal administration in Minnesota earlier in the year.

Judge Schiltz's findings were scathing. He concluded that "the evidence suggesting that the challenged subpoenas were issued for illegal motives is overwhelming." He added that the DOJ had "failed — unsuccessfully — to provide even a single credible reason to justify these subpoenas." The real objective, according to the court, was clear: "to coerce Minnesota officials into assisting the federal government in enforcing civil immigration laws, and to intimidate and punish them for their non-compliance." A Republican-appointed judge concluded that Trump's DOJ had conducted an unconstitutional retaliatory operation.

The 10th Amendment as the last line of defense

The Schiltz decision rested in part on the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits the federal government from commandeering state officials to implement federal policy. This fundamental principle of American federalism — long cherished by conservatives themselves — was being brandished not by progressives, but by a Republican magistrate to block a Republican administration. The contradiction did not escape observers.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey described the subpoenas as an attempt to "use the power of the Department of Justice against elected officials who disagree with the federal administration." Attorney General Ellison was even more direct: "The facts are undeniable: the Trump administration is targeting me because I am defending Minnesota's interests. In America, our political disagreements are settled at elections — and it should alarm Americans that Trump is weaponizing the judicial system against those he disagrees with."

The "Anti-Weaponization" Fund: Rewarding Allies, Punishing Enemies

A $1.776 billion fund for Trump's inner circle

In May 2026, the Trump administration announced the creation of an Anti-Weaponization Fund endowed with $1.776 billion — a figure whose choice was not coincidental, evoking the year 1776 and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The fund originated from a settlement between Trump and the Internal Revenue Service, following the leak of his 2019 and 2020 tax returns. As part of this deal, Trump withdrew his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS in exchange for, among other things, immunity from future tax audits and the creation of this compensation fund. The current Acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche, Trump's former defense attorney, established the fund jointly with the Treasury Department.

The fund's structure was designed to evade any independent oversight: a five-member commission appointed by the Attorney General was to decide fund allocations, with no possibility of judicial review and no obligation to publish public reports. Blanche himself refused to assure Congress that individuals convicted of assaulting police officers during the January 6, 2021 events would be excluded from beneficiaries. Vice President J.D. Vance even mentioned that figures such as Tina Peters — a local official convicted in an election fraud case — and Hunter Biden could theoretically apply.

Two federal judges, a bipartisan blockade

On June 12, 2026, federal Judge Leonie Brinkema extended her preliminary injunction blocking the fund, finding that Blanche's oral assurances before Congress were insufficient — particularly since Trump had himself declared wanting to proceed with the fund after his Attorney General's testimony. The judge gave the DOJ one week to produce written sworn statements confirming the fund's abandonment. In Washington D.C., Judge Richard Leon had warned the DOJ against "playing games" with the court.

Resistance to the fund was — notably — bipartisan in the Senate: Republicans joined Democrats in opposing it, forcing the administration to announce the project's abandonment. But Trump continued publicly praising its "great concept." Axios reported on June 1, 2026 that the fund was "effectively dead for now," according to two senior administration officials. The precision "for now" reassured nobody.

Elon Musk's Private Security Force Wearing the Marshal's Badge

The creeping privatization of a public agency

In April 2025, a revelation from Mother Jones, relayed by Raw Story, had caused a shock in American legal circles: Elon Musk's private personal security had been "deputized" — invested with official powers — by the U.S. Marshals Service. The Marshals Service can legally designate outside individuals as "special deputy marshals" for specific, time-limited missions. But this practice had always concerned local or state law enforcement — not private security teams attached to an influential billionaire within the administration.

The trigger for this step was itself revealing: a member of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had contacted the Marshals Service to complain that individuals indicted in connection with January 6 were not being released quickly enough. Moreover, the New York Times and Washington Post had reported that DOGE had used the Marshals to force entry into a federal agency's offices, creating a "chaotic and traumatizing" scene. The exact identity of the men — were they real Marshals or Musk's security agents? — was sufficiently blurred that the DOJ refused to provide clarifications to the press.

Legal scholars alarmed by an unprecedented precedent

David Noll, law professor at Rutgers University specializing in private law enforcement, was categorical: "Deputizing purely private individuals is not something that has been done in the 21st century or the 20th century." He added: "If a private security force is exercising the powers of the Marshals, we must ask whether it is acting in the public interest and whether it understands the regulations that apply to Marshals." Jonathan Smith, former head of civil rights at the DOJ, added: "When private entities acquire police powers, serious questions arise about their accountability and the rules they are going to follow."

James Meissner, a former Marshals Service supervisor, confirmed that this type of deputization of non-police personnel was "atypical" — a polite euphemism masking a harsher reality: there was no recent precedent. The combination of a two-century-old public agency, a billionaire heading an unelected "government office," and a White House prepared to do anything to accelerate its political priorities created an institutional hybrid without a clear legal framework, with arrest powers and access to secured spaces.

Judges Under Threat: When the Marshals Become the Suspects

An organized climate of violence against the judiciary

Since 2025, the U.S. Marshals Service itself has been alerting federal judges of an "unusually elevated threat level." These alerts — conveyed verbally or in writing — came while Trump, Elon Musk, and other White House allies were intensifying their public attacks against magistrates who opposed the administration's policies. Judge James Boasberg, appointed by... George W. Bush, was called a "radical left lunatic" by Trump on Truth Social after blocking certain deportations. Judges received death threats, were victims of swatting (fraudulent calls to law enforcement to trigger armed interventions at their homes), and had their personal addresses revealed via pizzas delivered to their homes.

In May 2025, Judge John Coughenour, also appointed by a Republican and boasting forty-three years on the bench, told the Wall Street Journal: "In forty-three years of service, there had never been a reason to worry that the Marshals Service would act inappropriately — until these past few years." His main concern was specific: that Trump would order the Marshals to withdraw protection from judges who ruled against him. The Marshals currently answer to Pam Bondi, an Attorney General known for her loyalty to the president.

The idea of an independent judicial protection service

At a judicial conference gathering approximately fifty federal judges, a radical proposal emerged: removing oversight of the Marshals from the executive branch and entrusting it directly to Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts. This proposal — structurally inspired by the Capitol Police model, which answers to Congress rather than the executive — aimed to create an institutional "firewall" against political interference in the security of the judiciary.

In May 2025, Democratic senators formally introduced legislation to that effect. The bill created a commission composed of the Chief Justice and the Judicial Conference to supervise the Marshals Service — exactly as with the Capitol Police. The White House dismissed the idea out of hand, calling it "absurd." The DOJ assured that the Marshals would continue to "protect the safety and integrity of the federal courts." These assurances convinced nobody in the judiciary.

The Liz Oyer Affair: Marshals at Your Door to Intimidate You

A former prosecutor receives a late-night Marshal visit

On April 7, 2025, at a hearing organized by Democratic lawmakers, former federal prosecutor Liz Oyer recounted a chilling episode. The evening before her testimony, around 9:15 PM, she had been notified that the Deputy Attorney General's office had ordered the Justice Department's security service to dispatch two armed U.S. Marshals to her home to deliver a letter — a letter that had already been sent to her by email. The Marshals were to arrive between 9:00 and 10:00 PM. The letter was a warning about her testimony the following day.

Oyer refused to be intimidated: "I will not be silenced in order to conceal ongoing corruption and abuse of authority within the Department of Justice." She specified that at no point had Todd Blanche's team contacted her by phone before sending armed agents to her home. This sequence — sending armed Marshals to a former DOJ colleague's home the night before her testimony — sent a shockwave through legal circles. Not because it was technically illegal, but because it demonstrated a use of public force for purposes of manifest intimidation.

The DOJ as the president's "personal favor bank"

Oyer had lost her position after refusing to follow a directive asking her to restore firearm rights for Mel Gibson, the actor convicted of domestic violence in 2011 — an offense that under U.S. federal law permanently prohibits firearms possession. The prosecutor had applied the law. She had been asked to make an exception. She refused. She was fired. Before Congress, she stated that the DOJ should not function as "a personal favor bank for the president" and that "career officials are not the president's personal collectors."

This case is emblematic of a documented trend: the DOJ under Todd Blanche appears to operate according to a logic of rewards for political allies and sanctions for detractors. Career officials who oppose these directives are pushed out. Those who accept them are promoted. And the Marshals become the visible instrument of this new political economy of American federal justice.

Trump, Court Orders, and the Doctrine of Calculated Refusal

More than seventy-five court orders flouted

The stakes of the Marshals Service's politicization cannot be understood without measuring the full scale of the underlying challenge. According to legal experts and journalistic compilations, the Trump administration has violated more than seventy-five federal court orders since the start of its second term. This number is not partisan rhetoric: it emerges from judicial records themselves, from written findings by judges, including those appointed by Republican presidents. Judge James Boasberg, examining the administration's conduct in El Salvador deportations, wrote that the executive had shown "deliberate contempt" for his orders.

The mechanics of refusal follow a predictable pattern: the administration receives a court order, ignores it or interprets it creatively, appeals to a higher court, and in the interim, the fait accompli is created. When appeals succeed, the damage is already done. When they fail, the cycle resumes with a new order and a new violation. Judges, who have no army, have only one coercive enforcement tool: the Marshals. And that is precisely where the loop closes on itself.

The question nobody wants to ask out loud

Retired Judge Nancy Gertner asked the question with disarming clarity: "If Trump wanted to be totally non-compliant, he could order the Department of Justice to be non-compliant. At that point, you have a full constitutional crisis. We're not there yet." That "not yet" has become one of the most troubling markers in the American constitutional debate: how long before "not yet" becomes "now"?

Because the institutional logic is relentless. If the president controls the DOJ, and if the DOJ controls the Marshals, and if the Marshals are the sole enforcement arm of court orders, then a president determined not to respect judicial decisions holds a de facto veto over the entire federal judicial system. This is not a theoretical hypothesis. It is the real institutional configuration of America in June 2026, and it operates according to exactly that logic on a daily basis.

Institutional Memory, or How Democracies Tip

Lessons of history: when agencies lose their neutrality

Institutional historian Peter Simi of Chapman University observed that this dynamic "underscores a broader crisis related to the decline of the legitimacy of American social institutions and the political divisions intensifying across the country." This sober formulation conceals a brutal reality: institutions do not disappear through spectacular coups. They erode through progressive diversions, accepted precedents, crossed lines without consequences, until yesterday's norm becomes the exception and the exception becomes the new norm.

The Marshals Service itself has a memory of resistance. Historically, when it received difficult or dangerous orders to execute — notably during the forced desegregation of Southern universities in the 1960s — it executed them "without asking questions," in the formulation of CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington). It is precisely that tradition of obedience to court orders that is now under pressure. Because the agency finds itself in an untenable position: its orders now potentially come from two contradictory masters.

The nomination of Gadyaces Serralta as a loyalty test

Trump nominated Gadyaces Serralta to lead the Marshals Service, following the resignation of the previous director. The Senate, charged with confirming this nomination, faces a historic responsibility according to CREW: it must rigorously examine Serralta's commitment to the USMS's primary functions, his qualifications, and his fidelity to the Constitution. Because if the agency comes to be led by a presidential loyalist rather than a legal professional, the last institutional lock between the president's will and the execution of court orders will have snapped.

In 2021, the DOJ Inspector General's Office had already found that the USMS could not provide adequate protection services to magistrates, in part due to "competing agency priorities" — bureaucratic language for saying Marshals were being diverted from their primary judicial mission. Ronald Davis, former USMS Director, had warned that protection demands and threats had become "unsustainable given current resources." Since then, threats have increased. And resources have been redirected.

$18 Million Diverted: Marshals Mobilized for Migration Politics

A judicial protection budget cannibalized by the presidential agenda

In June 2026, documents obtained through a FOIA transparency lawsuit revealed that the U.S. Marshals Service spent more than $18 million to support the federal takeover of the Washington D.C. district between August 2025 and March 2026 — the so-called "federalization" of D.C. under Trump's authority. This deployment diverted personnel and resources from court security missions, fugitive apprehension operations, and tactical operations across the country. And this precisely while threats against federal judges were reaching historic highs.

The juxtaposition is vertiginous: while judges were receiving death threats, having their personal addresses revealed, and being victimized by swatting, the agents supposed to protect them were being redeployed to execute the administration's political priorities. Congress had voted specific funds for judicial protection and courthouse reinforcement — funds that the USMS, enjoying "broad discretion" in the use of its budgets according to CREW reports, partially reallocated to other purposes.

A budget report that became an indictment

CREW filed before Congress, in April 2026, testimony on the USMS's FY2027 budget that documented these deviations. The organization noted that the agency appeared to enjoy "very broad discretion" in allocating its resources, without Congress's oversight mechanisms being sufficiently robust to take stock of this. This budgetary opacity, combined with politically loyal leadership, creates ideal conditions for presidential priorities to override the agency's legal mandates.

The report noted that federal law requires the USMS Director to consult the Judicial Conference on security needs and take those needs into account in resource allocation decisions. This consultation appears to have remained a formality. The $18 million spent on D.C. migration policy was not submitted for the Judicial Conference's approval. It was spent because the president wanted the USMS there, and the agency's director complied.

Judicial Resistance: The Judges Who Are Holding

Magistrates appointed by both parties facing the same pressure

One of the most striking aspects of this crisis is that judicial resistance does not conform to partisan lines. Judge Patrick Schiltz, appointed by Bush, quashed the subpoenas against Walz. Judge James Boasberg, also appointed by Bush, held firm on deportations despite Trump's personal attacks. Judge John Coughenour, appointed by Reagan, blocked the end of birthright citizenship. These Republican-appointed magistrates refuse to bend before an executive that considers them political enemies because they apply the law as written.

In March 2026, at an exceptional judicial forum, judges appointed by both Republican and Democratic presidents collectively read aloud the obscene threatening messages they had received. This act — unusual, almost theatrical in its sobriety — was a way of publicly documenting a reality the administration sought to minimize. Chief Justice John Roberts, in his year-end annual report for 2024, had already condemned "hostile threats against judges and the security measures taken in response" — including the use of bulletproof vests and permanent bodyguards.

An institution holding — but for how long?

The question is not whether individual judges have courage — they clearly do. The question is whether the overall institutional system still has the resources to enforce their decisions. Because a court that hands down sentences it cannot enforce is no longer a court: it is an echo chamber. And if the enforcement arm — the Marshals — is controlled by the party against whom the sentences are directed, then the system of independent justice ceases to function as such, regardless of individual magistrates' bravery.

The 249 lawsuits against Trump administration actions catalogued by the organization Just Security illustrate the scale of the judicial front opened against the White House. Each of these lawsuits is an individual battle. But the systemic war — the one over who controls the armed arm of justice — plays out at a deeper, less visible, and perhaps more decisive level.

The West Watches, and Is Not Reassured

What America's allies see from their capitals

From Brussels, Berlin, Paris, or Ottawa, the scenes unfolding in American courts are watched with a mixture of stupor and strategic calculation. America remains the pillar of the Western order — militarily, economically, symbolically. But an America whose judicial institutions are being weakened by the deliberate politicization of its armed arm sends a dangerous signal to its adversaries — and a disturbing signal to its allies. Russia, China, Iran know that American domestic disunion is their best strategic weapon.

The West has a direct interest in American institutional solidity. Not out of sentimental attachment to American democracy as a model, but because the credibility of the liberal international order rests largely on the United States' ability to demonstrate that its institutions function according to the rule of law. When American Marshals receive arrest orders against executive branch members and the question is publicly raised whether they will execute them, it is all that credibility that teeters.

Trump as a necessary evil: the limits of the argument

It is possible to accept Trump as a "necessary evil" for the West — his firmness on certain security files, his role in negotiations with adversaries who only respond to a show of force — while acknowledging that the politicization of the Marshals and federal law enforcement is a distinct institutional drift, separable from and critiquable independently of his foreign policies. These two judgments do not exclude each other. Supporting the West's firmness against its enemies and condemning the diversion of judicial agencies for partisan purposes are not contradictory positions.

What is unacceptable is not Trump as a political personality — it is the systemic logic he installs and that could survive his term. Because the precedents created today — a Marshals Service deputizing private bodyguards, a DOJ subsidizing the president's political allies, Marshals sent to intimidate a witness — these precedents will be available to the next president, whoever that is, whether from the left or the right. The institutional machine captures its driver as much as he drives it.

Conclusion: The Rule of Law Is Not a Given — It Is a Daily Choice

What this crisis reveals about the fragility of democracies

The story of the U.S. Marshals and their role in the American constitutional crisis of 2025–2026 is not the story of a corrupt agency. It is the story of a structurally vulnerable institution placed in an impossible position by political actors who decided to test the limits of what a democracy can tolerate. The Marshals themselves — their agents, their middle managers — are for the most part professionals who want to do their job. But the institutional framework in which they operate has been deliberately weakened, their resources diverted, their chain of command politicized.

The rule of law is not a natural property of democracies. It is a choice that institutional actors make every day, by respecting rules that do not physically compel them to do so, but that democratic culture has made socially and politically costly to violate. When that culture erodes — when violations become banal, when circumventions cost nothing — the constraint that keeps the system in place disappears. And it is that cultural erosion, more than any individual violation, that constitutes the deepest threat.

A warning for the entire West

What is happening in the United States is not solely an American problem. It is a real-time laboratory of what happens when an established democracy, with solid institutions and a deep constitutional tradition, finds itself governed by actors determined to test those institutions to their limits. The conclusions of this experiment matter to every Western democracy — French, German, British, Canadian — because the vulnerabilities are structurally similar. The difference is not in the nature of the institutions. It is in the political will to respect them.

The West needs an America whose judges can count on their Marshals, whose prosecutors can work without fear of retaliation, whose judicial institutions can function without the armed arm of justice answering to those it is supposed to check. We have not yet reached the point of no return. But we are closer than we were in June 2025. And we will be closer still in June 2027 if nobody chooses to hold the line.

Signed Maxime Marquette, columnist

Sources

Primary sources

The Guardian — Judge quashes DOJ subpoenas against Minnesota officials (Walz, Ellison, Frey) — June 22, 2026

Axios — Newsom reveals Trump's DOJ is investigating him in connection with his potential presidential run — June 15, 2026

CNBC — Judge Brinkema extends injunction against the $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization" fund — June 12, 2026

Secondary sources

CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) — Trump's politicization of the U.S. Marshals Service is a threat to our democracy — February 18, 2025

Raw Story — Experts alarmed: Musk's private security deputized by U.S. Marshals — April 7, 2025

The Guardian — Federal judges consider their own independent armed force in the face of Trump's attacks — May 25, 2025

Raw Story — Liz Oyer testifies about two armed Marshals sent to her home the night before her testimony — April 7, 2025

Axios — Trump administration set to abandon the "weaponization" fund — June 1, 2026