The DOJ’s Longstanding Fraud on the American People:

From Mass Incarceration to Political Weaponization

For decades, the Department of Justice has quietly perfected a weapon that has destroyed millions of lives, especially in Black communities: indictments that ignore the most basic requirement of justice; knowledge.

Under federal law, a person cannot be convicted of a drug offense unless the government proves they knew the substance was illegal. Yet for years, prosecutors have sidestepped this requirement, misleading grand juries into endorsing indictments that don’t actually state a crime. Judges, defense lawyers, and prosecutors have all looked the other way, letting this injustice continue unchecked. The result? Tens of thousands of wrongful convictions. Families torn apart. Communities left to pick up the pieces.

The “war on drugs” was never really about drugs. It was about control. It was about pouring substances into disadvantaged neighborhoods and then locking up the people who lived there to feed a machine of mass incarceration. It was about promotions for prosecutors, paychecks for court-appointed lawyers, and bonuses for agencies funded by asset seizures. The incentives were simple: the more indictments, the more property seized, the more hours billed, the more salaries paid.

At the heart of this system is the grand jury a constitutional safeguard meant to protect citizens, turned into a rubber stamp through secrecy and manipulation. Forepersons were misled into signing “true bills” that were anything but true, letting the DOJ convert fraudulent indictments into fraudulent judgments. Those judgments weren’t even just about sending people to prison, they were bundled, traded, and profited from at every step: wire fraud, mail fraud, securities fraud, all perpetrated by the very government entrusted to uphold the law.

But the injustice doesn’t stop there. Even after conviction, defendants are often punished for things they were never found guilty of, or were acquitted of entirely. Under the so-called “relevant and acquitted conduct” rules, federal judges can sentence people based on allegations that were dismissed or rejected by a jury. It means a person can be found not guilty on a charge, yet still have years, even decades added to their sentence for it. This practice turns the idea of “innocent until proven guilty” upside down and exposes the DOJ’s pattern of stacking time through technical manipulation rather than truth. It’s sentencing by accusation, not by evidence and it’s one of the most blatant violations of due process in America today.

Today, there’s debate about whether the DOJ has been “weaponized” against political figures like Donald Trump. But here’s the truth: the DOJ has always been weaponized. The difference is that Trump has money, lawyers, and media attention. Millions of ordinary people like the disproportionately poor and Black never had that chance. Their stories were hidden behind sealed grand jury doors, plea deals pushed under duress, and prison sentences quietly handed down.

My family knows this pain all too well. My father was sentenced for “conspiracy to distribute drugs,” yet it was never alleged that he knew the substance was illegal. The jury was never instructed to find that fact. He is serving time based on an indictment that fails to meet the most basic requirements of the law. He is far from alone in this story.

That’s why I created Manumit Me (www.manumitme.com) a platform dedicated to exposing this fraud and fighting to free my father and countless others like him. Manumit (man-u-mit) means “to set free.” For too long, the DOJ’s fraud has been hiding in plain sight. It’s time to pull back the curtain.

If Americans are outraged that the DOJ might target political figures for personal or partisan gain, they should be even more outraged that this machine has been devouring the poor and powerless for decades. What’s happening to Trump is not the exception it’s the rule. The DOJ just didn’t expect its tactics to be turned on someone with the resources to fight back.

The path forward requires accountability. It requires recognition that silence in the face of fraud is complicity. And it requires Americans; whether they care about Trump, mass incarceration, or the integrity of our legal system, to stand up and demand that justice mean more than conviction quotas, seized assets, and paychecks.

Because justice without truth is no justice at all!