The Fox is Guarding the Henhouse--But We Can Fix That

Trump’s Attorneys General Doing His Bidding is a Problem, And Not a New One

Todd Blanche, photo by Bruce Schaff via Wikimedia Commons

This piece originally appeared on Fran Quigley’s Substack We Can Do Better: Ending Poverty in Our Time on Aug21, 2026

Specifically, we can independently elect our Attorney General.

An independently elected prosecutor is already the dominant model in local communities, where 95% of criminal cases are filed and adjudicated. Mayors don’t have control over the person and agency who might file criminal charges against them. State-level attorneys general are also usually elected, so they can similarly hold governors accountable, as can local prosecutors.

If we do elect our Attorney General, it seems very possible that, given our divided electorate, we could be electing a president from one party and an Attorney General from a different party. We have a lot of split ticket voters, and we like to have some accountability and oversight of our top leaders. Checks and balances.

How do we do this? Likely through a constitutional amendment of Article II, § 3 which states the President “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

But that is not fully settled. The framers did not specifically address the question of whether the Attorney General would be appointed by the President. And in fact they were very concerned about putting checks on the power of any one branch of government. And the first Congress did not see presidential control of federal prosecutions as a constitutional mandate.

So there is an argument that we may not need a constitutional amendment. And there are some other anti-impunity options explored in the article, including a strong independent counsel law.

But even if a constitutional amendment proves necessary, it is worth it . We need to root out the inherent corruption in our system, where at the highest level of government the fox pretends to guard the henhouse.