A top Trump appointee in the Justice Department ordered an aggressive investigation in the last several months of student protesters at Columbia University, raising anger and alarm among career prosecutors and investigators who saw the demand as politically motivated and lacking legal merit, people familiar with the episode said.
The demand for the inquiry into students who protested Israel’s conduct of the conflict in Gaza also prompted pushback from a federal magistrate judge, who believed some of the steps being sought by the official, Emil Bove III, were unjustified and might violate the First Amendment, the people said.
The breadth of the investigation, conducted by the Justice Department’s civil rights division, has not been previously reported. The ensuing clash highlights the tensions roiling the department as administration officials seek to enact President Trump’s agenda. That bid includes redirecting the civil rights division away from its traditional approach of protecting the rights of minority groups to a new mission of fulfilling a campaign promise to crack down on student protesters amid accusations of rampant antisemitism on college campuses.
Those types of demands from political appointees at the Justice Department are part of the reason there has been an exodus of lawyers from the division in recent weeks, according to current and former officials.
The federal investigation into student protesters at Columbia appears to have stalled for now, but it represents one of the most contentious episodes yet inside the Justice Department during Mr. Trump’s second term. The dispute has left lingering ill will within the department, as well as the courts and the F.B.I., the people said.
Asked for comment, Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, said, “This is a false story fabricated by a group of people who allowed antisemitism and support of Hamas terrorists to fester for several years, standing by but doing nothing.”