The Justice Department’s newly formed “Weaponization Working Group,” announced in a memo this week by Attorney General Pam Bondi, was purportedly intended to root out “abuses of the criminal justice process” by local and federal law enforcement officers.

But a literal reading of its name suggests that the investigative body was also an example of the department itself, now under new leadership, weaponizing its expansive powers to scrutinize and perhaps take action against several officials who, for various reasons, have run afoul of President Trump.

“They are trying to politicize all this,” said Donald Voiret, a former F.B.I. senior executive who was the top agent in Seattle and also ran the bureau’s London office before retiring in 2022. “They are doing exactly what they accused the F.B.I. and D.O.J. of doing.”

The memo, issued on Wednesday, signaled the most significant first step in deploying the levers of government to carry out Mr. Trump’s repeated suggestions to exact retribution against those he perceives to be his enemies.

While the memo contained some conciliatory language, promising that no one who had “acted with a righteous spirit and just intentions” had any cause for alarm, it also included a laundry list of Republican boogeymen and grievances that the working group was intended to address.

At the top of that list were three prosecutors who all brought separate cases against Mr. Trump, even though there is no indication that any of them violated the law. They are the former special counsel Jack Smith; Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney; and Letitia James, the New York attorney general.