Trump's 2024 bid puts the DOJ in a tough position as it continues its investigations into the former president

• Former President Donald Trump has officially launched his bid for the presidency in 2024.
• He still faces multiple ongoing Justice Department investigations.

Never before has a leading contender for the US presidency faced as many legal perils as Donald Trump. This leaves Attorney General Merrick Garland facing difficult questions.

The former president, who formally launched his bid for the 2024 Republican nomination on Tuesday, is facing multiple probes from state and federal authorities. These include Justice Department investigations into his retention of classified documents after leaving office and his bid to prevent Joe Biden from taking power in 2020.

Trump has long sought to portray the investigations against him as political witch hunts, waged by government officials and their Democrat allies determined to destroy him. He's made the claim one of the central themes of his defense in the Mar-a-lago probe, where prosecutors believe he may have violated the law in taking top secret documents with him after leaving office.

His lawyers have also engaged in a protracted legal battle to prevent the DOJ obtaining the full stash of documents the FBI retrieved from Mar-a-Lago in October, with an independent official, or special master, currently assessing whether any should be shielded under privilege rules.

Some legal analysts believe that Trump has been engaging in a deliberate strategy to delay the DOJ probe — and will step up attacks on prosecutors as the election gears up.

The issue has led to speculation that Garland could appoint a special counsel to oversee the probes, in order to avoid the appearance of partisan prosecution.

Sources told The Washington Post on Wednesday that the DOJ investigations would go ahead in the wake of Trump's 2024 announcement, and that top officials were still debating whether to appoint a special counsel.

Such an official is typically appointed in order to avoid potential conflict of interest concerns, and if the public interest merits it.

But some critics of the plan say the investigations have been going on for too long for the appointment of a special counsel to have much impact on how they are perceived. Other believe that America has become so politically polarized that no official would be able to escape the perception of partisanship.

"There is no reason, under federal law, that a former president or a presidential candidate can't be indicted," Claire Finkelstein, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told The New York Times recently.

"But the nature of our politics has become so polarized that there is no criminal investigation, no indictment, no legal action that won't be perceived as just another part of the poisonous partisan politics in the U.S. today," she said.

Even if a special counsel is appointed, decisions on whether to charge Trump would still lie with Garland. And he has pledged that regardless of Trump's political status, justice will be served.

"We pursue justice without fear or favor," he told NBC News in July, with regards to the DOJ's January 6 probe.