What’s happened at the DOJ is the opposite of patriotism and justice. It’s what you get when you vote an authoritarian mob boss convict into office.
President Trump’s second term has brought a period of turmoil and controversy unlike any in the history of the Justice Department. Trump and his appointees have blasted through the walls designed to protect the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency from political influence; they have directed the course of criminal investigations, openly flouted ethics rules and caused a breakdown of institutional culture. To date, more than 200 career attorneys have been fired, and thousands more have resigned. (The Justice Department says many of them have been replaced.)
What was it like inside this institution as Trump’s officials took control? It’s not an easy question to answer. Justice Department norms dictate that career attorneys, who are generally nonpartisan public servants, rarely speak to the press. And the Trump administration’s attempts to crack down on leaks have made all federal employees fearful of sharing information.
But the exodus of lawyers has created an opportunity to understand what’s happening within the agency. We interviewed more than 60 attorneys who recently resigned or were fired from the Justice Department. Much of what they told us is reported here for the first time.
Beginning with Trump’s first day in office, the lawyers narrated the events that most alarmed them over the next 10 months. They described being asked to drop cases for political reasons, to find evidence for flimsy investigations and to take positions in court they thought had no legitimate basis. They also talked about the work they and their colleagues were told to abandon — investigations of terrorist plots, corruption and white-collar fraud.
Some spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation against them or their new employers. We corroborated their accounts with multiple sources, interviewing their colleagues to confirm the details of what they described and reviewing court documents and contemporaneous notes. We also sent a list of questions to the Justice Department and the White House. “This story is a useless collection of recycled, debunked hearsay from disgruntled former employees,” a spokeswoman for the D.O.J. responded in an email. “Targeting the department’s political leadership while ignoring the questionable conduct of former attorneys who do not have the American people’s best interest at heart shows exactly how biased this story is, and further illustrates why Americans are turning away from biased, outdated legacy media platforms.”
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, sent this statement: “These are nothing more than pathetic complaints lodged by anti-Trump government workers. President Trump is working on behalf of the millions of Americans who voted for him all across the country, not the D.C. bureaucrats who try to stymie the American people’s agenda at every turn.”
The attorneys who spoke to us for this project, many of whom have spent decades in government service, disagree.
January 20
On his first day in office, President Trump made it clear that lawyers loyal to him would lead the Justice Department. One of his personal defense attorneys, Emil Bove, became the temporary No. 2, and Trump nominated another of his lawyers, Todd Blanche, to take the position permanently once the Senate confirmed him.
Trump also undid one of the largest investigations in the Justice Department’s history by pardoning or commuting the sentences of the nearly 1,600 rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The group included more than 200 defendants who were convicted of assaulting law enforcement officers.
A mob of Trump supporters clashes with helmeted D.C. police officers inside the U.S. Capitol.
Prosecutors said they were in disbelief when President Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of Jan. 6 rioters. Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times
Ryan Crosswell, Public Integrity Section, which handles corruption cases: When I saw it was Blanche and Bove, I was actually relieved. OK, it’s gross that they were Trump’s personal attorneys, but before that they were federal prosecutors in New York. They’ve done the job. They know the prosecutors’ code. We’re the only lawyers whose job is not to get the best result for our client. Our job is to get justice. Sometimes that means losing or walking into court and saying we made a mistake.
But then things were 10 times worse than I thought they would be.
Liz Oyer, pardon attorney: We had no knowledge that the Jan. 6 pardons were coming on Day 1. Everybody was concerned that our office was being completely sidelined from the review process.
Gregory Rosen, chief of the breach and assault unit of the Capitol Siege Section, which prosecuted the Jan. 6 rioters: When I was alerted to the pardons, a lot of thoughts ran through my head about how absurd this could get, but first I had to do my job. We had to ask, Did we believe the order was lawful and constitutional?
My team and I determined that it was. The president has the right to pardon people and commute their sentences. So then it was a blitzkrieg of hundreds of cases. We stepped to it.
I was numb. As career prosecutors, we don’t talk about our feelings. We’re not partisans. We’re public servants just doing the job. Early on, we stayed away from using emotional language about our own reactions.
Mike Romano, Jan. 6 prosecutor: Anyone who spent any time working on Jan. 6 cases saw how violent a day that was. I’d spent four years living with that day, the things done to people. It’s incredibly demoralizing to see something you worked on for four years wiped away by a lie — I mean the idea that prosecution of the rioters was a grave national injustice. We had strong evidence against every person we prosecuted. And I knew that if they’re going to wipe all of that away based on a lie, either I’ll be fired as retaliation or pretext or asked to do something unethical. Or both.
Until that point, I’d hoped the second Trump term would be similar to the first one, or similar enough for a while. Then the pardons came down and I knew, in light of that, there is no way I can stay.
But keep trying to deflect from the violence we’re seeing from the left
considering all the lies the trump regime has pumped out in the last 8 months about almost anything it's involved in.
