One of President Trump’s promises was to “end the
weaponization” of the Department of Justice. Here’s how that’s going so far. The
US Attorney’s office in New York has been pursuing corruption charges against
New York City Mayor Eric Adams. One of the first things that happened when the
Trump administration took over the DoJ is that orders came down from the top
asking the US Attorneys in New York to dismiss the case, not because they didn’t
have the facts to support the case, not because they didn’t agree that Mayor
Adams violated the law, but because it would help the mayor be more cooperative
with the administration’s anti-immigrant efforts. Just after the Trump DoJ
moved to dismiss the case against Mayor Adams, the mayor met with Trump
anti-immigrant czar Tom Homan and was suddenly welcoming ICE into city jails. But
the most telling turn of events was the resignation of no less than seven attorneys
in the New York office who refused to sign off and carry out the dismissal of
the case. Rather than cave to the orders from the top that were in blatant
contradiction of the Dept of Justice’s foundational ethics, these admirable
people refused to cooperate. And who were these “deep state” attorneys resisting
Trump’s orders? Danielle Sassoon, the acting US Attorney in New York, is a
Federalist Society star who had clerked for Justice Scalia at the Supreme
Court. Hagan Scotten, an assistant US Attorney and the lead prosecutor in the
case, is an Army Special Forces veteran with two bronze stars, top of his class
at Harvard Law, clerk for Chief Justice John Roberts. In his
scathing resignation letter, he wrote “No system of ordered liberty can allow the
Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening
to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy
objectives… any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions
do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much
less elected officials, in this way.” These are people with impeccable
conservative credentials, and their defiant resignations are being pretty
roundly
applauded by conservatives who
take the rule of law seriously.
Just today news broke of another veteran US Attorney, this
one the head of the criminal division in the DC District, resigning when she
found herself unable to comply with a Trump administration request to take
legal action without sufficient evidence of a crime. The crime alleged was “conspiracy
to defraud the US Government” as committed by Biden administration EPA executives
carrying out Biden administration environmental policies that Biden had worked
to get authorized by Congress. So now they’re going after members of the
previous administration for carrying out policies they don’t like? No
weaponization there.
Denise Cheung’s resignation letter was heartbreaking: “I
have been proud to serve at the U.S. Department of Justice and this Office for
over 24 years. During my tenure, which has spanned over many different
Administrations, I have always been guided by the oath that I took upon being
sworn as an AUSA to support and defend the Constitution. Whether it was
prosecuting homicide cases in the Superior Court Division or investigating
international terrorism cases in the Criminal Division, I have always worked to
enforce the rule of law, to vindicate the rights of victims, and to protect the
security of the nation. I believe that the values the Department of Justice
stands for, and the many people that work every day to fulfill them, are to be
promoted and cherished.”
These are the sort of dedicated civil servants who work in
our government, serving without partisanship from one administration to the
next, who work in government out of a sense of service to our country and to
the principles for which it stands. And these are the sorts of people who are
being brutally lacerated out of government service by an aggressive malignant cancer
known as the Trump administration.
