Ending Weaponization of the Dept of Justice?

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.