The Justice Department Had 36 Lawyers Fighting Corruption Full-Time. Under Trump, It's Down to Two.
The Public Integrity Section is the latest casualty in the administration’s attacks on Nixon-era good-government reforms. When Donald Trump took office eight months ago, the Department of Justice had 36 experienced attorneys assigned full-time to investigate corrupt politicians and police officers. Today it has two.
All the other lawyers in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section have either quit under pressure, resigned in protest or been detailed to other matters across the nation, according to several sources who spoke with NOTUS. The section has also lost all but one of more than a dozen paralegals. “To me, it just screams that public corruption cases are no longer a priority of DOJ,” said Andrew Tessman, a prosecutor who left the Justice Department this month. “I cannot understand why we would want to restrict that section.” Sources with knowledge of the section’s operations say the reduction in staff means it can no longer advise the 94 U.S. attorneys’ offices around the country on how to build cases against crooked government officials — let alone prosecute new cases on its own.
To protect against politically motivated abuses, the DOJ’s Justice Manual has long required prosecutors in local U.S. attorneys’ offices to consult with the Public Integrity Section on any “federal criminal matter that involves alleged or suspected violations of federal or state campaign financing laws, federal patronage crimes, or corruption of the election process.” But Trump’s DOJ reversed that policy in June. “Department leadership is currently revising this section,” this part of the Justice Manual now says. “The consultation requirement is suspended while revisions are ongoing.” Several former Justice Department employees expressed extreme concern that the change in the Justice Manual, coupled with the flattening of the Public Integrity Section, opens the door for the Trump administration to engage in partisan prosecutions of Democrats by assigning the job to prosecutors working for U.S. attorneys — political appointees nominated by the president.
more... https://www.notus.org/courts/doj-public-integrity
= new reply since forum marked as read
