The Chaos of the Trump 2.0 Justice Dept…..

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…..

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Gregory Rosen, Capitol Siege Section: The F.B.I. had to divest serious resources from investigations of violent crime, gun and drug trafficking and child exploitation. Agents were diverted from those cases because they had to be on the street doing immigration roundups.

Prosecutor, D.C. metro area: It’s unprecedented to shift resources away from national security to this degree. Virginia and D.C. have the most important offices for counterterrorism and espionage. We get cases from the Middle East, long and complex investigations of terrorist threats from abroad and also domestically. In the Eastern District, there were 12 to 14 lawyers in the national security unit and now there are four, with no deputy or chief. In D.C., the national security unit is down about 50 percent. I was recently on the floor where F.B.I. agents work on domestic terrorism and it was completely hollowed out.

You have to have good, experienced, trained people doing this work on a daily basis. If you don’t, because you demand they do immigration shifts, there is real danger to national security and public safety.

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Katie Chamblee-Ryan, Civil Rights Division: I’d left D.O.J. by then. I found out when I started getting a million texts. People were saying, “I’m sorry.” At first I had no idea what they meant. I expected something bad, but it was so much more total and cruel than I imagined. The new leadership was erasing our work.

Withdrawing the findings was completely unprecedented. And if you read the Minneapolis findings and the remedies we negotiated with the city, you’ll see they document retaliation against journalists or civilians who film the police, the use of weapons or tear gas indiscriminately in a crowd or law enforcement agents hiding their identities. And we’re seeing federal agents do all those things now.

There was a statement from the Justice Department in court saying you can’t do these things. They took that statement away, and now the federal government is the most prominent violator.

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Mike Romano, Jan. 6 and PIN: No one should be charged with a crime because the president says “Do this,” and the people he has installed do what he says. The decision should be in the hands of people who know the evidence and have experience evaluating it and working criminal cases. If I was in that office, I’d wonder what the point is of exercising my professional judgment. If we’re indicting people because the president hates them, that’s counter to the whole point of doing my job.

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Prosecutor, D.C. metro area: The D.C. office is hemorrhaging bodies, and they will probably get rid of two competent people for stating relevant facts that were on the record.

I don’t think people will truly understand what’s happening to justice in America until it impacts them. Even my family: My parents voted for Trump. I don’t think they see it as a priority. I mean, they’re not going to be criminally indicted anytime soon. When I tell them what’s happening, I don’t think they really believe me.

It would take a lot of restraint not to retaliate in the next administration. A lot of career people are helping the administration now. I have a list in my head, and if we get out of this, some of them I’m holding to account. A lot could be validly criminally probed. But the back-and-forth will not be good.

Dena Robinson, Civil Rights Division: I wouldn’t even call it the Justice Department anymore. It’s become Trump’s personal law firm. I think Americans should be enraged. We all deserve better than this. I keep telling my colleagues still working in the division that I’m holding the line with them from the outside. But I feel guilty that I’m not holding the line with them from the inside….

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