During 35 years with the Department of Justice, I helped investigate and prosecute murderers, mobsters, gang members, drug dealers, white collar criminals, and corrupt public officials and law enforcement officers. I supervised others, and evaluated and trained US Attorney’s offices across the country. What I was taught, and passed onto others, was to “do the right thing.” Politics did not enter into the decision-making on the thousands of cases in which I was involved. I was never asked to pursue or to forego any case based on a person’s political affiliation. Nor would I. Federal attorneys do not swear allegiance to any person, including the president. They take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. I served under the last seven presidents (Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush II, Obama, Trump and Biden), Republicans and Democrats. While each administration had different priorities for the department, the rule of law and the Constitution were always supreme.
Unfortunately, this is no longer true.
The department is facing dangerous times. This administration is judging DOJ attorneys on their loyalty to the president. As one of her first acts, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo to department attorneys calling them “the President’s lawyers” and threatened discipline or termination if they refused to advance legal arguments they disagreed with or found frivolous. Attorneys have been dismissed for working on legitimate cases the president finds objectionable, such as the prosecutions of Jan. 6 Capitol rioters, and the political corruption case of New York City Mayor Eric Adams. They have been fired for admitting the administration made a mistake, as a career prosecutor was after he acknowledged that Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s deportation to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador violated a court order. This is wrong.
DOJ attorneys are held to higher standards than other lawyers because they have tremendous power and grave responsibilities. First, because they represent the government, they have an obligation that is larger than any case. In 1935, the Supreme Court in Berger v. United States said a US Attorney’s interest in any criminal prosecution “is not that it shall win a case, but that justice is done.” Second, they must believe in their cause. If a prosecutor has a reasonable doubt about their case, he or she has an ethical responsibility not to bring it. Likewise, if evidence is later uncovered that seriously calls into doubt the prosecution, they have a duty to dismiss it. Third, they cannot act alone. DOJ policy requires that prosecutors obtain approval to begin investigations and take significant steps during any prosecution. Fourth, they have an obligation to the truth. Prosecutors must disclose to the defense or the court evidence that mitigates a defendant’s criminal responsibility or potential punishment. They have a duty to be honest with the court at all times, even if it hurts their case. This administration is perverting these basic and noble principles.
After Watergate, checks were put into place to ensure that the DOJ’s work remained independent of political pressures from the White House. This administration has removed many of those safeguards and is using the Department as a political tool. It is requiring assistant US attorneys to investigate, prosecute and take legal action against perceived enemies. The president has directed the department to investigate Joe Biden. He has called for “major investigations” of Bruce Springsteen, Oprah Winfrey, Beyoncé and Bono for publicly supporting his opponent. He has ordered that law firms who represented his opponents be stripped of security clearances, barred from federal buildings, and excluded from government contracts. The president picked Ed Martin, a defense attorney for several Jan. 6 rioters, to be the department’s pardon attorney and director of a newly-created “Weaponization Working Group.” Martin said the group would investigate prosecutors who launched investigations of the president and his allies, and even if there is insufficient evidence to charge them, they will be named in an effort to shame them.