Resign Protest

estb 2 25 mebbe include bad firings?

see DOJ rule of law retaliation

SEE RFK2 CDC

DOS RUBIO BOAT STRIKES

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8 MORE ATTY RESIGN MINNE DA OFFICE BC GO AFTER PRETTI GOOD?! 2 26

THIS JOB SUCKS”

Lawyers 'astonished' at mass exodus from Trump DOJ as recruiting 'plummets' AN

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bailed? an 8 26

Another Army leader resigns after months of tension with top Trump brass

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an 3 26

At the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Attorney General Pam Bondi and her allies have been running into quite a few roadblocks when it comes to prosecuting President Donald Trump's foes — from prosecutors resigning from DOJ to grand juries deciding not to go forward with indictments to unfavorable ruling from judges in the lower federal courts. On MS NOW, some of the most vehement criticism of Bondi's leadership at DOJ is coming from former federal prosecutors who once worked there, including legal scholars Barbara McQuade and Joyce White Vance.

Bondi, with DOJ losing employees, is looking to hire new prosecutors. And MS NOW's Hayes Brown, in his March 19 column, argues that she is becoming increasingly desperate.

"There are a lot of empty desks in the Justice Department's offices compared to this time two years ago," Brown explains. "Attorney General Pam Bondi has been struggling to restock the much-depleted ranks of federal attorneys after last year's flood of firings, resignations and buyouts. Now, in the interest of quickly getting bodies in courtrooms, the DOJ has reportedly shifted its policies to allow U.S. attorneys' offices to hire lawyers straight out of law school."

Brown notes that according to reporting from Bloomberg Law, a DOJ memo said the department's one-year minimum experience standard can be waived in order to get more people hired. The memo said DOJ was facing an "exigent hiring need for attorneys across the Department."

"The 'exigent need' for fresh hires that the Justice Department cites is a relatively recent development," Brown observes. "Burgeoning lawyers used to leap at the chance to add a DOJ credential to their resumes. But that credential has lost some of its appeal since the start of President Donald Trump's second term. Bondi's day-one demand that federal lawyers 'zealously advance, protect, and defend their client’s interests' — with almost no room for dissent — hasn't made it easy to replace the thousands of staffers who have left the department since last January…. There's a world where this shift toward hiring newly graduated lawyers could be a good thing. If this project were truly about meritocracy, seeing more slots available for lawyers who didn't all go to the same handful of schools could be admirable. But the (Trump) Administration's screenings for ideological purity and loyalty to the MAGA agenda would undercut any claim that the department is truly trying to hire the best attorneys possible."

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AN 2 26

LAWSUIT TO PREVENT BAD USE OF BALLOTS

Police body cam video reveals how FBI 'screwed up' raid on Fulton County elections center

A body-worn camera from local police officers in Fulton County captured the FBI raid of the Georgia elections center. And professor James Sample, Hofstra University School of Law, told MS NOW that the arguments in the short 93-second bodycam video shows a debate over the process of the warrant.

Sample says it might be enough for a court challenge.

"Down the road, that could be a basis for a lawsuit, if, in fact, the government is seizing materialmaterial that is either not properly specified or the location is not properly specified," said Sample. "It's a little unclear. I think the real questions here will be about who's driving this. I mean, think about, you know, the DNI [Director of National Intelligence] ends up being part of this search. And then the phone call. I was thinking about an analogy today. Imagine a scenario where you were at Mar-a-Lago and Jack Smith or Merrick Garland had called President [Joe] Biden during the search for those documents."

He said that the outrage from the GOP would have exploded on Capitol Hill.

"That's essentially the equivalent of what we're talking about," he said about the Fulton County raid. "And it would have been outrageous had it occurred. This is being driven in a way that we talk about on a regular basis, and we may be a broken record, but the line between the White House and the Department of Justice is no longer blurry. It's just gone."

Host Ana Cabrera noted that Congress is supposed to be a check on that power.

"The hypocrisy is astounding," MS Now journalist Ken Dilanian said.

He also noted the raid came the week after the top FBI official in the Atlanta office was ousted. MS NOW later confirmed that it was due to his resistance to the raid.

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AN 1 26

The fatal shooting of 37-year-old motorist Renee Nicole Good by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Minneapolis on Wednesday, January 7 is drawing scathing condemnation on both the left and the right. Some prominent conservatives and libertarians — including The Bulwark's Bill Kristol, MS NOW's Joe Scarborough, former Judge Andrew Napolitano (a legal analyst for Newsmax), The New York Times' David French and The Lincoln Project's — are joining liberals and progressives in condemning the shooting as excessive force.

Yet allies of President Donald Trump, from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to Vice President JD Vance, are vigorously defending the ICE agent and claiming that he acted in self-defense. Noem, without evidence, even attacked Good as a "domestic terrorist." And according to reporting from the Washington Post, several U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) officials were so appalled by Trump allies' response to Good's death that they resigned from the agency.

In an article published late Monday night, January 12, Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian explain, "At least four leaders of a Justice Department unit that investigates police killings have resigned in protest over the (Trump) Administration's handling of the fatal shooting of a motorist in Minneapolis by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, according to three people briefed on the departures. Top leaders of the criminal section of the Civil Rights Division have left their jobs to register their frustration with the department after the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon decided not to investigate the ICE officer's fatal shooting of Renee Good last week."

Leonnig and Dilanian note that ordinarily, the criminal section of the DOJ Civil Rights Division would investigate a fatal shooting by a federal law enforcement officer.

Kristen Clarke, who led the Civil Rights Division under former President Joe Biden, told the Post, "Investigating officials to determine if they broke the law, defied policy, failed to deescalate, and resorted to deadly force without basis is one of the Civil Rights Division’s most solemn duties. Prosecutors of the Civil Rights Division have, for decades, been the nation's leading experts in this work."

These resignations, according to Leonnig and Dilanian "represent the most significant mass resignation" at DOJ since February 2025.

"Good's shooting on January 7 has galvanized Democrats and civil libertarians but also frustrated Minnesota politicians and state police investigators," the Post reporters observe. "On January 10, the FBI announced it would be handling the investigation of Good's shooting on its own and blocked Minnesota authorities from their typical role in reviewing evidence and investigating the shooting themselves."

Read Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian's full article for the Washington Post at this link (subscription required).

an 1 26

Six prosecutors with the Justice Department have resigned after being told they must investigate the partner of Renee Nicole Good, who was shot and killed last week by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross.

According to the New York Times, career prosecutor Joseph H. Thompson, who was previously serving as the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota through 2025, resigned on Tuesday along with five others. He was the second-in-command after another Trump pick was nominated to the post.

Thompson "objected" to the approach of going after Good's partner. He also wanted nothing to do with "the Justice Department’s refusal to include state officials in investigating whether the shooting itself was lawful," the Times reported, citing people familiar with Thompson's decision.

The other officials who resigned included Harry Jacobs, Melinda Williams and Thomas Calhoun-Lopez.

Jacobs was Thompson’s deputy, overseeing a fraud investigation into Minnesota daycare centers that Trump's administration has taken credit for busting. Jacobs began the probe in 2022.

Calhoun-Lopez served as the chief of the violent and major crimes unit.

Good was shot and killed during an encounter with Ross as she tried to move her car. The Trump administration claimed first that she ran over the agent. That statement has evolved into complaints that she allegedly rammed him with her car.

Read the full report here.

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AN 12 25

Employees at the U.S. Department of State are hesitant “to give advice that the political appointees might not want to hear” as officials "become guarded about what they say" under President Donald Trump, multiple former State Department lawyers told HuffPost.

In an article published Saturday, HuffPost reports “a severe and unusual fear of being punished for doing their jobs has spread among staff at the State Department’s legal office, bolstering concerns about how the Trump administration is crafting foreign policy.”

According to the report, lawyers at the Office of the Legal Adviser at State (“L”), fear repercussions “if they suggest the administration’s plans could break domestic or international law.”

The president’s “drastic” international moves — including “strikes on accused drug boats in the waters around South America” — have drawn particular concern among former State Department employees, according to the report.

“It’s really difficult to imagine how any State Department lawyer could sign off on these strikes,” former “L” employee Charlie Trumbull told HuffPost. “That leads me to believe that the normal vetting process for vetting these things is not functioning as it did.”

Trumbull added there’s “much more hesitancy to give advice that the political appointees might not want to hear.”

“We’ve always had a culture where we speak frankly, challenge things and really push ideas to ensure they’re solidly supported,” a former lawyer told HuffPost.

“There’s an underlying fear of … providing advice that wasn’t well-received and then being cut out of a subject, being further and further removed from the job that you spent your career trying to do,” that lawyer added.

According to the report, “L” has experienced “a drastic and uncommon loss of staff since Trump’s second term began.”

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11 25

DOJ 3 5500 QUIT FIRED THO NOT ALL ATTY

2 MORE QUIT RE BRENNAN?

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AN 12 25

About 200 former attorneys and staff from the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice are warning of the “near destruction of DOJ’s once-revered crown jewel,” and what they call Attorney General Pam Bondi’s “demand” for “loyalty to the President, not the Constitution or the American people.”

“For decades, the non-partisan work of the Civil Rights Division at the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has protected all Americans—especially the most vulnerable—from unfair treatment and unequal opportunities,” they write in a letter dated Tuesday. They added that “after witnessing this Administration destroy much of our work, we made the heartbreaking decision to leave—along with hundreds of colleagues, including about 75 percent of attorneys.”

Bloomberg Law reported on Tuesday that the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division will now focus only on “intentional discrimination,” and not “policies that may appear neutral but disproportionately affect racial minorities and other protected classes.”

In their letter, the former attorneys and staff specifically state that they left the Civil Rights Division “because this Administration turned the Division’s core mission upside down, largely abandoning its duty to protect civil rights,” and that it “achieved this goal by discarding much of the Division’s most impactful work.”

The group blasted Attorney General Bondi, who, they said, “issued a series of memos that subverted the Division’s mission in favor of President Trump’s political agenda.”

“One stood out: it insinuated that DOJ attorneys were Trump’s personal lawyers, an assertion that struck at the heart of the agency’s independence. Bondi’s demand to us was obvious: loyalty to the President, not the Constitution or the American people.”

In another scathing section, they charged that Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon “focused her efforts on ‘driving [the Civil Rights Division] in the opposite direction’ of its longstanding purpose.”

They allege she issued mission statements “that included fighting diversity initiatives instead of race-based discrimination, investigating baseless allegations of voter fraud rather than protecting the right to vote, and dropping any mention of the Fair Housing Act, a landmark 1968 law that protects Americans from landlords’ racial discrimination and sexual harassment.”

And they charge that the administration “demanded that we find facts to fit the Administration’s predetermined outcomes.”

“Having no use for the expertise of career staff, the Administration launched a coordinated effort to drive us out,” they wrote. “The campaign to purge staff culminated in Dhillon encouraging everyone to resign after a period of paid leave while threatening layoffs if enough staff did not accept.”

Christine Stoneman, one of the letter’s signatories, told Bloomberg Law, “It is a sad commentary that in this anniversary of the Civil Rights Division, the Trump administration has chosen to eliminate a regulation that, for nearly 60 years has helped root out illegal race and national origin discrimination by recipients of federal funds.”

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7 AG QUIT ON ERIC ADAMS FEDSOC CLERK FOR ALITO?

locked in rm, guy about retire rolls to save rest public corrupt unit elite, indep

fool coward never me

AN 2 25

On Tuesday morning, February 18, the Trump-era U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) was rocked by yet another resignation.

According to Reuters' Sarah N. Lynch, Denise Cheung — the top senior prosecutor in DOJ's Washington office — told her colleague Ed Martin, in her resignation letter, that she is leaving DOJ because of a request from Trump Administration officials she considers improper. The Trump allies, Lynch reports, asked Cheung "to launch a criminal probe" and "ordered her to investigate a government contract awarded during Joe Biden's administration and pursue a freeze of the recipient's assets."

In her resignation letter, Cheung wrote, "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 I took.... to support and defend the Constitution."

Cheung's resignation is inspiring a lot of reactions on X, formerly Twitter.

Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig tweeted, "Yet another resignation in protest after DOJ leadership orders veteran fed prosecutor this weekend to freeze enviro grants made by Biden administration. @TheJusticeDept can freeze funds when there is evidence the assets are linked to a crime. Veteran Denise Cheung felt such a step was improper/unethical now and resigned, sources tell the Post."

CBS News' Scott MacFarlane posted, "The wave of resignations among longtime Justice Dept attorneys continues Denise Cheung is leaving her post as a top criminal prosecutor in Washington DC, amid tumult in the agency."

Former federal prosecutor Daniel R. Alonso wrote, "Having served as a criminal chief in a Republican administration that did not abuse its authority with respect to our office (EDNY), I can say D.C. Criminal chief Denise Cheung was exactly right to resign. You DO NOT open investigations without predication."

In a separate tweet, Alonso commented, "It's a conundrum to be sure, but lawyers have ethical obligations. It's true different lawyers interpret them differently, but how can we ask her to stay when her conscience dictates otherwise? A more pressing issue is that the Senate should reject Martin's nomination - he belongs nowhere near federal prosecutorial decision-making."

The Hill's Niall Stanage wrote, "Developing story — NYT reports this happened because the person in question would not carry out a 'directive' from the Trump team."

CNN's Jim Sciutto tweeted, "The sudden departure of Justice Department veteran Denise Cheung comes a day after President Donald Trump announced his nominee to lead the prosecutor's office, Ed Martin, who has supported unwinding all January 6 criminal cases that the office brought."

X user Millard Fillmore remarked, "She is resigning because they ordered her to break the law via a trumped investigation."

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an 8 25

Veterans and legal analysts say the Trump administration’s arrest of a former army sergeant and roadside bomb victim marks an escalation in the administration’s attacks on first amendment rights, reports the Guardian.

Officials arrested Afghanistan war veteran Bajun Mavalwalla II for “conspiracy to impede or injure officers” after joining a demonstration against federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Spokane, Washington.

“Here’s a guy who held a top-secret clearance and was privy to some of the most sensitive information we have, who served in a combat zone,” said Kenneth Koop, a retired colonel who trained the Afghan military and police during Mavalwalla’s deployment. “To see him treated like this really sticks in my craw.”

The Guardian reports Mavalwalla was not among the more than two dozen people arrested at the scene of a June protest that left a government van with a broken windshield. Nevertheless, FBI officials arrived at the door of Mavalwalla and his Afghanistan war veteran wife one month later.

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According to the indictment, Mavalwalla and his co-defendants “physically blocked the drive-way of the federal facility and/or physically pushed against officers despite orders to disburse and efforts to remove them from the property”.

Video shows Mavalwalla, who has no criminal record, locked arms with other demonstrators to block a gate.

Mavalwalla has pleaded not guilty, and the Guardian reports Richard Barker, the former acting US attorney for eastern Washington state, resigned before signing the arrest warrant.

“I am grateful that I never had to sign an indictment or file a brief that I didn’t believe in,” Barker wrote on Linkedin.

However, replacing Barker is Trump-appointed acting US attorney Pete Serrano, which the Guardian reports as having filed an amicus briefat odds with the 14th amendment. Serrano also has no prosecutorial experience and has described Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol rioters as “political prisoners.”

Luis Miranda, former chief spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, told the Guardian Serrano appears willing to test the waters for Trump’s use of political detainment.

“He’s a test case to see how far they can go,” said Miranda.

Read the full Guardian report at this link.

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an 7 25 ah

During his first presidency, Donald Trump angrily clashed with some of his own appointees to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) — including two U.S. attorneys general: Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr. And he ended up hating Christopher A. Wray, the conservative Republican he chose to replace James Comey as FBI director.

The fact that Wray enjoyed strong bipartisan support and remained as FBI director under former President Joe Biden intensified Trump's disdain for him. And when he nominated far-right conspiracy theorist Kash Patel for that position, Trump sent out a loud message that he wanted ultra-MAGA loyalists running the FBI.

In an article published on July 29, attorney/legal expert Quinta Jurecic warns that six months into Trump's second presidency, the FBI is in total disarray.

Jurecic points to the resignation of former FBI special agent Michael Feinberg as a prime example of the agency's dysfunction: Feinberg, according to Jurecic, was under pressure merely for being friends with a former agent who was critical of Trump. Feinberg, like Wray, resigned before Trump had a chance to fire him.

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"The FBI has long seen itself as an organization built on expertise," Jurecic explains. "Its founder, J. Edgar Hoover, was an early and devoted advocate of professionalizing the government bureaucracy, to the point of mandating that agents wear a dark suit and striped tie. Now, however, the bureau is in the early stages of something like a radical deprofessionalization. The most important quality for an FBI official to have now appears to be not competence but loyalty. The exiling of Feinberg and others like him is an effort to engineer and accelerate this transformation."

Jurecic continues, "Feinberg’s boss, Special Agent in Charge Dominique Evans, didn't allege any misconduct on his part, Feinberg told me. Rather, as Feinberg set out in his resignation letter…. Evans explained that FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino had found out that Feinberg had maintained a friendship with the former counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, a longtime target of Trump's ire."

Feinberg, Jurecic notes, is lamenting the "decay" of the FBI.

"An FBI without constraint or apolitical oversight is exactly what Trump wants, and what Bongino and FBI Director Kash Patel seem to be working toward," the attorney warns. "Trump launched his 2024 campaign by declaring to his supporters, 'I am your retribution,' and in their previous lives as MAGA influencers, both Patel and Bongino voiced support for locking up the president's opponents. Citing 'Justice Department sources,' Fox News recently reported that the FBI has opened a criminal investigation into former intelligence chiefs who led the government's assessment of Russian election interference in 2016."

Jurecic continues, "In the first Trump Administration, such a blatant use of the FBI for political ends would have been an unthinkable breach of law-enforcement independence. But the FBI's new leadership has been pushing out many of those who might object. So many people have been driven away, in fact, that after his departure, Feinberg found himself adopted by what he calls an 'exile community' of former Justice Department and FBI officials working to help one another adjust to post-government life."

During his interview with Jurecic, the conservative Feinberg — who was active in the Federalist Society in the past — was highly critical of Trump's politicization of the FBI as well as the way U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with the FBI's help, is handling deportations. And thinks that wearing masks is a bad idea for ICE agents.

Feinberg told Jurecic, "I was absolutely furious. We live in a democracy. We are an organization that serves the public. We do not hide from our actions."

*Quinta Jurecic's full article for The Atlantic is available at this link (subscription required).

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AN 525

The Department of Justice (DoJ)'s civil rights division is reportedly facing significant internal disruption. This unrest is linked to a shift in focus away from police and voting-rights cases and towards culture-war topics such as discrimination against Christians and transgender participation in sports. As a result, over half of the division's lawyers are anticipated to resign, according to an articled published in The Bulwark Tuesday.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who runs this crucial division, has been unusually active on the social platform X amid this crisis.

"Like Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon, Dhillon represents an experiment in whether right-wing media personalities can transfer their attention-seeking skills into running the federal government," said the Bulwark article, written by journalist Will Sommer.

Sommer described Dhillon as "a California lawyer who became prominent in MAGA media for championing conservative legal cases, especially opposition to COVID mandate."

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Dhillon, who has over 1 million followers on X, has posted on the platform more than 263 times, per the report, excluding the content she has re-posted.

Dhillon frequently engages in online arguments on X, where she appears to have little tolerance for criticism. She told social media users who criticized her that she has "muted" them for general impoliteness or "dimwittery."

In one instance, the piece notes, this applied to someone who responded to a post by Dinesh D'Souza rather than one of hers.

In an April post, Dhillon solicited suggestions from her followers about which podcasts and television programs she should prioritize for media appearances.

“Do something,” replied a user to her post, adding: “Is the entire DOJ obsessed with TV hits??”

“Muted for being a jerk,” Dhillon said in response.

Since taking office, she has publicly stated that she has muted 30 individuals and blocked one, averaging 1.35 blocks or mutes daily.

Meanwhile, Dhillon has acknowledged that the civil rights division is facing a severe exodus of employees. During an interview on Glenn Beck's podcast, Dhillon said approximately 100 lawyers have already resigned and more are expected to quit. She suggested that up to 70 percent of the division's staff could ultimately depart.

AlterNet reached out to a DoJ spokesperson for comment.

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an 2 25

'Time to think of Plan B': Musk ripped after forcing out Social Security chief

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SEE ED MARTIN BASED ON VERITAS bs

TPM

A federal prosecutor in charge of the criminal division in the Washington, D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office resigned on Tuesday following her refusal to follow a Donald Trump administration directive to freeze assets of a Biden-era administration grant initiative, the Washington Post and Reuters reported.

The resignation is the latest of several similar resignations and dismissals at the Justice Department in recent days and the most recent example of a DOJ career prosecutor resigning to resist improper political interference from the Trump administration. The resignation highlights the ongoing erosion of Justice Department independence from the White House under Trump.

Denise Cheung reportedly refused an order from Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove and interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin to launch an investigation into the Biden-era Environmental Protection Agency funding decisions. Details are still unfolding, but specifically, the resignation is connected to the Justice Department’s recent effort to assist EPA administrator Lee Zeldin’s push to rescind $20 billion in grants already awarded by the Biden administration to fund climate projects.

VERITAS BS The former New York congressman and current EPA administrator posted a video on Twitter last week claiming, without evidence, that the Biden administration had improperly doled out the grants before the former president left office. In the video, Zeldin announced his plans to refer the matter to the inspector general’s office and to work with the DOJ on clawing back the money and contracts tied to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. DOJ has the authority to freeze assets but only after it has found evidence that the funds are tied to criminal activity, according to the Post.

Cheung and Martin reportedly disagreed about “whether she was delaying efforts to order a financial institution to halt spending transfers pending further investigation, or seeking to reach a compromise by taking steps she believed were ethical and appropriate,” in the Washington Post’s words.

In an email to colleagues, obtained by the Post, Cheung did not specify her reason for resigning. “I took an oath of office to support and defend the Constitution, and I have executed this duty faithfully,” the email reads.

In a letter offering her resignation to Martin, Cheung reportedly made it clear she was resigning due to the improper request from the Trump administration, Reuters reported.

Per Reuters:

In a letter to the interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin reviewed by Reuters, the office’s criminal chief Denise Cheung wrote that the Trump administration had ordered her to investigate a government contract awarded during Joe Biden’s administration and pursue a freeze of the recipient’s assets.

She said that neither request was supported by the evidence, which she said she was provided with by the Deputy Attorney General’s office.

Neither the White House nor the Justice Department responded to TPM’s request for comment.

Cheung’s resignation comes only one day after President Donald Trump announced the nomination of Martin to permanently head the D.C. US Attorney’s office. His chances of being confirmed in the Senate are unclear.

Martin, who has been a face of the ‘Stop the Steal Movement’ also has a long history of January 6 denialism and has defended January 6 rioters in court. Martin had tasked Cheung and another prosecutor with investigating how January 6 prosecutors charged rioters from that day.

Cheung’s resignation comes against the backdrop of recent resignations of federal prosecutors who refused to comply with orders from acting deputy AG Bove, to dismiss the criminal case against New York Mayor Eric Adams.

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