Violating court orders, gutting anti-corruption efforts, imperiling national security and weaponizing law enforcement against the president’s perceived enemies. These are the ways in which Donald Trump and his appointees are destroying the Justice Department, say scores of career employees who were recently pushed out of the DOJ under the president’s second term.
“We believe it’s our duty to sound the alarm about this administration’s degradation of DoJ’s vital work, and its assault on the public servants who do it,” according to an open letter signed by 282 former officials, obtained exclusively by MSNBC.
The collective letter, which was signed by a cross section of former prosecutors, FBI agents, intelligence analysts, immigration judges, civil rights attorneys and others, represents an extraordinary effort by civil servants to publicly call out what they see as Trump’s brazen disregard for constitutional norms and avowed threats of judicial vengeance against those who have crossed him.
All were nonpartisan career officials, not political appointees. Some were fired because they investigated Trump or those who were involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, violence at the Capitol, while others quietly resigned.
The former officials are making the most sweeping and serious accusations against a sitting president since Richard Nixon, who resigned in disgrace in 1974.
“We call on all Americans — whose safety, prosperity, and rights depend on a strong DOJ – to speak out against its destruction,” they wrote.
The former officials are making the most sweeping and serious accusations against a sitting president since Richard Nixon, who resigned in disgrace in 1974. The Watergate scandal touched the Justice Department, but the recently departed bureaucrats allege Trump has mounted a much broader and more sustained assault on its independence, policies and personnel.
“This administration’s lies about the ‘deep state’ and exaggerations about government inefficiency have eroded the respect our country once held for public servants,” the letter says. “Demonizing, firing, demoting, involuntarily transferring, and directing employees to violate their ethical duties has already caused an exodus of over 5,000 of us — draining the Department of priceless institutional knowledge and expertise, and impairing its historical success in recruiting top talent.”
The former officials, echoing sentiments expressed privately to MSNBC by other former and current Trump administration officials who have not been willing to go public, added, “We may feel the effects of this for generations.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Since his first successful run for president in 2016, Trump has accused the Justice Department of being infested with “radical left” bureaucrats bent on his destruction. His move to fire FBI Director James Comey and pressure the attorneys general in his first administration became part of a special counsel investigation into whether he obstructed justice, though former special counsel Robert Mueller did not reach a conclusion.
Yet, during Trump’s first term, much of the DOJ ran as it always had. Many of the letter’s signatories worked in the department during that time, and most career officials have said they were free to do their jobs as they saw fit.
The second Trump term has been strikingly different. The White House has seized control of the Justice Department in a way that has not happened in 50 years — and has used it to target Trump’s list of perceived adversaries.
“For decades, the guiding tenet for those working at the department was to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons,” said Stacey Young, a former Justice Department lawyer and founder of the advocacy group Justice Connection. “Many believe that’s no longer possible. They’re being asked to put loyalty to the President over the Constitution, the rule of law, and their professional ethical obligations.”
The letter will be posted later Monday on the website of Justice Connection.
The president and his supporters say they are merely fulfilling his campaign promises and correcting a historic wrong by shutting down what they call partisan lawfare. The best evidence of that, they say, are two federal felony cases against Trump brought by former special counsel Jack Smith with the help of career FBI agents and prosecutors.
But eight months into his second term — with access to all the texts, emails and phone records preserved from the previous administration — they have yet to produce proof that Biden political appointees influenced those investigations.
“Our predecessors turned this Department of Justice into the Department of Injustice,” Trump said in a speech at the Justice Department in March. “So now, as the chief law enforcement officer in our country, I will insist upon and demand full and complete accountability for the wrongs and abuses that have occurred.”
The letter says he has done the opposite. It notes that the Justice Department’s basic mission is “to uphold the rule of law, to keep our country safe, and to protect civil rights.”
“Our predecessors turned this Department of Justice into the Department of Injustice."
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Now, the former officials say, “It’s failing on all three fronts.” They point to what they see as the president’s retaliatory prosecutions of Comey, Smith and others; and accuse the Trump Justice Department of violating court orders, evading due process requirements, directing attorneys to eschew their ethical responsibilities and firing employees without notice or cause.
The letter also says Trump and his attorney general, Pam Bondi, have ousted FBI employees, prosecutors, national security experts and shifted highly trained personnel away from counterintelligence and counterterrorism.
The department also has purged attorneys who enforce environmental laws, driven out 75% of attorneys from the Civil Rights Division; and gutted the teams of prosecutors and FBI agents who investigate public corruption, paving the way for government graft, the letter notes.
“The administration is taking a sledgehammer to other longstanding work the Department has done to protect communities and the rule of law, too,” the letter adds. “Its plans to eliminate the Tax Division, which saves the country billions of dollars by pursuing tax evaders, will leave us poorer. Cancelling hundreds of millions of dollars in grants has left at-risk communities less protected and crime victims less supported.
All of this, the signers say, is “catastrophic for the nation.”
“We call on Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities far more vigorously,” the letter says. “Members in both chambers and on both sides of the aisle must provide a meaningful check on the abuses we’re witnessing.”
“Our democracy is only as strong as the rule of law, and the rule of law can’t survive without the principal institution that enforces it.”
