"Anyone who spent any time working on January 6 cases saw how violent a day that was. I'd spent four years living with that day, the things done to people. It's incredibly demoralizing to see something you worked on for four years wiped away by a lieI mean the idea that prosecution of the rioters was a grave national injustice. We had strong evidence against every person we prosecuted."
"And I knew that if they're going to wipe all of that away based on a lie, either I'll be fired as retaliation or pretext or asked to do something unethical. Or both. Until that point, I'd hoped the second Trump term would be similar to the first one, or similar enough for a while. Then the pardons came down and I knew, in light of that, there is no way I can stay."
Career Department of Justice attorneys were fired or resigned as the administration replaced experienced prosecutors with loyalists described as quacks, hacks, and button people. The administration pardoned all January 6 rioters on Day One, undermining years of prosecution work and demoralizing investigators. Investigators had strong evidence against those prosecuted and feared retaliation or unethical orders. The Public Integrity Section lost its independent prosecutorial ability and shrank from 38 prosecutors to two. DOJ leadership communicated distrust of D.C. lawyers and raised concerns about the capacity of smaller U.S. attorney offices to handle complex public-corruption cases.
Read at www.esquire.com
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