Career prosecutors who recently resigned from the Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) have brought a central conflict between two views of how the agency should operate — as an independent entity or under the president’s direction — into focus.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove suggested Wednesday after representing the department alone at a hearing on the motion to dismiss Eric Adam’s corruption case that those who do not share leadership’s vision for the DOJ should resign, warning career prosecutors that they cannot oppose Trump administration priorities.
“I went to New York today to show the men and women of the Justice Department as well as the American people that I am personally committed to our shared fight: ending weaponized government, stopping the invasion of criminal illegal aliens, and eliminating drug cartels and transnational gangs from our homeland,” Bove said, according to several reports. “For those at the Department who are with me in those battles and understand that there are no separate sovereigns in this Executive Branch, we’re going to do great things to make America safe again. For those who do not support our critical mission, I understand there are templates for resignation letters available on the websites of the New York Times and CNN.”
Seven prosecutors stepped down in response to Bove’s directive to dismiss the Adams indictment, which acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Danielle Sassoon claimed in her resignation letter was inconsistent with her “ability and duty to prosecute federal crimes without fear or favor and to advance good-faith arguments before the courts.”
Bove responded by explaining to Sassoon it was not local prosecutors’ job to “question these judgements within the Justice Department’s chain of command.”
“You lost sight of the oath that you took when you started at the Department of Justice by suggesting that you retain discretion to interpret the Constitution in a manner inconsistent with the policies of a democratically elected President and a Senate-confirmed Attorney General,” Bove wrote in a letter to Sassoon.
These prosecutors “fail to grasp the basics of our tricameral system in which the president has sole authority over the law enforcement and prosecutorial decisions of the federal government,” former federal prosecutor Andrew Cherkasky told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“They seem to propose an idea that unelected, non-senate confirmed, prosecutors should be permitted to operate outside the authority of the president,” he said. “The depths of the unconstitutionality of such a position is concerning.”
Cherkasky said it is “critical that the DOJ operate under the authority of the president” and does not “essentially become a fourth branch of government.”
Similarly, Article III Project Senior Counsel Will Chamberlain wrote on X this was a matter of prosecutors “substituting their policy judgment for DOJ leadership’s; essentially fighting for the idea that SDNY ought be independent.”
However, others thought Sassoon was right to decline to enforce Bove’s directive.
“A president has all sorts of authority to do things that are unethical. He may, for example, exercise the pardon power for corrupt reasons,” Ed Whelan, Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, wrote Saturday for The National Review. “But that doesn’t mean that lawyers acting at his direction are obligated to engage in conduct that they regard as unethical.”
Resignations have not been limited to prosecutors on the Adams case.
Denise Cheung, the head of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C, resigned Tuesday over a directive from leadership, according to The New York Times. The DOJ’s senior ethics official Bradley Weinsheimer also resigned on Tuesday rather than carry out duties he was reassigned to, according to Reuters.
For too long the DOJ has lost its way.
Prosecutorial misconduct and political agendas will no longer be tolerated.
The case against Mayor Adams was just one in a long history of past DOJ actions that represent grave errors of judgement.
This DOJ is going back to basics.…
— Chad Mizelle (@ChadMizelle47) February 19, 2025
Nearly 900 former federal prosecutors — including special counsel Jack Smith — signed a letter Tuesday encouraging current employees to continue standing against “political” influences.
“Some of you have been ordered to make charging decisions based expressly on considerations other than the facts and the law, including to serve solely political purposes,” the letter stated. “Some of you have been forced to consider whether your actions will result in the elimination of the Public Integrity Section, created in the wake of the Watergate scandal, and whose vital work is intended to protect the public from government corruption. Several of you have resigned, and others are wondering what will happen to the Department we served and revere.”
Smith pushed to quickly bring his election interference case against Trump to trial, raising questions about a potential violation DOJ rules that prohibit prosecutors from selecting timing of actions for the “purpose of affecting any election.” He unsuccessfully tried to convince the Supreme Court to hear Trump’s presidential immunity appeal before giving the lower court a chance and pushed for the public release of a massive evidence brief in the days leading up to the 2024 election.
Smith was forced to drop the cases against Trump after he won the election under DOJ policy, which prohibits criminal prosecution of sitting presidents.
Others who signed the letter include Stanford Law professor Pamela Karlan, who testified during Trump’s impeachment hearing in 2019, and MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissman. Trump was ultimately acquitted in the Senate impeachment trial on both charges stemming from his phone call with Ukraine’s president.
The letter was released by Justice Connection, an organization former DOJ attorney Stacey Young launched after resigning in January. Young, who ran the DOJ Gender Equality Network (DOJ GEN) before shutting it down on her way out, launched the new group to provide support to career prosecutors whose jobs were impacted by the Trump administration.
Featured Image Credit: Gage Skidmore
