'Mass revolt': Lawyer to key Trump aides hits out at DOJ rebels
A handful of Justice Department officials has done something no congressional Republican has done up until now — offer major pushback to the Trump administration's upending of the federal government and signal a "new kind of defiance," according to a new report in The Washington Post.
Last week, at least seven DOJ officials resigned rather than drop corruption charges against unlikely Trump ally New York Mayor Eric Adams (D), instigating, in the words of a lawyer who represented Trump allies in court Stanley Brand, "a mass revolt at the professional level.”
Brand represented Trump's White House aide Peter Navarro in his trial for defying a January 6 committee subpoena. He also represented Walt Nauta, Trump's valet, in the classified documents case.
“They have now instigated a mass revolt at the professional level. How far down the totem pole do they have to go before someone will sign a dismissal and go before a federal judge? Who will want to work in that office, or any of these offices, under those circumstances?”
WaPo reporter Naftali Bendavid wrote, "The departures may be particularly resonant because some of the key figures have strong conservative credentials, bearing little resemblance to the 'radical left lunatics' that Trump often depicts as his enemies. They have laid out their reasons for quitting in legalistic but evocative terms, giving their actions an added punch."
Robert S. Litt, a former senior DOJ official in the Clinton administration, called the resignations, "unprecedented, as far as I know. It’s a very big deal." He added that attorneys “don’t resign because you disagree with the policies, but because you are being asked to do something you believe is ethically, morally or legally improper.”
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Indeed, Danielle Sassoon, who resigned as acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, called the Adams situation, a “breathtaking and dangerous precedent” in a letter to acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove, Bendavid reported.
Hagan Scotten, the chief prosecutor on the Adams case, said "prosecution decisions cannot be used to influence a defendant’s policy decisions — a reference to Bove’s insistence that the criminal charges would keep Adams from focusing on illegal immigration in New York," Bendavid wrote.
He quoted Scotten's resignation letter, which said, "If no lawyer within earshot of the president is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.”
The message, according to Litt, is that in the Trump administration political favors come with a "quid pro quo: ‘you will help us on immigration, and we’ll help you on your criminal case.' That is not how the law should be.”