NBC News has reported that a few sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity, indicated to them that the administration of President Donald Trump is gutting the Justice Department unit that oversees prosecutions of public officials accused of corruption.
The unit, the Public Integrity Section, has overseen some of the country’s most high-profile and sensitive prosecutions. Only a small fraction of its employees – sources said roughly six – will remain, and the unit will no longer directly handle investigations or prosecutions.
Prosecutors in the unit, which had housed dozens of employees, are being told to take details to other positions within the department. Its current cases will be reassigned to US attorneys’ offices around the country, the sources said.
If the Public Integrity Section is shuttered, this coincides with a list of career Justice employees who have been purged from their roles, including FBI officials and prosecutors who worked on the investigations and prosecutions against Trump personally.
“[The decision] raises serious questions about whether future investigations and prosecutions will be motivated by improper partisan considerations.”
David Laufman, Senior Counsel, Caplin & Drysdale
Trump also fired Hampton Dellinger, the head of the federal agency overseeing the protection of whistleblowers; removed the director of the Office of Government Ethics, the independent agency responsible for overseeing ethics rules and financial disclosures for the executive branch; and fired roughly 17 inspectors general who were responsible for rooting out corruption.
Dellinger had sued the Republican president over his removal as the leader of the Office of Special Counsel, the office responsible for guarding the federal workforce from illegal personnel actions such as retaliation for whistleblowing. One judge sided with Dellinger by declaring the firing unlawful and put him back on the job, but an appeals court cleared the way for Trump to remove him. Dellinger then dropped his lawsuit, ending his tenure at the office.
Perkins Coie’s clearances revoked
Earlier this month, the president moved to suspend the security clearances of attorneys at Perkins Coie, a law firm linked to Democratic-funded opposition research looking into any ties between Trump and Russia during the 2016 US presidential campaign.
President Trump’s order also instructs agency heads to restrict access to government buildings by the firm’s attorneys “when such access would threaten the national security of or otherwise be inconsistent with the interests of the United States” and to identify, and cancel, contracts they have with the firm.
The law firm has filed a legal action in response to Trump’s executive order.
DOJ advancing an agenda
Senior Counsel at the law firm Caplin & Drysdale, David Laufman, who also served as a former head of the DOJ’s counterintelligence section in Republican and Democratic administrations, questioned the move.
“The only reasonable interpretation of this extraordinary action is that the administration wants to transfer responsibility for public corruption cases from career attorneys at Main Justice to political appointees heading US attorney’s offices,” Laufman said.
The decision, he added, raises “serious questions about whether future investigations and prosecutions will be motivated by improper partisan considerations.”
