The Jeffrey Epstein mess on the Division of Justice calls to thoughts Herman Wouk’s World Warfare II novel “The Caine Mutiny.” The paranoid Captain Queeg — later portrayed by Humphrey Bogart on movie — turns his ship upside-down in a manic seek for a stolen quart of strawberries. Queeg orders fruitless cabin searches and crew interrogations till, lastly relieved of obligation, he mutters, “Ahh, however the strawberries, that’s the place I had them. They laughed at me, however they have been solely making an attempt to guard some fellow officers.”
A whole bunch of staff on the Justice Division and the FBI conducted a equally obsessive search, this time for Epstein’s legendary “shopper listing” for sex-trafficking. The searchers combed via places of work, cupboards, closets and arduous drives, reviewing over 100,000 pages of paperwork. The trouble consumed legislation enforcement sources however yielded nothing. Captain Queeg would have been proud.
The frantic search left the Justice Division with no selection however to contradict Legal professional Common Pam Bondi’s earlier claim that the shopper listing was “sitting on my desk,” and admit that it possesses no such listing. (Bondi has walked her declare again.)
To appease Trump’s enraged MAGA base, the division introduced the diversion of much more crime-fighting sources to a different pointless quest for lacking strawberries — a “strike drive” to analyze baseless allegations of a “treasonous conspiracy” by former President Barack Obama and his intelligence officers arising from Russia’s efforts to affect the 2016 election.
Welcome to the dumbing down of the Division of Justice, the place the neatest and most skilled prosecutors are resigning or being dismissed; partisan, substandard legal professionals are changing them; and the division’s mission is reshaped to serve the president’s political and vengeance agenda — and to analyze weird conspiracy theories.
Ten skilled, high-quality federal prosecutors left the division over its choice to drop corruption expenses towards New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams in an obvious quid quo professional for his support for Trump’s immigration crackdown. Over two-thirds of the attorneys within the division’s Civil Rights Division have left as a result of its mission has been twisted from imposing civil rights to imposing Trump’s govt orders. Trump aides pressured out many of the lawyers within the Public Integrity Part as a result of prosecuting corrupt Washington officers evidently is much less essential than deporting undocumented immigrants who work arduous, pay taxes and have dedicated no crimes.
Who’s filling the vacuum? Begin with Ed Martin Jr., a Missouri lawyer and conservative activist with no prosecutorial expertise, who’s the topic of pending disciplinary proceedings and who had as soon as been found in contempt for failing to obey a court docket order. Trump nominated him to be U.S. Legal professional for the District of Columbia, however he proved too excessive even for Republican senators. Trump needed to withdraw his nomination, however Martin was then put in in a number of high-ranking Justice Division roles that bypass Senate affirmation.
Then there’s Alina Habba, whom Trump appointed to be the interim U.S. Legal professional for New Jersey, regardless of her lack of any prosecutorial expertise. She beforehand labored as certainly one of Trump’s personal non-public legal professionals. Habba publicly vowed to “flip New Jersey pink,” promising to desert partiality in favoring Republicans in imposing the legislation. When her interim time period expired, New Jersey’s federal judges, exercising their statutory mandate, appointed a extremely revered profession prosecutor, Desiree Leigh Grace, to succeed her. Bondi promptly fired Grace from that place and reinstalled Habba.
For historic perspective on the Justice Division’s decline, look to 1973, when Legal professional Common Elliot Richardson resigned within the public curiosity reasonably than perform an order from President Richard Nixon to fireplace Archibald Cox, the particular prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal, one thing Richardson had promised at his Senate affirmation listening to to not do.
Searching for integrity and ethical braveness like that in right now’s Justice Division is as futile as, nicely, Captain Queeg’s hunt for the lacking strawberries.
Gregory J. Wallance was a federal prosecutor within the Carter and Reagan administrations and a member of the ABSCAM prosecution staff, which convicted a U.S. senator and 6 representatives of bribery. He’s the creator of “Into Siberia: George Kennan’s Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia.”