The Department of Justice (DOJ) is considering decentralizing authority from the public integrity section, which handles cases against public officials.
A DOJ official confirmed provisions of the Justice Manual relating to several sections of the department are under review but told the Daily Caller News Foundation a final decision about the public integrity section (PIN) has not been made. Political law attorneys and former federal prosecutors who spoke with the DCNF had mixed views on whether modifying the PIN’s role would be beneficial.
“The point of the review is to ensure that equal responsibility is held in the field at U.S. Attorney’s Offices as opposed to centralizing all authority in PIN,” the official said.
The Washington Post first reported May 17, citing people familiar with the proposal, that the DOJ may be eliminating a requirement for U.S. Attorneys to route prosecutions of members of Congress through PIN. The section was created amid Watergate in 1976 to handle allegations of misconduct against public officials.
Former special counsel Jack Smith served as public integrity chief before Attorney General Merrick Garland selected him to work on investigations into Trump. Smith spent millions pursuing two cases against Trump that ultimately were tossed after he won the election.
Several cases handled by the section have ultimately been lost, including those against former Democratic North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, former Republican Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens and former Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell.
After Stevens was convicted in October 2008 by a Washington, D.C., jury on federal corruption charges, the DOJ moved to toss the conviction after discovering prosecutorial misconduct by federal prosecutors in Alaska. Senior PIN officials handled the case, according to the New York Times.
Then-Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell noted at the time that Stevens would have been re-elected if it were not for the guilty verdict.
“It literally cost us a seat,” he said in April 2009, per the NYT.
Brendan Sullivan, who was Stevens’ defense attorney, told the DCNF he does not have an opinion on proposed changes to PIN. But he noted the prosecutors in Stevens’ case were “corrupt in the discovery phase and during the trial of the case.”
The Supreme Court unanimously overturned McDonnell’s conviction in 2016 in a case that narrowed what conduct can be prosecuted as public corruption.
“Conscientious public officials arrange meetings for constituents, contact other officials on their behalf, and include them in events all the time,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the ruling, saying the government’s position “could cast a pall of potential prosecution over these relationships.”
The department lost Edwards’ case when the jury found him not guilty on one count and deadlocked on five other campaign finance charges.
George Holding, who was appointed as a federal prosecutor by George W. Bush, stayed on during the Obama administration for more than two years to finish the Edwards probe, according to Politico. After resigning following Edwards’ indictment, he ran for Congress and represented North Carolina as a Republican in the House for more than a decade.
“For too many years the Department of Justice out of its headquarters in Washington, D.C., — what we call ‘Main Justice’ — has injected itself in cases that can be fully and capably handled by United States Attorneys offices in the field,” former federal prosecutor Joseph Moreno told the DCNF. “One is the National Security Division, which for years required to be involved in every step of the way in any federal matter involving terrorism or espionage. Another is the Civil Rights Division, which was stood up in the 1960’s when southern Democratic prosecutors would refuse to bring racial discrimination cases and Main Justice had to step in and do it.”
Moreno said “Main Justice” should not function as an “administrative burden, justifying its existence by requiring public integrity cases to be quarterbacked by HQ every step of the way, from subpoena to investigation to trial.”
“Main Justice prosecutors should be pushed out to the field to handle their own cases, and United States Attorneys should be trusted to prosecute the wide range of public integrity and other cases that the Senate entrusted with them upon confirmation,” he continued.
The DOJ initiated discussions in March to reduce the size of its public integrity section, cutting it down from the 30 prosecutors who worked in the section at the end of the Biden administration, The Associated Press reported.
Five attorneys in the section resigned in February after they were directed to drop corruption charges against Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor William Shipley wrote on X in February that the section “must be cleaned out.”
“There is a consistent lineage within the personnel that goes back to Jack Smith in the Obama Administration,” he wrote. “Several of the prosecutors that Trump fired who were on the teams for either the MAL case or the DC Jan 6 case, came from Public Integrity.”
However, Lex Politica CEO Chris Gober told the DCNF it is “essential that the Justice Department’s prosecutions of public officials be carried out with consistency and integrity nationwide.”
“It’s unfortunate we’ve reached a point where additional safeguards are necessary, but the Biden Administration reminded us that rogue and overly partisan prosecutors can use their powers to bring politically motivated charges and settle political scores,” Gober said. “Investigations and prosecutions of elected officials should be driven by evidence and the rule of law, not by local politics or personal agendas.”
The DOJ has taken actions against several public officials in the past months.
Acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba announced Monday that she was charging Democratic New Jersey Rep. LaMonica McIver for “assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement.” The FBI also opened a probe into Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James over mortgage fraud allegations in early May, according to multiple reports.
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