While many will discuss the corruption and abuses at the Justice Department under Blanche’s leadership — and rightly so — this letter highlights the dangerous degradation of DOJ’s apolitical career workforce.
Under Blanche’s watch, over 16,000 employees have left the department, including more than a quarter of its attorneys. Agents, analysts, attorneys, immigration judges, and professional staff have been fired for declining to initiate vindictive prosecutions, refusing to lie in court, or for pursuing assigned cases the President didn’t like. Many more have resigned, often for fear of being asked to carry out unethical actions. Still others have been made to abandon their mission-critical work to patrol the streets of Washington, D.C. and other cities, or defend habeas cases in the wake of unprecedented immigration enforcement surges.
