An Oral History of Destroying the Justice Department

This is a very important story [gift link], and it the meat of it begins on Day 1, when the complacent “but muh guardrails!” excuses some formerly anti-Trump voters gave for supporting Trump were permanently exposed as the idiocy they always were:

Ryan Crosswell, Public Integrity Section, which handles corruption cases: When I saw it was Blanche and Bove, I was actually relieved. OK, it’s gross that they were Trump’s personal attorneys, but before that they were federal prosecutors in New York. They’ve done the job. They know the prosecutors’ code. We’re the only lawyers whose job is not to get the best result for our client. Our job is to get justice. Sometimes that means losing or walking into court and saying we made a mistake.

But then things were 10 times worse than I thought they would be.

Liz Oyer, pardon attorney: We had no knowledge that the Jan. 6 pardons were coming on Day 1. Everybody was concerned that our office was being completely sidelined from the review process.

Gregory Rosen, chief of the breach and assault unit of the Capitol Siege Section, which prosecuted the Jan. 6 rioters: When I was alerted to the pardons, a lot of thoughts ran through my head about how absurd this could get, but first I had to do my job. We had to ask, Did we believe the order was lawful and constitutional?

My team and I determined that it was. The president has the right to pardon people and commute their sentences. So then it was a blitzkrieg of hundreds of cases. We stepped to it.

I was numb. As career prosecutors, we don’t talk about our feelings. We’re not partisans. We’re public servants just doing the job. Early on, we stayed away from using emotional language about our own reactions.

Mike Romano, Jan. 6 prosecutor: Anyone who spent any time working on Jan. 6 cases saw how violent a day that was. I’d spent four years living with that day, the things done to people. It’s incredibly demoralizing to see something you worked on for four years wiped away by a lie — I mean the idea that prosecution of the rioters was a grave national injustice. We had strong evidence against every person we prosecuted. And I knew that if they’re going to wipe all of that away based on a lie, either I’ll be fired as retaliation or pretext or asked to do something unethical. Or both.

Until that point, I’d hoped the second Trump term would be similar to the first one, or similar enough for a while. Then the pardons came down and I knew, in light of that, there is no way I can stay.

Of course, January 6 was in itself dispositive evidence that complacent defenses of Trump were profound;y misguided, which is why passive-aggressive late conversions to Trump generally omit any mention of it.