"Fear is the tool of a tyrant": Exiting Justice Department workers sound alarms

Context: The Justice Connection, a network of DOJ and FBI alumni, has collected dozens of farewells, many overflowing with gratitude for the agency's mission while also warning about the consequences of damaging the institution.

• Executive Director Stacey Young said in a recent statement that the department's workforce is "being asked to put loyalty to the President over the Constitution, the rule of law, and their professional ethical obligations."
• The DOJ declined to comment.

What they're saying: The "current incarnation" of the DOJ "defines 'justice' in a way that I do not recognize," former trial attorney Carrie A. Syme wrote in a March farewell, adding, "please remember that the vast majority of DOJ attorneys are people of good will who are trying to maintain a true sense of justice."

• Devon Flanagan, who served as a trial attorney in the Wildlife and Marine Resources Section, warned that damage will accelerate as more employees "find these stressful and demeaning conditions untenable."

Zoom in: Three assistant U.S. attorneys who resisted dismissing New York Mayor Eric Adams' case addressed their April resignation notice to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, saying that the DOJ has "decided that obedience supersedes all else."

• The push to drop the charges against Adams triggered a walkout at DOJ.
• "There is no greater privilege than to work for an institution whose mandate is to do the right thing, the right way, for the right reasons," they wrote. "We will not abandon this principle to keep our jobs."

Zoom out: Anam Rahman Petit, an immigration judge who said she was terminated without any stated cause, wrote that "replacing career judges with less experienced or politically malleable ones reflects a systemic effort to reshape the bench with individuals more likely to deny cases without regard for due process."

• Joseph Darrow, identified as a trial attorney in the Office of Immigration Litigation, said that firing whistleblower DOJ attorney Erez Reuveni was "a warning and act of intimidation against us all."

State of play: The avalanche of DOJ departures has been a combination of resignations, retirements and terminations, including those who supported cases involving the Jan. 6 riot.

• Those high-profile firings also include the termination of Maurene Comey, a prosecutor who worked on Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's cases and who is also the daughter of Trump foe James Comey. Maurene Comey has sued over her firing.
• "If a career prosecutor can be fired without reason, fear may seep into the decisions of those who remain," she wrote in her farewell, per Justice Connection. She added, "Fear is the tool of a tyrant, wielded to suppress independent thought."
• Justice Connection estimates that more than 4,000 employees also departed following DOGE-sponsored buyout offers.

Catch up quick: After taking office, Attorney General Pam Bondi established a "Weaponization Working Group" probing offices that investigated Trump.

• Trump has long claimed he was a victim of lawfare and Deep State abuse.

Yes, but: Barbara Schwabauer, a trial attorney who resigned in August, wrote in her farewell that her departure was not due to "a 'deep-state' refusal to work with this administration."

• Instead, "It is the inevitable result of hollow leadership that disregards longstanding interpretations of civil rights law, upends Division and Departmental norms, and values perceived loyalty above the meritocratic principles it claims to espouse."

Go deeper: Jack Smith among 900 former prosecutors alarmed by Trump's DOJ