How Trump defanged the justice department’s political corruption watchdogs

Created after the Watergate scandal, the US justice department’s public integrity section has fought political corruption for nearly half a century.

Five months into President Donald Trump's second term, it has been stripped of power.

The unit has lost its authority to file new cases. Its staff has been reduced from more than 30 attorneys to five. Its once-powerful gatekeeping role, reviewing potential cases against members of Congress and other public officials to prevent politically motivated prosecutions, has been suspended.

The changes, confirmed by three people familiar with the department’s operations, are part of an overhaul of the justice department by the Trump administration that is dismantling guardrails designed to stop political interference in criminal investigations involving politicians, federal judges and other public figures.

Reuters reviewed the public integrity section’s cases and internal memos, and conducted more than 15 interviews, to document the decimation of an office with a mission to investigate and prosecute corruption allegations at all levels of government and supervise criminal probes into election crimes.

Among the most significant changes is the suspension of a long-standing justice department requirement that federal prosecutors seek the public integrity section’s approval before bringing charges against members of Congress, and consult with the unit before launching criminal prosecutions in many other matters involving public officials.

The suspension of the rule in early May hasn’t been previously reported. It frees political appointees in the justice department to prosecute public officials without going through a review intended to prevent baseless or politically motivated prosecutions. It also halts the unit from supervising election fraud cases, including allegations of election misinformation.

A justice department spokesperson confirmed changes to the rules are under review, but said no final decisions have been reached. The spokesperson said justice department leaders believe attorney's offices around the country, which are “closer to the facts and to the communities they serve, are better placed to determine whether to charge the crimes”. US attorneys are appointed by the president.

The requirements to run public corruption cases through the public integrity section give the unit “far too much power”, the spokesperson said.

The crippling of the section, under a president who campaigned on a vow to exact retribution against his enemies, could make it easier to prosecute Trump’s opponents and spare his allies, said constitutional law experts and former justice department officials.

“We are talking about the politicisation of the justice system,” said Stuart Gerson, head of the justice department’s civil division under Republican former president George Bush and an acting attorney-general under Democratic former president Bill Clinton.

“The rule of law is endangered.”

The justice department defended the changes.

“The department of justice is committed to ending the weaponisation of government and will continue to prosecute violent crime, enforce our nation’s immigration laws and make America safe again,” the spokesperson said.

Trump has said the changes are necessary to root out justice department lawyers he derided as “hacks and radicals” for prosecuting him and some of his supporters while he was out of power. In a March speech at the justice department, he argued that under former president Joe Biden federal prosecutors undermined public trust and used law enforcement to “thwart the will of the American people”. Trump attorney-general Pam Bondi has vowed to refocus the department on combating violent crime and illegal immigration.

Justice department prosecutors who worked on federal investigations involving Trump in recent years repeatedly denied in court filings any political influence in the cases.

The dismantling of the public integrity section is part of a broader justice department shift away from pursuing corruption cases under a leadership dominated by a core group of Trump's former attorneys led by Bondi.

In February, the administration suspended investigations of US companies for alleged corruption overseas. It also disbanded a FBI task force that examined foreign interference in US politics. In April, it directed prosecutors to step back from litigating fraud involving cryptocurrency, a freewheeling sector that has become a major money spinner for Trump’s family. A White House spokesperson said the crypto policy shift “has nothing to do with the president himself”.

Reuters documented the departure of at least 28 staff from the integrity unit in the past five months, including 10 resignations. At least 18 others either transferred, left for temporary details or are awaiting approval for reassignments. Only five remain. Ultimately, staffing is expected to be cut to two or three attorneys, according to the three people familiar with the matter.

Trump also has started to undo the public integrity section’s legacy by pardoning people convicted in cases brought by the unit’s attorneys, giving clemency to political allies and others accused of defrauding the public. Since January, the White House has issued four such pardons involving cases brought by the unit. The defendants in at least five other convictions are seeking pardons, Reuters found.

The White House has said the pardons are attempts to correct the wrongs of a politicised Biden justice department. A new Justice Department “weaponisation working group”, led by conservative lawyer and activist Ed Martin, is scrutinising past investigations into the president and his allies.

Beyond the justice department, Trump and his administration have sought to weaken or eliminate other institutions meant to be insulated from political influence, including firing independent inspectors-general who audit federal agencies for fraud and waste. The moves risk steering the US towards a more autocratic style of government, some constitutional specialists warned.

“What is happening is utterly unprecedented,” said Andrew Kent, who teaches constitutional law at Fordham University School of Law.

“These seem like very dangerous steps for a democracy.”

The public integrity section was set up after the 1970s Watergate scandal that forced former president Richard Nixon to resign under threat of impeachment for covering up a burglary at a Democratic campaign office and interfering with justice department investigations. The new unit, meant to restore faith in government and hold public officials to account, became an elite post for career prosecutors.

In the 1980s, the section won the convictions of many congressmen in a famous sting operation code-named “Abscam” in which FBI agents posing as Arab sheikhs offered bribes in return for political favours. Today, the unit is responsible for “some of the most sensitive, complex, and contentious public corruption cases” handled by the justice department, its website says.

Its work spans the political spectrum, including recent corruption prosecutions of Republican and Democratic members of Congress. The unit also consulted on the prosecutions of Trump by special counsel Jack Smith over allegations that Trump mishandled classified documents and tried to overturn his 2020 election defeat, but it did not have a direct role in prosecuting the cases. Smith, who declined a request for comment, dropped the matters when Trump won a second term in office.

The unit’s election threats task force also investigated a wave of violent threats by Trump supporters against election workers that arose after Trump falsely claimed the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. More than a dozen cases were prosecuted.

After Trump returned to power in January, the public integrity section quickly came under pressure, as two cases involving prominent politicians show.

In the first weeks of the new administration, public integrity attorneys clashed with Martin after the staunch Trump supporter was appointed interim attorney for the District of Columbia.

Martin, a lawyer for defendants in the 2021 Capitol riots, wanted to charge Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer with making a criminal threat five years ago. In 2020, the New York Democrat said in a speech that conservative US supreme court justices would “pay the price” for curtailing abortion rights. Schumer expressed regret the next day and said he had no intention of suggesting violence.

In February, attorneys in Martin’s office advised the public integrity section, as required, that he wanted to subpoena Schumer, said the three people familiar with the department’s operations. The unit opposed the plan, arguing in a memo to senior justice department officials that Schumer’s remark was constitutionally protected political speech and there was no legal or factual basis to investigate him, they said.

Martin appealed to the deputy attorney-general’s office, noting he had drafted an indictment and criticising what he viewed as the public integrity section’s recalcitrance, the three sources said. Martin lost the argument and the case died.

In an interview with Reuters, Martin downplayed the conflict with the section and described the episode as “a helpful process”.

“Schumer had not done something that could be chargeable,” he said.

He declined to comment on whether he had drafted an indictment and tried to override the unit.

The second case involving a prominent politician came three months later. By then, the public integrity section was powerless.

On May 9, US representative LaMonica McIver and two other Democratic members of Congress from New Jersey turned up at an immigration detention centre for a congressional oversight visit, which is permitted under federal law. The Democratic mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, briefly joined them inside the facility’s gated perimeter but was ordered to leave by federal agents.

In a chaotic scrum outside the perimeter, as federal officers moved to arrest Baraka on trespassing charges, McIver's elbows appeared to make brief contact with an officer, according to the criminal complaint brought by the US attorney’s office in New Jersey against McIver and video of the incident. The complaint also accused McIver of shoving a second officer. No-one was reported injured in the scuffle.

On May 19, the acting US attorney for New Jersey, Alina Habba, dropped the trespassing case against Baraka but charged McIver, a vocal Trump critic, with two counts of assaulting and impeding a law enforcement officer. Announcing the charges against McIver, Habba said: “No-one is above the law, politicians or otherwise.”

Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem, a longtime Trump ally, issued a statement saying the decision to charge McIver followed “a thorough review of the video footage”.

The justice department’s manual for investigations of elected officials sets a high standard for such cases. To prevent politically motivated charges against members of Congress, prosecutors must seek “prior approval” from public integrity section attorneys on “any criminal charge”, the manual says.

However Habba didn’t consult with or seek approval from the section before filing her case in federal court, said two of the people familiar with the department’s operations. The Washington Post reported on May 17 the department was considering whether to end the consultation requirement. However, the suspension had been implemented for about a week by then, the people who spoke with Reuters said.

Habba, a former personal lawyer to Trump, told Reuters she “coordinated closely with (justice) department leadership every step of the way”.

She did not respond to a question about whether she sought approval from the public integrity section for the McIver charges. Habba said Reuters’ reporting about the case is incorrect but declined to offer specifics.

McIver, who denies wrongdoing, told Reuters her prosecution reveals how changes at the department of justice are “making abuse of power easier”. Her lawyer, Paul Fishman, called the charges “spectacularly inappropriate” and said members of Congress have “the right and responsibility” to assess conditions at immigration facilities. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for June 11.

“A normal department of justice would never have suggested, ‘We have a case’,” said Peter Zeidenberg, who spent seven years as a public integrity section prosecutor. After reviewing video of the incident, he described the McIver indictment as “transparently political” because the assault charges appear to be unsupported by facts.

The Trump administration began reining in the public integrity section well before the McIver case.

On January 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration, more than a dozen senior justice department attorneys, including public integrity section chief Corey Amundson, were ordered to move to a new “sanctuary cities working group”. It was tasked with gathering information on cities that resist Trump’s mass deportation orders for migrants in the US illegally.

Amundson didn’t move, he quit. A 23-year justice department veteran appointed during Trump’s first term to run the public integrity section, he was among the first in a series of resignations and reassignments that stripped the office of people, power and responsibilities.

The hollowing out accelerated after former Trump personal attorney Emil Bove, then acting deputy attorney-general, ordered Manhattan federal prosecutors in a February 10 memo to dismiss a corruption case against Eric Adams, the New York mayor. Bove did not respond to a request for comment.

Adams had aligned himself more closely with Trump after being charged in September last year with taking bribes and illegal contributions. Adams denied the charges. Bove’s memo said the case was the type of Biden-era politicised prosecution Trump wanted to quash and the administration needed Adams’ support for its immigration crackdown.

The order prompted four public integrity section attorneys to resign in a single day, including its acting chief John Keller. A supervisor from the criminal division also left.

A month later, on March 11, a senior manager relayed a message from justice department leaders that the section faced further staff cuts and would no longer bring new prosecutions, said the three people familiar with the department’s operations.

“The Titanic was sinking,” stunned colleagues joked among themselves.

Today, the remaining staff are working through at least 10 ongoing cases, according to court filings. Former supervisors’ offices are empty at the unit’s Washington DC headquarters. Attorneys from at least one other section have started claiming open desks.

“It's like the village of the damned,” said one of the sources who is familiar with the mood.

With the public integrity section marginalised, Trump is ramping up pardons of public figures convicted in cases brought by its attorneys, helping allies and supporters who have echoed his claims of being persecuted by the justice department under Biden.

Of more than two dozen people who have received pardons or commutations since March, four have been in cases brought by the section, a historically high number, including one indicted during Trump’s first term.

Among the four is a former Virginia sheriff convicted last year on federal bribery charges. Another is a Las Vegas council member convicted of fraud last October after paying for personal expenses, including rent, travel and her daughter’s wedding, with money she raised to build statues for two slain police officers. The two were ardent Trump supporters who the president characterised as victims of biased Biden-era prosecutions.

One recent pardon came after justice department leaders received a letter from the lawyers of Brian Kelsey, a former Republican state senator in Tennessee who reported to prison in late February. Kelsey was indicted in 2021 and pleaded guilty the next year to conspiracy to defraud the federal government for illegally funnelling money to his failed 2016 congressional bid. The public integrity section and the attorney’s office in Nashville prosecuted the case.

The letter from Kelsey’s lawyers, which is previously unreported, accused the prosecutors of misconduct, alleging they were “anti-Republican”, among other claims, according to a person with direct knowledge of Kelsey’s case. Two of the four prosecutors declined to comment and two others did not respond to questions.

On March 11, Trump pardoned Kelsey, 47, after he had served two weeks of his 21-month sentence.

“God used Donald Trump to save me from the weaponised Biden justice department,” Kelsey wrote on X.

Reuters could not determine if the letter contributed to Kelsey’s pardon. Kelsey did not respond to questions about his case.

In contrast, Reuters could identify only one defendant in a public integrity case pardoned during Biden’s four-year term, former Kentucky Democratic Party chair Jerry Lundergan, 78, who was convicted in 2019 for illegal corporate donations to his daughter’s 2014 Democratic campaign for a Senate seat. Lundergan was serving a 21-month sentence when he was freed on compassionate grounds due to old age and poor health, court records show. Citing that and his post-prison community service, Biden pardoned him on his last day in office, at least two years after he was released.

However, Biden faced criticism at the end of his term when he also pardoned his son, Hunter, who had pleaded guilty to tax violations and was convicted on firearms-related charges.

Hunter was prosecuted by a attorney who began his probe during Trump’s first term and was appointed as a special counsel under Biden to continue the investigation. The public integrity section was consulted on the probe, according to one of the people familiar with the department and an additional person with knowledge of the case. However, the unit had no direct role in the prosecutions.

Biden had promised not to pardon his son, but later justified the move, claiming Hunter was “selectively and unfairly prosecuted”.

Defendants in at least five other public corruption cases handled by the public integrity unit are seeking pardons or dismissals, according to a review of public statements, court filings and interviews with one of the people familiar with the department’s operations and two others close to the defendants.

Those and other cases will be reviewed by Martin, the lawyer who leads the weaponisation working group. A longtime Republican activist in Missouri, Martin helped lead the “Stop the Steal” movement to overturn the 2020 election for Trump.

The weaponization working group will review cases against Trump brought by local, state and federal prosecutors and tackle “abuses of the criminal justice process”, Bondi said in a February 5 memo.

Trump also appointed Martin the pardon attorney, a traditionally non-partisan job that reviews clemency applications. It does not issue pardons but makes recommendations to the White House. It’s typically been occupied by a career justice department attorney,  rather than a political appointee, to ensure pardons are conducted without favouritism.

On May 22, Peter Ticktin, a Florida lawyer and longtime Trump ally, delivered a pardon application to Martin for Jonathan Woods, a former Republican state senator in Arkansas convicted of a bribery and kickback scheme in 2018 during Trump’s first term. He is serving an 18-year prison sentence in a case prosecuted by the public integrity section.

In his appeal for a pardon, Woods said he was targeted because he is an “outspoken conservative” with “Christian values”, Ticktin told Reuters, reading from the application.

Asked why the Woods case began under Trump, Ticktin argued  Trump “didn’t have control over everything” in his first term. He said Jack Smith, who headed the public integrity section from 2010 to 2015, had compromised the unit through overzealous prosecutions.

As the transformation of the section hobbles its ability to pursue future cases, and the wave of pardons undoes past convictions, some former justice department staff are bracing for a loss of law-enforcement independence.

“The true weaponisation is beginning,” said Randall Eliason, a former assistant attorney in Washington, DC specialising in corruption under Democratic and Republican administrations.

Reuters