Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance said that if Congress wants to talk about accountability in the Justice Department, it has a few former officials to call on.
In the past week, the DOJ has lost four high-ranking officials under Attorney General Todd Blanche's leadership. While the reasons aren't fully known, Vance contends that reporting on their exits raises serious questions about political interference.
She began with Brett Shumate, who quit his job leading the Civil Division at DOJ. He's perhaps best known for defending expansive claims of presidential authority under President Donald Trump. He also said that judges should be limited in what they can do in responding to Trump's executive authority.
CBS News reported that Trump's new chief of staff, Stephen Miller, felt Shumate was not aggressive enough.
"Shumate's job is to make the calls in the Department’s most complex civil litigation. Stephen Miller is not even a lawyer. The fact that the positions Shumate was willing to take were not enough to satisfy Miller, and that Shumate considered Miller’s influence in deciding to leave, does not bode well," said Vance.
The other resignation is John Eisenberg, the Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division. Bloomberg reported that Blanche shoved him out because he wanted Eisenberg to force journalists to turn over their sources so he could root out leaks. He was ordered to resign because Blanche wanted subpoenas for New York Times reporters who revealed Trump's safety issues with his Qatari-donated plane.
Then there was Harmeet Dhillon, the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, who announced she'd leave at the end of last week. Vance blasted her for turning the Civil Rights Division from the "crown jewel into a political weapon that could be deployed against the president’s enemies, Democrats and voters."
Under her leadership, there were "hundreds of career people" who quit the DOJ when she changed the focus of civil rights to religious liberties and other conservative ideological battles.
"There is some suggestion Dhillon left after coming out on the wrong end of some palace intrigue and that there were disputes over election strategy," wrote Vance.
Jason Reding Quiñones, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and special prosecutor Joe diGenova also announced they'd be leaving, though the latter made the announcement in September. They revealed that Washington tried to “force their hands” in the “grand conspiracy” case, Vance cited. That's the case involving Trump's theory that former President Barack Obama colluded with Hillary Clinton and a slew of others to target him, starting in 2016 and continuing through the 2020 election.
One of the defendants in that case, former CIA Director John Brennan, has pledged to respond to the administration's attacks by asking that the case be dismissed as a "selective and vindictive prosecution." The problem is the DOJ hasn't filed any charges against Brennan, only subpoenas and press releases. Quiñones is named in Brennan's own lawsuits.
The key point, she said, is that Congress can subpoena each of these people to testify in the 2027 session. There, they could be asked about being shoved out of DOJ by Blanche.
Vance called all of the losses significant to a normal DOJ, but the most significant barrier will be that if Blanche intends to replace them, he'll have to do it quickly while Republicans are back in session before the holidays. Democrats aren't likely to confirm far-right Trump allies to these posts.
She closed by arguing that Blanche should be impeached just as much as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. A Republican member of the House submitted articles of impeachment on Monday.
