Harry Litman - MAYDAY AT DOJ
The Department of Justice is in the gravest crisis of its storied 150+ year history, and whether it will emerge with anything like its previous institutional strength and integrity is far from clear.
Twice before, the Department has faced a crisis from within. Both times, presidents sought to corrupt its mission for self-serving ends. Both times, political appointees of the Department—as it happened, Republicans—stepped up, putting the DOJ’s institutional interests ahead of the personal welfare of the president.
The first episode was the famed Saturday Night Massacre of 1974 during the Watergate investigation, when President Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Both Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, refused the president’s order and resigned. (It was Robert Bork, the then Solicitor General, who ultimately carried out the order, with the acquiescence of the other two.) The refusals led more or less directly to Nixon’s resignation. It was a defining moment for the Department, still invoked today as one of its finest hours.
The second episode occurred in 2021, at the end of Donald Trump’s first administration. Trump sought to strongarm the Department into writing a false letter to Georgia election officials to further the plot to steal the election. In a dramatic Oval Office showdown, the entire Department leadership, led by acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen, told Trump that they would all resign if he installed Jeff Clark as a puppet AG and went ahead with his plans. Trump relented, and again the Department reaffirmed its institutional strength.
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https://harrylitman.substack.com/p/mayday-at-doj