Harry Litman - Thursday Night Massacre II
There never has been an assault on the integrity and professionalism of the attorneys of the Department of Justice—which is to say, on the Department itself—remotely as spurious and brutal as the one executed last week.
It might be the hope and expectation of the perpetrators of the assault that the event will go the way of other rapid-fire attacks on constitutional structure in the last month—that it will pass so quickly that it’s hard to absorb one before the other is at the doorstep.
But for any Department alums, that can’t and won’t happen. I know that I personally will be reminding people of the rottenness of the new DOJ regime so long as they remain in office. To quote one of my new heroes, Hagan Scotten—John Roberts clerk, double bronze star winner for valor in Iraq, and until Friday AUSA heading the prosecution team for Mayor Eric Adams—if they thought those who know the DOJ would just register protest and then let it pass, “it was never going to be me.”
At least four different factors put last week’s mugging in a shameful class of its own. First, DOJ attorneys are accustomed to wrongheaded criticism from political actors and the public, but not scathing attacks from Department leadership itself. Second, the attacks included not just general grousing about prosecutions but direct and defamatory attacks on the probity of individual prosecutors. Third, it entailed despicable collective pressure on a group of esteemed Department career professionals. Fourth, it was anchored in a rank and brazen lie, plain to anyone of any political stripe who knows the Department.
https://harrylitman.substack.com/p/thursday-night-massacre-ii