From day one of Trump’s second term, this administration has been hellbent on destroying the Department of Justice from the inside out. Over 200 people have been fired and approximately 5,500 employees have resigned. How can the federal agency continue operations as normal under these conditions? As Stacey Young, Founder and Executive Director of Justice Connection explains, it’s really not.
Young joins Jen to discuss the purpose of Justice Connection, why it was founded, and the massive amount of brain drain negatively affecting our federal government. Young and Jen also highlight the clear pattern of Trump weaponizing the DOJ against his political enemies.
Stacey Young is the Founder & Executive Director of Justice Connection. She was an 18-year DOJ veteran who worked at the Department until January 24, 2025. She served as a Senior Attorney in the Civil Division and later in the Civil Rights Division, working under five presidential administrations and seven Attorneys General.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.
Jen Rubin:
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, editor-in-Chief of The Contrarian. I am delighted to welcome Stacey Young, who is head of an organization called Justice Connection. Stacey, welcome!
Stacey Young
Thank you for having me!
Jen Rubin
What is Justice Connection?
Stacey Young
Justice Connection is an organization founded and fueled by DOJ alumni, and we exist to support the DOJ workforce that is currently under attack. by this administration. So I founded the organization on January 31st, one week after I resigned from DOJ after 18 years as a lawyer there. And I knew that DOJ employees were going to be under assault, and unfortunately, it’s been worse than I predicted, so I knew that they would need support from an organization outside the department.
So I founded one, and we are today providing Pro bono legal support to DOJ employees when they get fired or are under investigation, or need urgent ethics advice. We provide them with mental health support by connecting them to one of over 100 mental health providers who are now seeing DOJ employees. We help them find jobs if they need to leave the department, or if they’re fired. And we, give them media training if they want to start speaking out. And we also speak out ourselves in support of DOJ as an institution, the workforce, and the rule of law.
We’ve been cited in over 150 national news articles already. We have an exponentially larger reach than that, because we train DOJ alumni to speak out as well. And we have… we’re also speaking out on Substack. We have a new Substack we launched, about a month ago. We create videos, we’re on social media. We’ve organized letters with thousands of alumni speaking out, we’ve testified in Congress, we’ve had advocacy campaigns. opposing Amel Bovee, speaking out about the destruction of the Civil Rights Division. We’re doing a whole lot with the tiny staff, and that’s really kind of what we’re about, and we’re really trying to be the voice of DOJ’s career workforce, without which DOJ is really nothing.
Jen Rubin
Do you have a handle on how many people have been fired or who have left DOJ since the beginning of this term?
Stacey Young
Yeah, I do have a handle. What’s one of the things we do, we track departures. We’ve been doing that for many, many months. And our latest, total is approximately 5,500 employees who’ve left DOJ since the inauguration, and of those, more than 200 were fired. they received direct letters from the department. Most of them were acts of retribution, and several hundred more were riffed. So, you know, that’s one of the things we’re doing. We provided that information to the Washington Post, and they published those numbers a couple weeks ago, and that got a lot of attention, because I think people didn’t realize how much of a brain drain there’s really been, and how much institutional knowledge and talent has left the department. Just generations of brilliant attorneys and agents and analysts and others have left, and, you know, getting them back, you know, recovering in terms of DOJ’s ability to recruit and retain people, you know, it’s gonna take years and years and years to recover if we can.
Jen Rubin
And those people have left both from U.S. Attorney’s offices, as well as from Main Justice?
Stacey Young
That’s correct. And also the law enforcement agencies, including FBI and ATF and DEA and the U.S. Marshals Service and BOP. So that’s the entire department, yep.
Jen Rubin
So, with this many resignations, is the DOJ just hurting in terms of, manpower? I mean, they bring a lot of cases, and a lot of people bring a lot of cases against the government. Are they able to manage the workload at this point?
Stacey Young
They’re having a lot of trouble with that. In certain components in particular, in U.S. Attorney’s offices, they’re having a lot of trouble, specifically in the offices you’d expect, like the Eastern District of Virginia, and in DC, and in SDNY, Central District of California. It’s also having a terrible time in an office that is not well known outside of DOJ called the Federal Programs Branch, which is in the Civil Division. But that’s the office that defends the administration’s policies. So this administration especially needs that office because it’s getting sued all the time. So you have these brilliant, brilliant lawyers. I mean, the lawyers there are just cream of the crop. And they have left in droves. I think the number is up to 75% of them have left, which leaves, you know, so few people to defend scores and scores of legal challenges this administration is experiencing.
So it’s unfathomable how, they’re going to continue defending themselves. And you can’t just bring in other lawyers from other parts of the department or outside the department and expect them to be able to handle these cases in the same way. I mean, it takes so long to train up and become, you know, the kind of lawyer who can defend these complicated, often constitutional challenges. So, absolutely. And in the Civil Rights Division, they’ve lost more than 75% of their attorneys at this point. And the Environmental Enforcement Office in the department, they’ve lost more than 70% of their attorneys.
This is vital work that’s not getting done, and we’re seeing it everywhere, and also in the FBI. You know, somehow, you know, national security and community safety has become politicized. FBI agents are leaving in droves. We’re leaving ourselves more vulnerable to terrorism and crime. And corruption, and that… it’s just an unforced error. It’s… it’s… it’s obscene, and it’s depressing, and we’re all gonna feel the effects of it.
Jen Rubin
There are certain areas where the administration has just decreed, we’re not going to enforce the law in those areas, mostly in white crime areas, in cases involving public corruption, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. What is happening in those areas of the law, and what are the attorneys who were working in those areas doing? And last question for you, what is the statute of limitations on those crimes that people who break those laws might find, some accountability in a future administration?
Stacey Young
Yeah, I mean, I’m not gonna pretend I’m an expert in areas where I’m not an expert. My assumption is 5 years, I don’t know, so I’m not gonna answer on that.
Jen Rubin
In most cases, five years in criminal law.
Stacey Young
Right, so I don’t know for sure. I was a civil litigator during my entire time there, so I can’t presume to know what the criminal statutes of limitations are. Yeah, so those, you know, every administration comes in with their own set of priorities. That’s how our government works, and that is… you know, probably how it should work at DOJ, to some degree. But we’ve never seen an administration come in and just completely eviscerate a huge percentage of the work DOJ had always been doing, and that’s what we’ve seen in the areas you described. I mean, just to kind of, you know, hone in on one area, public corruption.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Stacey Young
The public integrity section, which is in the criminal division, was established after Watergate, so that our country could try to avoid the kind of corruption we saw in Watergate. It had over 30 attorneys, it was the premier public corruption office in the country, and it took on incredibly important, high-profile cases. And really was instrumental in keeping state and local and federal governments, honest and, you know, law-abiding. That office went from over 30 lawyers to 2. So, it is basically not functioning right now. And it also made sure that other parts of the division… other parts of the department that handled public corruption cases were doing it honestly.
Let’s say U.S. Attorney’s Office… let’s say the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tennessee, for example, wanted to bring a case against a local mayor. Well, you know, the lawyers in Tennessee are probably going to know the mayor, it’s their state. you know, the mayors may be in their town. You want oversight of that to make sure that these cases are handled properly, and that there’s no political bias involved. That’s what the public integrity section did in addition to prosecuting their own cases. That’s now not happening.
It’s shocking to kind of think that our federal government does not seem to care about public corruption anymore, perhaps because we’re seeing so much public corruption in our own administration. I mean. every time they kind of cut in office, it’s kind of a tell. You know, this administration doesn’t seem to like enforcing laws that the president likes to break. So, you know, that’s just one of many shocking examples of what DOJ is just not doing anymore.
Jen Rubin
And how do you recover from that?
Stacey Young
I mean, public corruption… the public corruption lawyers were brilliant in the public integrity section. How do you convince them to come back in a couple years if we recover? How do you expect to find other, you know, extremely talented prosecutors come to this department if they know that this could happen again? I mean, the stability that DOJ lawyer jobs had. For a lot of people just feel like we’ll never exist again.
Jen Rubin
Right. Now, there are certain instances, Eastern District of Virginia is the best example I can think of, where lawyers there will not put their names on certain cases. They will not, be on the Tish James or on the James Comey. So, what the administration does is, of course, they’ve parachuted in a new U.S. attorney who seems to have Lo and behold, some competency issues and some ethics issues, be that as it may. What I want to zero in on is these other lawyers that she then brings in from South Carolina or North Carolina.
How does that work? And, what’s the responsibility of those attorneys who are being moved into a case or cases that they know other DOJ lawyers have refused to go forward on, on ethical grounds?
Stacey Young
I mean, it presents a real quandary for the people coming in. I mean, it’s not unusual to have lawyers come in from other parts of the department to handle cases when, you know, there’s a ton of work to be done. For example, with January 6th. It was, I think, the largest investigation the department had ever undertaken, so it brought in DOJ lawyers from all over the department to kind of detail and work on these cases for a set period of time. So, coming in and handling a case at a different U.S. Attorney’s office isn’t… certainly isn’t unprecedented. The problem is, in the Eastern District of Virginia, there were lawyers there who said there is not enough evidence to convict Comey, there, you know, reportedly were decisions made by career prosecutors who also said there is not enough evidence to convict Letitia James. When you make that determination as a DOJ prosecutor, that is it.
The Justice Manual, which is kind of the Bible for DOJ lawyers, says you cannot seek an indictment in a criminal case if you don’t think that there is enough evidence to convict. And there were numerous DOJ prosecutors who made that determination. Lindsey Halligan, who came in as President Trump’s hand-picked U.S. Attorney, said, I don’t care. And sought an indictment anyway on her, I think it was her first or second day as a prosecutor anywhere. So what does it mean when a career prosecutor is brought in to handle cases after the determination was made? you know, I can’t speak specifically to this case. I don’t know what the reasoning, was by this particular prosecutor who came in from another district, I don’t know if that prosecutor, you know, made a different determination, I can’t speak to that, but it certainly creates a situation where you are prosecuting a case where it’s known that other career prosecutors found that the case should not have been brought. So it’s… It’s a tough situation. I wouldn’t want to be in the prosecutor’s shoes, frankly.
Jen Rubin
I can imagine. Now, even though the internal controls on the Office of Professional Responsibility has kind of broken down within the administration. Lawyers, and particularly prosecutors, are subject to ethics rules, by whatever state bar they’re licensed to do… to operate in. What is the risk for lawyers who blindly file and follow directions in bringing unmeritorious cases, in making misrepresentations under oath to a court, as we have seen. Again and again. Or to bringing, investigations, approving investigations that they know are spurious. What’s their professional risk later on?
Stacey Young
I mean, there still are risks internally. I mean, they are bound by government ethics rules and DOJ guidelines. So, you know, the fact that they have gutted internal oversight offices doesn’t mean they’re not supposed to follow those rules still. But, you know, as you mentioned, those rules are not really being enforced internally, they’re not really being enforced by other oversight bodies in the department, like the Office of Special Council. you know, we don’t know what OIG is doing right now. You know, Congress is certainly not acting as a check on, ethical or legal violations at DOJ. But, of course, every single lawyer, regardless of whether you’re in the department or not, is bound by their own state bar rules.
So… if somebody violates their own state bar rules, they could certainly be sanctioned by their state bar, or disbarred. I mean, what we saw on Wednesday in, the Judge Bozberg hearing was that he is investigating whether to hold DOJ lawyers in contempt. Over what he thinks may have been a violation of his orders. So, so there are sanctions available by… courts can certainly sanction lawyers, and state bars can sanction lawyers. So, you know, the consequences of not following laws, of not following court orders, of not… adhering to the Constitution are very serious. And what we’ve seen, unfortunately, I mean, the career lawyers at DOJ are… are… they’re… they’re rule-following nerds. I mean, they follow the rules. You are not seeing career DOJ lawyers violate rules. You’re not. You’re seeing a lot of them resign because they refuse to follow illegal or unethical orders. The problem is not that DOJ lawyers are not complying with their ethical and legal requirements. The problem is they’re being ordered to. And the problem is they are having to resign, or push back, or get fired for not… I mean, this is exactly what happened to Erez Reuveni.
And that situation that happened to Erez Reuveni is not unique to him. We are seeing these situations all the time. They’re not all getting reported, and it is… appalling that we are seeing DOJ lawyers put in this position. It was unfathomable during my 18 years there for anybody in leadership to expect a career lawyer to violate a court order, to not follow rules, to violate the law. Everything that’s happening right now is… is appalling and unprecedented.
Jen Rubin
And just to clarify, Judge Boasberg is the judge who was presiding over the issue of deporting people to a third country, namely, El Salvador. and the gentleman that you spoke of, came forward with a whistleblower, and essentially said Emil Bove, who is now sitting on the Third Circuit, had said, F the court, and, do what I tell you to do. So, we now have someone on the court, presumably who Judge Boasberg might want to talk to, in this contempt proceeding. That will be an interesting, legal interlude.
Stacey Young
I think we’ll all be on the edge of our seats watching Erez testify. And, you know, I’ll also add that I have known Erez for, I think, 16 years. We used to work very closely together. He is… the most honest, upstanding guy you could possibly know. The idea that… the fact that he has been slandered and castigated by members of this administration and by Republicans in the Senate is disgraceful. He has told the truth, he is not somebody who would not tell the truth, and he has taken great risks, and his… By doing so, and his courage should be heralded by all of us.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely, and by the way, he also has documentary proof that is consistent with what he’s saying,
Stacey Young
Other whistleblowers, yeah, there was another whistleblower also who provided substantiating evidence that what he said was true.
Jen Rubin
Alright, let me turn to the question of pardons, and the pardon attorney who is currently sitting there. We have seen, some shocking pardons. We start with the premise that the Constitution gives the president really plenary power, and he can sort of do whatever he wants. However, ill-advised it might be, although bribery still, apparently, is a restraint. But there is a process for pardons. There is a pardon attorney who is supposed to review these things. And last time I checked. In the before times, the department had certain rules, passage of time, all sorts of other requirements, some, indication of responsibility. None of that has been, followed to date. What is going on? Is there a pardon process? What are the ground rules that are being followed or not being followed? And is there any recourse?
Stacey Young
And it’s hard to know, because despite this administration claiming that it’s the most transparent in history, we have no idea what’s going on in the pardon office. What we do know is that this president fired the former pardon attorney. I think there was a reason other than… they clearly wanted her out of there, so… they wouldn’t have any impediments to what they wanted to do. And the current pardoned attorney became the pardoned attorney after the Senate made it clear that they weren’t going to confirm his nomination to be the U.S. Attorney in DC. And now we’re seeing some, you know, reporting of, alleged very serious, shenanigans that he was engaged in with respect to the, with respect to some of the investigations we’re seeing into Senator Schiff and Attorney General James. Are there any, you know, rules or, established procedures that are being followed with respect to pardons? It doesn’t seem like it, but we don’t know. I mean, I don’t know what’s going in… going on inside that office. I would be surprised if there are any real checks on, or oversight of the pardon power right now, inside the Department of Justice.
Jen Rubin
And to be clear, it was reported by ABC News, on Thursday, I believe, that Ed Martin, who is the partner attorney, is accused, and there’s allegations right now, and there’s an allegation that he is being investigated for this, went outside the department to share information with people who are not in the Justice Department. And that, of course, is very serious. It would be even more serious if, and there’s a big if. he shared grand jury information with any of those other individuals. That would be a violation of law. These are allegations, and presumably the administration is looking into it. Which tells you that some people in the administration may not be thrilled with this if the administration is now actually investigating this. But that is a fascinating drama that is unfurling.
Stacey Young
And you’d think that if you have officials within the Department of Justice who are, you know, high level and involved in very sensitive, important cases, and they are under investigation by the FBI, another administration would remove them from their jobs, you would think. But not this one.
Jen Rubin
Now, he is, remaining there. Perhaps the most disturbing, although it’s hard to choose, aspect of this administration is the weaponization of criminal justice against various, enemies of the present. He declared they were enemies, he insisted in a, I guess a direct message that inadvertently went public, that they should prosecute, certain individuals. He subsequently repeated these threats, and presumably they’ve referred, other investigations. If you are a attorney, and you are told, go investigate this person because the president wants you to, what’s your legal obligation at the investigation stage? Do you have an obligation to say no? Is there a level of proof that is required before you launch a criminal investigation?
Stacey Young
I mean, these are questions that, you know, usually the FBI are going to face, the, you know, the requirements for opening an investigation are… the threshold is lower than what they are for seeking an indictment. So, you know, I can’t answer the question of whether, you know, if an FBI agent or if a prosecutor believes that, you know, the request to open an investigation is simply, like, vindictive or politically motivated, whether they’re requi- what their obligations are to do in response to that. But… you know… We’ve seen these investigations now of a number of perceived enemies of this president, and it seems like they are accelerating. every time you kind of hear a threat about this president going after somebody, it seems to materialize into a criminal investigation. That’s the pattern we’re starting to see. And I have no reason to believe that that’s going to slow down.
I think, you know, we’re now seeing that a lot of these prosecutions have pretty glaring flaws, and it would be surprising if any of them end up in convictions. But of course, even being just investigated by the FBI, even if it’s not going to lead to a prosecution, can be life-changing. It can be hugely expensive. You are thrust into the public eye. You are terrified of your future. You’re, you know, you become vulnerable to doxing and threats from the public. I mean, it’s… These are… these are life-altering, you know, life-altering situations. This president and DOJ is putting people in simply because of the president having a beef with people. So… it’s, you know, it really is, like, vindictive investigations, vindictive prosecutions are, you know, symptoms of authoritarianism, and in terms of, you know, this slide into an autocratic regime, like, these are some of the starkest examples of that.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Stacey Young
So, you know, we have to remain laser-focused on what’s happening in DOJ, and we have to make sure that, you know, the people who are still there, the career people, feel safe. Feel that if they want to blow the whistle, that they can do so safely, and there need to be people on the outside continuing to support them. Because they are the ones upholding the rule of law. They are the check on, you know, lawlessness at the department. So, you know, we have to just applaud them for staying, and we all have to be doing what we can to support them while they’re there.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Our friends at Just Security, which is magnificent resources, has been keeping a long tracker of instances in which courts have found that The administration is misrepresenting facts, or acting arbitrarily, or disregarding orders. There are so many of these. Should… District Court judges, in your view, be taking a more aggressive stance as Judge Boasberg is. His is the only one that I’m aware of that is an open criminal contempt investigation. When you lie, when you… put a declaration in that you know to be untrue, or when you intentionally don’t follow the court? That’s a serious matter. Should district courts become more aggressive, realizing they have their hands full with this administration? But nevertheless, do they have an obligation here?
Stacey Young
I don’t want to make a broad statement about this. I mean, every judge has to examine, you know, the facts in their own case. So, you know, certainly judges should issue sanctions when there is clear evidence that lawyers intentionally, you know, violated their duty to the court. And we are starting to see a little bit of that. But, you know, I would just kind of… caveat that and say there are sometimes instances, and, you know, I can speak from experience, like, career lawyers at DOJ will sometimes present declarations or make statements based on what their client said. And you can’t get inside your client’s head. You can’t verify yourself every single fact your client is putting forth, that you are, you know, filing in a court on their behalf.
So, you know, I think everybody just needs to kind of be careful about judging, particularly career lawyers who are involved in these cases, who may at times proffer information that may not be accurate, because many times they have no way of knowing that it’s not. They have no way of knowing that, for example. agencies within DHS are not conveying the truth. So, you know, I just, you know, we’ve seen a lot of criticism, and we’ve even seen some bar complaints made against career lawyers for, you know, violating their duty of candor to the court. it’s not… it’s not always as clear-cut as it looks from the outside, and we have to remember that, like, the career lawyers inside DOJ are doing the best they can, and not everything they put forward, that may not be completely truthful is their fault.
Jen Rubin
Yes, well, if people want to help out, if they are lawyers themselves, they want to do pro bono work, if they want to donate to you, or if they are a career lawyer someplace that, almost impossible to believe they hadn’t heard of you, but if they haven’t heard of you, and they’re now watching this, what should they do? How can they contact you?
Stacey Young
So DOJ employees, both current and recent, are absolutely… we encourage you to reach out if you ever need help, if you ever need support, if you ever just need to… someone to talk to, you can absolutely reach out to us. And you can do that by emailing us at help at thejusticeconnection.org. And we are a very small organization, we are all former career DOJ employees, and one of the things we did not learn at DOJ was how to fundraise. So, we are not great at it. We figured out just about everything except fundraising, which none of us have any, and we’re also, because we’re… because we were government lawyers for so long, we don’t have the connections that other organizations, other pro-democracy organizations, have to foundations, so… We are really doing our best to raise money, and we need to raise money if we’re going to continue existing. So, we would really appreciate anybody who understands why our work is so important to make a contribution, and you can do that by going to our website. which is thejusticeconnection.org.
And I’ll also, I’ll also just mention this, because you, and also lawyers, mental health professionals. job recruiters, everybody is welcome to offer help, and you can do that by reaching out to us at info at thejusticeconnection.org. But I’ll just mention, you mentioned Just Security, which has, I think, the best tracker in town. We also have a tracker, and it’s a DOJ tracker, and we have tracked just about every single publicly reported attack on the department and its workforce since day one. It’s very comprehensive, it’s very helpful. We cite all… we have citations for everything on that tracker, and you can find that tracker at our website. So, you know, it’s been really an invaluable resource for reporters.
Jen Rubin
And for members of Congress.
Stacey Young
And for the general public. So, if you haven’t checked it out, because, you know, the administration’s flood the zone strategy makes it really hard to keep up.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Stacey Young
And we know that, and even for DOJ, you know, beat reporters, it’s hard for them to remember what happened 4 months ago. So, you know, check out our tracker, and it’s a great thing to bookmark. Yeah, and also, if you’re on Substack, we have a Substack page, and we have DOJ alumni posting several times a week, and we really kind of want to raise awareness about what DOJ does, and why it’s working. It really affects every aspect of our lives, and why its destruction will not just make us all less safe and make our rights more vulnerable, but will really just, erode the rule of law.
Jen Rubin
Well, Stacey, thank you for everything you’re doing. Contrarians, you heard all that information. Get to work, if you can, help out. And Stacy, we will look forward to having you back and hearing from you in the future. It is truly a tragedy, the crown jewel of justice, not only in the United States, but frankly around the world. It’s been admired, copied by other democratic, countries. is really under, siege, and goodness knows, how we’re gonna put it all back together. But thank you for what you’re doing now, and, best of luck, in your continued work on behalf of these, heroic individuals.
Stacey Young
Thank you so much, I appreciate it.
