The Unraveling of the Justice Department -- Sixty attorneys describe a year of chaos and suspicion

A must-read review of the month-by-month realizations these attorneys had, as they struggled with 'rule of men' enforcement's hollowing out rule of law enforcement.
URL with digital photos:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/11/16/magazine/trump-justice-department-staff-attorneys.html?searchResultPosition=1

archived: https://archive.ph/4puuG

One excerpt from the full URL

February 10 - 14

Crosswell: On the morning of Friday, Feb. 14, we got an email for a video call with Bove at 9:45. It was intense... Bove’s spiel was short. He directed us to sign the motion to dismiss the Adams charges. They could have done it themselves but I believe they wanted our imprimatur. We all huddled in a conference room and tried to figure out what to do. We had an hour. There were three options. One, someone signs. Two, we all resign. Three, we call their bluff, don’t do anything and see if they fire us. I recommended Option 3. I’m still thinking we have civil service protections. But someone said if you don’t sign, they could say you’re insubordinate, and that could affect your security clearance, which could affect getting hired for other jobs. I backed off.

Romano: I thought 100 percent he’d fire everyone because no one would sign. Then one of the lawyers in the section agreed to file the motion to dismiss. I didn’t know him super well. He was older, on the verge of retirement. People saw it as protecting the rest of us, not trying to advance himself.

Crosswell: To my mind, he did something pretty heroic. Then there was a daylong negotiation over how the motion would be worded. It was important to us to be clear we were effectively put at gunpoint. Before, I said, I don’t want to leave because I don’t want a hack to replace me. But I started writing my resignation letter. I’m a Marine officer. Aside from how wrong it was to drop the case for political reasons, I felt so mad that our deputies had lost their jobs for protecting us.

Katie Chamblee-Ryan, Civil Rights Division: What happened to PIN was an alarm blasting everywhere. That’s when I was like, They’re just going to break every rule. They don’t care. That’s when private meetings started among staff to talk about whether you have more legal protections if you resign or are fired.