‘Committed to the oath that I took’

This is an adapted excerpt from the Feb. 18 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes,” guest hosted by Ali Velshi.

On Tuesday, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., cleared the way for Donald Trump and Elon Musk to continue their assault on the U.S. government. Judge Tanya Chutkan, who previously oversaw Trump’s Jan. 6 criminal case, declined a request from 14 state attorneys general to prevent Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, from firing employees or accessing agency data.

Chutkan determined that the mere threat of DOGE causing widespread harm was not enough to issue a temporary restraining order. This happened just one day after we learned that the acting head of the Social Security Administration, Michelle King, resigned after she refused to give Musk’s DOGE staffers access to sensitive personal data.

She wasn’t the only government official to resign in protest of the Trump administration on Tuesday. Denise Cheung, the head of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, abruptly stepped down, too.

As NBC News reported, Cheung pushed back against an order from Trump’s Justice Department to freeze bank assets and open up a criminal investigation into a contract awarded by the Environmental Protection Agency. Trump’s acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, allegedly tried to push the whole thing through on Monday, a federal holiday, when, presumably, fewer people were paying attention.

In her resignation letter, obtained by NBC News, Cheung said there was no legal justification for such dramatic action. “[She] wrote that she was asked on Monday to review documentation provided by the Office of the Deputy Attorney General (ODAG) — currently headed by acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove — ‘to open a criminal investigation into whether a contract had been unlawfully awarded by an executive agency’ during former President Joe Biden’s administration,” NBC News reported.

In the letter, Cheung outlines the alleged pressure campaign from Bove to get this done as quickly as possible:

I was told that there was time sensitivity and action had to be taken that day because there was concern that contract awardees could continue to draw down on accounts handled by the bank handling the disbursements. I conferred with others in the Office, all of whom have substantial white collar criminal prosecution experience, and reviewed documentation provided by ODAG, in determining whether the predicate for opening such a grand jury investigation existed. Despite assessing that the existing documents on their face did not seem to meet this threshold, an ODAG representative stated that he believed sufficient predication existed, including in the form of a video where statements were made by a former political appointee of the executive agency in question.

In other words, it sounds like the new administration’s position was for the Justice Department to freeze funds first and then come up with a legal justification for doing so after the fact — or possibly not at all.

Cheung also detailed how she was getting pressure not just from the acting deputy attorney general but from her own boss, acting U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, a Trump appointee who helped lead the “Stop the Steal” movement ahead of Jan. 6.

As Cheung wrote to him in her resignation letter:

You also directed that a second letter be immediately issued to the bank under your and my name ordering the bank not to release any funds in the subject accounts pursuant to a criminal investigation being run out of the [U.S. Attorney’s office in D.C.]. When I explained that the quantum of evidence did not support that action, you stated that you believed that there was sufficient evidence. You also accused me about wasting five hours of the day “doing nothing” except trying to get what the FBI and I wanted, but not what you wanted … Because I believed that I lacked the legal authority to issue such a letter, I told you that I would not do so. You then asked for my resignation. … I remain committed to the oath that I took, and it has been an honor of a lifetime to be an [assistant U.S. attorney] in this Office. I know that all of the [assistant U.S. attorneys] in the Office will continue to uphold that pledge they have taken, following the facts and the law and complying with their moral, ethical, and legal obligations.

In a statement to NBC News, the Justice Department wrote, “Refusing a basic request to pause an investigation so officials can examine the potential waste of government funds is not an act of heroism — just a failure to follow chain of command.”

Of course, many would argue that standing up against what one believes to be an illegal or unjust order, at great professional cost, would indeed be an act of heroism. But perhaps Trump’s officials are just getting a bit tired of all the resignations.

Cheung’s resignation comes after at least seven DOJ prosecutors quit last week rather than enable Trump’s deal with New York City Mayor Eric Adams wherein the federal bribery charges against Adams — which he denies — would be dropped, allegedly in exchange for his cooperation with Trump’s immigration policies. (Both Bove and Adam’s legal team have denied allegations of engaging in a quid pro quo.)

Bove tried, and tried again, to get a Justice Department official to sign onto the order dropping those charges. But, at multiple turns, career prosecutors, in many cases conservatives who had signed on to work with the Trump administration, refused to do something they felt was either illegal or unjustified or immoral or improper.

Eventually, Bove found someone to submit the request: a lawyer named Ed Sullivan, a trial attorney at the Justice Department who is nearing retirement. He possibly did so under the unspoken threat that his colleagues would lose their jobs otherwise.

There are basically two schools of thought here: One, as outlined by legal scholar Laurence Tribe on my program, “Velshi,” this past Saturday, is that there’s nothing principled about remaining at Trump’s weaponized Justice Department:

“There were 22 career members of the Justice Department, they were threatened by Emil Bove: ‘One of you better sign this corrupt motion to dismiss or you’re all fired,’” Tribe told me. “And at first they stood together, which is what they should have done, until finally a guy named Ed Sullivan … who was about to retire anyway, said ‘I’ll volunteer, I’ll take the hit.’”

“He’s no profile in courage,” Tribe continued. “They should all have insisted on being fired. Make Emil Bove sign the damn thing himself.”

That’s one perspective. Another perspective is that if all the principled people quit, or are forced to resign like Cheung, then who will be left to push back? After all, don’t you think Trump wants all of the career prosecutors who won’t obey a potentially illegal order to leave, especially considering his new edict that essentially states only he and his handpicked attorney general get to say what is and is not illegal?

On Tuesday, Trump signed an executive order titled, “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies,” which requires independent agencies to submit proposed regulations to the White House for review. “The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch,” the order states.

Clearly, this time around, things are different. Trump and his co-president Musk are systematically dismantling all guardrails against their lawless power grabs. That means the strategies for resisting those power grabs must be different, too.

This article was originally published on MSNBC.com