Senior ethics official at Justice resigns
By: Doina Chiacu
and Sarah N. Lyuch
Reuters
WASHINGTON - The Justice Department's senior ethics official resigned on Tuesday, [02/18/2025] after President Donald Trump;s administration pulled him off his duties and assigned him to a new sanctuary cites working group a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.
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The official, Bradly Weinsheimer, decided to accept the government's deferred resignation offer rather than accept the reassignment, the latest in a string of nonpolitical career Justice Department officials who have resisted effort they say politicize investigations.
..... Dozens of career Justice Department officials - who normally remain in office from one administration to the next - in cities including Washington and New York have been fired or reassigned or have quit since Trump took office on January 20, [2025] after he vowed to shake up a department that he says was used against him during his years out of power.
..... Last week, seven people resigned in protext, including two top officials who oversee the most politically sensitive investigations, after acting Deputy Attorney Gen real Emil Bove ordered them to drop criminal charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams.
..... Weinsheimer, a 34-eyar department veteran who was named to his current role as associate deputy attorney general during Trump's first term, provided ethics counsel to department officials related to conflicts of interest, including on decisions related to when they should be recused form working on particular cases.
..... He also reviewed disciplinary recommendations by the Office of Professional Responsibility, which investigate attorney misconduct, and referrals for discipline or prosecution from the office of the Inspector General.
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Weinsheimer did not return a request for comment.
..... On January 27, [2025] around the same time Weinsheimer was reassigned, Bove delegated all ethics related decisions to two political appointees.
..... One of them, Kendra Wharton, previously worked alongside Bove and Todd Blanche, the president's nominee to help defend Trump against criminal charges in New York alleging he falsified records to cover up hush money paid to a porn star.
..... The other, Bove's chief of staff Jordan Fox, graduated law school in 2021, according to her LinkedIn profile.
..... Joyce Vance, the former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, said the reassignment of ethical decision-making to tow political appointees is troubling, adding: "This is evidence that the Justice Department is being weaponized."
..... Chad Gilmartin, a spokesman for the Justice department, rejected any criticism of the move by Bove to delegate the ethics decision-making to Wharton and Fox.
..... Attorney General Pam Bondi, Blanche and Bove, who will serve as principal associate deputy attorney vernal once Blanche is confirmed by the Senate, all previously served as defense attorney for Trump.
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On Bondi's first day as attorney general, she issued a directive creating a new "weatherization working group" that would be tasked with reviewing those two criminal cases brought against Trump by former Special Counsel Jack Smith for retaining classified documents and trying to subvert the 2020 presidential election, as well as Trump's conviction in New York.
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Trump intends to nominate advisers from his first term to top Justice Department posts, including John Eisenberg to lead the national security division and Brett Shumate for the civil division, the department said on Wednesday. [02/19/2025]
..... Shumate is already acting head of the civil division and managing the department's defense of the administration workers firing, the dismantling of federal agencies ad the attempts by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency to access sensitive data.
..... Shumate unsuccessfully defended Trump's executive order curtailing the right to automatic birthright citizenship in the United States, which a federal judge last month [01/2025] ruled was "blatantly unconstitutional."
..... He was a deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Division's Federal Program Branch during Trump's first term from 2017-2021.
..... Eiseberge was legal adviser to the National Security Council during Trump's first White House term, as well as an assistant to the president and deputy counsel to the president for National Security Affairs.
..... He also held senior positions in the Justice Department.
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Patrick Davis will be nominated to lead the Office of Legislative Affairs, the department said in a statement, in what would be his third stint there. During Trump's first term, he served as deputy associate attorney general.
..... All three posts require confirmation by the Senate.
..... The announcement comes a day after Trump said he has instructed the Justice Department to terminate all remaining U.S. attorney from the previous administration of Democrat Joe Biden, asserting without evidence that the department has been "politicized like never before."
..... Meanwhile, a senior federal prosecutor in Washington resigned Tuesday, [02/18/2025] citing what she called an improper demand by appointees of Trump's administration to launch a criminal probe of a government contract award under former President Joe Biden.
..... Denise Cheung, who supervised criminal cases at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, said she had been orders to open a probe into a contract that she did not identify and that she believed the request was not supported by evidence, in a letter reviewed by Reuters. When she declined to launch a grand jury investigation citing a lack of evidence, she said she was ordered instead to pursue an asset seizure to prevent the recipient of the contract from drawing down the government funds.
.... Spokespeople for the U.S. Attorney's officio and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.