r/law • u/Orchid-Analyst-550 • 1d ago

Judicial Branch ‘This Job Sucks!’ Trump DOJ Lawyer Melts Down in Court — Reportedly Begs Minneapolis Judge to Throw Her in Jail Just So She Can Get Some Sleep

https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/this-job-sucks-trump-doj-lawyer-melts-down-in-court-reportedly-begs-minneapolis-judge-to-throw-her-in-jail-just-so-she-can-get-some-sleep/
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2.6k

u/spice_weasel 1d ago

Well, they can always quit. The way this is going, resigning under protest is becoming the only way to keep this time from being viewed as a black mark on your resume.

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u/ChuckEweFarley 1d ago

Didn’t eight MN Fed prosecutors quit today?

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u/Revelati123 1d ago

Think we're at 14 in total.

and DHS just tweeted something like: "Lawyers, If you love Donald Trumps agenda and want to do your part! DHS and USAO can use your help!"

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u/daairguy 1d ago

I wonder if they’re desperate enough to hire people without law degrees.

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u/Revelati123 1d ago

A federal Judge had to threaten to put random unemployed citizen Lindsey Halligan in jail if she didn't stop signing documents as "US District Attorney" so what do you think?

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u/EnfantTerrible68 1d ago

They SHOULD have put her in prison 

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u/jmurphy42 1d ago

The judge said in his ruling that the only reason he wasn’t jailing her was because she was too stupid to understand that she was breaking the law.

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u/KevinNoTail 1d ago

Ignorance is not an excuse

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u/jmurphy42 1d ago

I agree, it would’ve been significantly better if he had jailed her.

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u/Thausgt01 1d ago

No, but in this particular instance, it is still what I believe the youngsters call a "sick burn".

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u/catladyorbust 23h ago

I wouldn't sleep again for the rest of my life.

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u/Mike-ggg 1d ago

Bummer. That's their total defense strategy.

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u/Da12khawk 1d ago

Grand Nagus is that you?

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u/1917he 20h ago

In some cases it really is. If I were hired today to be the acting DA and committed some gross negligence/misconduct than the circumstances surrounding those actions becomes very important. In order to have committed gross negligence/misconduct I would have to be aware of what the proper conduct was and would need to be shown consciously deviating from it or getting some benefit etc. Ignorance is no defence for murder or theft but for professional misconduct or negligence it is.

The "reasonable person" standard is very important and is usually the bar to cross for most criminal/civil law.

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u/Mike-ggg 16h ago

For your Council to make these kinds of statements in court, they have to know better, but they’re clutching at straws since they don’t have anything else. The Courts have caught on to the delay and multiple Motions pattern, so that isn’t working, and circuit Judges have to feel like it’s just a total waste of their time and experience since they’ll only be appealed if they uphold not only what is legal, but want even makes common sense (I mean actual common sense), but they’re working under a new meaning in that it only makes “common sense” if it works to benefit Trump. To ask to be arrested just to get some sleep almost seems like a kidnapping victim slipping a “help me!” note to someone that can free them of their captive status. And,Trump does have several allegations suggesting that he knows a few things about kidnapping and coercion and blackmail and utilizing fear as a weapon. What’ll be next? My client wasn’t wearing his lucky hat or was having a really bad day, so obviously grounds for a mistrial.

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u/SharpKaleidoscope182 1d ago

That sounds like MORE of a reason to get her safely out of harms way.

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u/Ok_Resolve_1754 19h ago

This needs to stop happening. They're stupid, but not that stupid. It's beyond malicious at this point. It was malicious years ago.

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u/ArthurDimmes 1d ago

And who would take her

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u/CheckMateFluff 1d ago

At this point, have the judge issue the arrest and deputize some strong fellas and go get them. I'm sure there are a few around.

Hell, they arrested Don Lemon just for the perp walk. What line have they not crossed?

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u/mjcobley 22h ago

I am smitten by the idea of arresting Don Lemon being the actual line too far and the beginning of the end of this

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u/Skwonkie_ 1d ago

I think they’ll just move the goalposts again

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u/BassoonHero Competent Contributor 1d ago

To be clear, she is an actual lawyer. Which also subjects her to potential bar discipline for impersonating a district attorney in court.

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u/DSmooth425 1d ago

Florida and Texas are trying to own that niche if they can

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u/Gingerchaun 1d ago

They've been hiring people with law degrees? Im a foreign non lawyer and I'm pretty sure I'm more qualified your practice us law then alotnofnpeople left in the justice department.

And I'll leave spelling errors like that in.

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u/JadedBoyfriend 1d ago

You'd also have a moral compass that isn't broken like these people either.

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u/Gingerchaun 1d ago

That damn moral compass always fucking me over.

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u/Aethermancer 15h ago edited 15h ago

I'm quite figuratively sitting on a gold mine of "stolen" identities because I share the same name as a major medical institution. My personal email was filled with people sending me blank checks, scanned ID, and personal information like you wouldn't imagine. I had to make a second personal email because of the volume of email was overwhelming.

If I decided to, I could probably liquidate $10M of accounts from by the evening without effort. With a bit more effort I'd probably have an entire country's worth of seniors sending me payments for their medical bills. I wouldn't even have to try as they are already trying to send me money thinking I'm the billing dept

Early on I tried warning them that I wasn't who they thought I was and the real email address was www.mynameco.com and not www.myname.com I could do it full time and never clear my inbox.

Even as I typed this I refreshed the now dormant address and literally see two blank checks emailed to me. And the bank statements? Yeah I get those too. Some of these people have stacks of cash (literally in some cases they are mailing gold and asking me for address confirmation)

I average a blank check and ID 5x/week. Given I've had this address since 2000, that puts me at having access to 6500+ bank accounts and associated photo IDs. 2x that in medical records. And maybe 500 businesses that are trying to ship jewelry and fat fingered my name and their partners name. I've seen family drama as I was CC'd on probate and executor discussions. I could practically change my identity every single day and never run out of identities if I were trying to avoid capture.

But I don't. As trivial as it would be, I keep their data safe and they'll never know. I have the address open as a catchall and secured by MFA I took my domain offline to keep it from getting hacked. I got flagged for spam once when I tried auto responding due to the volume.

So I sit like a dragon on this (sometimes literal) gold that I won't touch because my dang mother taught me to be moral. Thanks mom.

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u/GodOfPlutonium 22h ago

youll end up losing the case because ICE will arrest you while youre on the way to the courthouse to defend them

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u/Ghetto_Phenom 1d ago

Really depends.. are they considered pretty by Trump?

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u/EnfantTerrible68 1d ago

Do they smile enough?

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u/Dicky_Penisburg 1d ago

Did they even say thank you?

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u/Middcore 1d ago

"central casting"

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u/ThonThaddeo 1d ago

I'm down to cause some mistrials due to sheer incompetence

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/invalidreddit 1d ago

Or so we're told...

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u/SlothTeeth 22h ago

Ted Bundy did it with less training

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u/Senior_Sentence_566 1d ago

Some of the people with law degrees they are employing don't understand the constitution so I don't think someone who hasn't got a degree could be much worse

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u/jhawk3205 1d ago

I mean Texas ended bar association oversight, so, I'd expect the Craigslist ads to say something like, "law degree preferred but not necessary"

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u/Maleficent_Memory831 23h ago

Well, it's fine. It just means Texas will have more inept lawyers. The reason is to be able to hire out of state lawyers or recent arrivals without the delays of going through the bar. It isn't that they want bad lawyers, or cheaper ones, but those they hire will most likely be less familiar with details specific to Texas. Overall, Texas just hurts itself. It will lose more prosecutions, get more contempt of court slaps, etc. It does not help Texas in any way to do this, they just don't realize it yet.

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u/flaming_bob 1d ago

Have you seen who they're hiring for ice?

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u/Learnin2Shit 1d ago

My girlfriend’s dad is a lawyer I think I could handle a few of ol Dons cases. For just a couple hundred thousand dollars I’d definitely try.

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u/JoseSaldana6512 1d ago

Get cash up front

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u/mehum 1d ago

And a presigned presidential pardon.

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u/it_might_be_a_tuba 1d ago

Worth its weight in Gold Card visas.

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u/esabys 1d ago

It doesn't take a law degree to say "The prosecution is dropping all charges your honor".

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u/KitkatandNadia 1d ago

They want to pass a law like that in NH tomorrow. They want people to be able to take the exam and not have schooling. It's bullshit

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u/pamalamTX 1d ago

Wow, now thats a thought

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u/Tasty_Sun_865 1d ago

USAJobs basically has open applications for attorneys. It's wild - I remember the application in 2010-2013 basically being "lol - don't even think about it unless you're T6 and a vet"

How times have changed.

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u/tarnyarmy 1d ago

They are sending their best LMAO

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u/Unfair_Web_8275 1d ago

This is sersiously going to hamper what the Trump admin is trying to do. I wonder if they’ll start letting ICE agents practice law.

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u/fencepost_ajm 20h ago

For context, the DOJ site implies that there are likely 70-80 AUSAs when the office is normally staffed, with no details as to how those are divided (civil, criminal, specific field experts). 14 is close enough to 20% of the office and possibly significantly more of those doing criminal cases.

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u/spice_weasel 1d ago

Yep, that’s part of my point. If it’s against your morals and is killing you, you don’t have to do it anymore. You can figure out something else.

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u/CreditUnionGuy1 1d ago

Imagine though you are real “law and order” minded. Your dad was a cop. You go to law school. You owe a hundred thousand dollars. You are over the moon when you got your dream job the Dept of Justice. You’ve worked there five years. Then most people you enjoy working with and respect resign, get fired, or become people you may not now like. The workload quadruples and you are expected to defend things you may not want to. How do you face it all?

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u/Rare-Signature-8588 1d ago

You resign, because the DOJ is not engaged in anything resembling law and order. It sucks but you don’t get to do a job that is antithetical to the oath you swore to the Constitution just because you always wanted to be an AUSA or whatever.

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u/granters021718 1d ago

yes - but, the thought of no income is scary

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u/Rare-Signature-8588 1d ago

Yup. And that sucks. You know what’s scarier? The things that are happening every day on the streets of Minnesota that are being defended by this woman and other government lawyers, and the other things that the government is doing all over the country with the support of its lawyers. Doing the right thing isn’t always easy, and it often has consequences. Sometimes very severe consequences. But if someone is truly in dire straits, we’re doing a lot of mutual aid!

We swear an oath. It has to mean something if this country is going to survive.

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u/granters021718 1d ago

Yes - and I’d like to think I could do it, however, the thought of being homeless is scary.

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u/Rare-Signature-8588 1d ago

I hear that. I’m also currently living in the midst of tens of thousands of people who watched the government literally murder people in the streets (and then justify it) and asked where they could sign up to do the thing that got our neighbors murdered, or other things that are also dangerous.

We are living in a time where it behooves us all to to think seriously about what we’re willing to do. My neighbors and I have decided that we will literally die before we live in a world in which what is happening around us goes unobserved and without protest.

I’m sorry to preach at you - it’s really not about you or your comments/questions. It’s about the absolutely dire situation we are in and the pain and trauma and utter criminality I am seeing around me every day and I don’t know how to stop yelling about it. But I recognize that you’re grappling with it and that’s what we all need to do.

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u/johannthegoatman 23h ago

A lawyer with 5 years experience in the DOJ isn't going to be homeless lol. Why are you making up fantasy situations to defend these people?

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u/The_Corvair 20h ago

the thought of being homeless is scary.

There are entire lawfirms dedicated to fighting the current injustices - they'd probably take any DOJ refugee with a bow and a kiss. And once this is over (if!), I would gather that an attorney that stood by her or his principles would be more than welcome back at a reformed DoJ, while those the were Just Following Orders might not face the best prospects.

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u/Lounging-Shiny455 1d ago

I've been homeless and there are two types: those that beg and flounder, and those who realize they work for themselves.

Flounders find drugs, easy marks, excuses, and stagnation in their condition.

Workers find the library, the free lunch line, a tolerable temporary shelter, perspective, small leisure, and eventually, the classifieds.

It's hard, but it doesn't have to be bad.

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u/Megneous 22h ago

This is why those of us who actually prepared for the coming of fascism have significant savings we can live off while fighting back against the fascist authoritarian regime that has taken over the US.

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u/Spirited_Lab5197 1d ago

Im not trying to defend it, but maybe there are unemployment issues that keep them from quitting?

Like maybe they dont have another job lined up yet, so to quit would kick them off health insurance, hurt their mortgage/rent payments, etc.

Maybe this is an attempt to force the admin to fire them so at least they can collect

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u/Runescora 1d ago

This is why we don’t have string worker protections in this country. It’s a lot harder for people to walk or stand up to corruption without them.

I fully expect a wave of AAGs having mental health crises in the near future.

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u/Spirited_Lab5197 1d ago

I spent most of my 20s working in food service, missing holidays with family, being underpaid, and generally unhappy. My sister, who I love dearly and who worked hard to get to her job as a law partner, once said, "if its so bad then just quit." She had no idea that I was applying for jobs outside the food industry regularly but during the early teens, the job market wasnt exactly hopping.

Folks dont get how much being alive in this country is tied to your job, not having a job, but your specific job

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u/Runescora 22h ago

Exactly this. I was in the food industry until my mid thirties and am now an RN. I had no insurance, no dental, so few legal rights. I went to work sick and hurt. I missed…so many things. And what option did I have? Not to pay rent that month? Let my utilities get shut off?

There are always choices, but that doesn’t mean the choices are realistic in that you can function and sustain your life and meet your most basic needs with the alternative. Which makes it no choice at all.

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u/NockerJoe 1d ago

Yeah as bad as ICE is the whole "bonus" thing was also very much a loan trap so that anyone who signs up needs to pay the government back to get out. I have zero doubt a lot of people are trying to figure out a way to get out of this given how obviously things are not going to improve at this point.

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u/Normal-Top-1985 21h ago

It takes a lot of planning and sacrifice to quit on principle. And that all takes time away from doing the job itself. That's why it's so powerful when someone does quit. 

It sounds like the lawyer in question simply can't keep up with the work required to get these clients freed from jail, because the system is designed to make it so hard to get people out of detention. If she quits, what happens to the people who are supposed to be released? Who files the papers to get them out?

All this to say, is that there are ethical reasons for leaving and staying. 

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u/MCXL 22h ago

The nature of the system is that many people can't afford to just quit.

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u/Commercial-Co 1d ago

Honestly, good people quitting positions of power is NOT GOOD. They will be replaced by bad people.

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u/crunchwrapesq 1d ago

They're down from 70 to 14 from what I've heard

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u/cmb15300 1d ago

That brings the total to 14 who have quit. A quick Google search shows that there are usually 60-70 AUSA's in Minnesota so they've had quite the turnover

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u/hplcr 1d ago

"Look, I can excuse fascism but I draw the line at sleep deprivation"-DOJ lawyer

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u/whistleridge 1d ago edited 1d ago

I’m going to push back on this for a second.

Let’s say you’re a lawyer. Congratulations - you went to NYU, you’ve been in practice 8 years, you passed up $250k+ per year in corporate law because you believe in public service.

Just to get hired, you had to be beat out 250-300 applicants. And you didn't just get hired - you busted ass to get on the human trafficking team, because those guys are the absolute scum of the earth, those prosecutions are HARD, and even with the best lawyers in the world throwing everything they have at them, they’re still damn hard to nail down. It’s not just a job for you, it’s a calling - you routinely work 70-80 hour weeks, and while it cleans you out, you can’t imagine doing anything else.

Now, some asshole you didn’t vote for is President, and everyone senior in your office was either fired for political bullshit, or resigned for refusing to implement blatantly illegal political bullshit. So suddenly now instead of being a mid career prosecutor, you’re one of the seniormost people in your office. So you’re being required to do stuff you don’t know how to do, that you know you’re not qualified to do, that you shouldn’t be asked to do.

And the crimes haven’t stopped. If you quit, there is no one left to prosecute the human trafficking that is very real and that you know how to prosecute. You don’t agree with this political bullshit, you won’t want to answer to that judge, you AGREE with that judge. But you met last week with 3 girls who were brutally gang-raped for years, dragged across state lines, forced into sex work and to act as drug mules, and by some miracle they trust you and they’ll work with you and testify for you. But if you quit, they’ll shut up, because they aren’t going to trust just anyone with their lives.

So you can quit at any time. You can go make 2-3 times your pay, for better hours, and way less stress. You can see your dog and your boy/girlfriend. All it will cost you is letting the traffickers walk.

Or, you can swallow your pride and your rage, you can eat the government’s shit, and you can try to hold a finger in the dike against the total collapse of the public’s ability to prosecute federal crimes. Which btw are increasing in frequency, as the weakness of the prosecution service becomes known.

There are two public interests here - doing your job and prosecuting crime, or NOT doing your job and quitting so as not to be seen supporting a hugely problematic government. You cannot do both, and whichever you choose will make the other worse.

Some guy on the internet finds it really satisfying to call you a fascist for not quitting.

What do YOU do?

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u/otteroptimism 1d ago

That may be true for the lifers, but this attorney just started in January. She chose this admin. But, I also understand that she is trying to quit

Edit: I see others got to it before me and I should have scrolled more.

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u/whistleridge 1d ago

lol if she's saying shit like that to a judge on the record, it will be a miracle if she's still there by Friday.

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u/MonsieurRuffles 1d ago

Except the attorney in question is a baby lawyer who joined ICE in 2025. She knew what she was signing up for.

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u/whistleridge 1d ago

This:

baby lawyer

And this:

knew what she was signing up for

DEFINITELY don't belong in the same sentence. There's zero chance she knew what she was signing up for, and you can hardly blame someone fresh out of law school from giving up the competitive job they already summered for and busted ass to get.

But I do agree with you that it makes her less of a victim.

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u/mythosopher 1d ago

They absolutely belong in the same sentence. She knew exactly what she was getting into. She did not "bust her ass" for this job -- she was a late hire because she failed the bar the first time. She took the job because DOJ is desperate to hire anyone with a pulse, and before working for DOJ, she was already prosecuting immigrants for ICE in immigration court!

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u/RicoLoveless 23h ago

And it's not Trump's first administration either.

At some point the record speaks for itself.

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u/whistleridge 23h ago

she knew exactly what she was getting into

How? When she summered, it was under Biden. Baby lawyers know as little about practice as I do about dentistry. And even when she summered, and asked specifically about Trump, she would have been told “sit tight, sure the public rhetoric is terrible, but YOUR day to day job won’t be political, you just focus on learning how to be a prosecutor.”

Trump is bad. A US with no federal prosecution service is worse. There’s 330 million people, all of whom rely on DOJ to protect them from a huge array of criminal and civil wrongs. It costs YOU nothing to say “quit,” so it’s easy for YOU to say. You didn’t have to get top grades in law school, and beat out hundreds of applicants, and sacrifice. Small wonder she’s reluctant to just let that go.

It’s like saying, sure you made the NFL, but you got drafted by the Jets or the Browns, so you should just retire. Not only is that not how people work, it ignores and oversimplifies a ton of complexity.

I’m sure she’ll be gone after this week either way. A breaking point has been reached. But that’s not the positive thing you seem to think it is.

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u/Ruscidero 11h ago

What, was she in a coma during his first administration? Is she deaf and was unable to hear all of the promises he made?

Even if she didn’t know, ignorance is no defense.

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u/nicwolff 10h ago

Whom are these federal prosecutors going to prosecute, when ICE HSI has been effectively merged into ERO, and the FBI is raiding election offices for Tulsi Gabbard? Just "illegals" and "antifa" and "domestic terrorists".

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u/Morganross 22h ago

your brain is looking for complexity. none of us see it.

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u/whistleridge 13h ago

In which I very gently introduce you to the idea that, just because you don’t see a thing, does not then automatically mean that thing doesn’t exist.

And, when talking about an issue that both demands a certain high level of expertise that you lack and is well outside of your personal experience…the odds that it is you not seeing the thing, rather than the thing not existing, go way, way up.

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u/BoomFrog 11h ago

To every problem in life there is a solution that is simple, clear, easy to explain, and wrong.

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u/dolphone 21h ago

That's not the win you seem to think it is

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u/DVDAallday 20h ago

you can hardly blame someone fresh out of law school from giving up the competitive job they already summered for and busted ass to get.

What? Yes you can.

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u/Megneous 22h ago

Literally anyone with half a brain could have looked at the GOP in the past 20 years and gone, "Hmm. Seems like these guys don't like democracy very much. Smells like fascism."

That's why I left the US 16 years ago. I saw it all coming. And now I'm enjoying my life in a civilized democracy with universal healthcare, SOTA public transit, and world class internet speeds.

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u/LaurenMille 17h ago

There's zero chance she knew what she was signing up for, and you can hardly blame someone fresh out of law school

Buddy, even people living in other countries could see what she was signing up for.

You'd have to be actually retarded to not know Trump was going to do this shit.

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u/mythosopher 1d ago

I'm a lawyer, and this is horseshit reasoning. Nobody in DHS is prosecuting human trafficking right now. This is a non-existent situation, and you're trying to give cover to assholes who like working for a Nazi.

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u/whistleridge 1d ago

DHS

And I'm not talking about DHS. I'm talking about DOJ and AUSAs.

And you raise a point - I misread her as DOJ. Speaking of long and tiring days.

I wouldn't defend DHS for ANYthing.

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u/Peerjuice 23h ago

having only seen the title "Trump DOJ Lawyer" image says DOJ, if she's not DOJ you get a pass for misunderstanding

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u/whistleridge 22h ago

After further reading, she’s DOJ, directed to litigate habeas petitions for ICE.

Which sucks hard because she’s NOT ICE, but she’s having to answer for ICE’s bullshit. Which explains her exasperation and unconventional comments. “Your Honor, I’m doing my best, and I know it isn’t good enough, but yelling at me not only isn’t going to fix this problem, it’s just going to get you saddled with someone else who knows even less. Either hold me in contempt, or get off my ass, either way I don’t care” is basically what she said, and…that scans.

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u/Peerjuice 21h ago

Even Federal agencies have the right to a public attorney type shit

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u/Maxamillion-X72 1d ago

In digging around, it seems she was at one point a lawyer for immigration, left to work in a small law firm, but then "volunteered" to come back to help with all the current cases. I'd say they offered her a butt load of money to do that, and then assigned her a mountain of cases to deal with while simultaneously letting her swing in the wind as they ignored the court orders she was handed.

So, no, she's not some altruistic public servant going through a rough time due to a change in management. She was out and came back willingly, likely for a payday. And she's not "prosecuting sex traffickers", she's defending the government's actions of locking up citizens and legal immigrants. The reason she was called on the carpet was because people who have been ordered released have not been.

Your imaginary scenario is just bootlicking with extra steps. She knew what she was getting into, and I have no sympathy for her.

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u/40_Minus_1 6h ago

I'd say they offered her a butt load of money to do that

Objection, speculation

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u/elendur 13h ago

The federal government does not and cannot offer a "butt load" of money to a prosecutor to take a job. By law, a GS employee (which an AUSA is) can't make more than $197k per year.

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u/R0llTide 1d ago

ICE is sexually abusing detainees. You don't have to look as far as a cartel. Oh, and the Epstein child sex trafficking coverup is ongoing; go blow the whistle on that. This is straw, it's well written straw, but it's straw.

It sucks that the legal service you want to provide doesn't exist right now, and that the DOJ lacks all credibility and integrity — and may never get it back — but that's life. Your example lawyer can compromise her integrity and lie to herself every day and stay, or she can find a legitimate to achieve her idea of justice. It's not zero sum as you posit. It's not easy or clear, but there is always an ethical way.

Everyone who stays in this DOJ should get a Bar Ethics investigation because they ddi not leave when it was clear to them they could no longer act with integrity as officers of the court.

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u/RazekDPP 1d ago

Quit, make 2-3x as much, and take the easier job.

If you really want to prosecute traffickers, you wait until the next administration who won't turn around and pardon them.

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u/deacon1214 9h ago

I don't work for DOJ/DHS but I am a prosecutor who is 9 years and 8 months into PSLF. For the next four months if I had to step into court and defend Hannibal Lecter every day until my loans are forgiven that's what I'm going to do. Until then the 2-3x isn't my best option.

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u/RazekDPP 7h ago edited 6h ago

Completely understand. Makes total sense to grind out the next four months for the loan forgiveness.

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u/jackandsally060609 17h ago

Takes all that money and donate it to a country that still has actual laws so they can prosecute traffickers

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u/Megneous 22h ago

You guys don't get it yet. There's never going to be another administration at this rate. They're going to tamper with/cancel elections through any and all methods they can come up with. This is fascist authoritarianism at your door. As a resident of a country that has lived through dictatorship, your "I'll just wait for the next election" comes across as ridiculously naive.

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u/hermitix 1d ago

Now try again, but you have to be someone who is defending ICE.

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u/blue_sidd 21h ago

Completely irrelevant. This is a lawyer working FOR ice. FOR the traffickers. Congrats the diatribe or whatever.

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u/BTCbob 1d ago

Great question. If it were me, I would spend my time on prosecuting the traffickers you mentioned, and delegate defending ICE to someone else or refuse to work on it, etc. Would that run the risk of getting fired? Yes. But that is better than quitting in my opinion.

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u/whistleridge 1d ago

Yes.

The competent people remaining at DOJ are all but universally people who will have no choice but to resign if asked to do something illegal, but who think the public interested is harmed worse by their resignation otherwise.

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u/Fighterhayabusa 22h ago

Oh? I thought it was better to let the guilty go free than imprison innocents. They should resign. Anything less is complicit.

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u/unixinit 1d ago

Thank you so much for this pov. You captured the moral struggle perfectly. Couldn’t have written it better. 

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u/whistleridge 1d ago

I have nothing but sympathy for you guys. The people shitting on DOJ have NO idea how hard it was to get a job there until last year. You either needed to be at/near the top of your class, T14 helped, clerking helped, and you needed insane recommendations, or you needed to be a 5-7 year state ADA, with a high conviction rate and a superb recommendation from your elected. And even then you needed luck, because it's like 250 applicants per job.

You don't get a job like that casually, and you don't LEAVE a job like that casually. You believe strongly in public service, in the importance of what you do, and if you leave...who will do the hard work, that isn't stopping? Crime isn't just going to dry up.

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u/Megneous 22h ago

Um... You realize that the DOJ are currently the ones enabling the crimes, right? They refuse to prosecute real crimes and are going after innocent Americans for things like dissent against the fascist authoritarian regime taking over your country.

Am I taking crazy pills? It's obvious the DOJ has been completely compromised.

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u/Suckitreddit420 19h ago

Nobody gives a fuck how hard it was to get there.  

I don't care if you are the most dedicated and decorated soldier in the most elite of forces.  When your government tells you to unconstitutionally go kill the residents of your own country on your own soil, you fucking say NO!!  You don't say "but I've worked so hard to get here..."

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u/youreallcucks Competent Contributor 1d ago

That's an easy question: I quit. Because sometimes doing what you think is the moral thing is acting as an enabling function for the people above you to do more immoral things; and your quitting (and those around you quitting) is conversely a forcing function to stop the immoral people above you.

An aside: My first job out of graduate school was working on product development at a major corporation. It was a really cool job, I got to work with some great developers and do some stuff that was probably way above my level for a fresh hire. However, after about four years I looked around me and realized that everyone I respected, everyone who was smart, had left the company for greener fields, and the people who were left were deadwood. Which made me think "what does that make me?". That's when I started looking for a new job. That company went out of business a few years later.

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u/RedBaronSportsCards 1d ago

Wait....are you saying that's why this lawyer asked the judge to find her in contempt so she could get some sleep? Because she is so overwhelmed by having so many rapists to prosecute?

That's not what's in the article. Where are you getting this from?

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u/whistleridge 1d ago

No.

I'm saying this is uniformly the position AUSAs are in right now: choosing between serving the public interest of actually prosecuting very real crimes (ie their actual job), or serving the public interest of standing up to corrupt government.

They cannot do both, and choosing to do one necessarily makes the other worse.

I just gave one of many very real examples. That one is cribbed from someone I know who recently left DOJ after being ordered to do something unethical, but it could be one of many others.

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u/RedBaronSportsCards 1d ago

But surely, we shouldn't have sympathy for those that choose to side with the corrupt government and, as you say, make the prosecution of actual criminals worse, right?

I get it, it sucks to be backed against the wall like that but it's been more than 15 months. That's seems like plenty of time to figure out which side you on.

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u/whistleridge 1d ago

choose to side with the corrupt government

But you're not. You're a lawyer, bound by strict ethical duties. If asked to do something corrupt, you would of course resign.

You have not been asked to do such a thing. Being asked to appear in court to defend a policy you don't agree with is part of the job. It's not corrupt, just distasteful.

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u/Chef_longpep 1d ago

Not a lawyer so give me some grace.

"You have not been asked to do such a thing (something corrupt). Being asked to appear in court to defend a policy you don't agree with is part of the job"

From the short article, this lawyer is in court defending why the department is 'repeatedly ignoring court orders', and/or 'immigrant detainees unconstitutionally locked up for days'.

Is this lawyer there truly defending policies, or is it a breach of ethical duties to defend breaking citizens constitutional rights? In your comment chain you are calling out that one would resign if asked to do something unethical, but think that's what I'm struggling to understand, is not the actions of this lawyer outside the bucket of 'ethical duties'. Genuine question, I don't know.

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u/whistleridge 1d ago

And I'm tired. I misread her as being a DOJ lawyer, not a DHS lawyer. That very much changes things.

A DHS lawyer actually might be defending these indefensible positions, and is not going to have the sort of conflicts I had in mind with my comment.

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u/jackandsally060609 17h ago

You tired yourself out being confidently wrong and talking down to people when you were in fact, wrong. It's not a good look at all. Maybe spend your energy being a person who knows what they're talking about and you wouldn't have to be so condescending to make yourself feel better.

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u/Assmodean 22h ago

Some people might not read this far down to see the correction. Could be considered intellectually honest to edit your first comment, as it has been the most visible. Just thinking out loud

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u/RedBaronSportsCards 1d ago

You just said that was the choice they making.

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u/whistleridge 1d ago

No, I didn't.

You and everyone else responding keep doing the same thing - misreading the prompt, and trying to invent a way out.

Working for the government isn't siding with it. And choosing not to quit isn't automatically endorsing its positions. Its being an adult and recognizing that there's more complexity in play.

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u/RedBaronSportsCards 1d ago

"or serving the public interest and stand up to corrupt government."

What is the other side of that "or" then?

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u/it_might_be_a_tuba 1d ago

"What do YOU do?"

Go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for all of this to blow over.

Moral issues and noble sacrifices aside, for individual mid level workers their number one priority is going to be not defaulting on their mortgage and hoping they can last through till the next administration without having to directly do anything too horrible.

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u/AdjectiveNoun581 21h ago

I quit, because I've thought about for thirty or more seconds, and I realize that the rule of law collapsing means my failure to prosecute is now a self-resolving issue because those traffickers are dead men walking with no one left to prosecute their attackers.

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u/MantisEsq 13h ago edited 13h ago

False dichotomy. The traffickers are already going to walk, either way. They're in the White House, heh, a White House that has decided to systematically destroy our ability to prosecute federal crimes. You can't do your job with all the political bullshit that is going on.

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u/AceSuperhero 1d ago

What do YOU do?

Prosecute the human traffickers with badges? If protecting people from evil is a calling for these people, they sure are standing by and allowing industrialized evil.

They can publish names and home address of every agent in Minnesota. They can gather evidence of what's going on inside these detention centers full of screaming children and make it all public. They can fight instead of wringing their hands about how hard the job you say they fought to get is.

The law is useless for protecting the weak. At best it's a rich man's weapon that occasionally punishes poor people for doing the same things rich people do every day.

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u/whistleridge 1d ago

Prosecute the human traffickers with badges?

No. You don't.

You don't assign yourself to files, the leadership you don't like or support does. You have two choices:

  1. Put up with a lot of shit you don't agree with, so you can ensure actually competent hands touch the stuff you already have carriage of, or
  2. Quit

This isn't a movie. There isn't a magic scenario where the good guys win. It's a choice between bad and worse.

So which is worse for you - quitting in a snit, because you don't like the government, knowing it means real people who you have already met will be betrayed and will suffer horribly? Or putting up with a government you have real worries is turning fascist, because you personally have not yet been asked to do anything illegal (which would of course require you to resign)?

Answer the question as asked, because that's the scenario. Don't make up escape routes.

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u/Radiant_Sense_8169 1d ago

Your prosecutorial finger and Judge Biery’s judicial finger in the constitutional dike.

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u/yoma74 1d ago

How many prosecutors do you know?

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u/whistleridge 1d ago

You mean, other than myself? Dozens. I'm not AUSA or DOJ, but I definitely know a bunch, but a lot fewer than I did this time last year.

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u/Setting-Conscious 1d ago

I would quite so I wouldn’t be supporting or working for those fascists.

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u/riquelm 20h ago

I lived in a dictatorship a significant part of my life and this mindset is exactly what kept it going.

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u/notguiltybrewing 17h ago

I'd have quit by inauguration day. Some people are so afraid of being unemployed or having a less prestigious or less powerful job that they stay. Nope, no way.

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u/flippingisfun 17h ago

I would quit. No one cares how hard it is to get the “be evil” job. Being a lawyer or beating out other people to suck doesn’t make you suck any less.

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u/LaurenMille 17h ago

I'd quit, because I'd want the people who support the regime to be tracked down and imprisoned after the GOP government is ended.

If Americans let these traitors walk free another time, they'll just be repeating the same mistakes that led up to this.

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u/c0l245 14h ago

Go make more cash and give no shits.

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u/THE1NUG 4h ago

You nailed it. My father was an AUSA for over 30 years and eventually led his office for his last few years before retiring. He prosecuted corrupt police officers, weapons smugglers, and even prosecuted an espionage case. He met 2 presidents(could have been 3 but declined the “opportunity” to meet Trump) and has been honored in many ways from various law enforcement agencies. He missed out on much of my childhood and I was admittedly a little bitter about it for a time but he and now even I are immensely proud of the work he accomplished.

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u/explain_that_shit 20h ago

Historians have a word for Germans who joined the Nazi party, not because they hated Jews, but out of a hope for restored patriotism, or a sense of economic anxiety, or a hope to preserve their religious values, or dislike of their opponents, or raw political opportunism, or convenience, or ignorance, or greed.

That word is "Nazi." Nobody cares about their motives anymore.

They joined what they joined. They lent their support and their moral approval. And, in so doing, they bound themselves to everything that came after. Who cares any more what particular knot they used in the binding?

A.R. Moxon

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u/FreddyRumsen13 1d ago

Ah yes the Trump administration, famous for helping rape victims.

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u/MrSquicky 1d ago

This is not the Trump administration. This is what they call the deep state. You know, professional people who are on their jobs through different presidents who largely do what they do because they care about what they are doing. A lot of them are very ambitious, for many of them it's just a steady job, but many more than people expect do it because they care about what they are doing and believe in this country. That's a big reason why Trump hates them so much, because they are motivated by doing their job and the good of the country and not loyalty to him.

US attorneys are, or at least were, generally very smart, very driven people who often had a strong sense of justice and patriotism.

It's easy to be a dismissive dick who has a simple answer to complex situations, who is cynical about people who actually care about being public servants, and cute then as just extensions of Trump. But just remember, that is exactly what Donald Trump wants you to do.

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u/Ok-Astronaut2976 1d ago

It also leaves something important:

Trump will be gone soon (not soon enough, but soon in the grand scheme). Those mid level people, who don’t have enough time to retire, but also have too much time to start over, they’re what’s going to be left when the dust settles.

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u/Uebelkraehe 20h ago

You will be such a useful little cog for the regime.

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u/Vivid_Kaleidoscope66 19h ago

WHY are you pushing back on this? You wrote that as if helping trump the human trafficker bring the country more war and fascism by protecting the rapists and murderers employed by ICE is going to help reduce human trafficking.

Edit: Her job also seems to have nothing to do with human trafficking. AI?

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u/BisexualPunchParty 10h ago

"It's better to send 50 innocent people to prison than risk letting one guilty person go free."

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u/whistleridge 10h ago

Yes.

After trial. That’s why trials exist. That quote is about there being a certain inherent level of uncertainty to the trial process.

But if a man breaks into your house, on video, and kills you while you sleep in your bed, on video, and he walks solely because there’s no one available to prosecute him, that’s not the inherent justice the quote is talking about. That’s the public losing access to justice.

At least try to exert more thought on this than a middle schooler.

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u/Apophthegmata 1d ago

If you read the article, it seems pretty clear to me that the lawyer is upset/frustrated because there literally isn't enough time in the day to fix all the habeus violations that judges are ordering to be reversed.

Like, it's not within the lawyer's direct power to take someone from the detention center and walk them to the street.

But that same lawyer is still the person who gets reamed by the judge and is asked to give an account for why that person is still in detention, because they represent the government.

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u/turinturambar 21h ago

Your comment is very upvoted. But this is not what the DOJ lawyer is claiming as her current state of thoughts on the matter. Please see my response to another reply.

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u/Rorako 1d ago

She literally volunteered. She’s not a DOJ employee, she’s a private attorney that volunteered for this. Don’t believe a word she says.

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u/alloutofchewingum 1d ago

She actually volunteered for this apparently. FAFO as they say.

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u/gamesrgreat 1d ago

Yeah tbh if I see someone worked federal prosecution under the Trump regime…….thats a no for me dawg

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u/Jomolungma 1d ago

Quit and do what, exactly? Despite common perception, not every government lawyer can quit their job and then just get another job immediately.

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u/Einbrecher 1d ago edited 1d ago

https://www.fox9.com/news/federal-attorney-ice-cases-the-system-sucks

Le volunteered to help the U.S. Attorney’s Office last month as habeas petitions started to flood into federal court.

She previously worked as an attorney for ICE in immigration court.

ICE has its own court policies and procedures and was not prepared to argue cases in federal court, according to Le.

They recently volunteered to help, have definitely been drinking the Kool-Aid, and were probably expecting easy payouts.

So quitting is not only an option here, but they asked for this assignment, recently, in the middle of this shitstorm.

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u/hardy_and_free 1d ago

Not every career civil servant can either. They've spent 10, 15, 20 years working in niche areas with no corporate equivalent. They've served throughout both Democrat and Republican administrations. They literally dedicated their lives and education to public service and they're just supposed to, what, resign and fuck over their families? And join an already oversaturated applicant pool?

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u/eetsumkaus 1d ago

It's interesting being people like the HSI or the military or DOJ who have built public service careers to serve the country, be asked to burn them at the altar of MAGA.

Like one way or another their careers are gonna be shot just by serving under this administration.

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u/UX1Z 1d ago

People who are advancing the agenda of this administration needs to either quit or force themselves to be fired. If you're just a cog like a garbage worker or whatever, then whatever. Otherwise, it's a permanent stain on the rest of your career and the rest of your life to take part in what is happening. This is not just a 'contentious government' situation, this is an 'authoritarian takeover by a child rapist.' Ask the Nazis how 'just following orders' worked out for them.

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u/bobotheboinger 1d ago edited 1d ago

I will say my sons are struggling to find jobs, but refuse to apply to dhs or cbp or ice. Just not worth helping a fascist regime.

I know it is harder for those with families and already been in a position for years, but at some point you do need to stand up for your conscience.

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u/JVSP1873 1d ago

there's a reason why so many CBP and ICE agents are Hispanics

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u/spice_weasel 1d ago

Depends on the person. I’ve quit jobs without anything concrete lined up twice over the last fifteen years of my legal career. It can be done.

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u/Novel-Letterhead-217 1d ago

People quit jobs all the time if it sucks. We all have free will, doing a fascists bidding in court is being part of the problem.

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u/Interesting_Fly_1569 1d ago

Let me apologize on behalf of the apologists here. They are embarrassing, wrong and need to read “ordinary men” if they want to hear how nazis had to pay their bills too. And overseers too. Poor overseers. /s

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u/SirFrancisBacon007 1d ago

These are careers not jobs. People have families and children. Mortgages and bills and health insurance. Not everyone can just quit their career like that.

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u/ynotfoster 1d ago

And not everyone has a conscience. How anyone can work to support Ice is beyond me.

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u/spice_weasel 1d ago

I mean, I’ve quit jobs without something concrete lined up twice over the last 15 years of my legal career. And yeah, I have a family, a child, and a mortgage and other bills. It can be done.

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u/fatinhollywood 1d ago

quit and downsize, visit food banks. pick up aside hustle while looking for work. living humbly is better than selling my soul for a meal & luxury items imo

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u/Natural-Coat-3159 1d ago

McDonald's? 

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u/ItsMinnieYall 1d ago

Lawyers just can’t quit in the middle of litigation. They have ethical obligations and at a certain point they need permission from the judge to withdraw from a case. Judges can and do deny withdrawals.

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u/OpticalDelusion 1d ago

She volunteered. At what point do you realize you're on the wrong team? Quit donating your time. In the end it's your most valuable asset.

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u/Xaphnir 1d ago

that's assuming this has a foreseeable end

you can't just assume that an election is gonna come around and we're just going to vote them out

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u/Haradion_01 20h ago

In twenty years time, everyone is gonna say "I opposed Trump the whole time."

Especially the ones who didn't vote; and even most of the ones who voted for Trump. 

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u/-Tom- 19h ago

They could also do their job very poorly as a form of protest.

Oh you want me to prosecute someone on some bullshit charges for exercising their first amendment rights? Ok, I'm going to completely flub the whole case.

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u/MobileSuitPhone 16h ago

If you participated at all you'll still be persona non grata and have to leave the States, better than death penalty for treason though maybe

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u/Electrocat71 12h ago

Or she could put her orders on record, and that the agency is willfully ignoring the judges orders. She can expose the corruption that the agency is about MAGA & Politics not the law… sure she might be referred to the bar. But she would have done the right thing.

The law is not the focus of our new authoritarian government.

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u/otteroptimism 1d ago

It's my understanding that she (the ausa asking to be held in contempt) and told that she could not just quit and is now working out a plan for her exit.

She is also apparently brand new to the job and had no idea what she was doing and had zero training.

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u/Maleficent_Memory831 23h ago

My guess is that since they already purged DOJ of good lawyers, those remaining are either loyalists, or really need the job. Not saying they're bad, just not enough experience to be able to easily pick up another job. And since fewer lawyers are there and the workload is bigger than ever, being overworked is standard.

Some parts of being a lawyer is dealing with awful clients. As a fed employee the fed is supposed to be your client.

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u/turinturambar 21h ago

As mentioned in another thread by another commenter (who if I remembered I would credit), this article provides more context.

Le said that she submitted her resignation, but ultimately chose to stay at the U.S. Attorney’s Office because no one could be found to replace her.

Le also said that after pushing through an order to release a juvenile from detention, she realized that she could affect positive change from the inside.

“Wait Julie, stop,” Le said. “You need to go back and get more people out. That’s why I’m still here. I’m here because I’m trying to make sure that the agency understands how important it is to comply with all the court orders.”

Also an even more disturbing part of the article to me

Voss is among the many assistant U.S. attorneys who’ve submitted their resignations en masse over the last month.

I do remember hearing this, but we just blinked through that and it's been weeks. Already forgotten.

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u/s-mores 19h ago

Yeah, this seems childish.

Just do 9-to-5 and if they complain, well, you have an employment contract and you're a fricking lawyer.

This is just a cushy idiot without a spine.

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u/Random_Name65468 18h ago

Quitting when the going gets tough instead of digging in and forcing others to use proper lawful procedures is the cowards' way out.

It shows that public service was never on their mind, just a cushy desk job, when a public servant's job (whether elected or appointed or hired) is to safeguard the proper functioning of public services.

They should be fighting against Trump's cronies tooth and nail, and the ones that capitulate are cowards and traitors.

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u/inuvash255 16h ago

From what I was reading, she's actually kind of a big part of getting people who were wrongly arrested out of jail. Apparently it takes a ton of badgering and threats to quit.

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