Trump Guts the DOJ Unit That Investigates Public Corruption From 40 Attorneys to Just Two

The Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section has operated for 50 years under both parties, investigating corruption by public officials at every level of government without regard to political affiliation. Under Trump, it has been reduced from 40 full-time attorneys to two.

NPR reports:

Legal experts say the pardons are but one way the Trump administration has undermined the fight against public corruption. ... Another piece is the dismantling of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, which was created after Watergate to investigate and prosecute public corruption and election crimes.

Under this administration, the section has been decimated. It had around 40 full-time staff when Trump returned to office in January 2025. That number has dropped to just two full-time attorneys today, according to current and former officials. It was handling around 175-200 open matters ... when Trump returned to office. That number has plummeted to around 20 today, those officials say.

The gutting of the Public Integrity Section began with the Eric Adams episode; DOJ’s career attorneys resigned to protest the corrupt quid pro quo in which corruption charges were dropped against the former New York City mayor in exchange for his cooperation on immigration enforcement. The administration then suspended the requirement that corruption cases be reviewed by the Public Integrity Section at all, removing even the procedural check on partisan prosecution.

The result is an administration that has simultaneously eliminated the unit designed to hold it accountable while signaling to every public official in the country that corruption carries no consequence—provided you are on the right side.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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