WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?

Greetings. I am a voting constituent in rural west Texas. Reading that corruption charges against Mayor Adams were about to be dropped by the Justice Dept. because it would interfere with his reelection efforts, and also hinder his efforts to assist the Trump administration with immigration, I thought ‘That’s a lawyerly assessment?’ But considering the quid pro quo governance going on these days I shrugged and moved on. There’s plenty more to worry about and we’re all being groomed to accept corruption as the norm, regardless. But it turns out that it deserved more than a shrug. That there are still people in positions of power and trust that take their oaths and responsibilities to the country seriously. Principled lawyers who took a stand and refused to go along with such an abuse of power. To go along with abuse of the law by top law, the Justice Dept. When asked to do something they knew was wrong these prosecutors refused. They resigned. They eloquently expressed the reasoning behind their refusal. “There is a tradition in public service of resigning in a last-ditch effort to head off a serious mistake. Some will view the mistake you are committing here in the light of their generally negative views of the new Administration. I do not share those views. I can even understand how a Chief Executive whose background is in business and politics might see the contemplated dismissal-with-leverage as a good, if distasteful, deal. But any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way. If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.” Further, after being ordered by the acting director attorney general to either find someone to sign the request to drop charges against Adams or be fired, or conversely, be rewarded by compromising their principles and the rule of law and sign it, the SDNY prosecutors initially agreed to resign en masse. But then one of them decided to take the bullet for the rest of the group and sign off on this shady deal. To risk his reputation in the history books in order to protect his colleagues’ jobs. In a resignation letter, one of the prosecutors described a Jan. 31 meeting with acting director Bove and Adams’s attorneys in which she said the mayor’s lawyers “repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo,” insisting that Adams could help with the Justice Department’s immigration priorities only if the indictment were dismissed. Trump’s border czar Tom Homan even appeared on Fox News with Eric Adams and reiterated the arrangement expected. With awkward chuckles all around. Ha ha good times. Where are the Republican officials speaking up against this blatant abuse of power?