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accountable.us
As Bondi Testifies to Senate, DOJ Alumni Blast 'Appalling' Leadership
"It is incumbent on all of us to fight for the Justice Department before it's too late."
Oct 07, 2025
In the lead-up to US Attorney General Pam Bondi's Tuesday testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, hundreds of former employees of the Department of Justice and outside watchdog groups sounded the alarm about the current state of the DOJ.
"From prosecutors, special agents, and intelligence analysts to immigration judges, grant managers, civil rights attorneys, and more, we all carried out our duties faithfully, regardless of who occupied the White House. Until we no longer could," the 282 ex-DOJ employees wrote in a Monday letter released by the alumni network Justice Connection.
"Each of us left the department, either voluntarily or involuntarily, because of actions taken by this administration," they continued. "It is incumbent on all of us to fight for the Justice Department before it's too late."
The letter, first reported by MSNBC, calls out the DOJ for carrying out President Donald Trump's "retribution campaign," spreading lies about the "deep state," violating court orders, and inappropriately dismissing employees, including at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and attorneys in the Civil Rights Division.
"The administration is taking a sledgehammer to other long-standing work the department has done to protect communities and the rule of law, too," the letter notes, citing attacks on the Tax Division, the Public Integrity Section, FBI public corruption squads, and hundreds of millions of dollars in grants for at-risk communities.
"As for its treatment of its employees, the current leadership's behavior has been appalling," the letter adds. "Demonizing, firing, demoting, involuntarily transferring, and directing employees to violate their ethical duties has already caused an exodus of over 5,000 of us."
The letter urges DOJ leadership to "adhere to the legal guardrails and institutional norms," Congress to "exercise its oversight responsibilities far more vigorously," and fellow alumni and all Americans to speak out. It concludes that "our democracy is only as strong as the rule of law, and the rule of law can't survive without the principal institution that enforces it."
In a statement, Stacey Young, executive director and founder of Justice Connection, echoed that warning: "For decades, the guiding tenet for those working at the department was to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons. Many believe that's no longer possible."
"They're being asked to put loyalty to the president over the Constitution, the rule of law, and their professional ethical obligations," she added. "We're seeing the erosion of the Justice Department's fabric and integrity at an alarming pace. Our democratic system cannot survive without the primary institution that enforces the law."
Bondi and other DOJ leaders—particularly FBI Director Kash Patel—have faced mounting criticism throughout the second Trump administration, including for the attorney general's Day One memo arguing that department employees are expected to "zealously defend" the president's interests and policies.
"The abuse of the Justice Department under Bondi's watch has been rampant, including the recent high-profile and scandalous move to secure an indictment against former FBI Director Jim Comey after the president publicly demanded they do so, and despite the previous prosecutor’s claims of insufficient evidence," Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert said in a Tuesday statement.
"The DOJ has been in constant turmoil since Bondi took the helm, firing prosecutors who worked Capitol riot cases or investigated Trump and pushing out senior officials at the FBI," she continued. "At the same time, under her leadership, the Public Integrity Section of the DOJ, the section dedicated to fighting corruption from federal officials, has been reduced from a total of 36 employees to two."
"The Department of Justice is intended to be independent from the White House, not its revenge arm," Gilbert stressed. "Her tenure shows they have become exactly that."
Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk also issued a statement ahead of the Senate hearing. He said that "in her eight months as Attorney General, Pam Bondi has confirmed all warnings about her treating the office as an enforcer for Donald Trump's personal whims while also acting as a walking conflict of interest for her former lobbying firm and clients."
"It says it all that the former Qatar lobbyist Bondi penned a DOJ memo—i.e. corruption 'get out of jail free card'—allowing Donald Trump to use a gifted luxury super jet from the nation he's doing billions of dollars in crypto business with during and after his presidency," he continued.
"During her first Senate hearing," he wondered, "will Bondi answer for all these sweetheart deals she's supporting for the president and former lobbying clients while millions of working Americans are asked to choose between a continued government shutdown or losing their healthcare?"
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Watchdog Fears Supreme Court Will Continue to ‘Rubber-Stamp’ Authoritarian Trump Actions in New Term
Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk said the Supreme Court has "regularly abetted President Trump’s unlawful power grab and indulged his anti-constitutional impulses."
Oct 02, 2025
With a new term kicking off for the US Supreme Court on Monday, an anti-corruption watchdog group is sounding the alarm about several cases that may "rubber-stamp" President Donald Trump's attempts to further erode the rule of law and consolidate more authority over the federal government.
In a statement published Thursday, Tony Carrk, the executive director of the group Accountable.US warned that during Trump's first nine months in power, the high court's 6-3 conservative majority has "regularly abetted President Trump’s unlawful power grab and indulged his anti-constitutional impulses, which has enriched himself, his family, and his wealthy allies at the expense of everyday Americans while eroding our rights, freedoms, and protections."
He fears the court may do so again as it hands down new, highly consequential rulings. Some cases it plans to decide in the new term will determine whether Trump can use emergency powers to enact tariffs without Congress' approval and fire heads of independent federal agencies, including Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook, without cause.
These cases are all on the latest so-called "shadow docket," by which the court issues emergency rulings without providing a public rationale for its decisions. Since his second term began, Trump has flooded the shadow docket with an unprecedented number of cases.
Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck found that in just the first 20 weeks of Trump’s second term, the administration sought emergency action by the court 19 times—the same number of requests made by the Biden administration over four years.
"On issues ranging from dismantling the Department of Education to banning transgender people from serving in the military, federal trial judges from across the ideological spectrum have repeatedly blocked actions by the administration, only for the Supreme Court to halt those rulings with little or no explanation," explained Alicia Bannon, the director of the judiciary program at the Brennan Center for Justice.
Adam Bonica, a political science professor at Stanford University, described the Supreme Court as being "in open conflict with the lower courts over cases involving the Trump administration." Between May 1 and June 23, he found, "federal district courts... ruled against the administration 94.3% of the time. The Supreme Court, however, has flipped that outcome, siding with the administration in 93.7% of its cases (15 out of 16)."
Carrk noted that these new cases "come on the heels of the court’s decision in Trump v. United States last year, which granted Trump broad immunity for unchecked abuses of power at the highest levels of government. This considerable expansion of presidential power arguably emboldened him to take even more extreme, accelerated actions."
Trump is also expected to add other cases to the shadow docket as the term progresses. On Sunday, ABC reported that Trump has requested that the court make an expedited decision on his order ending the constitutional protection of birthright citizenship.
The conservative justices signaled that they may be sympathetic to overturning birthright citizenship when they ruled in June that lower courts could not issue nationwide injunctions to stop its enforcement. Since then, three more federal judges have ruled the order unconstitutional.
The new term will come as the American public increasingly doubts the Supreme Court's evenhandedness. A Gallup poll published Wednesday found that 43% of Americans believe that the court is "too conservative." While this was the highest proportion ever recorded, it has held roughly steady since 2022, when the court overturned Roe v. Wade, which has allowed many states to severely restrict or outright ban abortion.
Approval of the court has plummeted more generally over the past five years. In 2020, just two months before the death of the liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 58% of Americans approved of the job the Supreme Court was doing. Now just 42% say they approve of the court, just slightly up from the 39% nadir recorded in July, which was the lowest level of support the court had received in Gallup's 25-year trend.
"As the court’s new term kicks off, Carrk concluded, all eyes will be on its conservative majority to show that they’re capable of standing up for our rights, freedoms, and the Constitution, or they will further risk undermining their legitimacy and waning trust among the American public."
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As Trump Signs TikTok Order, Critics Sound Alarm Over Corruption and US Propaganda
One watchdog leader noted that the president's deal involves "one of his major crypto business partners that generates tens of millions of dollars a year for the Trump family."
Sep 25, 2025
President Donald Trump on Thursday issued an executive order claiming to "save" TikTok from a federal law that would ban the video-sharing platform in the United States, but critics are condemning the Republican's deal as yet another case of him "picking winners and losers in government policy based on who is enriching his family."
Trump initially kicked off efforts to force TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest with an August 2020 executive order, but Democratic former President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan legislation that would ban the platform based on national security concerns last year.
Since returning to office, Trump has pledged to "save" TikTok, delaying enforcement of the law and negotiating a deal under which, according to a White House fact sheet, the US application "will be majority-owned by US investors, operated in the US by a board of directors with national security and cybersecurity credentials, and subject to strict rules to protect Americans' data and our national security."
The fact sheet also confirms that "ByteDance will hold less than 20% of the stock as required by law," and "Oracle—one of the nation's leading technology companies—will act as TikTok’s security provider and independently monitor and assure the safety of all operations in the US."
Critics have expressed alarm about both the anticipated quality of the US platform and the reported investors.
OpenSecrets noted Thursday that Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison is "a Trump supporter and major bankroller of Republican candidates and causes," and the company "has spent at least $11 million on federal-level government lobbying during each of the past four full years," a trend that is set to continue this year.
Citing unnamed sources, CNBC reported Thursday that, in addition to Oracle, the main investors will be Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi's MGX. Previous reporting has also suggested involvement from venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.
Trump on the TikTok deal: "Rupert Murdoch is involved."
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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) September 25, 2025 at 4:35 PM
While some opponents of the Trump plan have highlighted his ties to Ellison, Andreessen, and Horowitz, Tony Carrk, executive director of the watchdog group Accountable.US, focused on his relationship with MGX in a Thursday statement.
"President Trump's use of his office to enrich himself and his friends seems to know no bounds," Carrk said. "His grand scheme to 'save' TikTok just so happens to involve the enrichment of one of his major crypto business partners that generates tens of millions of dollars a year for the Trump family."
"That's no coincidence for the only US president in history that has seen his bottom line grow by billions from the White House," he asserted. "Meanwhile, working Americans see their costs continue to increase, from groceries to healthcare to housing. It's clear the president's priority is himself, not the rest of us."
Trump's Thursday order affirms that the deal complies with last year's law and allows another 120 days to finalize the details.
The Associated Press reported that "Trump said Thursday that Chinese leader Xi Jinping has agreed to move forward with it. However, the Chinese embassy in Washington didn't immediately respond to an AP inquiry seeking confirmation that China has formally signed off on the proposed framework deal."
US political leaders have long claimed that under ByteDance's control, users may encounter content favored by the Chinese government. The Electronic Frontier Foundation said earlier this week that "if the concern had been that TikTok could be a conduit for Chinese government propaganda—a concern the Supreme Court declined to even consider—people can now be concerned that TikTok could be a conduit for US government propaganda."
Joining Trump in the Oval Office for the executive order signing on Thursday, Vice President JD Vance seemed to confirm that's the plan, telling reporters that "the US company will have control over how the algorithm pushes content to users, and that was a very important part of it."
Responding to Vance's remarks, one social media user quipped, "Ahh, so it was just an issue of *whose* propaganda."
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