Press Releases

Washington, D.C. (March 12, 2025)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Committee on the Judiciary, issued the following statement after President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) gutted the Department’s top anti-corruption unit, the Public Integrity Section:

“Corruption is the depraved heart of authoritarianism, and it beats like mad on the Trump-Musk operation. They've just taken more action to wreck the country’s anti-corruption apparatus by gutting the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, the traditional home of the country’s most experienced anti-corruption prosecutors. 

“By slashing the Public Integrity Section’s workforce and removing its power to charge politicians and public officials for bribery and extortion, Trump’s DOJ has jettisoned decades of expertise and effectively dismantled the unit that prosecuted some of the country’s most important corruption cases on everything from election theft to bribery—including the investigations of then-Sen. Bob Menendez and expelled former Rep. George Santos.

“Our nation’s anti-corruption safeguards are being dismantled before our eyes: Trump has purged 18 independent Inspectors General, ditched enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, disbanded key DOJ anti-kleptocracy initiatives, and shuttered the agency protecting Americans from fraud and deceitful practices.

“Trump attacks anti-corruption mechanisms because he serves not the common good but the corrupt networks that bankrolled his campaign.

“Every cut to anti-corruption enforcement, every watchdog fired, every integrate safeguard dismantled brings us closer to a government where white-collar criminals operate with impunity and justice is for sale. This is Trump’s government of lawlessness-and-disorder.”