The Trump Justice Department, under Attorney General Pam Bondi, is weighing a move that could end the Public Integrity Section’s power to oversee indictments of members of Congress, potentially opening the door to politically motivated prosecutions, The Washington Post reports.
If the proposed changes go through, U.S. attorneys — positions appointed by the president — could indict members of Congress without the sign off from attorneys in the Public Integrity Section (PIN), reducing the office’s ethical watchdog role. Prosecutors would no longer need to consult PIN at key points during investigations and prosecutions of public officials in all three branches of government, including federal, state, and local lawmakers as well as judges.
The PIN was established following the Watergate scandal “in order to consolidate in one unit of the Criminal Division the Department’s oversight responsibilities for the prosecution of criminal abuses of the public trust by government officials,” the DOJ’s website states. PIN also “supervises the nationwide investigation and prosecution of election crimes.”
According to the paper, a source confirmed the proposed change is being reviewed but has not yet been decided.
In March, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, raised the alarm in a letter to Bondi requesting information about the dismantling of PIN after The Associated Press reported DOJ had reduced the size of the office from 30 prosecutors to around five. Some of the reductions in staff came from resignations among PIN leadership when a top DOJ official directed prosecutors to drop corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams.
“Any move that further weakens the Public Integrity Section would signal that the Trump Department of Justice intends not to protect the American people against corruption,” the Rhode Island Democrat wrote. “Created in response to Watergate, the Public Integrity Section exists to ensure that the Department of Justice fairly and thoroughly investigates corruption by government officials at the federal, state, and local level without regard to those officials’ political views or allegiances. This Section has steadfastly pursued justice against both Republicans and Democrats.”
PIN prosecutors have been involved in the Adams corruption investigation and indictment and the prosecution of former Democratic senator Bob Menendez, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison for corruption-related charges. The office also intervened when now former interim U.S. attorney Ed Martin sought to prosecute Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for remarks he made about two Supreme Court justices years before. PIN attorneys told Martin that the comments were not a prosecutable threat, according to multiple Post sources.
“This is part of a shift in limiting the power of law enforcement experts in public corruption,” Georgetown Law professor and former PIN attorney Paul Butler told the paper.
