Inside Trump’s DOJ: Jan. 6, Eric Adams and the Future of American Justice

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Meantime, in the United States, a federal judge is asking the Department of Justice to explain why prosecutors have suddenly dismissed the corruption indictment against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Multiple prosecutors have resigned in protest amid concerns that the Trump administration struck a deal in exchange for Adams’ cooperation in enforcing immigration laws. Brendan Ballou, who recently left the Justice Department, joins Michel Martin now to discuss this situation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Brendan Ballou, thank you so much for talking with us.

BRENDAN BALLOU, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Thank you.

MARTIN: You’re a former federal prosecutor and you prosecuted some of the January 6th cases of people who, you know, assaulted the Capitol in an effort to interfere with the counting of the election results or the validating of the election results. First of all, can I just ask you how you got those cases, or the cases that you worked on, how did they come to you?

BALLOU: Sure. Well, it was an accident. You know, I — my practice primarily was in white collar crime, going after antitrust violators. But, you know, the call went out within the Department of Justice that there was a desperate need for prosecutors to go after and prosecute these January 6th rioters. So, I raised my hand. So, as much as I’d like to think that it was because of my prosecutorial genius, truly, it was just a massive need within the department.

MARTIN: So, do you remember how you found out that the president was pardoning these people en masse? I know that he talked about this during the campaign, but when the day came that he actually did it, making no distinction between people who engaged in acts of violence and people who engaged in misdemeanors, even though they were offenses against the law, do you remember what your reaction was?

BALLOU: Yes, it was enormous disappointment and fear for primarily the officers that were assaulted at the Capitol that day, who I believe are going to be the targets of, you know, potential militia or vigilante violence. You know, maybe this was naive of me, but I had assumed that even the president would have certain political restraints on pardoning people that assaulted officers that were involved in, you know, staging weapons near the Capitol in anticipation of potential warfare. I thought that there would be constraints even on the president for pardoning those folks or commuting their sentences, but obviously there wasn’t.

MARTIN: We’re about a month in to this administration. The latest incident involving the Justice Department is this effort to persuade the prosecutors in New York to drop the corruption charges that had been leveled against New York City’s Mayor Eric Adams. In response to this, at least seven prosecutors have resigned so far. What concerns you about that?

BALLOU: You know, I think it’s a unique concern. It’s somewhat different from the concern around pardoning the January 6th rioters. I believe that the purpose of the January 6th pardons was to empower vigilantes or militias that would be loyal to the president, but ultimately, unaccountable to the law. I think with the Eric Adams quid pro quo, the ambition here is to explicitly politicize criminal prosecutions and to waive the threat of prosecutions in order to accomplish unrelated policy goals. And that is, I wouldn’t say unprecedented, but certainly something that we haven’t had to experience for most of our lifetimes. But that seems to be the goal of this administration and it seems like it’s going to be a part of our future.

MARTIN: Well, let me just say sort of for the record that Eric Adams, of course, has consistently denied that he took bribes in exchange for favors. That’s the original underlying charge. The subsequent issue at hand here is the allegation that there was a discussion with the Justice Department that he would be accommodating of the president’s policy goals, specifically around immigration in exchange for dropping these charges. So, acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove says that the decision to seek dismissal of the case had nothing to do with its strength. He argues that the prosecution was politically motivated and that it was impeding Mr. Adams’ ability to cooperate with President Trump’s immigration policies. So, as near as you can understand, I mean, is there any evidence that you are aware of that the prosecution of Eric Adams was politically motivated?

BALLOU: Absolutely none. And I believe that the lawyers who resigned in opposition to this order to drop the charges laid out the case for why it wasn’t exceptionally clearly. If anything, you know, the strongest evidence that this wasn’t politically motivated is that Eric Adams’ own lawyers didn’t bring a charge of selective prosecution. It suggests that this was not a politically motivated prosecution, but one rather guided by the facts in the law, and that it is, in fact, Deputy Attorney General or acting Deputy Attorney General Bove, who is trying to politicize this process.

MARTIN: So, the motion that was filed by the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove. Now, the government requested that Adams’ case be dismissed without prejudice. What does that mean? Can you explain that for laypeople? Does that mean that it could be brought again in the future?

BALLOU: You’re exactly right. Specifically, the case could be brought again in the future, and practically, it means that this administration would have a means by which to extort the mayor in the future if he fails to comply with this administration’s policy objectives.

MARTIN: Well, that’s a strong word. I mean, extort is a strong word. I mean, do you think that essentially the purpose here is to hold the case over his head to make sure that he’s compliant with their objectives?

BALLOU: Tom Homan on Fox News the other day, who’s an administration official, suggested exactly as much. So, I think this is — this administration has been pretty clear that that’s what its objective is.

MARTIN: Have you ever seen anything like this? I mean, to see seven prosecutors resign, including the person who was named as the acting head of the office, who is herself has clerked for a conservative Supreme Court justice. I mean, have you ever seen anything like this with this number of prosecutors resigned over a case?

BALLOU: Yes, I certainly haven’t. You know, the historical analogy that folks have pointed towards is the Saturday Night Massacre in the Nixon administration when multiple senior Department of Justice officials resigned rather than fire Archibald Cox. I think that this is different then and arguably much more serious than that situation. You know, the Saturday Night Massacre was about the president trying to preserve his own political career. This is an attempt to drop a prosecution in order to advance a policy agenda and suggest a fundamental rethinking about what the Department of Justice and what criminal prosecutions should even be for and to really question the very nature of the rule of law in the United States. So, in that sense, I think that this is quite literally unprecedented.

MARTIN: So, now judges overseeing the Adams case have asked the Department of Justice to explain its decision to drop the charges. How do you read that? I mean, there’s a signal that they’re not just accepting the Justice Department’s decision at face value. And the other question I would have here is, what recourse do they have? They can ask.

BALLOU: Yes.

MARTIN: But —

BALLOU: So, when the department moves to dismiss a criminal charge, the court needs to accept that and must exercise independent judgment in doing so. You know, one of the things that can be considered is whether there is essentially a corrupt quid pro quo happening in dropping that charge. You know, acting U.S. Attorney Sassoon laid out exactly this issue in her memo to Attorney General Bondi describing the problems with doing so. So, you know, this is now before Judge Dale Ho in the Southern District of New York, who I think is one of the most respected young judges in the United States. So, I have little doubt that he’s going to apply scrupulous attention to figuring out whether or not these charges can or should be dropped.

MARTIN: But does the judge have authority to reinstate them is the question? I mean, there’s generally a presumption that the prosecutors want to withdraw charges. They’re generally dropped. Isn’t that the case? So, does that — can the judge — does the judge’s judgment supersede that?

BALLOU: You know, generally the judges, of course, defer to prosecutors and these sorts of things. But once again, the judges are not powerless here. And so, we’re entering almost uncharted territory here, but there are — you know, it is possible that he could reject the motion to dismiss the charges without prejudice and potentially direct the Department of Justice to continue the prosecution. I think there will be interesting legal questions, the answers to which I don’t know, about whether he can appoint a special counsel or independent party to proceed with the prosecution in the case that the Department of Justice is unwilling to do so.

MARTIN: I think it’s important to point out that there are a lot of people who support what the president’s doing, or who don’t think about it very much because they don’t think it affects them. So, having said that, the people who don’t agree with what he’s doing, the people who find it, as you do, violative of the rule of law, of standards that we have adhered to, et cetera, et cetera, have been looking to the courts, but what enforcement mechanism does exist if the president decides he’s not going to adhere to court orders? What happens then?

BALLOU: Yes. So, there’s been interesting and helpful writing on this already. There’s sort of an escalating series of actions that the courts and institutions surrounding the courts can take. Each sort of decision by this administration to ignore a court order comes at something of a reputational cost, a cost that may be born to the public, as well as to the lawyers that remain inside the government. So, even just ignoring a court order isn’t costless for this administration. But when they do, a court can hold government officials in civil or even criminal contempt make bar referrals for the attorneys that represent the government. In extreme cases, could potentially order government officials to be jailed. Now, those sorts of steps may not particularly constrain the president or the world’s richest man, but they may well constrain the individual line level attorney that remains at some of these departments or agencies. It may well constrain the lower or mid-level government officials that are necessary to implement so many of these policies. And so, I think that there are practical tools that the judiciary has to constrain some of the worst impulses that this administration has been showing thus far.

MARTIN: So, let’s take a sort of step back here and just ask overall, what is your concern about when you take all of these actions together in just a matter of a couple of weeks, a lot of people looking at that — looking at this might think, well, these are just technicalities. You know, this is above my head. I don’t — you know, I don’t know what this is all about, and why does it matter? So, for somebody who has that perspective, who just really isn’t sure why all this matters, what would you say?

BALLOU: Yes. You know, for lawyers, the idea of the rule of law isn’t just an expression, it’s a very concrete idea. The idea that decisions are made not because of the whims of an individual man or woman, but because of precedent, principles, statutes in the Constitution. What these actions collectively suggest is a concerted effort by this administration to end the rule of law and to put the power of law in the hand of one man — in the hands of one man or just a handful of men, but that is going — if they are successful in that, that will be a dramatic change in how the law operates in the United States.

MARTIN: What’s interesting is that the Trump administration is taking the position that these other actions are what they’re calling the weaponization of the Justice Department. They are the ones saying that their predecessors are the people who politicized the Justice Department. I’m thinking here, like, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, defended the decision to drop the case. She says she was attending this Munich Security Conference this past weekend, and she told Fox News, quote, “We have a right to protect against weaponization in New York and every state in this country.” So, I don’t know. How do you respond to that?

BALLOU: I think this administration would very much like the narrative here to be a battle between them and career prosecutors. Essentially, he said she said about who’s right. I think, ultimately, that’s a little bit of a distraction. And for those who want to understand what’s going on here, I would encourage them to read the initial charging materials in the Eric Adams case, understand what the specific allegations were and notice that the attorney general and deputy acting deputy attorney general did not seem to be contesting the underlying facts here, nor for that matter was Eric Adams challenging this as a politically motivated prosecution. These seem like after the fact justifications for an attempt to, in essence, use criminal law to achieve policy objectives.

MARTIN: You resigned from the Justice Department I think a couple of weeks ago, if I recall. Why did you resign?

BALLOU: I believe that the part — the president’s parties, as I mentioned, were going to create a new wave of vigilante violence that the United States really has not seen since the KKK. I believe that that was a fact that needed to get out and that there was little point in me staying within the Justice Department to try to stop some of this administration’s worst instincts. So, I decided to leave as noisily as I could and to try to explain this problem as clearly as I could.

MARTIN: Did you have any concerns about your career or even your safety?

BALLOU: I’m not particularly concerned about my own safety or rather I should say, I think that many people are in far greater danger than folks like myself are. I think that the 140 officers that were assaulted at the Capitol that day are under significant risk for their safety. I also think that the communities that this administration demonized on the campaign trail, migrants, trans people, and so forth, these are the communities that are most likely to be the initial victims of vigilante or militia violence. And I think those are the communities that we need to pay the most attention to.

MARTIN: What’s next for you?

BALLOU: I think, you know, there’s sort of practical career things, but I think in — you know, it wasn’t what I necessarily intended, but I think a lot of us now realize that there is a fight over the history of January 6th to be had. And that there are a number of people that really need that day to be forgotten for their political careers to succeed. And I and a number of other people are absolutely committed to making sure that that day isn’t forgotten.

MARTIN: I’m just wondering if, as a person who chose, you know, you — some people don’t want to be prosecutors because they don’t want to be representative of the government, right? And it’s a certain decision to choose that. And I wondered, is there any part of this experience that has been a crisis for you? I mean, it’s obviously a career disruption, but is there something that kind of had made you question some things that you thought you knew?

BALLOU: No, absolutely not. I mean, obviously, this is — the challenge to the rule of law is more serious than it has been in — certainly, in my lifetime in this moment, but I think it’s also a reminder of just how important the rule of law is. You know, the resignations that we’ve seen in the past few days and just talking to my friends and former colleagues who are still in government give me enormous faith in the ability of prosecutors, lawyers, other folks in government who really do want to serve in the public interest, it gives me faith in their power to do so. And it gives me faith that I believe they’ll ultimately be successful.

MARTIN: Why do you believe that?

BALLOU: Well, the fundamental issue is that for an administration to accomplish anything they need to convince the rest of the government to act. And the less popular a policy is the less likely it is that the government is going to implement it. So, when you see sort of wave after wave of what I would argue are illegal, unprofessional, or unethical actions implemented in a ham-handed way or proposed in a ham-handed way, I think it actually makes these policies vastly less popular within the government more broadly. And thus, much less likely to ever happen.

MARTIN: Brendan Ballou, thank you so much for talking with us.

BALLOU: Thank you.