More than 1,900 former Justice Department employees have repeated a call for William Barr to step down as attorney general, asserting that he had “once again assaulted the rule of law” by moving to drop the case against President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, the Washington Post reports. The letter, organized by the nonprofit group Protect Democracy, was signed by DOJ staffers serving in Republican and Democratic administrations dating back to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Most were career staffers who worked as federal prosecutors or supervisors at U.S. Attorney’s offices across the country or the main Justice Department.
Protect Democracy has organized several similar letters critical of Barr’s decisions or other Trump administration actions. In February, the group collected more than 2,600 signatures on a letter calling for Barr to resign after he intervened to reduce career prosecutors’ sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, a longtime friend of Trump. Jonathan Kravis, one of the prosecutors involved in Stone’s case who resigned after Barr’s action, wrote in the Washington Post column that in both matters, “the department undercut the work of career employees to protect an ally of the president, an abdication of the commitment to equal justice under the law.” The group called on Congress to censure Barr and asked a federal judge to hold a hearing to scrutinize whether to dismiss the case against Flynn. Among the signers were several high-profile Republican appointees, including Donald Ayer, a deputy attorney general under President George H.W. Bush; Charles Fried, solicitor general under President Ronald Reagan; and Stuart Gerson, who led the Justice Department’s civil division under Bush.