The Justice Connection and founder Stacey Young, a former long-time DOJ attorney and darling of the Trump-hating corporate media who holds a seething hatred for Trump, released a letter last week listing the names of 1,200-plus Justice Department employees urging the Senate to vote against Blanche’s confirmation.

Roughly 1,200 Department of Justice (DOJ) alumni signed off on a letter on Tuesday sent to high-ranking Senate Judiciary Committee leaders demanding they reject elevating Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche as he prepares for confirmation hearings next week on July 15 and 16.

During a sit-down interview with a local TV station, Mr. Blanche wryly dismissed a scathing letter, signed by 1,200 former department employees, calling on the Senate to reject his nomination.

The list of reasons Blanche should not be confirmed is longer than what we have time to review tonight, but these give you an idea. More than 1200 former federal prosecutors oppose the nomination, an unprecedented development.

More than 1,200 former agents, analysts, immigration judges, lawyers and other staffers wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday detailing why they are against making him the attorney general. “Since his confirmation as deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche has shown time and again that his guiding star is fealty to the President, not the Constitution,” Stacey Young, executive director and founder of Justice Connection, a Washington-based organization for department alumni, said in a statement. “That fealty led to the purge of thousands of experienced career employees.”

Attorney General-Nominee Todd Blanche, who has already shown that he is more than willing to do President Trump’s bidding, will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing. Stacey Young and Joyce Vance join The Weekend to discuss why the Senate should reject his confirmation.

Our monthly update to track the attacks on the rule of law and the Justice Department. Here’s what you need to know from June.

If these egregious acts of partisan loyalty to Trump weren’t convincing enough, senators could also refer to the letter over 1,200 former DOJ employees sent this week to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Ranking Member Sen. Dick Durbin. In no uncertain terms, it lays out how damaging Blanche has already been to the department and how it can only get worse with him in charge of the entire agency.

The letter was sent Tuesday by Justice Connection, an organization of former DOJ alumni, to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Ranking Member Dick Durbin. The signatories — who say they served across 14 Republican and Democratic administrations — focused their criticism not on Blanche’s policy decisions, but on what they called his systematic dismantling of the DOJ’s career workforce and “to support DOJ’s apolitical workforce.”

More than 1,200 Justice Department alums urged the Senate Judiciary Committee in a letter released Tuesday to reject Todd Blanche’s nomination to serve as the country’s top federal prosecutor. The Justice Connection, a network of fired DOJ employees created to support the department’s career prosecutors who they say have been targeted by the Trump administration, released the letter one week before the kickoff of Blanche’s highly anticipated two-day confirmation hearing before the Senate panel.

More than one thousand former Justice Department employees urged the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday to reject Todd Blanche’s confirmation as attorney general. 'Since his confirmation as Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche has shown time and again that his guiding star is fealty to the President, not the Constitution,’ Stacey Young, the founder and executive director of the Justice Connection, a DOJ alumni group that organized the letter, said in a statement Tuesday.

“His nomination should be laughed at.” Former Justice Department Stacey Young argues that it’s significant to have 1,200+ former Justice Department employees urge Senators to block confirmation of Todd Blanche.

Over 1,200 former employees at the Department of Justice are urging the Senate Committee on the Judiciary to reject President Donald Trump’s nomination of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche as full-time attorney general. Justice Connection, a nonprofit network of DOJ alumni, sent the letter directly to Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Dick Durbin (D-IL), the top leaders on the congressional panel.

More than 1,200 former Department of Justice (DOJ) employees encouraged the Senate to reject acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s nomination to take on the role permanently, writing in a Tuesday letter that he has been “demonizing career employees.” “In the coming weeks, many will rightly underscore the corruption and abuses that have defined the Justice Department under Todd Blanche’s leadership: the vindictive prosecutions and investigations of the President’s foes; the deals designed to reward lawbreakers with taxpayer dollars; the erasure of accountability for January 6; the mishandling of the Epstein files; and the denigration of judges and repeated violations of their orders,” the former employees wrote in a letter organized by Justice Connection, a DOJ alumni group.

A group of 1,205 Justice Department alums are urging the Senate Judiciary Committee to reject Todd Blanche’s nomination to become permanent AG. In a letter to Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and ranking member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) obtained by Playbook, the signatories note plenty of attention will be given to the “corruption and abuses that have defined” Blanche’s tenure. “But we want to focus on an area that deserves just as much attention: Todd Blanche’s degradation of DOJ’s apolitical career workforce,” they write. The letter comes as the panel prepares for Blanche’s confirmation hearing next Wednesday.

The Senate must not give its seal of approval for Blanche’s degradation and politicization of the Justice Department’s career workforce.

While early accounts suggested a small number of departures, comprehensive tracking data from The Justice Connection reveals that over twelve career attorneys who assisted with the investigations into Trump were terminated.

Former agency official Andrew Mergen, speaking for the Justice Connection organization, reacted to the news, “ENRD and the U.S. Attorney’s Offices it partners with.. are the only government litigators enforcing environmental laws. If you want the public to know what the division does you need ‘environment’ in its name. The name change is best understood not as serving the public, for whom the department works, but instead as catering to the priorities of the President and an Administration that has cynically invoked ‘national security’ and so-called energy ‘emergencies’ to evade compliance with environmental laws.”

Justice Connection board member Andrew Mergen issued the following statement on the Justice Department’s decision to change the Environment and Natural Resources Division’s name to the Energy and Natural Resources Division:

Stacey Young, a former DOJ attorney, says the Bolton case is legitimate, and different from those other "vindictive cases DOJ has pursued." Young is now the executive director and founder of Justice Connection, an organization of former DOJ staffers. "The fact that the public has lost its trust in the Department of Justice is at issue with this case. After seeing DOJ leadership repeatedly bow to President Trump's orders to prosecute his enemies, it's hard for the public to separate this case from the vindictive and selective prosecutions we've seen that ... violate the Constitution."

“If a whistleblower or a witness or a crime victim or a former employee who the IG has no authority to compel thinks the inspector general will share their information with Congress, they will be less likely to cooperate with the inspector general,” said Sara Zdeb, an Emory University law professor who was the Biden-era deputy head of DOJ’s legislative affairs office and a former chief oversight counsel to Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats.

We encourage DOJ alumni to submit a comment before the June 26 deadline

Upholding victims’ rights is an essential part of serving as a federal prosecutor. This DOJ’s leadership has been consistently ignoring its obligations and losing the trust of crime victims.

Stacey Young, a former Justice Department attorney who now leads Justice Connection, told CNN that while the government may increase the number of cases it files, judicial oversight remains a significant constraint on how quickly denaturalization efforts can expand.

“Requiring plaintiffs in all civil rights cases to demonstrate discriminatory intent is contrary to Supreme Court law, and will lead to a sharp increase in unchecked discrimination,” said Stacey Young, founder of the advocacy group Justice Connection, told TheWellNews.

The court accepted friend-of-the-court briefs from a range of labor organizations, including the American Federation of Government Employees, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the National Federation of Federal Employees, and the AFL-CIO. Six senators - Chris Van Hollen, Angela Alsobrooks, Tim Kaine, Andy Kim, Gary Peters and Mark Warner - filed as well, joined by Whistleblower Aid, Justice Connection and the Merit Systems Protection Board Professional Association. The briefs filed so far back the petitioners.

The Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services has shrunk by roughly a third since 2024, and the Office for Civil Rights is roughly 40% smaller. Meanwhile, in the Department of Justice, the Education Opportunities Section has shrunk by half, according to estimates provided by Justice Connection, a network of department alumni.

“They may be able to expedite the process for initiating these cases, but regardless of the steps they take before cases are filed, the litigation process itself is still going to be a huge impediment to their goal of denaturalizing people in huge numbers,” said Stacey Young, who served at DOJ under multiple administrations and is the founder and executive director of Justice Connection.

The FBI is losing institutional knowledge and the experience needed to face evolving threats to our country.

The DOJ has seen similar staffing woes in its civil rights division as more than 75 percent of its civil rights attorneys have left since January 2025, according to Justice Connection, an advocacy group founded by ex-DOJ civil rights lawyers.

A Harvard Law School interview with Hank Shea, a former federal prosecutor and expert on ethical leadership.

Stacey Young, a former Civil Rights Division attorney and founder of Justice Connection, argued that discrimination often exists without overt expressions of bias. “Discriminatory outcomes don’t always result from explicit animus, which is why disparate impact liability has been a cornerstone of civil rights enforcement for decades,” Young said. “Requiring plaintiffs in all civil rights cases to demonstrate discriminatory intent is contrary to Supreme Court law, and will lead to a sharp increase in unchecked discrimination.”

Stacey Young, who leads the DOJ alumni group Justice Connection, said Blanche has continued acting as Trump’s personal lawyer rather than an independent attorney general. Young’s statement accused Blanche of entering into a corrupt arrangement with the president and his family, advancing politically motivated prosecutions, and removing career staff from their posts. She also accused him of targeting whistleblowers and attacking the judiciary.

Stacey Young, founder of Justice Connection, a group of former DOJ workers, said career prosecutors understand they must follow the facts and law in investigations. “When neither is on the administration’s side, it drags in unscrupulous lawyers from the outside who are willing to break the rules to please the president."

Stacey Young, founder and executive director of Justice Connection and former DOJ lawyer: “Todd Blanche has never stopped acting as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer. He has used his high position at the department to enter into a corrupt deal with the president and his family, advance vindictive prosecutions, illegally fire career employees, smear whistleblowers, and attack the judiciary.”

Stacey Young, executive director of Justice Connection, a group of former DOJ employees, criticized the new legal opinion. “Discriminatory outcomes don’t always result from explicit animus, which is why disparate impact liability has been a cornerstone of civil rights enforcement for decades,” she told The Epoch Times. “Requiring plaintiffs to demonstrate discriminatory intent is contrary to Supreme Court law, and will lead to a sharp increase in unchecked discrimination.

"Blanche has abandoned what he learned about blind justice and ethical law enforcement as a career federal prosecutor," said Stacey Young, the head of Justice Connection, a group seeking to support DOJ employees targeted by the Trump administration.

“Discriminatory outcomes don’t always result from explicit animus, which is why disparate impact liability has been a cornerstone of civil rights enforcement for decades,” Stacey Young, executive director of Justice Connection, a DOJ alumni group, said in a statement.

Stacey Young, a former Civil Rights Division lawyer who founded and leads the group Justice Connection, said "[d]iscriminatory outcomes don't always result from explicit animus, which is why disparate impact liability has been a cornerstone of civil rights enforcement for decades." "Requiring plaintiffs in all civil rights cases to demonstrate discriminatory intent is contrary to Supreme Court law, and will lead to a sharp increase in unchecked discrimination," she said.

Stacey Young, founder of Justice Connection, a group of former DOJ workers, said career prosecutors understand they must follow the facts and law in investigations. “When neither is on the administration’s side, it drags in unscrupulous lawyers from the outside who are willing to break the rules to please the president,” she said.

Several former FBI officials say they were forced out of the Bureau for not upholding President Trump’s agenda. Under Director and Trump loyalist Kash Patel, the FBI has seen dozens of employees purged in an alleged effort to root out political bias. One of these is Jacqueline Maguire, who served in the Bureau for 25 years and is part of Justice Connection’s FBI Support Network. She joins Michel Martin to explain why she left.

“Todd Blanche has never stopped acting as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer. He has used his high position at the department to enter into a corrupt deal with the President and his family, advance vindictive prosecutions, illegally fire career employees, smear whistleblowers, and attack the judiciary,” Stacey Young, head of Justice Connection, a DOJ alumni group, said in a statement.

“Todd Blanche has never stopped acting as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer. He has used his high position at the department to enter into a corrupt deal with the president and his family, advance vindictive prosecutions, illegally fire career employees, smear whistleblowers, and attack the judiciary,” said Stacey Young, a former justice department lawyer who now leads Justice Connection, which advocates on behalf of former department attorneys.

“Todd Blanche has never stopped acting as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer,” said Stacey Young, the founder of Justice Connection, an organization of former department employees that includes many career prosecutors forced out by Mr. Blanche as he has sought to reshape the department to Mr. Trump’s liking. “He has used his high position at the department to enter into a corrupt deal with the president and his family, advance vindictive prosecutions, illegally fire career employees, smear whistle-blowers and attack the judiciary,” she added.

Peter Carr, communications director for Justice Connection: His unwavering fealty to the president and destruction of institutional norms should disqualify him from leading the only agency with its foundational virtue in its name.

Stacey Young, head of an organization of former Justice Department attorneys, has issued this statement: “Todd Blanche has never stopped acting as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer. He has used his high position at the department to enter into a corrupt deal with the President and his family, advance vindictive prosecutions, illegally fire career employees, smear whistleblowers, and attack the judiciary.”

In a statement, the Justice Connection, a network of DOJ alumni, said the firings of FBI analysts "escalate the already dangerous culture of fear" within the agency. "Analysts' job is to look for potential threats and communicate them to leadership," said Stacey Young, executive director of Justice Connection. "These terminations will only cause them to pull back on areas they fear are politically divisive, leading to blind spots in the threat picture and underinformed policymakers."