The FBI’s operational secrecy is meant to safeguard the sources, methods, and ongoing investigations that protect the nation. Under Patel, we’re losing that.

Todd Blanche's firings of career DOJ employees aren't just unlawful, "they are also incredibly damaging to the department and its law enforcement mission."

“If Todd Blanche is confirmed as Attorney General, there will be no ethical lines between the White House and the Attorney General. There are no lines now,” says Cobb.

Never before has this many DOJ alumni publicly spoken out against an AG nominee. Castigating those signatories, considering the level of alumni support Blanche received, is the height of hypocrisy.

Former SDNY prosecutors write in an op-ed for MS Now that the judgment Blanche has displayed since becoming a senior Justice Department leader should disqualify him.

Based on input from subject matter experts in Justice Connection’s DOJ alumni network, we prepared questions for the record that Blanche should answer before Senators vote on his nomination.

“Each of these offices was created to operate independently by law for important reasons. They’re run by people trained to help the specific communities the offices were designed to serve - like victims of domestic violence, local law enforcement agencies and crime victims,” said Stacey Young, a former Justice Department attorney and founder of Justice Connection. Young, whose group helps serve former agency employees, also said, “This unnecessary consolidation will mean that specialized leadership will be muddled or lost. The beneficiaries of these vital programs will bear the consequences.”

Former AUSA Mike Gordon and MPD Officer Michael Fanone say “Todd Blanche does not serve justice.”

A group of 1,200 Justice Department alumni have urged the Senate not to confirm Blanche, saying he has pulled employees from critical work to focus on immigration enforcement and other Trump initiatives and warning that the department could continue to bleed staff.

The fear of potential retribution could be one reason only a handful of Blanche’s former SDNY colleagues signed a letter from more than 1,200 former DOJ employees opposing his nomination.

Weakening civil-service protections will not make DOJ more accountable. It will make career lawyers more fearful, more political, and less independent.

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.

Live video with Frank Figliuzzi and Stacey Young, executive director and founder of Justice Connection.

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.

This week, just days before his confirmation hearing, more than 1,200 former Department of Justice employees urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to reject Blanche’s nomination, warning that he has compromised the DOJ’s independence and integrity. The Justice Connection deserves credit for organizing this extraordinary, unprecedented effort, bringing together DOJ alumni from 14 administrations with thousands of years of collective experience in defense of the Justice Department.

In an extraordinary defense of norms that date back to the founding fathers, [Ty] Cobb and 1,200 of his colleagues have formed the Justice Connection. They have written a blistering letter on the clear and present danger Blanche poses to the country.

Justice Connection, a network of DoJ alumni, this month sent a letter to the committee in charge of Blanche’s confirmation hearing, signed by more than 1,200 former DoJ employees. They urged it to reject Blanche’s nomination, pointing to what they said were the “corruption and abuses that have defined the justice department” under his leadership and his “degradation” of the department’s workforce.

This week a letter was sent to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that will be conducting the confirmation hearing of Todd Blanche for U.S. Attorney General. The letter was signed by more than 1,200 former Department of Justice employees who served in 14 Republican and Democratic administrations and collectively possess thousands of years of DOJ experience.

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.

Former Justice Department official Stacey Young, who now leads the oversight group Justice Connection, called the purchase 'an embarrassment', linking it to other reported perks including a custom raid jacket and challenge coin bearing Patel's own design.

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.

A letter signed by more than 1,200 former Department of Justice employees is urging the Senate Judiciary Committee to reject Todd Blanche’s nomination as Attorney General. The signatories include career prosecutors, FBI officials, and former U.S. Attorneys who served under both Republican and Democratic administrations. The letter was organised through The Justice Connection and takes a deliberately narrow focus rather than relitigating Blanche’s full record.

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.