WASHINGTON — In the five weeks since Justice Connection launched, attacks against our former Department of Justice colleagues have been reckless, swift, and devastating.
Employees across DOJ have been fired, involuntarily transferred, placed on administrative leave, had their ethical responsibilities tested, and told they may be investigated just for doing their jobs. Many more fear they will be next.
“People who have worked for the Justice Department understand better than anyone else how crucial the Department is to upholding the rule of law,” said Stacey Young, Justice Connection’s founder and executive director, who resigned from DOJ on January 24 after an 18-year career as a lawyer there. “As DOJ alumni, we’re using this organization as a vehicle to support and protect our former colleagues, and to preserve the institution that keeps our communities safe and just.”
Justice Connection is working around the clock to keep up with the demand from DOJ employees who’ve contacted us for support. Here are some of the ways we’ve already provided vital support to our former colleagues.
We marshaled an urgent response for people in crisis employment situations. Hundreds of DOJ employees have come to us for help, and we’ve connected people who’ve been fired or placed on administrative leave with top federal employment attorneys. We’ve also coordinated large-scale information sessions for employees in targeted components.
We’re building a legal support network of DOJ alumni who want to help their former colleagues. Hundreds of former DOJ attorneys with a wide range of expertise have signed up to assist DOJ employees, including lawyers who are ready to represent employees facing congressional, criminal, and other government investigations. We’re working with federal employment law specialists to train DOJ alumni without federal employment law experience to represent clients before the Merit Systems Protection Board, filling a needed gap in a practice area with a small number of practitioners.
We stood up a mental health support network. Administration officials promised to put federal employees “in trauma,” and tragically, they’ve succeeded. With the help of alumni who led large-scale mental health programs at DOJ, we identified a growing list of clinicians available to provide services to DOJ employees. We also added a suite of mental health resources to our website. We’re also close to standing up a financial-planning network that will help employees navigate the financial consequences of career shifts.
We’ve begun building an employment support network. We’re developing partnerships with job-search organizations—like Civic Match—to help those who were forced out of DOJ, fear they soon will be, or feel like they must leave, find new jobs. We know that our own alumni network is eager to help, and we intend to soon tap into this incredible resource to help DOJ employees with job leads, mentorship, and more—including for non-lawyer roles.
We organized an open letter to current DOJ prosecutors from over 1,200 former DOJ prosecutors. Following recent resignations from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and Public Integrity Section of DOJ’s Criminal Division, we worked with alumni of those offices to coordinate an open letter of support to DOJ prosecutors, and more than 1,200 former federal prosecutors joined. Current prosecutors across the department were shaken by recent events; we hoped they’d find some comfort in this message of support, and they have.
We’re speaking out in Congress. Our executive director told the House Judiciary Committee about the earliest effects of the attacks on DOJ employees (video here and written statement here). We’ve also connected congressional offices with recent DOJ employees who’ve testified and shared information.
We’re helping others replicate our model across the U.S. civil service. We’re providing ongoing guidance and support to alumni of other agencies who are working to replicate Justice Connection’s model to help their former colleagues.
We’re supporting DOJ employees in the press. The New York Times covered our launch; NPR and Bloomberg profiled our work; and we raised the alarm about the assault on DOJ’s workforce in the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg Law. Our open letter in support of DOJ prosecutors was also covered by The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, ABC, Axios, and others.
We’ll continue speaking out about what’s happening to DOJ’s workforce, especially when it’s too dangerous for those in the trenches to do it themselves. We know reporters want to be able to hear directly and on the record from federal employees—and when that isn’t possible, we’re here to bridge the gap.