More than 1,900 former Justice employees again call for Barr’s resignation

Washington — More than 1,900 former Justice Department employees on Monday repeated a call for William Barr to step down as attorney general, asserting in an open letter 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 letter, organized by the nonprofit Protect Democracy, was signed by Justice Department staffers serving in Republican and Democratic administrations dating to President Dwight Eisenhower. The vast majority were former career staffers - rather than political appointees - who worked as federal prosecutors or supervisors at U.S. Attorney Offices across the country or the Justice Department in Washington, D.C.

Protect Democracy, which counts Justice Department alumni among its members, has organized several similar letters critical of Barr’s decisions or other Trump administration actions. Most recently, 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 a Washington Post column published Monday 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 new letter asserted that its signers “continue to believe that it would be best for the integrity of the Justice Department and for our democracy for Attorney General Barr to step aside.” The group also called on Congress to formally censure Barr and asked a federal judge in Washington to hold a hearing to scrutinize whether to dismiss the case against Flynn.

“Our democracy depends on a Department of Justice that acts as an independent arbiter of equal justice, not as an arm of the president’s political apparatus,” the group wrote.

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 Reagan; and Stuart Gerson, who led the Justice Department’s civil division under Bush and served as acting attorney general briefly in the Clinton administration.