A group of former federal prosecutors and human rights lawyers is coming together to investigate political corruption and law enforcement violence that it says is being ignored by the Justice Department under President Donald Trump.
Organizers said the nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, dubbed the Rule of Law Project, would gather facts and present cases either to state or local prosecutors, or to a future Justice Department it said may operate in a less partisan manner than the current one.
Founder Brad Adams, who spent 20 years with the nongovernmental organization Human Rights Watch overseeing investigations of state violence, said the group was responding to a climate — citing recent stories alleging grift among politicians and incidents like shootings by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers — in which “senior officials openly engage in corruption and federal agents beat and kill innocent people with impunity.”
“The rule of law is on life support, but it’s all of our responsibility to make sure it doesn’t die,” he added.
Adams said the group would be funded by undisclosed private donors, and would operate in a strictly nonpartisan manner, probing corruption among members of both parties.
“The Rule of Law Project’s mission is to bring back the ideal that the law protects and binds everyone, that criminal conduct has consequences and that no one — regardless of office, badge or influence — may escape those consequences.”
The Rule of Law Project will seek to investigate and document instances of official corruption and police violence across the United States that appear to have gone unexamined and unpunished, though without the subpoena power afforded to government investigators. It will gather evidence and witness statements and turn over “prosecution-ready case files” to state and local authorities, or a future Department of Justice the group said may be more willing to take on those cases.
“I do not think we can break the cycle in this country without criminal accountability,” Adams said, adding that he anticipateed working with Congressional investigators where appropriate.
State and local prosecutors have launched investigations into some cases of ICE violence, but have faced obstacles in obtaining evidence.
DOJ officials disputed the idea that they ignore potential criminal activity, saying the department assesses each case on the merits.
The lead investigator will be Mark Blumberg, who spent almost 30 years in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division investigating and prosecuting acts of official misconduct. For the last 20 years, Blumberg led DOJ efforts to enforce civil rights laws in elections. He also served on the FBI’s Shooting Investigation Review Group and Customs and Border Protection’s National Use of Force Review Board.
The group said he would lead a team of former federal prosecutors and investigators with decades of federal law enforcement experience.
“People need to trust that the game is not rigged against them, that the law applies to everyone,” Blumberg said. “If those in power aren’t held accountable for illegally enriching themselves and using violence against others without cause, that undermines any incentive for the rest of us to follow the law. Our public officials should model the best behavior for our country, not milk it dry for power and riches.”
Organizers said the Rule of Law Project would investigate officials who appear to have used their public office for private gain, including those who solicit or accept something of value in exchange for influencing their official duties, who improperly seek to influence executive and legislative actions, and whose official acts affect their personal financial interest.
A series of news stories over the past 20 months has documented questionable conduct by public officials or FBI corruption investigations that were closed by Trump officials.
For example, MS NOW was first to report that the FBI recorded Tom Homan accepting $50,000 cash in an undercover sting operation, an allegation Homan has denied. The case did not move forward.
More recently, ProPublica reported that the Trump Justice Department declined to move forward on FBI investigations of potential illegal cash for contract schemes involving Republican Sen. Susan Collins, the late Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham and Democratic Rep. James Clyburn. Collins and Clyburn deny wrongdoing. The FBI told ProPublica that it had found “nothing implicating Senator Collins” and that the stories about the lawmakers were based on “half-baked misleading claims from former FBI personnel and a convicted felon to spin a predetermined narrative.”
Other cases have come to light that typically might have drawn Justice Department scrutiny, including a recent New York Times report that former DOJ official Alina Habba received a $50 million compensation package from the daughter of a Venezuelan billionaire who sought and got a pardon from Trump. Habba denies wrongdoing and the DOJ has not indicated whether it will — or will not — investigate the matter.
The Rule of Law Project will also investigate excessive-force cases and improper conditions of confinement, with a specific focus on unlawful conduct by ICE and CBP, the group says. Investigators will also look into federal interference with protected liberties, including the right to vote.
After an ICE officer shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine in July, officials said the FBI was not conducting a civil rights investigation.
The DOJ also declined to open a civil rights investigation into the January ICE shooting of Renée Good in Minneapolis.
“We only take cases that an independent Justice Department would have pursued in ordinary times,” Blumberg said. “That’s the standard I held myself to as a prosecutor. We’re not here to seek retribution or to settle scores. We’re here to ensure the law applies to the powerful the same way it applies to the rest of us.”
Since Watergate, the Department of Justice has operated independently of the White House in choosing which cases to investigate and prosecute. Days after he was sworn in, Attorney General Todd Blanche said he would not pledge to run the department independent of Trump and the White House.
“No, I’m not going to pledge that. And no attorney general should ever pledge that,” he told NBC in August.
Among the board members of the new group is Kenneth Roth, former executive director at Human Rights Watch.
“Since the current U.S. government won’t investigate allegations of ICE violence or official corruption, we will,” he said. “To lay the foundation for prosecutions when they become possible.”
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