The Department of Justice is expected to cut the public corruption unit, the sources say

Washington (AP) – The prosecutors of the section of the Department of Justice who handle public corruption cases have been said that the unit will be significantly reduced in size, and that their cases will be transferred to the offices of the United States prosecutor throughout the country, two people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

The discussions on the reduction of the public integrity section occur weeks after the leadership of the unit resigned when a senior official of the Department of Justice ordered the Launching corruption charges against the mayor of New York, Eric Adams.

At the end of the Biden Administration, there were about 30 prosecutors in the section, which was created in 1976 after the Watergate scandal to supervise the criminal prosecutions of federal cases of public corruption throughout the country.

Prosecutors have been told that they will be asked to take new tasks in the department and that only five lawyers can remain in the unit, people said, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the movement. The offices of the United States prosecutor are expected throughout the country to assume the cases that the section was prosecuting, people said.

A spokesman for the Department of Justice said Tuesday that leadership is “looking widely” to the agency’s resources, but no final decisions have been made about the future of the public integrity section.

The measure seems to be part of a broader Trump administration effort to completely weaken or dismantle the railings designed to protect good governance and clean play in business and politics.

The Department of Justice has already arrested the application of a law of decades that prohibits American companies to bribe foreign governments to win business and moved to eliminate cases of high -profile public integrity such as that against Adams and the former governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich, both Democrats.

In addition to processing misconduct by public officials, the section supervises the management of the Department of Electoral Crimes such as electoral fraud and campaign financing crimes. According to the Biden Administration, he was also home to the threat of threats elections, which was launched to combat a growing number of threats of violence against electoral workers.

The section has been without leadership since five supervisors resigned last month in the middle of agitation on the Adams case. His interim boss, three attached bosses and an deputy attorney general in the criminal division that supervised the section resigned last month after the order to leave the case of the Attorney General of the then defense Emil Bove.

Bove then summoned a call with prosecutors in the section and gave them an hour to choose two people to sign the motion to say goodbye, saying that those who did could be promoted. After the prosecutors left the call with Bove, the consensus between the group was that everyone would resign. But a veteran prosecutor took a step forward to sign the motion for concern for the work of the youngest people in the unit.

For decades it has been one of the most prestigious sections of the department with a list of outstanding alumni, including former attorney general Eric Holder, former attached attorney general Rod Rosenstein and Jack Smith, who directed the unit years before being appointed special advisor to investigate President Trump.

The section received a reputation coup with the failed prosecution of the late Senator of Alaska, Ted Stevens, a case that was dismissed in 2009 by a federal judge who determined that prosecutors had retained evidence of defense lawyers who was favorable to his case.

Smith was appointed in 2010 to rebuild the section and directed the unit during the series of high -profile corruption prosecutors but not always successful, even against former governor of Virginia Bob McDonnell, a Republican and former Democratic Senator John Edwards of North Carolina.