Reagan-appointed federal judge rebukes Trump in damning resignation letter
A federal judge appointed to the bench in 1985 by President Ronald Reagan announced his resignation over the weekend in a damning public letter, criticizing the Trump administration for its attack on the rule of law.
U.S. District Court Judge Mark L. Wolf did not hide behind subtleties in the letter, published by The Atlantic on Sunday, but expressed his opinion bluntly.
“President Donald Trump is using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while preventing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution and possible punishment,” he warned.
“This is contrary to everything I have stood for in my more than 50 years in the Department of Justice and in the judiciary. The White House’s attack on the rule of law is so deeply disturbing to me that I feel compelled to speak out. The silence, to me, now is intolerable.”
Wolf proceeded to detail numerous abuses of the law by Trump and his appointees, describing the blatant corruption of justice as an “existential threat to democracy and the rule of law.”
That includes Trump’s social media post ordering US Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute his political adversaries despite lacking a legal basis to do so. Bondi dutifully complied and has attacked New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey with what appear to be spurious lawsuits.
“What Nixon did episodically and covertly, knowing it was illegal or inappropriate, Trump now does routinely and overtly,” he wrote.
Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Trump also dismantled internal offices that investigate government corruption, Wolf noted:
“Shortly after taking office, Trump fired, possibly illegally, 18 inspectors general who were responsible for detecting and deterring fraud and misconduct at key federal agencies. The FBI’s public corruption team has also been eliminated. The Justice Department’s public integrity section has been gutted, reduced from 30 lawyers to just five, and its authority to investigate election fraud has been revoked.”
And although he spent his first term calling cryptocurrencies a “scam,” Trump has since embraced them wholeheartedly, leading to what Wolf charitably suggests is the “illegal influence of money on official decisions.”
Trump disbanded the Justice Department’s cryptocurrency enforcement unit after launching his own cryptocurrency, $TRUMP. The main buyer of the coin, Justin Sun, is a foreign national, noted Wolf, who has spent about $85 million on $TRUMP and other cryptocurrencies controlled by the Trump family.
“Normally, the Department of Justice would investigate this type of situation,” Wolf wrote. “Rather, a few months after Sun began purchasing tokens from the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company, the Securities and Exchange Commission paused its fraud lawsuit against Sun and his companies pending the outcome of settlement negotiations.”
Critically, the 78-year-old judge noted that his successor was appointed in 2013, long before the Trump administration, so his resignation will not create a vacancy that Trump can fill.
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He told the New York Times that he now plans to speak out about the Trump administration’s attacks on due process, something he could not ethically do as a judge.
“I hope to be a spokesperson for the embattled judges who, under the code of conduct, feel they cannot speak frankly to the American people,” he said.
In a statement to News, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson appeared to welcome Wolf’s resignation. He said judges who “want to inject their own personal agenda into the law have no place on the bench.”