From roughly 30-36 attorneys to 2: gutting the unit that prosecutes public corruption

Editor's note: reporting documents the collapse of the public-corruption section after the order to drop the Adams case, but no official record establishes that the reduction was unlawful or retaliatory.

DOJ's Public Integrity Section, the unit responsible for prosecuting public corruption by federal, state, and local officials nationwide, saw its attorney ranks reduced from roughly 30 to 36 to about two, and its open matters drop from 175-200 to roughly 20. NOTUS counted 36 attorneys assigned to the section full-time; NPR reported roughly 40 full-time staff, a broader measure; DOJ's own annual report to Congress described the section as maintaining a staff of approximately thirty attorneys. The contraction followed the section's acting chief resigning after being directed to dismiss the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams (PRG-12/OVR-06), a decision that also triggered a wave of career-prosecutor resignations.

The section's near-total gutting removes one of the federal government's primary tools for investigating public corruption at every level of government, not merely the White House-adjacent cases catalogued elsewhere in this database, at precisely the moment federal ethics oversight was also being dismantled at OGE, OSC, and the inspector-general offices (PRG-02, PRG-03, PRG-04).

The section remained operational at dramatically reduced capacity as of the NPR report; no reversal or public rationale beyond the Adams-case fallout has been identified.