'Awesome': Conservative legal analyst and Trump supporter heaps praise on DOJ rebels

Ed Whelan has a lengthy credentials list as a conservative legal scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and as a supporter of President Donald Trump's policies. In 2018, he even got himself in trouble and took a leave of absence from his think tank over a zealous and controversial series of social media posts against the sexual assault accuser of now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

But he is all for the rebellion against Trump's Justice Department that exploded this week at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York as droves of federal prosecutors resigned rather than carry out top DOJ official Emil Bove's order to dismiss charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, currently under indictment for a public corruption scheme in which he allegedly accepted over $100,000 in illegal gifts from individuals connected to the Turkish government.

Whelan, who also sounded the alarm last year over Trump's potential scheme to bypass Senate review of his Cabinet nominees, particularly lauded federal prosecutor Hagen Scotten — the lead prosecutor in the Adams case and the latest to resign in protest — in a piece for the National Review, saying, "He now should get a prize for Awesome Resignation Letter."

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The timing of the order to dismiss the case, combined with Bove's own insinuation that it would be an obstacle to working with New York City on migrant deportations, creates the appearance the Trump administration is dropping the charges as a favor for Adams being open to cooperating on immigration policy — and a threat to reinstate the case if he changes his mind, Whelan noted, quoting the letter.

"No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives," wrote Scotten in the letter. "Any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way. If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me."

"Somehow I doubt that Bove’s blunderbuss blundering will put the Department of Justice in good stead with Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Kavanaugh, or any other justice," Whelan concluded.