'I resigned my position': Former DOJ official leaves LA Times over them 'appeasing Trump'

On his Substack platform on Thursday afternoon, former U.S. Attorney and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman announced he has resigned as a contributor to the L.A. Times editorial page in protest over the paper's owner for his unabashed support for Donald Trump.

The Times has been in turmoil since billionaire owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong refused to let the editorial board of the venerable paper publish an editorial endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris.

On Wednesday, Litman joined the exodus from the paper that included editorials editor Mariel Garza in protest over Soon-Shiong's increasing interference that has now grown to him trying "to force the paper, over the forceful objections of his staff, into a posture more sympathetic to Donald Trump," as he wrote on Thursday.

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Writing he has been associated with the paper for fifteen years, serving as the Senior Legal Columnist for the past three years, Litman announced he has parted ways.

"I have written my last op-ed for the Times. Yesterday, I resigned my position. I don’t want to continue to work for a paper that is appeasing Trump and facilitating his assault on democratic rule for craven reasons," he wrote before explaining his departure is the result of an "... existential stakes for our democracy that I believe Trump’s second term poses, and the evidence that Soon-Shiong is currying favor with the President-elect, they are repugnant and dangerous."

Regarding the spiking of the pro-Harris editorial, he wrote, "By far the most important problem with Soon-Shiong’s scrapping of the editorial was the apparent motivation. It is untenable to suggest that Soon-Shiong woke up with sudden misgivings over Harris’s criminal justice record or with newfound affection for Trump’s immigration proposals. The plain inference, and the one that readers and national observers have adopted, is that he wanted to hedge his bets in case Trump won—not even to protect the paper’s fortunes but rather his multi-billion-dollar holdings in other fields. It seems evident that he was currying favor with Trump and capitulating to the President-elect’s well-known pettiness and vengefulness."

He added, "Trump has made it clear that he will make trouble for media outlets that cross him. Rather than reacting with indignation at this challenge to his paper’s critical function in a democracy, Soon-Shiong threw the paper to the wolves. That was cowardly."

Litman, a regular presence on cable TV as a legal commenter, added, "I don’t pretend that my resignation is any kind of serious counter-blow to the damage of Soon-Shiong’s cozying up to Trump.... But the cost of alliance with an important national institution that has such an important role to play in pushing back against authoritarian rule, but declines to do so for spurious and selfish reasons, feels too great. And Soon-Shiong’s conscious pattern of détente with Trump has in fact recast the paper’s core identity to one of appeasement with an authoritarian madman. I am loath to affiliate with that identity in any way."

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