Hey folks, Preet here. Joyce Vance and I are out with a new episode of the Insider Podcast. First, we discuss Jelaine Maxwell's request that President Trump grant her clemency in exchange for testimony. She says she would clear him from any wrongdoing related to Jeffrey Epstein's trafficking network. Then we turn to the latest on ICE operations and the mounting strain inside the Justice Department as it struggles to retain and recruit prosecutors. Finally, we talk about the Supreme Court's ruling allowing California's new congressional map to stand, at least for now. If you're a member of Cafe Insider, head to the Insider feed or click the link in the show notes of this podcast to hear the full analysis. Stay tuned, listeners. Stick around for an excerpt from our conversation. Members of Insider help support our work and get access to full episodes and other subscriber benefits. We're living in unreasonable times, so join our community of reasonable voices. Head to cafe.com slash insider or staytuned.substack.com. Now, on to the show. Joyce, where do you want to begin? So listen, there's been some reporting. DOJ, obviously no longer the DOJ that we worked in, is having some manpower and some staffing problems. And that seems to be coming to a head in Minneapolis and in Minnesota. there's reporting that every office in the country has been asked to designate a jump team that could be available to support. I think they use some fancy language, but it's the deportation efforts. And that offices that were large were being asked to designate two people who could rotate in and out of those districts, smaller offices one. Would you be just jumping at the opportunity to create a jump team if you were still the U.S. attorney in Manhattan? Let me take a step back. As I think about the loss of professionals from U.S. attorneys' offices, and the numbers are astonishing in some places. I mean, in Minneapolis, Minnesota has one district, right? It's the district of Minnesota, main office in Minneapolis. they've gone from it's not a huge office they've gone from i understand it 50 right 50 yeah assistant u.s attorneys to 20 i can't quickly do the math off the top of my head but that's an enormous 60 decrease in the course of a year we had a large office it used to be the case at least when i was overseeing the sdny we had about 220 assistant u.s attorneys 170 or so in the Criminal division, 50 or so in the civil division. And we were very busy. We had a large office and we conceivably could deal with personnel issues or loss because we were so large. I didn't feel that way. We fought for every full-time, every FTE, every full-time employee, every seat. If we were down three, I felt it. If we were down five or 10, I really felt it, right? Because it's not 160 people or 170 people working on one case, there's all sorts of different things everyone is working on. And everyone had a huge docket and everyone was overworked. And if you take away some percentage of folks, it's really not good for the office, but that's not really the point. When it's not good for the office, it's not good for public safety. It's not good for justice being served. It's not good for timeliness of proceedings, motions, trials, and everything else. you know, justice gets delayed and sometimes justice is not delivered. And we plotted in every possible way we could to get every slot filled and to increase our slots, right? Whether it was through forfeiture funds or you know something called ACE funding in every way possible we tried to fill our ranks I remember one of the worst times in office for me and maybe you shared this was during a hiring freeze I guess in 2011 2012 when attrition could not be countered by hiring more people. And we have natural attrition in the Southern District, more so than most offices, because we have a shorter average tenure for assistants. This is just a long-winded way of saying, and I'm sure you have the same experience. I know from personal experience how devastating it is to office morale, but more importantly, to public safety and to public justice when even a small percentage of folks depart. And here in Minnesota, we're talking about, if again, if I'm doing the math correctly, a 60% downgrade, including I think almost all of the high level leadership of the office. I don't even understand how they're getting anything done. Not good for the district, not good for the state, not good for public safety, not good for justice, not good for the reputation of the department. I can't imagine what they're going through. So against that backdrop, I was never keen, maybe jealously, to send my folks elsewhere because we had our own district to take care of. Is that selfish? No, I mean, that's the job, right? And I think you're dead on when you point to the brain drain, the loss of institutional knowledge in Minnesota, at a time, by the way, when they need it the most, when they need to have people in the office who will pump the brakes on activity that violates Justice Department norms. I know that it's become popular to be dismissive of norms, but that's still in large part how the U.S. attorney's offices across the country operate, because that's how justice is delivered. And as you have said in other contexts, you know, something that we do is we go slowly, that we make sure we don't get anywhere close to violating due process rights. Well, when you don't have the institutional knowledge that can enforce those sorts of norms, that's how an office gets into trouble. So this loss of some of the senior people, including, by the way, the two guys who were doing this incredibly important major fraud case that President Trump has commented about in Minneapolis, gone as a result of this. The idea of subtracting from other offices, and this goes back to the point of Maya's tweet again, the idea of subtracting personnel from other offices, and especially the smaller offices that can be hit hard by the loss of even one person for a couple of weeks, is that we're all less safe so that Trump can execute political aims. That seems to be, I think, the theme of the moment. Yeah, I don't know what the solution is. I mean, the other problem is there is not an influx of people coming in. And some of the saddest things that I've read recently are the laments of people who used to be in the department or who have observed or covered the department about how, and it kills me to say this, and maybe it's an extreme version of lament, But maybe not. And a lot of AUSAs and former AUSAs listen to this program, so let me speak to them. It is horrifically sad to me, having spent so many years in the department, and now following the department, and now representing clients against the department sometimes, that a job that used to be considered perhaps the most prestigious, but certainly one of the most prestigious jobs you could get in the law in the United States of America was assistant United States Attorney. And I still remember the woman who hired me, Mary Jo White, who practices law still, saying over and over and over again that she had the second best job in America, which was to be the United States Attorney, which is a pretty good job, which I had also later But the best job was to be an Assistant U attorney And it is the career high for lots of people It an incredibly difficult job to get in any district and certainly in the large cities. It's a point of pride. It's the pinnacle of a lot of people's careers. And for that to have lost the luster and in some ways respect and prestige and honor that it used to have, if that is happening breaks my heart. Yeah. You know, mine too. I mean, the high point of my career was getting to stand up in court and say, may it please the court. My name is Joyce Vance and I represent the United States of America. And that meant something and we all understood what it meant. I just want to say to folks listening who are currently working at the Justice Department, we appreciate your service and we see what you're trying to do. I hope as many people as can do so in good conscience will try to stick it out. But I get that that's becoming increasingly difficult, which is just another, I think, sad commentary on what we're living through. Well, the saddest part of it is not to belabor the point, but this is deeply personal to you and to me. Let's call out what's different. You know, I gave an example of the hiring freeze because the government had a shutdown a number of years ago. You had to endure it. I had to endure it. that's a function of circumstance and that happens what's happening here is not all of them but many of the departures are taking place because these people of honor who have taken on these prestigious posts feel that they are asked to be they're being asked to do things that are contrary to their conscience their oath and their ethics and they have no choice but to leave the office. And that is not happening, you know, here or there. It's not happening on the part of a couple of people in some far-flung. It's happening in major offices, in lots of different places, and it's happening in Washington also. And it should tell you something, it should tell you a lot of things, that scores of people who managed to get this very difficult to obtain position, who are screened not only for ability and skill and craft, but also for character and honesty and integrity and ethics, are saying, I'm going to leave this beloved job that I worked so hard to get, that has been the pride of my professional career. I'm going to leave this job because I cannot do what I'm being asked to do. That's horrific. I have nothing to add to that. That was great. So, you know, I don't know how they're going to solve the problem. You know, I guess, you know, some folks in Washington like smaller government. Well, they're getting it. You know, I mean, I used to say, I'm just going to go on and, you know, successive rants. That's good. I'll get words back if you keep talking. Successive rants here by your co-host. You know, people love to say government was broken. and Ronald Reagan popularized that phrase, the most dangerous words in the English language are, hello, I'm from the government, I'm here to help. Well, I always thought just to be parochial for a moment and prideful about my parochial nature, that didn't apply to the Department of Justice. That didn't apply to the various U.S. attorneys' offices. Every single assistant U.S. attorney I thought was worth their weight in gold and was underpaid and underappreciated. but did the job because they did so much good, and it was a force multiplier for good, right? And sometimes that was in bringing a case, and sometimes that was in walking away from a case. And by the way I should mention because they listened too my civil division assistants right My beloved civil division assistants who did not prosecute people although sometimes we had a civil division folks working on civil rights investigations when law enforcement had to death, but by and large, defending the United States of America against lawsuits or bringing affirmative lawsuits on behalf of the United States of America against people and institutions who are defrauding it, right? Huge amounts of positive effort, energy, and the fact that they have to worry about what they need to do or not do. Again, I'm repeating myself now, but I think it bears repeating. It's a big problem. And you don't get it back. You don't get it back so quickly, right? No, you and I, rant number four. You and I have talked about this antiseptic phrase that we sometimes use. Remember what it is? The presumption of regularity. The presumption of regularity, which you and I have discussed when it comes to a grand jury proceeding or a deportation proceeding or any kind of criminal proceeding, is basically a principle of trust, right? That the courts have found was justified over decades and perhaps even a couple of centuries of practice and dealing with the fine lawyers of the Department of Justice, right? And that's not built into, I mean, there's case law about it now, but that's basically a tremendous compliment by the members of one branch of government to individual members, nameless individual members of another branch of government. That, I mean, not to be overly wax poetic about it, but that's what it is. There is a presumption that when an assistant U.S. attorney goes into the grand jury, they do things the right way. They cross all the T's, they dot all the I's, and they do what's honorable, right, and good. It's not always that way, but that's the presumption. That's how it normally works unless we have some evidence to think otherwise. And after years and years and years and years. That is a priceless asset commodity gift that assistant U.S. attorneys in the Department of Justice have had, and where, even though it's invisible, and where like a halo, and it was deserved. And the fact that you now have, you know, people like us and courts also questioning whether that presumption of regularity should be maintained is basically saying we no longer trust the array of foot soldiers in the Justice Department to do what has been the norm and our understanding and the thing that has earned us, earned you great respect by us over the course of decades and decades and decades. That too is a separate thing from what I've been talking about, equally heartbreaking. You know, I think all of this comes to a head last week in a Minneapolis courtroom. The judge was Jerry Blackwell, who ironically was one of the state's... Thanks for listening. 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