Senior DOJ prosecutor quit after being told to investigate Biden climate spending, sources say
The top criminal prosecutor in the Washington, DC, US Attorney's Office, Denise Cheung, resigned Tuesday after declining a request from her Trump-appointed superiors to open a grand jury investigation that she viewed as premature, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.
The direction originated from Emil Bove, the department's acting deputy attorney general, to Ed Martin, whom President Donald Trump has nominated to be the permanent DC US Attorney.
Cheung, a long-time DOJ employee, had been asked to shepherd an investigation into an Environmental Protection Agency funding decision during the Biden administration.
She refused the order and resigned, in part because she believed there wasn't sufficient evidence to take that step at the time, as well as seeking to protect lower-level prosecutors from the work, source said.
The Trump administration has consistently criticized Biden's spending on environmental programs. EPA administrator Lee Zeldin's said he has had 'found' $20 billion worth of funding from former President Joe Biden's 2022 climate law in a Citibank account, and wanted to return the money to the US Treasury.
The EPA then announced in a press release the EPA would 'work with the US Department of Justice' on the matter. CNN has asked EPA for comment.
The Justice Department declined to comment. Cheung didn't respond to a request for comment from CNN Tuesday morning.
Zeldin has suggested the funding was rushed to eight non-profits to distribute at the end of the Biden administration through the Inflation Reduction Act, but a former EPA official responsible for implementing the funding told CNN last week it wasn't rushed or set up nefariously.
Cheung sent a farewell message office-wide on Tuesday morning. She didn't publicly indicate her reason for leaving.
Cheung's departure also comes at a time of roiling change across the DOJ, with prosecutors deemed to be untrustworthy being fired, and ethical clashes erupting between Trump's hand-picked political appointees and long-time federal prosecutors.
Bove last week presided over a public row with prosecutors in New York and Washington over his order to dismiss charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
Martin, taking the helm of the DC US Attorney's Office, has supported unwinding all January 6 criminal cases that the office brought. He had enlisted Cheung and another career prosecutor in the office to look at how prosecutors charged January 6 rioters with a felony obstruction charge that the Supreme Court later overturned.
'When I started as an AUSA, I took an oath of office to support and defend the Constitution, and I have executed this duty faithfully during my tenure, which has spanned through numerous Administrations,' Cheung wrote in her sign-off email to her colleagues. 'I know that all of the AUSAs in the office continue to honor their oaths on a daily basis, just as I know that you have always conducted yourself with the utmost integrity.'
This story is breaking and will be updated.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
24 minutes ago
- New York Post
Washington Post media critic admits failure in scrutinizing Biden coverage after ‘Where's Jackie' gaffe
Advertisement Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple reflected on his own 'failure' Monday in scrutinizing press coverage of Joe Biden and his cognitive decline, particularly after the infamous 'Where's Jackie?' gaffe. As the legacy media continues to face a reckoning over how it handled covering the former president's mental acuity before his disastrous 2024 debate performance, Wemple wrote a scathing piece calling out news organizations for not admitting any errors with the headline, 'Did legacy media fail in its Biden coverage? Not if you ask them!' In his lengthy critique, Wemple revisited an episode from a September 2022 event where Biden called for Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Ind., who had died just weeks earlier in a car accident. Biden previously released a statement acknowledging her death after it happened and the event he attended similarly honored her memory. Advertisement 4 Erik Wemple wrote a scathing piece calling out the media's lack of self-reflection. Fox News 'Jackie, are you here? Where's Jackie?' Biden said in the viral moment. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended the president at the time, insisting Walorski was simply 'top of mind.' 'It's time to turn this exercise on my own byline,' Wemple wrote Monday. 'The 'Where's Jackie' episode was my cue to start hammering mainstream outlets for not pushing on this story. Never happened — that was a failure.' Wemple noted, as Fox News Digital did at the time, that neither CNN nor MSNBC offered any coverage of the 'Where's Jackie' comment. Advertisement 4 Former President Joe Biden speaks during the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, at the Ronald Reagan Building, Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2022, in Washington. AP 4 Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Ind., is seen before a House Ways and Means Committee markup in Longworth Building on July 12, 2018. CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Imag While acknowledging some in the press, like Axios' Alex Thompson and The Wall Street Journal's Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes for their pre-debate reporting that shed light on Biden's cognitive decline, Wemple knocked the media for broadly lacking the vigor to get to the bottom of it sooner. 'White House coverage must involve more than observing the president in action and writing up analysis pieces about his comings and goings,' Wemple wrote. Advertisement 'It needs to include a muckraking component detailing behind-the-scenes strategies, conflicts and debates over all manner of issues, particularly those relating to the president's mental acuity. An adjacent question relates to whether Biden himself was fully abreast of and in charge of day-to-day decisions.' 4 The Washington Post office in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, June 27, 2024. Bloomberg via Getty Images 'And it's on these fronts that major media organizations fell short: Though Biden's declining faculties were clear to all, they never ignited one of those glorious mainstream-media investigative frenzies that colonizes television and radio broadcasts,' he added. Thompson's 'Original Sin' co-author, CNN anchor Jake Tapper, said there should be 'soul-searching' in the legacy media for how Biden's clearly apparent issues were covered. 'Few souls are undergoing a pat-down,' Wemple wrote.
24 minutes ago
The ACLU demands the US release and return a Dominican woman living legally in Puerto Rico
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- In late May, a 47-year-old woman from the Dominican Republic was detained by police in Puerto Rico after she entered a municipal building seeking a permit to sell ice cream on the beach to support herself. Upon being turned over to federal agents, the Dominican woman presented her passport, driver's license and work permits that proved she was living in the U.S. territory legally, her attorney Ángel Robles and the American Civil Liberties Union of Puerto Rico, said Monday. Despite the documents presented, authorities recently transferred her to Texas as part of a federal crackdown on migrants living illegally in U.S. jurisdictions. The woman, whose first name is Aracelis, has not been fully identified because she is a victim of domestic violence. Aracelis is among hundreds of people who have been detained in Puerto Rico since large-scale arrests began in late January, surprising many in the U.S. territory that has long welcomed migrants. Robles and the ACLU demanded Aracelis' release and return to Puerto Rico. 'It's outrageous,' Robles said in a phone interview. 'No charges have been filed against her, and she is not in the system.' Because her name does not appear in a federal database, Robles' request for a bond hearing was denied. 'This case is one of unspeakable abuse,' said Annette Martínez Orabona, the ACLU director in Puerto Rico. The case has fueled already simmering anger against the administration of Puerto Rico Gov. Jenniffer González Colón and local authorities who have been working with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to arrest those believed to be living illegally in the U.S. territory. In a letter sent Monday to the governor and the island's justice secretary, the ACLU accused Puerto Rico's government of violating the Constitution and local laws by providing ICE and U.S. Homeland Security with confidential information on nearly 6,000 immigrants. It also accused ICE of using that data to go on a 'fishing expedition' that it called 'arbitrary and abusive.' A spokesman for Homeland Security Investigations did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In Puerto Rico, undocumented immigrants are allowed to open bank accounts and obtain a special driver's license. The ACLU in Puerto Rico also accused González Colón's administration of not providing protocols to local government agencies for how to deal with such requests from the federal government. The ACLU requested, among other things, that Puerto Rico's government issue an executive order barring public agencies from collaborating with ICE subpoenas not accompanied by a court order. A spokeswoman for the governor did not immediately return a message for comment.
26 minutes ago
In their own words: Trump, Newsom trade insults and barbs over National Guard in Los Angeles
The swiftly evolving situation in the Los Angeles area over protests surrounding immigration enforcement actions has also cued up a public spat between President Donald Trump and Gov. Gavin Newsom, the California governor who has been one of the Republican president's most vocal Democratic critics. After Trump on Sunday called up 2,000 National Guard troops to respond, Newsom said he would sue the administration, a promise on which the state followed through a day later. Trump cited a legal provision that allows him to mobilize federal service members when there is 'a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States." The president also agreed with one of his top advisers that maybe the governor should be arrested. Here's a look at back-and-forth between Trump and Newsom in their own words: 'You have violent people, and we're not gonna let them get away with it.' — Trump, Sunday, in remarks to reporters in Morristown, New Jersey. ___ Newsom's ire has been elevated over Trump's decision to, without his support, call up the California National Guard for deployment into his state. In a letter Sunday, Newsom called on Trump to rescind the Guard deployment, calling it a 'serious breach of state sovereignty.' The governor, who was in Los Angeles meeting with local law enforcement and other officials, also told protesters they were playing into Trump's plans and would face arrest for violence or property destruction. 'Trump wants chaos and he's instigated violence,' he said. 'Stay peaceful. Stay focused. Don't give him the excuse he's looking for.' In an interview with MSNBC, Newsom said Sunday he had spoken with Trump 'late Friday night,' after the protests had begun, but said deploying the National Guard 'never came up.' "We talked for almost 20 minutes, and he — barely, this issue never came up. I mean, I kept trying to talk about LA, he wanted to talk about all these other issues," Newsom said. 'We had a very decent conversation.' 'He never once brought up the National Guard,' Newsom said of Trump, calling him 'a stone-cold liar.' Saying, 'I did call him the other night,' Trump told reporters Sunday that he told Newsom in that call: ''Look you've got to take care of this. Otherwise I'm sending in the troops.' ... That's what we did.' On Monday, Trump posted on social media that Los Angeles would have been 'completely obliterated' without his intervention and referred to Newsom as 'Newscum,' a pejorative moniker he has used to refer to the governor. 'We are suing Donald Trump. This is a manufactured crisis. He is creating fear and terror to take over a state militia and violate the U.S. constitution.' — Newsom, Monday, X post. ___ As Newsom promised, California officials sued the Trump administration on Monday, with the state's attorney general, Rob Bonta, arguing that the deployment of troops 'trampled' on the state's sovereignty and pushing for a restraining order. The initial deployment of 300 National Guard troops was expected to quickly expand to the full 2,000 that were authorized by Trump. Late Monday, Trump authorized an additional 2,000 National Guard troops. Ahead of that move, Newsom accused the president of inflaming tensions, breaching state sovereignty and wasting resources, while warning protesters not to 'take Trump's bait.' Teasing the suit, Newsom told MSNBC that he saw the deployment as 'an illegal act, an immoral act, an unconstitutional act.' Asked Monday about the lawsuit, Trump said it was 'interesting' and argued 'that place would be burning down' without the federal government's intervention. 'I'm very happy I got involved," Trump added. "I think Gavin in his own way is very happy I got involved.' 'I think it's great. Gavin likes the publicity, but I think it would be a great thing." — Trump, Monday, in remarks to reporters. ___ Tom Homan, the Trump administration's border czar, previously warned that anyone, including public officials, would be arrested if they obstructed federal immigration enforcement. Newsom's initial response to Homan, during the MSNBC interview and in subsequent posts on his own social media: 'Come and get me, tough guy.' On Monday Trump seemed to agree with his border chief, telling reporters, 'I would do it if I were Tom.' 'I think it's great. Gavin likes the publicity, but I think it would be a great thing,' Trump added. "He's done a terrible job. Look — I like Gavin, he's a nice guy, but he's grossly incompetent, everybody knows." Homan later said there was 'no discussion' about actually arresting Newsom, but reiterated that 'no one's above the law.' wrote Monday on X that they represented 'a day I hoped I would never see in America' and said Trump's call for his arrest marked 'an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism.'
