Let's Hear It for the Sullivans

 The career prosecutors who resigned this week from the Eric Adams case in the Southern District of New York surely faced an unenviable dilemma. 

On the one hand, Trump's political appointees had issued an order that no career prosecutor could ethically obey. They could not in good conscience proceed with dismissing the prosecution for political reasons—especially not when the administration was apparently doing so as a tacit "quid pro quo" for Adams's cooperation on immigration enforcement (notably, the Department ultimately moved to dismiss the case "without prejudice"—ensuring that they could hold the threat of renewed prosecution over Adams's head going forward, as a way to secure his ongoing compliance). 

In such a context—where a federal prosecution was being wielded essentially as an extortionate instrument of raw power, it would appear—the only ethical thing to do would be to resign. 

But (and here's the hopeless dilemma of the situation)—to resign would also be to give the Trump administration exactly what they want. Trump's team would like nothing better than to force out all of the ethical civil servants from the federal government, so that they can replace them with their MAGA hacks and political goons. 

So—which is the nobler thing to do: to resign, and try to sound the alarm about the politicization of the Justice Department? Or to clench one's jaw and soldier on internally, trying to steer the administration in a slightly more ethical direction from within? 

The prosecutors who worked on the Adams case appeared to have settled on a particularly elegant solution to this dilemma. The Wall Street Journal gives us the full story. It would seem that the prosecution team essentially divided into two roles: one side would resign in protest, in order to send a message to the public about the Trump administration's assault on the independence of the DOJ. But some would remain behind and simply accept the moral sacrifice required to sign off on Emil Bove's orders. 

They might have drawn straws for this unglamorous role—but instead, one career prosecutor apparently volunteered. DOJ veteran Edward Sullivan reportedly made himself a willing sacrifice—not because he agreed with Bove's motion to dismiss—but because he wanted to ensure that no other members of his team would be fired. Like the protagonist of Shusaku Endo's Silence, he took the sin of the fumie on himself so that others wouldn't have to. (According to the Journal, part of the reason he was willing to sign up for this role was because his reputation had already been slightly tarnished by an earlier case.) 

It seems to me, then, that there were two quite different kinds of heroism on display here. There was the highly visible and spectacular heroism of the people who publicly resigned in protest and issued statements explaining why they had done so—sacrificing their jobs and livelihoods, at least in the immediate term—to send a message about what is being done to our country's executive branch. This is the heroism that has been more widely seen, and rightly celebrated, in the press over the last several days. 

But then there is the quieter heroism that was required to be willing to sign an unjust order, purely to spare others the moral taint of having to do so—the heroism, that is, of the Sullivans. And it occurs to me that, as sacrifices go, this may have been an even greater sacrifice than that of the career prosecutors who resigned. Sullivan may not have given up his job and livelihood. But, he gave up a part of his honor—and this, as the political theorist Robert Michels once wrote—is "the greatest sacrifice that a man of honor can make." (Paul trans.)

I'm left torn, therefore, as to who is really the hero of this story. Perhaps they all were—all who resisted Trump's goons in either the louder or the quieter way. But so far, it is only those who chose the spectacular form of martyrdom who have won the public's praise (and reasonably so). So, let us pause for a moment tonight to salute the Sullivans as well. Let's hear it for the quiet martyrs—who sacrifice not only their jobs for the team, but even their good name—which to any ethical attorney must sting even worse. 

There's a great poem by Robert Lowell that I've quoted many times in the past, in which he laments: "Ah, to have known, to have loved/ Too many Davids and Judiths!/ My heart bleeds for the monster." 

In the case of the current showdown happening in the Justice Department, it's easy to spot the Davids and the Judiths. Danielle Sassoon and Hagen Scotten plainly fill those roles. They are the monster-slayers. They are the ones lobbing the rock at Goliath. They are the ones who have heroically and visibly stood against those bigger and more powerful than themselves. 

But my heart bleeds for the Sullivans too—the ones who don't get the glory. The ones who quietly soldier on inside the Justice Department—and even accept the moral compromises it requires—in order to spare the rest of us from the fate of seeing our entire federal government hijacked completely by Trump-appointed political thugs. They deserve some of the credit too. 

Even as we hail and applaud the Davids and Judiths, the Danielles and Hagens, then—let's hear it, too, for the Sullivans. God knows we have cause to thank them: they may soon be all that's left standing between us and the abyss.