The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois used to be considered one of the best federal prosecutors' offices in the country. But the last week has shown that Donald Trump's administration is driving it off the rails.

First, an egregious attempt to prosecute protesters fell apart amid serious allegations of prosecutorial malfeasance. Then, this past week, we learned that the office is investigating payments made to the law firm representing E. Jean Carroll, who successfully sued Donald Trump for millions after accusing him of sexual abuse. Which raises the question: How long can decent people continue to work for such a corrupted institution?

In the face of Trump's attempts to turn the Justice Department into his legal praetorian guard, many career employees seem to think they can keep their heads down and wait out their new masters. "We are the mole people now," one department employee told New York Times reporter Devlin Barrett in his forthcoming book, "The Department of Revenge: How Trump Took Control of American Justice."........

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