The DC Federal Procutors’ supervisor said to resign after the investigation dispute

By Alanna Durkin Richer and Eric Tucker

Washington (AP) – A high -level supervisor from the Office of Federal Prosecutors in Washington said that she had been forced to resign following a dispute with her boss on a directive that she examined the allocation of a Government contract during the Biden administration, according to a letter examined by the Associated Press.

Denise Cheung, a long -standing official of the Ministry of Justice who led the Bureau’s criminal division, wrote in a resignation letter that American interim lawyer Ed Martin ordered him to ask for a freeze on the assets linked to contract and to issue assignments of great jury despite his believer that there was an insufficient basis to do so.

Cheung said Martin had asked for his resignation after resisting his request to tell a bank not to release funds from certain accounts due to a criminal investigation. Cheung said that she “did not have the legal authority to issue such a letter” to the bank, telling Martin that “the quantum of evidence did not support this action”.

Cheung’s letter, summarizing his dispute with Martin, did not describe the nature of the contract or which agency was involved. A spokesperson for the American prosecutor’s office refused to comment, and a spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said that the fact of not following orders “is not an act of heroism”.

The conflict was the last to go around the Ministry of Justice and to lead to the resignation of a career manager who was not willing to follow a Trump administration mandate.

Cheung did not explain the reason for his departure in an email to his colleagues on Tuesday morning, but encouraged them to continue to achieve their commitment to “continue the justice without fear or damage”.

“I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution, and I executed this obligation faithfully during my mandate, which extended through numerous administrations,” wrote Cheung in the email examined by the Associated Press. “Everything we do is rooted in the follow -up of facts and the law and complying with our moral, ethical and legal obligations.”

Cheung’s resignation comes one day after President Donald Trump said he would name Martin to serve as an American DC lawyer on a permanent basis. Martin, who pleaded for the rioters of January 6 and supported the false claims of Trump according to which the elections of 2020 were stolen, has directed the office as an acting prosecutor since last month.

Martin called on Cheung last month to perform an internal examination of the prosecutor of a crime accusation against hundreds of rioters of the Capitol. Calling for the use of the accusation “a great failure of our office”, Martin ordered lawyers to give Cheung and another supervisor all “files, documents, notes, emails and other relevant information” and ordered It is up to supervisors to prepare a report on their results.

This is the last departure of a Ministry of Justice which was shaken by layoffs, resignations and forced transfers since the inauguration of Trump at the end of January.

Last week, the main federal prosecutor of Manhattan, Danielle Sassoon, resigned to protest following a directive of Emil Bove, the head of the commissioner of the Ministry of Justice, to reject the accusations of corruption against the former Mayor of New York Adams. Several senior civil servants who supervised the public integrity section of the Ministry of Justice followed Sassoon by switching off after Bove asked the unit to take over the case.

Originally published: February 18, 2025 at 2:08 p.m. PST