The End of the Rule of Law

Susan Estrich on Jan 15, 2026

The headline shook me to the core. "Six Prosecutors Quit Over Push to Investigate ICE Shooting Victim's Widow."

This is what the end of the rule of law looks like. The people who refuse to do the wrong thing leave, or are pushed out, and replaced by sycophants.

Joseph Thompson was number two in the Office and the former Acting U.S. Attorney for Minnesota. His resignation reportedly came as a result of senior Justice Department officials pressing for a criminal investigation into the actions of the widow of Renee Nicole Wood -- this at the same time they were refusing to open a civil rights investigation into her slaying and refusing to include state officials in the review of whether the shooting was lawful. Thompson and five of his colleagues did what you do when you're asked to do something that is wrong and should be unlawful: they walked.

I used to tell my students that if they really wanted to play God, they should become prosecutors. Judges -- they have to act in public, subject to scrutiny of their decisions. Prosecutors can bring the wrath of the government upon you without even explaining why. They have enormous discretion in who and what and how to investigate people, in what they threaten them with, or excuse me, charge them with, in how they wield their power. Much of which is inevitable. Prosecutorial discretion, it's called, and notwithstanding occasional calls for greater transparency, mostly it's unreviewable discretion.

Which is why the rule of law depends on the good faith of people like Joseph Thompson and those who resigned with him, including senior prosecutors Harry Jacobs, Melinda Williams and Thomas Calhoun-Lopez. Mr. Thompson was in charge of the fraud prosecution, which supposedly attracted the Trump administration to Minnesota. Mr. Jacobs had been Mr. Thompson's deputy overseeing that investigation, which began in 2022. Mr. Calhoun-Lopez was the chief of the violent and major crimes unit. These are big losses, precisely because they understood and respected the limits of their power.

Or as the Minneapolis Police Chief put it, "When you lose the leader responsible for making the fraud cases, it tells you this isn't really about prosecuting fraud," Brian O'Hara said. Trump and his sidekicks, Ice Barbie and Prosecutor Pam, are not dumping agents into Minnesota to fight fraud. If that's what they were up to, they'd keep Mr. Thompson and his colleagues.

No, they are actively out there stoking the partisan fires, name-calling (ICE watchers are "domestic terrorists"), dividing people, threatening people, getting rid of the naysayers and otherwise actively encouraging as much chaos and anger as they can. Because that is what this president thrives on. His mission is not to unite the country, provide comfort for those in pain or give voice to the better angels of our nature.

Chaos is their goal, an excuse for greater and greater shows of force; resistance meets round-ups. MAGA on the loose. And tear gas, and more people in detention, which is the point of the exercise.

These prosecutors are at the end of their ropes. There are many more like them. The question is not what they can do. They are doing what they can do: they are refusing. They are letting us know. Now the question is what we will do.

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