At this time last year, Ryan Crosswell was hard at work trying to put New York City’s mayor in prison on corruption charges while serving as a prosecutor in the Justice Department.
But after resigning in protest over the Trump administration's decision to drop the case against Mayor Eric Adams and cut back on prosecutions of public corruption cases, he’s looking at a switching careers to making laws instead of enforcing them.
According to CBS News, Crosswell, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, left the department in February amid the uproar over the dropping of charges against Adams, a move which at the time was framed as a way to enable the mayor to better assist the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts.
Four months later, he announced a campaign for the House of Representatives seat for Pennsylvania’s seventh district against Republican Ryan Mackenzie, telling the television network: "If you're a Marine and you're a former prosecutor, you are protecting people."
Crosswell is just one of a number of ex-federal prosecutors looking to continue public service careers by seeking election to various offices across the United States.
The former prosecutors all have one thing in common — they left federal service in the tumultuous opening months of the Trump administration amid what have been described as loyalty tests as a condition of remaining in the government.
Erika Evans, the granddaughter of Olympic track-and-field medalist Lee Evans, left the Department of Justice in March on account of the changes made to the Civil Rights Division under Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon.
Dhillon, a longtime GOP activist, has made it a priority to refocus the division away from protecting racial minorities towards pushing back on alleged anti-white discrimination.
Evans told CBS she resigned after receiving emails asking for DOJ employees to report colleagues involved in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion work that the Trump administration has banned.
"We received emails requiring that we report any colleagues doing diversity work in the office. We had 10 to 14 days to report them or we would get in trouble ourselves," Evans said. "That was pretty disgusting."
Now, she’s looking to resume her public service career as Seattle’s elected City Attorney.
In a video released by her campaign, she says she’ll “take on Trump” if elected and “demand the community safety we deserve” from the federal government.
She explained how she’d wanted to spend her career in public service but felt she had to leave because of the Trump administration's priorities.
"When I realized that that was not going to be possible any longer with the values that the Trump administration was having for the department, I knew I needed to shift,” she said.
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