Congressional Democrats used a shadow hearing on Monday to make the case they belong to the party interested in preserving democracy as part of a continued effort to define themselves relative to President Donald Trump despite a lack of power to significantly affect policy change.
Members of the House and Senate judiciary committees questioned three former Justice Department officials — all of whom resigned or were fired after Trump took office this year — and one lawyer who resigned from a firm that struck a deal with Trump.
The lawmakers repeatedly said their decision to highlight these members of the legal community was a response to the unprecedented steps the Trump administration is taking with the Justice Department and other federal agencies.
“To all those who gathered across America … asking what Congress is doing to try to stop these excesses and these violations of the Constitution, remember what happens on this day, because on this day, I think we are making history at the right moment,” Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in his opening remarks.
No Republicans attended Monday’s hearing. Democrats do not have the power to launch formal investigations or issue subpoenas because they are in the minority, so they relied on witnesses who were willing to give public accounts of their tenure early in the Trump administration.
They included Liz Oyer, a former pardon attorney for the Justice Department who was fired while working under Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and Ryan Crosswell, a former federal prosecutor for the department who resigned after higher-ups asked him to drop a corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Rachel Cohen, who resigned from a law firm that agreed to provide legal services to the Trump administration to escape an executive order that threatened the firm’s business, and Stacey Young, a career litigator who resigned in protest of the Trump administration’s approach to the DOJ, also appeared.
The hearing is part of a string of actions by Democrats highlighting how the Trump administration’s unprecedented overhauls of federal agencies and programs has upended the norms long observed by career civil servants. Lawmakers at the hearing referenced other acts of resistance by Democrats inside and outside of Congress, including anti-Trump protests that drew thousands of people across the nation over the weekend and a 25-hour speech during which Sen. Cory Booker lambasted the Trump administration.
“Last week, our New Jersey colleague showed strength and resolve and courage to stand for more than 25 hours to speak for fairness and justice,” Durbin said. “He made history, and this hearing continues in that spirit.”
Monday’s hearing also follows complaints last month from the Democratic base that party leadership was bowing to Republican measures backed by the Trump administration without pushing back hard enough.
Events like the hearing are a sign that Democrats will “continue to fight back,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono.
Multiple lawmakers underscored that the shadow hearing, which lacked the fiery exchanges that have come to define many congressional hearings under the Trump administration so far, was part of efforts by Democrats to fill gaps left by Republicans.
“Many of our colleagues, sadly, on the Republican side of the aisle, are acting like subjects to the king instead of being independently elected officials, to the point where we’re holding this shadow hearing because they won’t hold such a hearing,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar said.
A key part of the hearing was a Justice Department decision last week to drop a corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a process that Trump-appointed officials at the department reportedly started in mid-February. Crosswell, one of the prosecutors who refused to sign a motion to dismiss the case against Adams, gave his account at the hearing.
A top federal prosecutor, Danielle Sassoon, who also resigned from the Justice Department over the matter, said in February that the department wanted to drop the case in exchange for Adams helping enforce President Donald Trump’s agenda, including cooperation on immigration crackdowns. The Trump administration denied that the decision to drop the case was “quid pro quo,” as Sassoon (who did not appear at the shadow hearing on Monday) said in a letter the day before her resignation.
Crosswell resigned from his role as a federal prosecutor at the Justice Department in February after then-acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove directed him and his colleagues to sign a motion dismissing the charges against Adams. Crosswell said in his resignation letter that Bove’s directive came in a meeting on Feb. 14, the day after Sassoon resigned.
“Bove demanded the signature of two Public Integrity Section Trial Attorneys to add legitimacy to a motion that he admitted was not based on the facts or the law. Five of our supervising attorneys resigned rather than convey that order,” Crosswell wrote in his resignation letter.
“Is a Justice Department that will drop charges against those who acquiesce to a political demand a Justice Department that will bring charges against those who don’t?” Crosswell said during the hearing.
Lawmakers applauded Crosswell’s resignation during his testimony.
“I was so in awe of what you and others did after you were forced or asked to drop bribery charges against Mayor Adams,” Klobuchar told Crosswell.
Lawmakers also repeatedly pointed out just how unprecedented Trump’s actions penalizing law firms and ousting career officials have been. The witnesses pointed to multiple occasions in which the Trump administration has strayed from accepted procedure at the Justice Department.
Oyer, the pardon attorney who was fired from the department after speaking out against restoring actor Mel Gibson’s gun rights, said several of the Justice Department’s actions in recent months — including granting pardons to Jan. 6 rioters — did not go through the typical pardon process the department has used in past administrations.
“My role in the department was becoming increasingly untenable every day. It was becoming more and more difficult every day to do the job in a way that was consistent with my values and my obligations as an attorney,” Oyer said.
Sen. Adam Schiff said the administration’s actions have led to a “creation of a climate of fear” meant to “weed out and drive out … anyone who will stand up and defend the rule of law.”
“We will do the investigative work that our colleagues across the aisle refuse to do,” Schiff said. “Today’s hearing is a step toward real oversight and accountability.”
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Shifra Dayak is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.