# Public Integrity Section The Justice Department unit created to prosecute corrupt public officials. Established in **March 1976** as a section of the **Criminal Division**, in the direct aftermath of Watergate, "to consolidate in one unit of the Criminal Division the Department's oversight responsibilities for the prosecution of criminal abuses of the public trust by government officials." Known inside the Department as **PIN**. As of 2026 it has approximately **two full-time attorneys**. ## What it was for PIN prosecuted and supervised prosecutions of federal, state and local officials across all three branches, and held **exclusive jurisdiction over allegations against federal judges**. Its **Election Crimes Branch**, created in 1980, handled voter fraud, campaign-finance crime, patronage offenses and corruption of the electoral process. ⭐ **Its most important function was not prosecuting but gatekeeping.** The Justice Manual required U.S. Attorneys to **consult PIN** before opening or charging any matter involving a Member of Congress or congressional staff, and before bringing election or campaign-finance charges. PIN administered the non-interference policy that kept overt investigative steps away from imminent elections, and published the roughly 281-page *Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses*, the manual that told every federal prosecutor in the country what an election crime was and was not. That gatekeeping is the thing to hold on to, because a centralized approval requirement is a constraint on *both* directions of abuse. It stops a rogue U.S. Attorney charging a member of Congress for political reasons, and it stops a district declining to charge a favored one. Removing it does not free prosecutors so much as decentralize the discretion. ## Its reputation, and the Stevens disaster The section's historical record includes Abscam, Operation Greylord, Governor Rod Blagojevich, Representative William Jefferson, and inquiries into Representative Tom DeLay and Senator John Ensign. [[Jack Smith]] led it from 2010 to 2015. It was also badly damaged by one case. Senator Ted Stevens was indicted in July 2008 and convicted on seven counts on **27 October 2008**, eight days before he lost re-election. Attorney General Holder moved to set the verdict aside; Judge Emmet Sullivan granted the motion on **7 April 2009** and appointed Henry Schuelke to investigate. The **Schuelke report, released 15 March 2012**, found the prosecution "permeated by the systematic concealment of significant exculpatory evidence." Holder replaced the entire trial team and the section's leadership. The effect was two decades of institutional caution, particularly toward congressional targets — which is worth remembering, because the section that was dismantled in 2025 was already a conservative one. ## The dismantling, 2025–2026 This is the current story, and it is not a reorganization. It is a subtraction. **Chief Corey Amundson resigned in January 2025** after being reassigned to a "Sanctuary Cities Enforcement Working Group." **The Adams sequence, February 2025.** Acting Deputy Attorney General [[Emil Bove]] issued a memo on **10 February** ordering dismissal of the corruption indictment against New York Mayor [[Eric Adams]] **without prejudice**. SDNY acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon resigned on 12 February. On **13 February**, Hagan Scotten resigned with a letter stating that "no system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges... to induce an elected official" to support its policy objectives; PIN acting chief John Keller and acting Criminal Division head Kevin Driscoll resigned the same day, along with other PIN prosecutors. On **14 February** Bove told the roughly twenty remaining PIN lawyers to produce a signatory or face firing; two signed. Roughly seven resignations came in the first wave, more in the following months. Election Crimes Branch director Rob Heberle also left in 2025; the post has remained vacant. On **2 April 2025** Judge Dale Ho dismissed the Adams case **with prejudice**, finding the government's stated rationale pretextual. **The staffing collapse.** PIN had **36 full-time lawyers in January 2025** (it had 25 as far back as 1982). By September 2025 NOTUS counted **two**, with twelve nominally assigned and ten detailed elsewhere. NPR reported in May 2026 that a section of roughly forty staff was down to **two full-time attorneys**, and that open investigations and charged cases had fallen from **175–200 to about 20**. **The powers went too.** The Justice Manual consultation requirement was **suspended in June 2025** "while revisions are ongoing." The congressional-charging approval policy went under review. The FBI squad investigating congressional misconduct was disbanded. The election-offenses manual was removed from the Department's website. **The 2026 election posture.** Reporting in June 2026 found that no Election Day command center was stood up at FBI headquarters; that the March 2026 in-person and July 2026 online election-crimes trainings were cancelled, citing "changes in priorities," with the last in-person training held in January 2024; and that District Election Officers were appointed only in June 2026, without the customary public announcement. > [!warning] What is not established > The Department's own staff page still lists Amundson as chief "since 2019," which is stale. **No reliable confirmation of who currently leads PIN was available as of September 2026**, and there is no evidence the section was formally abolished or merged — it appears to have been emptied rather than closed. An August 2026 renaming of the Criminal Division's Fraud Section rests on a single source and has not been shown to involve PIN. ⭐ **Why this page sits in a democratic-backsliding vault rather than an administrative one.** Capacity is a precondition, not a detail. A statute criminalizing election fraud with two attorneys and no training program behind it is a different law than the same statute with forty and a manual. The section was not repealed, defunded by Congress, or struck down — it was reassigned, and the difference between a law on the books and a law enforced turns out to be a personnel decision that requires no vote. ## See Also - [[Morrison v. Olson]] — the independent-counsel alternative, and why it no longer exists - [[Special Counsel]] — what the Department uses instead - [[Emil Bove]] · [[Eric Adams]] — the February 2025 sequence - [[Ed Martin]] — the Weaponization Working Group, running in the opposite direction - [[Jack Smith]] — section chief, 2010–2015 - [[Department of Justice]]