Federal Prosecutor Responsible for Overseeing Major Criminal Cases Resigns

A veteran federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., responsible for overseeing major criminal cases in one of the nation’s most important offices abruptly resigned on Monday, according to an email sent to colleagues.

Denise Cheung, the head of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, resigned rather than carry out a directive from the office’s Trump-appointed leadership, according to several people with knowledge of her actions who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Ms. Cheung did not say what precipitated her decision in her email, but she thanked her colleagues for adhering to the highest standards of professional conduct.

“This office is a special place,” she wrote. “I took an oath of office to support and defend the Constitution, and I have executed this duty faithfully.”

Ms. Cheung, a Harvard Law School graduate, said prosecutors in the office had conducted themselves “with the utmost integrity” by “following the facts and the law and complying with our moral, ethical and legal obligations.”

The resignation came less than a day after President Trump nominated Ed Martin, a right-wing activist who sat on a board that raised cash for rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and pushed for their mass reprieve, to run the office permanently.

A spokesman for Mr. Martin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Decisions by Mr. Trump’s appointees have roiled the Justice Department. Last week, seven career officials, in the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan and at department headquarters, resigned rather than signing the dismissal of federal corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York, saying the request by the department’s acting No. 2 official was inappropriate and undermined an appropriate investigation.

In a separate move, Mr. Martin told his staff on Friday that he was planning to hire about 20 more new line prosecutors, according to an email obtained by The New York Times.

His announcement of the hires came a little more than two weeks after top officials at the Justice Department fired more than a dozen rank-and-file prosecutors who had been brought into the office to work on cases stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.