Political Tension Awaits Unproven DOJ Criminal Division Head (1)

Tysen Duva, the veteran line prosecutor President Donald Trump tapped to lead the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, steps into a powerful role attorneys see as a target for political influence that his predecessor partially deflected.

How Duva, who was sworn in Dec. 23, navigates pressure from the White House, DOJ leaders, and outside advocates will shape Trump’s ability to further overhaul US law enforcement.

Duva assumes the post from Matthew Galeotti, the acting Criminal Division head for the prior nine months who gained outsized influence due to his close preexisting working relationship with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. Galeotti, who’s expected to exit DOJ in the coming days, found ways to insulate staff from some of the politicization and case reversals permeating the rest of the department, said numerous lawyers who worked with or interacted with him.

Duva has “never experienced this level of management and these tense dynamics before—this is going to be a really high-velocity environment,” said Joseph Gerbasi, who retired in March after 28 years in the division.

“He’s the level between Bondi and Blanche and the career supervisory and line prosecutors,” he added, referring to Attorney General Pam Bondi.

In an illustration of challenges Duva faces, Galeotti couldn’t prevent structural changes that weakened the division’s public corruption footprint. Presidential pardons, US attorney dismissals, and lenient plea deals for a Trump-linked banker and former governor were also decided above his head.

Duva, a first-time manager who’s leading the division amid department-wide upheaval, will likely encounter persistent conflicts from this administration, multiple DOJ veterans said. He now oversees 1,100 white collar and violent crime enforcers under the shadow of Bondi and Blanche.

Duva, in a statement, pledged to make “non-partisan enforcement decisions” and credited Galeotti with doing “exactly that.”

“The Criminal Division will continue the Department of Justice’s mission to prosecute cases that harm the safety and security of the American people,” Duva said.

Ashley Hayek, a senior adviser to Bondi, followed up after this article first published, with her own statement: “Baseless accusations and false narratives may help this struggling reporter get more clicks but the truth remains—this Department of Justice has ended weaponization and does not make politicized decisions like the previous administration.”

Testy Exchange

After 18 years as a Jacksonville, Fla., assistant US attorney, Duva takes over a vast bureaucracy with attorneys litigating financial fraud, cybercrime, and gang cases. They also serve as a resource to US attorneys’ offices by approving their use of complex statutes like racketeering, authorizing wiretaps and other sensitive tools, and extraditing overseas fugitives.

But US attorneys also have a history of battling the division on particular cases, a scenario that tested Duva before he took the reins.

Then awaiting Senate confirmation as an aide to the attorney general, Duva intervened this fall to stall Miami’s US attorney from rushing to bring public corruption charges against a Democratic congresswoman, said three people familiar with the situation.

Trump-aligned US Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones threatened to derail what career prosecutors saw as a meritorious case by demanding they prematurely ask a grand jury to indict Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.), the people added, speaking anonymously to discuss internal deliberations.

Duva had a testy conversation with Reding Quiñones—his fellow Floridian Trump appointee—and prosecutors pulled the investigation together to successfully secure Cherfilus-McCormick’s Nov. 19 indictment on charges of stealing $5 million in federal Covid relief funds. Cherfilus-McCormick says she’s innocent.

Representatives for Reding Quiñones didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Hayek, who arrived at DOJ from America First Policy Institute, added: “This DOJ will continue to follow the facts in every case and remain united as one team to pursue justice and make America safe again.”

Relative Stability

The Criminal Division endured turbulence in the initial weeks of Trump’s second term with the removals of top career officials, resignations of public corruption attorneys who were ordered to dismiss criminal charges against then-New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and directives from Trump and Bondi to curtail international corruption enforcement.

But when Blanche replaced the administration’s first choice for interim division leader, Antoinette Bacon, with Galeotti, it ushered in a period with less attrition and more political independence, former DOJ employees and other lawyers said. Galeotti, a former Brooklyn-based federal prosecutor, previously worked with Blanche at WilmerHale.

Galeotti and his deputy, Keith Edelman, managed to preserve many corporate prosecutions as well-connected defense lawyers and Trump whisperers sought dismissals by arguing they’d been unfairly targeted or that cases fell outside Bondi’s narrowed white-collar focus, said the attorneys, who spoke anonymously to share private conversations.

Although some employees still felt demoralized by broader administration actions destabilizing DOJ’s career workforce, most lawyers interviewed credited Galeotti and Edelman for keeping the division out of some of the most contentious initiatives that have defined DOJ’s past year and for protecting core enforcement lanes.

“The enforcement actions the division has announced in just the past month—involving trade fraud, health care fraud, bank fraud, virtual asset crimes, and even the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act—reflect a level of activity that appears consistent with its work in recent years,” said Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman lawyer Jeff Izant, a former Criminal Division chief of staff.

Among White House priorities in which the Criminal Division dodged involvement: nationwide subpoenas of children’s hospitals over gender-affirming care; the human smuggling indictment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia; and prosecutions of Trump’s perceived enemies James Comey and Letitia James.

‘Tighter Bandwidth’

Duva lacks that personal history with Blanche, but does have ties to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles that landed him on the administration’s radar.

During his Senate hearing in October, Duva responded to Democratic scrutiny over Trump’s influence by emphasizing that his background as a career prosecutor would inform his commitment to follow the facts and the law.

But Trump’s law enforcement approach may force Duva to operate under a “little tighter bandwidth” compared to predecessors, said David Rybicki, a Criminal Division official in Trump’s first term who now co-leads the white collar practice at K&L Gates. He cited curbs on overseas bribery cases and a crackdown on tariff evaders as constraining factors.

“Something that we see in the Criminal Division now that was not quite the case when I was in the front office,” Rybicki added, “is how some of the administration’s priorities are conditioning and limiting what would have been traditional work that the division did.”