Ryan Lucas

Right.

The other piece that I looked at is a special unit at the Justice Department called the Public Integrity Section.

It was created after Watergate to investigate and prosecute public corruption and election crimes.

And for 50 years, that is what it did.

It brought cases against elected officials, corrupt police officers.

But it has been gutted under this administration.

The section had 35 to 40 attorneys when Trump returned to office last January.

Now it has just two full-time attorneys.

The section had 175 to 200 investigations and charged cases on its hands when Trump returned to office.

That number has now dropped to around 20.

So a huge decrease.

I did reach out to the Justice Department for comment on this.

It did not respond.

Well, it's interesting.

But current and former officials I spoke with say it's really smaller states and rural areas that are going to be hit the hardest by this.

And the reason for that is public corruption cases are resource and time intensive.

Big city U.S.

attorney offices have enough resources to do them on their own.

But a lot of places don't.

And it's those places that the public integrity section would often step in with resources and expertise.