Ryan Lucas

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.

to do cases and hold corrupt state and local officials to account.

One example is a case against a small town Pennsylvania police officer who was convicted of bribery and other crimes, including using his position to obtain sex from two women in exchange for favors in prosecutions.

And it's cases like these, people say, that are likely to slip through the cracks without the public integrity sections.

Well, legal experts, current and former officials that I spoke with say the message from the administration appears to be that it is indifferent at best to tackling the problem of public corruption.

And looking down the road in the longer term, the concern is that if corruption is allowed to go unchecked, that has a corrosive effect.

It eats away at government, at public trust in government.

And you can end up with a sort of broken system where public officials routinely serve themselves first and the public second.

Thank you.

Smaller states and more rural places, that's where the public integrity section would step in with resources and expertise and do these cases to hold corrupt state and local officials to account.

An example of that is the prosecution of a former police officer in a small town in Pennsylvania who was convicted of bribery and other offenses, including using his position to obtain sex from two women in exchange for favors in prosecutions.

And people tell me that without the public integrity section doing these sorts of cases, it's likely that those sorts of abuses of power are going to continue unchecked.

Cole Allen was previously charged by criminal complaint with three counts, including, most notably, trying to assassinate President Trump.