Assistant US Attorney Denise Cheung resigned from her senior-level position with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday after a senior official from the Office of the Deputy Attorney General (ODAG) urged her to criminally investigate the legality of a contract and to freeze all grant funding awarded under the contract.

In a letter addressed to interim US Attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin, Cheung wrote that the senior official pressured her to criminally investigate whether a federal agency had lawfully awarded a contract to an unnamed awardee ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration. More specifically, the senior official pressed Cheung to send a letter to the grant-holding bank declaring that the ODAG had probable cause—a Constitutional Fourth Amendment legal requirement—to criminally investigate the bank accounts. The letter would allow the DOJ to seize all accounts and issue a 30-day freeze on all funds and assets awarded under the contract.

In her letter, Cheung explained that she disagreed with Martin and the ODAG over whether there was enough evidence to establish probable cause required to send the 30-day freeze letter. Cheung wrote in the letter:

I was asked to review documentation supplied by the Office of the Deputy Attorney General to open a criminal investigation into whether a contract had been unlawfully awarded by an executive agency before the change in Administration and to issue grand jury subpoenas pursuant to this investigation … Based upon the evidence I have reviewed, I still do not believe there is sufficient evidence to issue the letter you described, including sufficient evidence to tell the bank there is probable cause to seize the particular accounts identified. Because I believed that I lacked the legal authority to issue such a letter, I told you that I would not do so. You then asked for my resignation.

After conferring with her DOJ colleagues, Cheung reiterated that none of the prosecutors believed there to be enough evidence to establish probable cause. In response, the senior official accused Cheung of “doing nothing,” other than seeking the result that “[she] and the FBI wanted,” and demanded that she resign.

While Cheung’s letter does not name the federal agency, the bank, or the contract at issue, various news outlets have reported that the Biden-Harris administration has awarded over $100 billion in appropriations to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of which $20 billion was transferred to Citibank last year. Anonymous grant recipients stated on Wednesday that they were unable to withdraw funds but had not received notice of a freeze from either Citibank or the EPA.  

Cheung’s resignation comes after a video surfaced in which a Biden-era EPA administrator made an unofficial comment about how the agency had been “throwing gold bars” off the Titanic. The comment referred to the agency’s alleged attempt to transfer EPA climate funds to “nonprofits, states, and tribes” in advance of Trump’s inauguration. The video elicited a strong response from Trump-appointed EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin in which he expressed a desire to terminate the Biden-Harris Financial Agent Agreement and demanded the return of the $20 billion which he claims was “parked at a financial institution by the Biden-Harris Administration to fund partisan pet projects.”