By Carol D. Leonnig, Spencer S. Hsu · The Washington Post (c) 2025
The head of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. resigned Tuesday morning after declining to comply with a Trump administration demand to freeze the assets of a multibillion-dollar Biden administration environmental grant initiative, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Veteran prosecutor Denise Cheung did not spell out her reasons for her sudden resignation in an emailed announcement to colleagues that was obtained by The Washington Post, but she praised her co-workers for their “countless” sacrifices in the service of the public and honest law enforcement.
“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.”
Cheung’s resignation came in connection with a Justice Department effort to assist President Donald Trump’s new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, who said last week that he would try to rescind $20 billion in grants awarded by the Biden administration for climate and clean energy projects, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss it publicly.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said on X that the agency would seek to revoke contracts for a still-emerging “green bank,” known as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, that is set to fund tens of thousands of projects to fight climate change and promote environmental justice.
The people said Cheung and interim U.S. attorney Edward R. Martin Jr. disagreed over whether she was delaying efforts to order a financial institution to halt spending transfers pending further investigation, or seeking to reach a compromise by taking steps she believed were ethical and appropriate. On Monday, Martin called Cheung, yelling at her for failing to do what acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove’s office had asked, one person said, although a second person contradicted that account, saying their exchanges were blunt but professional.
The Justice Department has the authority to freeze assets, but it can only take that step when it has evidence suggesting the assets can be traced to a crime.
In this case, the people said, Cheung and Martin disagreed over whether halting releases was inappropriate and unethical without such evidence, or whether she was disobeying the department’s leadership and investigative strategy of stopping releases and looking for evidence.
Cheung’s departure as the top supervisor overseeing federal criminal cases for the U.S. attorney’s office in the nation’s capital marks the latest shake-up of key federal prosecutors’ offices under the Trump administration. At least seven senior U.S. public corruption prosecutors resigned last week, including interim Manhattan U.S. attorney Danielle Sassoon and a top deputy, after Bove ordered the dismissal of corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams (D) because he agreed to support the administration’s anti-immigration policies.
The D.C. U.S. attorney’s office has been a focus of the administration’s early weeks, rocked by Trump’s pardoning of all of nearly 1,600 defendants in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, whose prosecutions were run by the office, and the firing of numerous Jan. 6 prosecutors and members of special counsel Jack Smith’s team based in the office.
In one of his first moves last month, Martin also ordered two top supervisors – Cheung and Jon Hooks, the head of the office’s public corruption unit – to review how the office handled Jan. 6 prosecutions.
Martin oversees roughly 360 prosecutors in the D.C. office who are responsible for investigating current and former members of Congress and executive branch agencies in Washington – such as the EPA – prosecuting key national security and international crimes, and enforcing all D.C. felony laws.