Career lawyers and staff at the Department of Justice say the rush of changes in the first week of the Trump administration make them feel like they’re under siege.
President Donald Trump’s acting attorney general
fired more than a dozen prosecutors who worked on the criminal cases against Trump, reassigned senior personnel across major divisions and dramatically shifted workplace rules — all in a matter of days.
Even as the moves followed through on vows Trump made on the campaign trail to
remake the department under his vision, the swift action still took staffers by surprise
“It feels like a non-violent war. It’s just wild. Everybody’s a sitting duck and these people have no power or control over the situation,” said one DOJ career employee. “People are just in a state of shock and devastated. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen … Nothing that happened during the first Trump administration came anywhere close to this.”
POLITICO spoke with more than a dozen current and former DOJ officials for this article, most of whom were granted anonymity because of fears of potential retribution.
Trump’s
blanket pardons of Jan. 6 rioters, which wiped out years of work, demoralized some already anxious staff. So did the sharp shifts in DOJ’s prosecution policies, including a broad halt to litigation by Justice’s Civil Rights Division. But employees say
the firings of more than a dozen attorneys who worked for special counsel Jack Smith, the transfers of veteran national-security prosecutors and a call by a Trump appointee for Jan. 6 prosecutors to turn over their files for special review have been more disruptive than any policy changes.
Trump officials’ early decision to reassign top career leaders of the National Security Division and the Criminal Division to less desirable jobs has fueled much of the concern. Among the officials given 15 days to accept a reassignment: the department’s most senior career official, Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer, and the head of the Public Integrity Section, Corey Amundson, according to a person familiar with the moves.
Those officials and others were offered slots on a newly formed team aimed at combating sanctuary city policies, but at least some are expected to turn down those offers and leave the department. Amundson has already decided to do so, the person familiar with the developments said.
The firings Monday, which don’t appear to have included any offers of reassignment, upped the tension further.
“It’s got to be among the most demoralizing moments in the history of the Department of Justice,” said one former DOJ career official. “It is a flat-out purge of individuals who this administration must view either of suspect loyalty or have worked on matters they just did not like. … We are in the early phases of what to me is just looking like a wholesale politically inspired demolition of the Department of Justice in key places.”
Acting Attorney General James McHenry, who is running the department temporarily while Pam Bondi awaits Senate confirmation, ordered the firings of the prosecutors who worked on the special counsel’s team. A Justice Department official said McHenry “did not believe these officials could be trusted to faithfully implement the President’s agenda because of their significant role in prosecuting the President.”
Several employees also said new personnel policies like the Trump administration’s demand that
employees come to the office five days a week has done as much to fuel the sense of turmoil among lawyers and others at DOJ as any of the shifts in enforcement priorities. Some flexible work arrangements put into place during the pandemic are nearly five years old, and rolling them back has complicated the lives of many employees, especially those with young children.
Government-wide directives the administration issued calling on agencies to
“identify all employees on probationary periods” have led to some panic among DOJ personnel who’ve been at the agency for less than two years and lack most civil service protections.
“It’s the probation announcement that has people completely terrified,” said the career staffer. “There are a lot of question marks around some of these programmatic shifts, but there are not really question marks with respect to some of these fundamental employment issues.”
Fear has also set in among prosecutors who handled cases against more than 1,500 people charged in connection with the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. They already saw their work undermined and abandoned by the
pardons Trump gave to nearly everyone convicted.
However, their sheer numbers could be an obstacle to significant retribution. Hundreds of Justice Department attorneys from across the country, including many who rarely get involved in criminal matters, picked up Jan. 6 cases in what DOJ says was the largest prosecutorial and investigative effort ever undertaken by the department.
“Obviously, they can’t fire everybody,” the former DOJ career official said.
At the FBI, a directive from the Justice Department’s acting No. 2 official, Emil Bove, to
redirect the nation’s roughly 200 Joint Terrorism Task Forces toward immigration enforcement is rankling some agents who fear being called out the next time a terror plot in the making is missed.
“The FBI and DOJ do not have infinite resources to do infinite things,” said Chuck Rosenberg, a former FBI chief of staff. “That is why, for the last quarter century, they have prioritized national security work. There are genuine and dangerous counterterrorism and national security threats out there and we divert resources from them — and sideline experienced career professionals — at our peril.”
Another former FBI official with extensive experience managing the task forces, which typically include federal, state and local law enforcement, said the DOJ move opens the FBI to being second-guessed the next time a major act of terrorism takes place, such as the truck attack that killed 14 people on New Orleans’ famous Bourbon Street on New Year’s Day.
“You take your eye off the ball for the more concerning type of a threat — whether domestic terrorism, international terrorism, homegrown violent extremism or foreign-inspired plots,” said the ex-official, who asked not to be named because of his current employer.
“That’s a lot of work to be done solely focused on the threat of terrorism. To pull people and split their time — there is criticism already of the FBI for miscues related to the Boston bombers and whether they missed things going on in New Orleans,” the former FBI official continued. “You are taking valuable resources and dedicating resources from targeting the highest priority threats to the country to something that’s not nearly the threat.”
Also roiling the waters at DOJ are a series of unusual public comments by the new acting U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C.: Ed Martin. In a provocative social media post last week, he endorsed Trump’s pardon of two D.C. police officers convicted of conspiracy to obstruct justice in connection with the death in 2020 of a suspect they were pursuing. A jury also found one of the officers guilty of second-degree murder.
“Hear me loud and clear: we will stand with the Blue against the thugs and scum who terrorize DC,” Martin
wrote on X. “Today, I spoke with the MPD chief of police 3 times about protecting the Blue. Under Biden, they chose politics over police. I choose police. Free these guys and let’s go get the bad guys.”
Many law enforcement officials opposed the prosecution and the Metropolitan Police Department issued a statement welcoming the pardons, but some former prosecutors said Martin’s comments appeared to endorse a gloves-off approach to policing.
“A lot of people with little or no experience in law enforcement or criminal prosecution often think the solution is to empower violent or lawless police officers,” said Brendan Ballou, who resigned from the Justice Department last week after handling Jan. 6 cases. “My sense is that that is completely counterproductive and, frankly, betrays a certain lack of experience on the part of people saying that.”
Martin’s remarks echoed controversial calls by Trump for more aggressive tactics by police. Months into his first term,
Trump urged police to stop treating suspects so kindly. “Please don’t be too nice,” he implored. And at a rally during his last campaign,
Trump said “one real rough, nasty” and “violent day” of police targeting criminals would “immediately” wipe out crime.
Some former officials also said Martin’s inflammatory rhetoric is likely to backfire on prosecutors, as judges look at the government’s claims with more skepticism and give more leeway to defense lawyers making arguments that police were abusive or corrupt.
“You know that very good defense attorneys are going to turn this against the office,” one former federal prosecutor said.
In another attention-grabbing move, Martin tangled publicly with a federal judge in Washington last week,
taking to X to accuse him of overreaching in ordering that several Jan. 6 defendants whose sentences Trump commuted
stay away from the Capitol. The judge, Amit Mehta,
backed down Monday, while
evincing some irritation with Martin’s approach.
“Some people apparently equate sounding tough with effective leadership, but effective leaders think and talk in serious and sophisticated and thoughtful ways,” Rosenberg said. “This ain’t that.”
Despite the current turmoil, there seem to have been only a smattering of departures so far by career lawyers.
“Every government employee in moments like this needs to decide where they can best do the right thing,” said Ballou, who wrote
a New York Times op-ed last week denouncing Trump’s pardons. “For some, that’s by staying inside government or by leaving and leaving noisily. And I thought I could be most effective by leaving noisily.
