Trump’s DOJ has fired dozens of prosecutors, upending decades-old norm

The Department of Justice under the Trump administration has fired dozens of career prosecutors during the past six months, making the dismissal of federal attorneys — generally a move reserved for cases of misconduct — almost commonplace.

The dismissals often came without warning and have affected more than 40 prosecutors, based on reporting by the Washington Post and a tally of public information.

The total number of lawyers, agents and support staff DOJ has fired since the administration began in January includes dozens more people, according to Justice Connection, an advocacy group for former Justice Department employees. The group estimates that more than 200 career employees have been fired across the department and its component agencies, which include the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Among those fired was federal prosecutor Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI director James B. Comey, who lost her job Wednesday. The reason for her firing was not immediately clear. She had worked on high-profile matters such as the criminal cases of Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell and the recent trial of Sean Combs, the music mogul known as Diddy.

Others the Justice Department dismissed include career attorneys who worked on the prosecutions of Trump and those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department offered no comment on the firings but noted the agency expects to save $470 million after more than 4,000 employees accepted buyout offers.

The terminations have alarmed staff members and observers who worry that agency officials are engaged in a broad campaign to erode civil service protections, bolster the political interests of the president and weaken the rule of law.

The firings — often made without explanation — aren’t normal. Prosecutors and other federal employees are typically fired only when they do something improper or fail to perform their duties.

“‘Unusual’ is the wrong word — it’s unheard of,” said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit group focused on strengthening the federal workforce.

Some former prosecutors and experts say the departures have weakened the Justice Department’s front lines, prompted other prosecutors to leave on their own and rattled those who remain. They question the legality of the firings and say the administration’s approach risks creating a Justice Department stacked with a mix of loyalists and workers too cowed to speak up when they see improprieties.

After she was fired, Comey told her former colleagues not to succumb to fear.

“Fear is the tool of a tyrant, wielded to suppress independent thought,” she wrote in a note to them. “Instead of fear, let this moment fuel the fire that already burns at the heart of this place. A fire of righteous indignation at abuses of power.”

The firings account for only a small portion of the departures from the Justice Department, where many more have resigned or retired after they were demoted or moved into different jobs, according to employees and former employees.

The National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys said in a statement the firings “will make it far more difficult for DOJ to recruit and retain qualified attorneys, inhibit employees from executing their constitutional duties out of fear of reprisal, and will ultimately make our society less fair, safe, and secure.”

If unchecked, the situation could lead future presidents to throw out hundreds of prosecutors and replace them with supporters, creating an amped-up version of the spoils system of the 1800s that allowed presidents to stock government offices with their supporters, analysts said. In 1883, Congress created a system to hire employees based on merit and prevent their firing for political reasons after a disgruntled job seeker assassinated President James Garfield two years earlier.

“If [prosecutors] are there simply to please the boss, then I think we are entering a dangerous time,” said Barbara McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor who was U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan under President Barack Obama.

Former prosecutor Michael Gordon said he was given a stellar job review two days before he was fired this year. While he was preparing a witness for trial shortly before 5 p.m. on a Friday, he was handed a sheet of paper saying he was being let go without explanation. He was taken aback but instinctively knew why: He was among the prosecutors who had worked on the Jan. 6 cases.

“What’s shocking is that the Department of Justice — the part of the government that’s supposed to uphold the law — is instead openly defying it, openly thumbing its nose at the very laws that it’s supposed to enforce,” he said. “They’re prioritizing revenge over public safety.”

President George W. Bush faced accusations of injecting politics into prosecutors’ offices when his administration ousted nine of the U.S. attorneys he had appointed. The controversy then was over politically appointed officials who serve at the pleasure of the president — not the rank-and-file prosecutors who now find themselves at risk.

Career prosecutors hold extraordinary power. They can destroy reputations by simply issuing grand jury subpoenas. They can seek to put people away for years or, in the ultimate act of government authority, pursue taking away someone’s life as a form of punishment.

“If the public doesn’t trust that those decisions are being made on an apolitical basis, then it does harm to the institution,” said Paul Charlton, the U.S. attorney in Arizona who was fired under Bush.

An internal Justice Department review found the agency used a flawed and arbitrary process to drive out Charlton and other U.S. attorneys. But those experiences are “nothing like” the recent dismissals of career prosecutors, said Carol Lam, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California who was part of the Bush-era purge.

Prosecutors now have to worry about their work being undermined at every stage, she said. “Even if you were allowed to start the case, would you be able to continue it with this person then to be given a blanket pardon?” she asked.

It used to be that rank-and-file DOJ lawyers could do the job, she said, and the department would stand behind them as long as they acted ethically.

“That no longer is the case,” Lam said. “Now the criteria is: Is this going to help the president or not?”

“You don’t take an oath of allegiance to the administration or the president of the United States,” she added. “This disruption of that ethical standard means that this Department of Justice bears no resemblance of what it was before.”

The recent firings range from top-level career officials overseeing key Justice Department divisions to line prosecutors in far-flung U.S. attorneys’ offices around the country who caught the attention of Trump or his political appointees.

Adam Schleifer, an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, was fired in March after his work on a case against Fatburger founder Andrew Wiederhorn drew the ire of Trump confidante and MAGA influencer Laura Loomer, who advocated for Schleifer’s termination online. He was fired via an email from the White House, and is now challenging his dismissal with the Merit Systems Protection Board.

That same weekend, the department fired Reagan Fondren, a career attorney in Memphis, who’d been elevated to lead the U.S. attorney’s office there on an acting basis. No explanation was given.

Some have described their terminations in posts on social media. “It was a shock,” Adam Cohen, the former head of a key Justice Department task force overseeing drug and gang investigations, wrote on LinkedIn. He was fired in March, 18 hours after officials sent out a memo he’d prepared bearing the deputy attorney general’s signature, he said.

Joseph Tirrell, the department’s senior ethics attorney, was fired last week. He wrote in a note announcing his departure on LinkedIn that the oath he took as a prosecutor “did not come with the caveat that I need only support the Constitution when it is easy or convenient.”

In recent instances, the Justice Department is telling prosecutors they are being let go under Article II, the part of the Constitution that vests the power of the executive branch in the president.

Mark Zaid, an attorney representing some of the fired Justice Department employees, described Trump’s view of Article II authority as, “I’m the king. You all work for me — not anymore.” Trump has taken an expansive view of his powers knowing many of the Supreme Court justices share that sentiment.

Zaid, who has been working in employment law for more than 30 years, said he’s seen nothing like the recent firings across the federal government.

“All they did was their job, just like they did all prior years in multiple administrations, oftentimes during the first Trump administration,” he said. “And now all of a sudden, they’re guilty of something, which is usually associational.”

Observers raised the prospect that Trump’s approach could thrust the government back more than 100 years, when a patronage system rewarded political allies with jobs and punished political opponents by taking away their livelihoods.

Stier, of the Partnership for Public Service, said the dangers were much higher now because of the threats of nuclear war, cyberattacks and environmental disasters.

“We aren’t in the 19th century,” he said. “We are actually in a world that is so much more dangerous, complicated, faster-moving than the 19th century that the implications of a spoils system are a lot larger for us.”

Perry Stein and Spencer S. Hsu contributed to this report.