House Democratic leaders are asking Justice Department officials to explain an “onslaught” of firings and reassignments of prosecutors during President Trump’s first week in office.
The letter from Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), the top Democrats on the Judiciary and Oversight committees, detail the “widespread summary firing and involuntary reassignment of excellent career prosecutors.”
On his first full day in office, Trump officials sidelined top career prosecutors in Justice’s national security and criminal divisions, often placing them in new positions unrelated to their expertise.
At least one of those early reassignments were of prosecutors who had worked on investigations into Trump.
The Justice Department (DOJ) took that a step further Monday, firing all prosecutors who had worked on either the election interference case or the Mar-a-Lago documents probe.
“This onslaught against effective DOJ civil servants began within hours of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, in complete contradiction of the president’s repeated pledges to maintain a merit-based system for government employment,” the two lawmakers wrote.
“Yet, you appear to have removed them from their offices without regard to their demonstrated competencies, their recognized achievements, or their devoted service to the Department, in some cases reassigning them to areas that are outside of their legal expertise. By removing them from their positions in this hasty and unprincipled way, you have very likely violated longstanding federal laws,” they added, pointing to civil service protections.
The letters ask for a breakdown of each employee who was fired or reassigned, the rationale given to the employee, and their past evaluations.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to request for comment.
But in the case of the prosecutors who worked on Trump’s criminal cases, they were explicitly informed their work on the cases was the reason for their removal.
The letters quoted remarks from Trump on his first day in office, blaming the Biden administration for a “systemic campaign against its perceived political opponents.”
“Nowhere was that effort more salient than in the unprecedented prosecutions the Department of Justice pursued against President Trump himself,” Acting Attorney General James McHenry wrote, adding that “I do not believe that the leadership of the Department can trust you to assist in implementing the President’s agenda faithfully.”
The letter also asks about reports that across government, Trump administration officials are poring over prospective employees’ social media accounts to try to determine their political leanings.
The letter expressed alarm over any effort to choose loyalists over qualified candidates, calling it a violation of the current merit-based hiring system. Trump signed a Day One order on merit-based hiring that blasted diversity policies, but competitive hiring practices have been the basis of the federal civil service system for over 100 years.
“This approach has protected the federal workforce from being turned into an army of cronies, suck-ups, and sycophants, ensuring that the American people can rely on non-partisan professionals chosen based on their qualifications and their performance,” Raskin and Connolly wrote.
“Rather than embracing these principles, you seem intent on upending them and returning us to the days of the infamous ‘spoils system’ of the 19th century, when civil servants were hired based on political loyalty rather than professional merit.”
Beyond prosecutors, the Justice Department has fired the acting official overseeing the U.S. immigration court system as well as other top officials.
The department also suspended its program for hiring entry-level attorneys and interns, a major pathway for recruiting new hires to the department.
The reassignments include officials like deputy assistant attorney general George Toscas, a national security law expert pushed to the newly created Office of Sanctuary Cities Enforcement. Toscas is an expert in prosecuting terrorism cases and had worked on the Trump documents case.
Eun Young Choi, another national security official who worked on crypto cases, was also reassigned. She also worked on the prosecution of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, who Trump pardoned.
