DOJ fires officials who worked on Jack Smith's Trump investigation
Special counsel Jack Smith left the Justice Department before Donald Trump was inaugurated. (Photo by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
The Justice Department fired more than a dozen officials who worked on the special counsel team that investigated Donald Trump in two separate criminal cases, citing a lack of trust in them, a department spokesman said Monday.
Acting attorney general James McHenry informed the officials of their firings, saying that he “does not trust these officials to assist in faithfully implementing the President’s agenda.”
The firings were effective immediately and focused on officials who played key roles in prosecuting Trump, the spokesman said.
In a letter sent to the officials, McHenry referred to Trump’s claims that previous administrations weaponized law enforcement to hurt political enemies.
“Nowhere was that effort more salient than in the unprecedented prosecutions the Justice Department vigorously pursued against President Trump himself,” reads a copy of the letter obtained by The Washington Post. “You played a significant role in prosecuting President Trump. The proper functioning of government critically depends on the trust superior officials place in their subordinates.”
The terminations are the latest example of the Trump administration reshaping the Justice Department since the inauguration last week, transferring or firing veteran career officials who the president’s allies believe would impede or interfere with their agenda.
The shake-up has hit nearly every major department and could eliminate some guardrails at the Justice Department intended to keep politics from interfering with investigations, according to people familiar with the moves.
Among the people transferred to a less-influential position was Bradley Weinsheimer, the Justice Department’s most senior career official. His position included being involved in some of the department’s thorniest cases, acting as a mediator in ethical disputes, and telling political appointees in the law enforcement agency what they could and could not do.
The chief of the Justice Department’s public integrity section, Corey Amundson, was also being removed from his post, according to people familiar with the personnel move. The section oversees election crimes and investigations into public officials, and its chief is a nonpartisan career official, according to the Justice Department website.
Veteran career officials in the national security, criminal, environmental and civil rights divisions were also removed from their positions. Some were transferred to a newly created division focused on sanctuary cities and immigration enforcement.
The transfers to less-desirable positions are probably, in part, intended to skirt career civil service protections and push at least some of these people to resign if they do not want to accept the transfers, according to legal experts familiar with the workings of the Justice Department.
Legal experts said the attorney general will have the authority to convert some of these career positions into political ones, giving the Trump administration authority to pick whomever it wants for the powerful posts.
While the people removed from their positions have deep expertise in complicated legal areas, some experts said it was important to note whom the administration puts in their place.
“We have to wait and see,” said Harvey Eisenberg, a recently retired national security prosecutor in Maryland. “We need to calm down and evaluate each step on its merits, not on speculation.”
In November 2022—soon after Trump announced his presidential bid—Attorney General Merrick Garland said he would appoint Jack Smith to serve as special counsel to oversee the investigations of Trump.
The special counsel prosecutors fired Monday were concentrated in the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia, where the election interference case against Trump was prosecuted.
Many were longtime career prosecutors who had expertise in national security and public-corruption prosecutions. Those people have protections as career government employees, and it is unclear what—if any—legal ramifications the Trump administration could face because of the firings.
“This is without a doubt retaliation, pure and simple,” said Stephen A. Saltzburg, a former Justice Department official who now teaches at George Washington University’s law school. “We have never had a situation like this before. On the other hand, we’ve never had a president who was indicted in two different federal cases.”
It was unclear how many people on the special counsel team were terminated Monday. Smith built a team of at least 40 lawyers to investigate Trump. They looked into Trump’s alleged mishandling of national defense secrets after he left the White House in 2021 and his alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Smith brought some people from outside the government to serve on the special counsel team, though many were career employees who were detailed to work on the team. Once the prosecutions were over, some officials left the Justice Department or retired. But many went back to their career positions in different parts of the department.
“In light of their actions, the Acting Attorney General does not trust these officials to assist in faithfully implementing the President’s agenda. This action is consistent with the mission of ending the weaponization of government,” the Justice Department spokesman said.
The two special counsel investigations resulted in indictments, but Smith dropped the cases against Trump after the election, citing long-standing federal guidelines that prohibit the prosecution of a sitting president.
Smith was hired from outside the government and left the Justice Department before Trump was inaugurated.
Days before the inauguration, Garland released Smith’s special counsel report detailing the findings of the D.C. election interference case against Trump. Smith concluded in the report that he was confident prosecutors had ample evidence against Trump to secure a guilty verdict had the case gone to trial.
A separate volume of the special counsel’s report detailing the findings of the classified-document case has not been released. Garland had said he would not publicly release the report because litigation is ongoing against Trump’s two former co-defendants in the case. But, per special counsel regulations, the former attorney general had wanted to show the report to some Senate and House leaders.
A court blocked the Justice Department from releasing the report to Congress.
It is now up to Trump’s Justice Department to determine how to handle the ongoing litigation and the potential release of the report.
Trump nominated one of his top personal defense attorneys, Todd Blanche, to serve as the deputy attorney general, the second-most-powerful position in the Justice Department.
While Blanche awaits Senate confirmation, another Trump defense attorney, Emil Bove, is serving as the acting deputy attorney general.
Jeremy Roebuck contributed to this report.
Write a letter to the editor, share a story tip or update, or report an error.
