The Trump administration fires DOJ officials involved in criminal probes against the president

The Justice Department said Monday that it has dismissed many professional lawyers involved in Donald Trump's prosecution, escalating the president's campaign of retaliation against his perceived adversaries.

Acting Attorney General James McHenry's letter to the officials stated that they cannot be "trusted" to "faithfully" carry out Trump's objectives.

“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,” McHenry wrote. “Given your significant role in prosecuting the President, I do not believe that the leadership of the Department can trust you to assist in implementing the President’s agenda faithfully.”

The workers contributed to special counsel Jack Smith's inquiry, which resulted in now-dismissed indictments against Trump for his handling of confidential data and efforts to reverse his 2020 election defeat in the run-up to the Jan. 6 attack on the United States Capitol.

Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump maintained that all of the probes were illegitimate and politically driven "witch hunts." He said that Democrats had "weaponized" the Justice Department and attempted to damage his re-election effort.

Hours after his inauguration, Trump issued an executive order “ending the weaponization of the federal government.”

Former Justice Department officials and legal experts have long warned that Trump should not retaliate against career civil servants who were merely carrying out their duties and, in some cases, assigned to the investigations. They argued that retaliating against the career prosecutors who worked on the Trump cases would chill the Justice Department staff and hinder future investigations into inappropriate behavior by public officials.

“Firing prosecutors because of cases they were assigned to work on is just unacceptable,” said former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance. “It’s anti-rule of law; it’s anti-democracy.”