Among the many problems that have emerged in federal law enforcement during Donald Trump’s second term is the campaign against key personnel. Indeed, there’s been an unsubtle campaign to purge federal law enforcement of prosecutors and FBI officials who worked on cases that the president didn’t like.
Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested in March that these efforts are ongoing — and likely to get worse. Evidently, the increasingly hyper-partisan Republican meant it. NBC News reported on the administration’s latest Friday night news dump:
At least three federal prosecutors who worked on cases against Jan. 6 rioters were fired Friday by the Justice Department, according to more than half a dozen current and former officials familiar with the dismissals. A copy of one of the dismissal letters seen by NBC News was signed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, notifying the recipient that they were ‘removed from federal service effective immediately.’ No reason for the removal was stated in the letter.
If these developments sound at all familiar, it’s not your imagination. Less than two weeks after Donald Trump’s second inaugural, all six of the FBI’s most senior executives and multiple heads of FBI field offices across the country were forced out of their jobs — not because they’d done something wrong, but in large part because Team Trump wanted to punish officials involved in Jan. 6 cases.
It was not the only purge of its kind. As NBC News’ report added, “The Trump administration in late January fired probationary federal prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases and prosecutors who worked on former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Donald Trump. The administration also demoted some career prosecutors who worked on the Capitol siege investigation.”
The report quoted one unnamed federal law enforcement official who described Friday’s firings as “horrifying.” “To fire them, without explanation, is a slap in the face not only to them, but to all career DOJ prosecutors,” the official said. “No one is safe from this administration’s whims and impulses. And the public certainly is not served by the continued brain drain of DOJ — we are losing the best among us every day.” Team Trump has determined that when it comes to the violent insurrectionist assault on the U.S. Capitol, the criminals are the heroes, and the heroes are the villains. The lengths officials like Bondi will go to in order to codify this ridiculous principle are striking, but also increasingly common.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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