The firing of multiple career Justice Department lawyers involved in prosecuting Donald Trump on Monday was designed to intimidate the Justice Department and FBI workforce and deter investigations of Trump’s second administration, five former Justice Department and FBI officials told NBC News.
“They are scaring people into behaving a certain way,” said a former senior FBI official, who asked not to be named, citing fears of retaliation.
“Imagine if anyone in the new administration legitimately abuses their position,” he added. “Is anyone in DOJ or FBI really going to investigate that now?”
Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics expert and former New York University law professor, said Trump appears to be trying to achieve two goals: punishing his perceived enemies and deterring future criminal probes.
“The motive is retribution,” Gillers said. “At the same time, he also warns others that they will suffer the same fate if they cross him. So a second motive is deterrence. What we have then is both revenge and behavior modification.”
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A spokesperson for the Justice Department, now run by an acting deputy attorney general appointed by Trump, declined to comment.
Among those fired Monday were multiple career prosecutors who worked on the team of special counsel Jack Smith, who charged Trump with mishandling classified documents and interfering in the 2020 election. They include Molly Gaston, J.P. Cooney, Anne McNamara and Mary Dohrmann, an official familiar with the matter said.
Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly vowed to revamp the Justice Department and the FBI, accusing both of pursuing politically motivated “witch hunts” against him. Smith and former Attorney General Merrick Garland repeatedly said Trump’s own actions, not political bias, resulted in the criminal prosecutions.
Trump’s election victory suggested that voters still support him and his vows to shake up Washington. “The scales of justice will be rebalanced,” Trump said in his inaugural address last week. “The vicious, violent and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department and our government will end.”
A former career Justice Department official who worked during Trump’s first term and asked not to be named, citing fears of retribution, said the firings were driven by revenge but were also strategic.
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“He fired them out of anger and spite,” the former Justice Department official said. “He is trying to intimidate other officials in an effort to get them to submit to him personally rather than to their jobs and the Constitution.”
A second former Justice Department official predicted that acts of retribution would continue if Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee, is confirmed as FBI director.
Patel, whose confirmation hearing is Thursday, has blamed career civil servants for being part of a “deep state” plot to undermine Trump’s presidency. Patel published a list of 50 people in a 2023 memoir who he said were members of the “executive branch deep state.”
The second former Justice Department official said: “The firings are designed not just to punish these career officials who were simply doing their jobs, but to send a chilling and sinister message to other career employees that they better not stand in the way of people like Kash Patel who have vowed to target Trump’s political opponents.”
Documents seized during the FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in August 2022, partially redacted by the source.Department of Justice via AP file
Multiple reassigments
Last week, Justice Department officials reassigned four senior career prosecutors also involved in Trump investigations to a crackdown on sanctuary cities. The former officials warned that the loss of prosecutors with decades of experience will slow federal counterterrorism, criminal and cyber investigations and potentially put the public at risk.
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The reassigned prosecutors were moved to a new Justice Department task force created last week that will investigate state or local officials who resist or fail to comply with federal immigration enforcement efforts.
A third former Justice Department official said the demotions of the senior career prosecutors would weaken the department and the FBI.
“Only a fool could think that introducing turmoil into — and removing expertise from — our national security mission is a good idea,” said the third former official, who also requested anonymity because of concerns about retribution.
George Toscas, a senior civil servant in the Justice Department’s National Security Division who was involved in the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s estate in Florida, in 2022, was reassigned to the sanctuary city task force last week, NBC News reported last week.
So was Eun Young Choi, a career prosecutor in the National Security Division, who helped convict Ross Ulbricht, a cryptocurrency backer who helped found Silk Road, a black market on the dark web that sold illegal drugs, The Washington Post reported.
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During the 2024 campaign, Trump promised to pardon Ulbricht, a folk hero in the libertarian and crypto communities, if they supported him. On his first full day in office, Trump pardoned Ulbricht and denounced the federal prosecutors who convicted him.
“The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern-day weaponization of government against me,” Trump wrote.
The second former Justice Department official said reassigning career prosecutors put the public at risk.
“The senior career DOJ officials who have been targeted are in charge of investigating the most sensitive and complex national security threats facing the country — from active terrorist plots to Chinese cyberattacks,” the former official said. “They are extraordinary public servants who have devoted their professional lives to national security. There’s just no way to replace their decades of experience and leadership.”
Multiple Republicans in Congress, though, have said the Justice Department and the FBI need sweeping reform. Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” last month that Patel “represents the type of change that we need to see in the FBI. … The entire agency needs to be cleaned out.”
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“There are serious problems at the FBI,” Hagerty added. “The American public knows it.”
Timothy Naftali, a senior research scholar at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs and former director of the Nixon Presidential Library, said Trump’s victory in November is a sign of the support he still enjoys from voters.
Naftali said Trump and President Richard Nixon are similar in that they both tend to view the world in terms of allies or enemies. He said Trump, though, has been far more successful than Nixon at convincing Americans that all of the investigations of his conduct have been improper.
Until that public perception fades, Naftali said, Trump is likely to continue to openly retaliate.
“He’s managed to convince people that the exercise of investigative powers against Donald J. Trump is always illegitimate,” Naftali said. “That’s amazing. That gives him latitude. That’s the era we are living in.”
Donald Trump has terminated the remaining members of the independent, federal commission that assists election administration officials nationwide just a few months before the midterm elections, multiple outlets reported Thursday.
The remaining three commissioners of the four-member bipartisan commission were forced out on Thursday in different ways. The one Republican appointee resigned and the other two, Democratic appointees were notified of their terminations via email from the White House presidential personnel office.
“On behalf of President Donald J Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as Commissioner of the Election Assistance Commission is terminated, effective immediately. Thank you for your service,” the email, seen by Reuters, said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Election Assistance Commission serves as a “national clearinghouse of information on election administration”, accredits testing laboratories and certifies voting systems, and maintains the national mail-voter registration form developed by the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, according to the commission’s website. The terminations follow Trump and top administration officials’ advocacy to change vote-by-mail requirements and investigations into the 2020 election outcome, which Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
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“It is irresponsible and dangerous that this Administration remains dead set on causing chaos for our election officials across this country,” Arizona secretary of state Adrian Fontes said in a Thursday statement. “This move undermines the integrity of nonpartisan election administration.”
The 2002 law that established the commission, the Help America Vote Act, states the president can appoint replacements to the commission.
It is unclear how Trump will move ahead with the commission.
Former U.S. Olympian David Hearn (left) walks with his attorney Norman Eisen to speak to reporters and protesters gathered after his arraignment at the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.
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Former U.S. Olympic canoeist David Hearn pleaded not guilty to damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in D.C. Superior Court Thursday morning.
Federal prosecutors charged Hearn with a single count of destruction of property causing more than $1,000 in damage to the pool.
Hearn has previously claimed, which his attorneys repeated during a short press conference outside the court, that he simply touched the water in the pool out of curiosity.
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The Trump administration had just completed a $14 million renovation of the pool.
But shortly after the work finished, peeling paint and algae gathered in the water. The remodel has been largely criticized as a massive failure and waste of taxpayer dollars.
Superior Court Judge Carmen McLean released Hearn on his own recognizance. His next hearing is scheduled for Aug. 5.
Norm Eisen, one of Hearn’s attorneys, spoke to reporters outside of court following the hearing. He said the administration is using Hearn as a “scapegoat … for their own failures.”
“It is not a crime to touch the reflecting pool, to touch water in the United States of America,” he said.
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Prosecutors say there is a host of evidence against Hearn.
Three more people have been criminally charged with destruction of property at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Officers say they detained Cameron Thiers, Sophie Dennison-Gibby and Justin Carreno one Saturday afternoon in June and described in court documents witnessing them peeling and removing pieces of blue paint from the Reflecting Pool.
One officer “witnessed Carreno reach down into the reflecting pool and pull up a piece of the blue paint,” according to the court documents.
The officer who detained Dennison-Gibby “found 1 additional piece of the reflecting pool liner” in her purse, the documents said.
All three incidents were recorded on the officers’ body worn cameras, they said in the court documents.
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Several “partnering law enforcement agencies assigned to the Reflecting Pool” working with US Park Police were involved in detaining the two men and one woman — including officers from Texas, Oklahoma, Montana and California.
One of the officers said in court documents that Thiers “admitted to removing a piece of blue sealant from the Reflecting Pool and still had it in his hand when I made contact with him.”
The three defendants were arraigned in court Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor charges of destruction of property with a value less than $1,000. The judge ordered them to stay away from the Reflecting Pool.
Lawyers for Thiers and Dennison-Gibby declined to comment. CNN has reached out to Carreno’s attorney.
If found guilty of destruction of property, the defendants could be fined up to $1,000 and face a maximum of 180 days behind bars.
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The New York Times first reported that three additional people had been charged with damaging the Reflecting Pool.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that vandals caused major damage to the pool by gashing the lining after his administration spent more than $14 million on renovations, though he has not provided evidence to support that claim. The officers who charged Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby did not accuse them of gashing the lining.
Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn was indicted by a grand jury in Washington, DC, last week for allegedly damaging the Reflecting Pool. Hearn — unlike Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby – was charged with destruction of property with a value of more than $1,000 which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, if convicted. He is set to be arraigned in court Thursday.
Crews began draining the Reflecting Pool over the weekend to make repairs, according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, for the second time in three months.
The move comes after weeks of problems – algae blooms, green-hued water, a chipping bottom and the administration’s allegations of vandalism – that have plagued the iconic landmark, making its woes the subject of national interest.
