Justice Department prosecutors who worked on trump investigations fired

Acting Attorney General James McHenry on Monday fired more than a dozen prosecutors who worked on the two criminal investigations into Donald Trump for special counsel Jack Smith, saying they could not be trusted to "faithfully implement" the president's agenda, a Justice Department spokesperson said.

The department did not identify the prosecutors. But a person who worked with some members of Smith's team said many of the firings appeared to target career lawyers and most likely violated civil service protections for nonpolitical employees.

The move was abrupt, but not unexpected: Trump had vowed to fire Smith as soon as he took office, but the special counsel and some of his top prosecutors quit before his inauguration. Others, however, returned to their old posts, including some assigned to the U.S. attorney's office in Washington.


The announcement kicked off a second week of convulsive change at a department Trump has vowed to dismantle and reconstruct, ushering in a new era of more direct White House control of federal law enforcement agencies.

The firings came just hours after the Trump team made a major personnel move that underscored their intention to remove any officials who might contradict their plans -- reassigning the department's most senior career official, a well-respected department employee responsible for some of the most sensitive cases, to a much less powerful post.

The transfer of Bradley Weinsheimer, the associate deputy attorney general, is part of a larger effort by the Trump team to exert greater direct control over the department.

It follows the reassignments of some of the department's most experienced and highly regarded supervisors, including top officials with expertise in national security, international investigations, extraditions and public corruption. On Monday, one of them, the chief of the public integrity section, resigned.

It is not yet clear who will replace them.

Like many of the other officials who have received transfer emails, Weinsheimer has been given the option of transferring to the department's sanctuary cities task force -- an offer seen by some in the same situation as an effort to force them into quitting.

The transfer of Weinsheimer is the clearest sign yet that the Trump team is moving quickly to remove officials who might halt, delay or revise actions they deem inappropriate by political appointees.

(This article originally appeared in The New York Times)