The interim attorney general said goodbye to more than a dozen prosecutors who worked in the two criminal investigations in Donald J. Trump for the special lawyer Jack Smith, saying that it could not be trusted that “faithfully implement” the president’s agenda, the president’s agenda, A spokesman for the Department of Justice. saying.
The veterans of the Department of Justice described the shots an atrocious violation of the well -established laws aimed at preserving the integrity and professionalism of government agencies.
What made it even more discordant, said current and previous officials, was that such a transcendental and aggressive step had been initiated by a dark interim attorney general, James Mchenry, operating on behalf of a president with a declared desire for revenge, and Few advisors with height or inclination to contain it.
The department did not appoint prosecutors dismissed. But a person who worked with some members of Mr. Smith’s team said that many of the layoffs seemed to attack career lawyers and probably violated civil service protections for non -political employees.
The measure was abrupt, but not unexpected: Trump had promised to say goodbye to Mr. Smith as soon as he assumed office, but the special lawyer and some of his main prosecutors resigned before the day of taking possession. Others, however, including some assigned to the United States Prosecutor’s Office in Washington, returned to their former positions.
The announcement began a second week of convulsive change in an department that Trump has promised to dismantle and rebuild, marking the beginning of a new era of more direct control of the White House of federal agencies of application of the law.
In the letters to the prosecutors, who were transmitted electronically on Monday afternoon, Mr. Mchenry said that Trump had constitutional authority on personnel matters under article II of the Constitution to fire the members of the career staff, instead of arguing that they were finished by causes based on the cause. on low performance or inappropriate behavior.
“Given your important role in the prosecution of the president, I do not believe that the leadership of the department can trust you to help implement the president’s agenda faithfully,” said the farewell memorandum.
Greg Brower, who was US prosecutor during the administration of George W. Bush, said the measure was unheard of.
“This is not preceded, given the career status of these people, which makes them not subject to the president’s dismissal, and the apparent lack of any cause that the department has been able to articulate,” Brower said. “And therefore, I suspect that we will see them exercise their rights to appeal” to the Merit Systems Protection Board, an independent agency that reviews the claims of the workers of the dismissed civil service and can restore them.
The justification expressed in the shooting memorandum contradicts decades of the Civil Service Law, which says that employees can only be fired for misconduct or low performance, not to do their job, said Kristin Alden, a lawyer who specializes in problems of problems Federal Employment.
“The reason we have the civil service reform law is to move away from the loot system,” he said.
The shots, previously informed by Fox News, were produced only a few hours after the news of an important personnel movement made by the Trump team that stressed their intention to quickly eliminate officials who could contradict their plans. The highest career official in the department, an employee of the highly respected department responsible for some of the most delicate cases, was reassigned to a much less powerful position.
If that official, Bradley Weinsheimer, remains as the attached associate attorney, would have handled critical questions about possible challenges, a thorny issue for an apartment that will soon be administered by several former lawyers of Mr. Trump.
Follow the reallocations of some of the most experienced and very respected supervisors of the department, including senior officials with experience in national security, international investigations, extraditions and public corruption. On Monday, one of them, the head of the Public Integrity Section, resigned.
It is still not clear who will replace them.
Like many of the other officials who have received electronic transfer emails, Mr. Weinsheimer has had the option of moving to the task force of the sanctuary cities of the department, an offer seen by some in the same situation as an effort to force them to quit.
Mr. Weinsheimer, a respected veteran of the department for three decades, played a fundamental role under multiple administrations, often acting as a critical referee of ethical problems or interactions that required a neutral referee.
He was appointed for his current role on the Attorney General Jeff Sessions in July 2018 during Mr. Trump’s first mandate, a measure that was permanent for one of his successors, William P. Barr.
Mr. Weinsheimer also turned four years in the Department of Professional Responsibility of the Department, who investigates complaints about prosecutors. An email to your government account was not immediately returned.
In 2021, Weinsheimer cleared the way for former Trump administration officials to testify to Congress on the president’s actions after the 2020 elections, about the objection of Mr. Trump’s lawyers. But transcripts showed that he had tried strictly limit the scope of the questionsto the anger of the members of the Democratic Committee personnel.
Mr. Weinsheimer also directed the point for the department of an irritable exchanges with the lawyers of President Joseph R. Biden Jr. about the inclusion of the highly harmful evaluation of the mental sharpness of Mr. Biden contained in the lawyer’s report special about its management of classified information management.
Also on Monday, the head of the Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice resigned instead of being forced to transfer.
The boss, Corey Amundson, was informed in recent days that he would be reallocated to work in immigration. Mr. Amundson was one of the many senior officials of his career told him that he was being sent to work in the working group focused on the Sanctuary cities, jurisdictions that are expected to be reluctant to comply with the administration officials trying Increase deportations and immigration arrests.
In his renunciation letter, which was obtained by the New York Times, Mr. Amundson reported the many significant corruption cases that he supervised in his 26 years in the department.
“I spent my whole professional life committed to the apolitical application of Federal Criminal Law and to guarantee that those around me understood and embrace that central principle of our work,” he wrote in his letter to Mr. Mchenry. “I am proud of my service and I wish him the best to seek justice on behalf of the American people.”
He added that he wanted the department to follow Mr. Trump’s agenda, “even to protect all Americans from the scourge of violent crimes and public corruption.”
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