President Donald J. Trump is taking a chainsaw to the Department of Justice. The unsavory elements are being cut away, and, again, this shouldn’t be a shock to anyone paying attention to the 2024 campaign. The cancerous elements that infected this institution under Joe Biden, which were weaponized to go after Trump, pro-life activists, and the January 6 defendants, will be excised. Two prosecutors were fired, with at least 50 US attorneys and their associates also being given pink slips. The latter isn’t new either—it’s customary for a new administration to pick new US attorneys. Let’s call it the Clinton protocol (via NYT):
Trump admin fires 50 prosecutors and deputies in DOJ overhaul https://t.co/zoPQouUDLX
— Axios (@axios) March 31, 2025
Two longtime career prosecutors have been suddenly fired by the White House, in what current and former Justice Department officials called an unusual and alarming exercise of presidential power.
In recent days, the prosecutors, in Los Angeles and Memphis, were dismissed abruptly, notified by a terse one-sentence email stating no reason for the move other than that it was on behalf of the president himself.
The ousters reflected a more aggressive effort by the White House to reach deep inside U.S. attorney offices across the country in a stark departure from decades of practice. While it is commonplace and accepted for senior political appointees at the Justice Department to change from administration to administration, no department veteran could recall any similar removal of assistant U.S. attorneys.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.
Asked about the ousters and whether others had been let go in a similar fashion, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said, “The White House, in coordination with the Department of Justice, has dismissed more than 50 U.S. attorneys and deputies in the past few weeks.”
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Trump has made it clear that the DOJ will focus on enforcing the law, not pursuing politically charged witch hunts, which was the primary function of this agency and the FBI for years. The president has learned from his first administration—attack the rot quickly.
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