WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration’s firings and departures of career lawyers at the Justice Department have created fear and uncertainty among long-tenured staff, according to interviews and details described by The Associated Press. The upheaval has continued into Pam Bondi’s early tenure as attorney general, with lawyers who said they were working on sensitive cases describing abrupt termination or resignation, often without explanations.
The article centered on Michael Ben’Ary, a veteran prosecutor who, while driving one of his children to soccer practice in October, paused at a red light to check his work phone. He said his phone had been disabled, and he later found a letter in his personal email informing him he had been fired.
Ben’Ary had handled high-profile cases over two decades at the Justice Department, including the murder of a Drug Enforcement Administration agent and a suicide bomb plot targeting the U.S. Capitol. Most recently, the AP said he was leading a case tied to a deadly attack on American service members in Afghanistan. The AP reported that the same counterterrorism case was one Trump highlighted during an address to Congress, leaving Ben’Ary with what he and colleagues described as a sharp disconnect between the administration’s public emphasis and his internal dismissal.
The AP also described online allegations surrounding Ben’Ary. It reported that right-wing commentator Julie Kelly told hundreds of thousands of online followers that Ben’Ary had previously served as senior counsel to Lisa Monaco, then the No. 2 official in the Biden administration, and suggested he was part of an “internal resistance” to prosecuting former FBI Director James Comey. The AP said Ben’Ary was never involved in the Comey case. Ben’Ary’s firing, the AP said, came hours after Kelly’s post circulated widely.
The AP said terminations and a larger voluntary exodus of lawyers have removed “centuries” of combined experience from the department and reduced the number of career employees who are expected to act as a bulwark for the rule of law, as Trump presses the limits of executive power and seeks prosecutions of political opponents. Interviews by the AP of more than a half-dozen fired employees described departures across multiple categories, including prosecutors who handled cases involving the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on police at the Capitol, environmental and civil rights enforcement, counterterrorism work, immigration judges, and attorneys who defended administration policies.
Stuart Gerson, an official who served in the George H.W. Bush administration and acted as attorney general early in Bill Clinton’s administration, said the impact of removing staff at Ben’Ary’s level was “immensely damaging to the public interest.” He added, “We’re losing really capable people, people who have never viewed themselves as political and attempted to do the right thing.”
The AP cited estimates from Justice Connection, a network of department alums, saying it estimated that more than 230 lawyers, agents and other employees were fired last year, apparently because of work they were assigned, past criticism of Trump, or “seemingly no reason.” It also reported Justice Connection’s estimate that more than 6,400 employees left a department that had about 108,000 employees at the end of 2025.
Ben’Ary described unfinished business tied to the Kabul airport bombing case and the national security unit he led at the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia. After he was fired, the AP said he posted a typed note near his door as a distress call to colleagues, reminding them of the oath to follow the facts “without fear or favor” and “unhindered by political interference.” The note also warned that the department’s political leadership had violated those principles, “jeopardizing our national security and making American citizens less safe,” and urged: “While I am no longer your colleague, I ask that each of you continue to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons,” adding, “Follow the facts and the law.”
The AP reported that Justice Connection’s counts and other accounts were matched by a broader picture of institutional change described by former and current federal prosecutors. The AP said such firings began even before Bondi arrived in February, including days after Trump’s inauguration terminations of prosecutors assigned to Jack Smith’s special counsel team and later firings of prosecutors involved in cases stemming from the 2021 Capitol insurrection.
Among the examples described, the AP said a Jan. 6 prosecutor named Aliya Khalidi was fired and that she characterized the work as nonpartisan. “The people working on these cases were not political agents of any kind,” she said. “It’s all people who just care about the rule of law.” The AP said the firings were at times described as surgical and at other times as random, and “almost always without explanation.”
The AP also described other terminations and ethics-related dismissals. It said Joseph Tirrell, the department’s chief ethics officer, was fired in July, after counseling Bondi’s staff on ethics propriety and gifts, including a cigar box from Conor McGregor. The AP said Tirrell was fired before a FIFA Club World Cup final in New Jersey in which he had said Bondi could not ethically accept a free invitation. It reported that the Justice Department, in a statement, said none of Tirrell’s advice “was ever overruled” and that the Attorney General obtained ethics approval to attend the event in her official capacity as a member of a FIFA task force. Tirrell, the AP reported, said there was “a great deal of fear” because of his firing and others, and he asked, “Are you going to get fired because you provided ethics advice? Are you going to get fired because you have a pride flag on your desk?”
In addition, the AP reported that Anam Petit, an immigration judge, learned she was fired via email during a break between hearings and then returned to the courtroom to deliver a decision. Petit told the AP she put her phone away and centered herself to continue rendering the ruling, describing “a very shaky voice and shaky hands.”
The AP said the administration has disputed accounts of some firings and resignations, and it reported that the department defended the terminations of those who investigated Trump as “consistent with the mission of ending the weaponization of government.” In the same statement, the AP reported, the department said, “This is the most efficient Department of Justice in American history, and our attorneys will continue to deliver measurable results for the American people,” and said it has hired more than 3,400 career attorneys since Trump took office.
The AP reported that the departures have led to backlogs and staff shortages, and that senior leaders have solicited job applications to fill gaps. It also described the consequences for efforts to prosecute political opponents, including a decision in September to replace the veteran U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia with Lindsey Halligan, which the AP said was followed by dismissals after a judge identified missteps in how Halligan presented the Comey case to a grand jury and dismissed both prosecutions outright. The AP also reported that Smith, the special counsel who investigated Trump and left before being fired, told lawmakers, “These are not partisans,” and added, “They just want to do good work,” saying that when the culture is lost, “you lose a lot.”