The Trump administration’s Justice Department fired four prosecutors involved in federal cases brought under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, drawing new attention to internal disputes over how the law has been enforced against clinic obstruction and threats.
In a statement Tuesday, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department would not tolerate what he described as “selective prosecution based on beliefs,” adding, “This Department will not tolerate a two-tiered system of justice.” Blanche said the actions were taken as the administration “restore[s] integrity” in the department’s prosecutorial system, while the firings were framed as a response to what the administration described as misuse of the FACE Act.
The dismissals were described as part of broader personnel changes inside the Justice Department, including terminations of staff involved in cases criticized by conservatives or viewed as insufficiently aligned with President Donald Trump’s agenda. The department said the actions preceded the release of a report connected to a working group that the Justice Department described as examining alleged politicization in prosecutions.
The report comes from the Justice Department’s “Weaponization Working Group,” which was created by former Attorney General Pam Bondi to scrutinize federal cases criticized by conservatives, including Trump-related prosecutions. The Justice Department’s account tied the organization’s work to scrutiny of how prosecutions were handled under the Biden administration.
Officials in the Biden administration and critics of the Trump Justice Department said the earlier prosecutions were grounded in the facts and the law. Former special counsel Jack Smith and Attorney General Merrick Garland, the article said, previously asserted that their decisions followed only the evidence and the law in their prosecutions.
In the Biden-era FACE Act cases, the law makes it illegal to physically obstruct someone seeking reproductive health services or to use threats of force to intimidate or interfere. The act also prohibits damaging property at abortion clinics and other centers. The Justice Department’s new report effort points to claims that some attacks on pregnancy resource centers or houses of worship—also covered by the law—were “ignored and downplayed” in Biden-era prosecutions.
The report also alleges that prosecutors sought harsher sentences in cases brought against anti-abortion activists than in cases involving abortion-rights defendants. Separately, the article said Trump last year pardoned anti-abortion activists convicted of blockading abortion clinic entrances, describing them as “peaceful pro-life protesters.”
Kristen Clarke, who led the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division during the Biden administration, defended those prosecutions in an emailed statement. Clarke said the attorneys “enforced the law even-handedly and put public safety at the center of this work,” and she said the Civil Rights Division brought law enforcement leaders, crisis pregnancy center representatives, faith leaders, and reproductive health care staff together to address what she described as violence, threats of violence, and obstruction directed at reproductive health services.
The article also describes criticism from former Civil Rights Division attorneys who said the Trump administration cherry-picked communications and other documents to portray the earlier prosecutions inaccurately. Maura Klugman, described as a former deputy chief in the division’s special litigation section, said one of the fired lawyers, Sanjay Patel, was an ethical and “respected career prosecutor who would never go out of bounds.”
Outside the Justice Department, Justice Connection, a network of former department employees, criticized the firings and said the leadership’s approach showed “cruelty and hypocrisy” in the report. Stacey Young, a former Justice Department lawyer who founded Justice Connection, said in a statement that the agency’s leadership insisted on “zealous advocacy” by career staff in advancing the president’s priorities while “shaming and firing those who did just that in the prior administration,” and she added that career employees had been put on notice that they could face termination if future leadership disagreed with prior policy goals.