Let’s take a moment to appreciate the audacity of the framing. Last month, the Department of Justice fired four career prosecutors who had worked on cases against anti-abortion activists under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. The firings came just before the DOJ’s newly created “Weaponization Working Group.” established by former Attorney General Pam Bondi to scrutinize prosecutions criticized by conservatives, released a report accusing the Biden administration of biased enforcement of the FACE Act. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, whose recent public statements read like a sizzle reel designed to entice Donald Trump to make the appointment permanent, then released a statement about restoring integrity: “This Department will not tolerate a two-tiered system of justice. No Department should conduct selective prosecution based on beliefs. The weaponization that happened under the Biden Administration will not happen again, as we restore integrity to our prosecutorial system.”
The prosecutors fired were doing their jobs. That is, apparently, the problem.
Because the purge of career prosecutors didn’t start here. In January, acting Attorney General James McHenry began firing those at the DOJ who worked on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigations into Trump, writing in termination letters that he did not believe they “could be trusted to faithfully implement the President’s agenda.” The letters were explicit: “You played a significant role in prosecuting President Trump… I do not believe that the leadership of the department can trust you to assist in implementing the President’s agenda faithfully.” By later in the year, there had been at least 35 firings of DOJ employees who worked for Smith, including paralegals, finance staff, and support staff, all identified by the same Weaponization Working Group that just released the FACE Act report. All of which sent a chill through the remainder of the DOJ’s career workforce, and you have to imagine it’s getting darn near icy there after the latest purge.
This is the same DOJ that is begging for AUSAs on social media, with a former chief of staff literally asking prospective prosecutors to slide into his DMs — and then discovering, helpfully, that his DMs weren’t even open when he posted the request. The same DOJ that lowered its hiring standards to eliminate any requirement that prospective federal prosecutors have actual legal experience — because, as ATL noted at the time, “turns out a lot of seasoned attorneys would rather not” sign up to drop corruption cases as part of political bargains and sign off on dubiously motivated prosecutions of the president’s enemies. The same DOJ that deployed “emergency jump teams” of rotated AUSAs to cover staffing emergencies of its own creation, plugged gaps with military lawyers whose training under the Uniform Code of Military Justice doesn’t exactly translate to federal criminal prosecution, and most recently posted a Star Wars-themed recruiting tweet that, among other problems, used the wrong font. And threw $25,000 signing bonuses at lawyers willing to investigate transgender youth and litigate immigration cases, because the market for people willing to do that work has apparently tightened considerably.
The DOJ’s staffing crisis is real and well-documented. But these firings make something else equally clear: the department isn’t actually desperate for competent lawyers. It’s desperate for a very specific kind of lawyer — the kind who will drop cases the president doesn’t like, prosecute people the president doesn’t like, and ask no inconvenient questions about whether any of it is legal or ethical. Career prosecutors who know the law, follow it regardless of who’s in the White House, and have the institutional credibility to make their work stick in court are not what this administration is looking for. What it wants are toadies. And when it finds prosecutors who insist on doing their jobs — enforcing the FACE Act, prosecuting anti-abortion activists whose conduct met the legal standard, following the evidence — it fires them and calls it “restoring integrity.” The lawyers willing to do what the administration actually wants are out there. They’re the ones sliding into Chad Mizelle’s DMs.
The pattern is not subtle. The DOJ under this administration fires prosecutors who investigated Trump, fires prosecutors who prosecuted January 6 rioters, fires prosecutors who enforced laws protecting abortion clinics, and then releases reports calling all of those prosecutions “weaponized.” Kristen Clarke, who led the Civil Rights Division under Biden, pushed back on that characterization directly, telling the Orlando Sentinel that the attorneys “enforced the law even-handedly and put public safety at the center of this work.” Justice Connection, a network of former DOJ employees, was more pointed: the agency leadership’s “cruelty and hypocrisy are on full display in this report.”
The report itself claims the Biden administration “ignored and downplayed” attacks against pregnancy resource centers and houses of worship, which are also covered by FACE Act protections, and pushed for harsher sentences against anti-abortion defendants than against abortion-rights defendants. Trump pardoned the anti-abortion activists whose convictions were prosecuted under FACE Act last year, calling them “peaceful pro-life protesters,” and now the four prosecutors who secured those convictions are out of a job.
What the Weaponization Working Group calls “selective prosecution,” the rest of us might call “prosecution.” What Todd Blanche calls “restoring integrity,” career prosecutors might call “following the law regardless of who the defendant is.” That latter principle, that the law applies to everyone, that prosecutors uphold it without regard to the political preferences of the current administration, is the *entire point* of having career prosecutors rather than political appointees doing line prosecutorial work.
None of this is accidental. The Weaponization Working Group was created not to identify genuine prosecutorial abuse but to provide retroactive political cover for purging prosecutors who did their jobs in ways the current administration doesn’t like. And Todd Blanche, who has already demonstrated his willingness to bend the justice system to Donald Trump’s personal whims at every available opportunity, is standing at the podium calling it integrity.
There’s a stench at the DOJ linked to what the department has become, and who is willing to be part of it.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1
The post The DOJ Purge’s Latest Target: Prosecutors Who Enforced Federal Abortion Clinic Protections appeared first on Above the Law.
Let’s take a moment to appreciate the audacity of the framing. Last month, the Department of Justice fired four career prosecutors who had worked on cases against anti-abortion activists under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. The firings came just before the DOJ’s newly created “Weaponization Working Group.” established by former Attorney General Pam Bondi to scrutinize prosecutions criticized by conservatives, released a report accusing the Biden administration of biased enforcement of the FACE Act. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, whose recent public statements read like a sizzle reel designed to entice Donald Trump to make the appointment permanent, then released a statement about restoring integrity: “This Department will not tolerate a two-tiered system of justice. No Department should conduct selective prosecution based on beliefs. The weaponization that happened under the Biden Administration will not happen again, as we restore integrity to our prosecutorial system.”
The prosecutors fired were doing their jobs. That is, apparently, the problem.
Because the purge of career prosecutors didn’t start here. In January, acting Attorney General James McHenry began firing those at the DOJ who worked on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigations into Trump, writing in termination letters that he did not believe they “could be trusted to faithfully implement the President’s agenda.” The letters were explicit: “You played a significant role in prosecuting President Trump… I do not believe that the leadership of the department can trust you to assist in implementing the President’s agenda faithfully.” By later in the year, there had been at least 35 firings of DOJ employees who worked for Smith, including paralegals, finance staff, and support staff, all identified by the same Weaponization Working Group that just released the FACE Act report. All of which sent a chill through the remainder of the DOJ’s career workforce, and you have to imagine it’s getting darn near icy there after the latest purge.
This is the same DOJ that is begging for AUSAs on social media, with a former chief of staff literally asking prospective prosecutors to slide into his DMs — and then discovering, helpfully, that his DMs weren’t even open when he posted the request. The same DOJ that lowered its hiring standards to eliminate any requirement that prospective federal prosecutors have actual legal experience — because, as ATL noted at the time, “turns out a lot of seasoned attorneys would rather not” sign up to drop corruption cases as part of political bargains and sign off on dubiously motivated prosecutions of the president’s enemies. The same DOJ that deployed “emergency jump teams” of rotated AUSAs to cover staffing emergencies of its own creation, plugged gaps with military lawyers whose training under the Uniform Code of Military Justice doesn’t exactly translate to federal criminal prosecution, and most recently posted a Star Wars-themed recruiting tweet that, among other problems, used the wrong font. And threw $25,000 signing bonuses at lawyers willing to investigate transgender youth and litigate immigration cases, because the market for people willing to do that work has apparently tightened considerably.
The DOJ’s staffing crisis is real and well-documented. But these firings make something else equally clear: the department isn’t actually desperate for competent lawyers. It’s desperate for a very specific kind of lawyer — the kind who will drop cases the president doesn’t like, prosecute people the president doesn’t like, and ask no inconvenient questions about whether any of it is legal or ethical. Career prosecutors who know the law, follow it regardless of who’s in the White House, and have the institutional credibility to make their work stick in court are not what this administration is looking for. What it wants are toadies. And when it finds prosecutors who insist on doing their jobs — enforcing the FACE Act, prosecuting anti-abortion activists whose conduct met the legal standard, following the evidence — it fires them and calls it “restoring integrity.” The lawyers willing to do what the administration actually wants are out there. They’re the ones sliding into Chad Mizelle’s DMs.
The pattern is not subtle. The DOJ under this administration fires prosecutors who investigated Trump, fires prosecutors who prosecuted January 6 rioters, fires prosecutors who enforced laws protecting abortion clinics, and then releases reports calling all of those prosecutions “weaponized.” Kristen Clarke, who led the Civil Rights Division under Biden, pushed back on that characterization directly, telling the Orlando Sentinel that the attorneys “enforced the law even-handedly and put public safety at the center of this work.” Justice Connection, a network of former DOJ employees, was more pointed: the agency leadership’s “cruelty and hypocrisy are on full display in this report.”
The report itself claims the Biden administration “ignored and downplayed” attacks against pregnancy resource centers and houses of worship, which are also covered by FACE Act protections, and pushed for harsher sentences against anti-abortion defendants than against abortion-rights defendants. Trump pardoned the anti-abortion activists whose convictions were prosecuted under FACE Act last year, calling them “peaceful pro-life protesters,” and now the four prosecutors who secured those convictions are out of a job.
What the Weaponization Working Group calls “selective prosecution,” the rest of us might call “prosecution.” What Todd Blanche calls “restoring integrity,” career prosecutors might call “following the law regardless of who the defendant is.” That latter principle, that the law applies to everyone, that prosecutors uphold it without regard to the political preferences of the current administration, is the *entire point* of having career prosecutors rather than political appointees doing line prosecutorial work.
None of this is accidental. The Weaponization Working Group was created not to identify genuine prosecutorial abuse but to provide retroactive political cover for purging prosecutors who did their jobs in ways the current administration doesn’t like. And Todd Blanche, who has already demonstrated his willingness to bend the justice system to Donald Trump’s personal whims at every available opportunity, is standing at the podium calling it integrity.
There’s a stench at the DOJ linked to what the department has become, and who is willing to be part of it.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1
