Monday’s terminations were said to have been effective immediately and they applied to employees in the Department of Justice, according to anonymous sources within Trump’s government.
An official told the Reuters news agency that acting Attorney General James McHenry, a Trump appointee, had determined that the prosecutors “could not be trusted to faithfully implement the President’s agenda because of their significant role in prosecuting the President”.
The move underscored Trump’s threats to seek retribution against those who scrutinised his behavior – and it marked a break with longstanding norms that career government employees should not be punished for carrying out tasks under a preceding administration.
Trump took office on January 20 for a second term as president, after serving previously from 2017 to 2021.
Those affected by Monday’s firings included prosecutors who had worked with former Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led two probes into Trump before stepping down.
One focused on Trump’s retention of hundreds of classified documents at his private residence, despite a subpoena in 2022 for their return.
The other zeroed in on his behaviour before, during and after the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump was accused of seeking to subvert the election results, which he had claimed were marred by widespread voter fraud.
Both investigations resulted in federal criminal indictments: the first in Florida and the second in Washington, DC.
Trump was the first US president, past or present, to face criminal charges.
In addition to the federal cases, he was also charged in two state-level indictments. One, in Georgia, also pertained to Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The other, in New York, accused Trump of falsifying business documents to conceal a hush-money payment to an adult film actress during his successful 2016 presidential campaign. In that case, Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts, though he was sentenced to an “unconditional discharge” – wherein he was released with no penalties.
Trump has denied wrongdoing in all four cases and accused the prosecutors of leading a politically motivated “witch hunt”.
While the state-level cases were prosecuted by local district attorneys, the federal cases were overseen by the Biden administration’s Department of Justice.
But to maintain the independence of the investigations, then-Attorney General Merrick Garland named a special counsel who was not a political appointee to lead the probes: Jack Smith, who had previously prosecuted war crimes at The Hague.
Neither of Smith’s cases against Trump made it to trial. After Trump was re-elected in November 2024, Smith dropped both cases, citing longstanding Justice Department policy not to prosecute sitting presidents. He also stepped down as special counsel.
In fact, on the day of his inauguration, Trump teased the widespread dismissal of “Biden bureaucrats”: “Most of those bureaucrats are being fired. They’re gone”.
This equals their career-high ranking, last achieved in January 2023.
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