Attorney General Pam Bondi has fired at least three career Justice Department prosecutors who worked on cases related to the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The attorneys were informed in letters signed by Bondi that they were “removed from federal service effective immediately” with no further explanation, NBC News reported.
One federal law enforcement official told NBC that the firings were “horrifying,” calling it “a slap in the face not only to them, but to all career DOJ prosecutors.”
“No one is safe from this administration’s whims and impulses,” the insider added. “And the public certainly is not served by the continued brain drain of DOJ—we are losing the best among us every day.”
The move is an escalation of the Trump administration’s targeted retaliation against federal officials who worked on cases against President Donald Trump and his supporters.
Back in January, the administration axed several prosecutors still in the probationary period for their jobs who worked on Jan. 6—along with six senior executives at the FBI.
This is the first time that career prosecutors at the Justice Department have been ousted because of their role in prosecuting Jan. 6 rioters.
The Justice Department did not immediately return the Daily Beast’s request for comment on the situation.
The identities of the fired prosecutors have not been revealed.
Immediately upon his return to office, Trump gave a mass pardon to 1,583 of his supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 in an effort to prevent the certification of the 2024 election results. He even pardoned the people who engaged in violence.
Asked about the targeted FBI firings back in January, Trump said: “If they fired some people over there, that’s a good thing, because they were very bad. They were very corrupt people, very corrupt, and they hurt our country very badly with the weaponization.”
