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WASHINGTON — <\/span>Michael Ben’Ary was driving one of his children to soccer practice on an October evening last year when he paused at a red light to check his work phone. He was in the middle of a counterterrorism prosecution so important<\/a> that President Donald Trump highlighted it in his State of the Union address.<\/p>\n Ben’Ary said he was shocked to see his phone had been disabled. He found the explanation later in his personal email account, a letter informing him he had been fired.<\/a><\/p>\n A veteran prosecutor, Ben’Ary handled high-profile cases over two decades at the Justice Department, including the murder of a Drug Enforcement Administration agent<\/a> and a suicide-bomb plot targeting the U.S. Capitol. Most recently he was leading the case arising from a deadly attack on American service members in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n Yet the same credentials that enhanced Ben’Ary’s resume spelled the undoing of his government career.<\/p>\n His termination without explanation came hours after right-wing commentator Julie Kelly told hundreds of thousands of online followers that he had previously served as a senior counsel to Lisa Monaco,<\/a> the No. 2 Justice Department official in the Biden administration. Kelly also suggested Ben’Ary was part of the \u201cinternal resistance\u201d to prosecuting former FBI Director James Comey<\/a>, even though Ben\u2019Ary was never involved in the case. <\/p>\n As Attorney General Pam Bondi<\/a> approaches her first year on the job, the firings of attorneys like Ben\u2019Ary have defined her turbulent tenure. The terminations and a larger voluntary exodus of lawyers have erased centuries of combined experience and left the department with fewer career employees to act as a bulwark for the rule of law at a time when Trump is testing the limits of executive power by demanding prosecutions of his political enemies.<\/a><\/p>\n Interviews by The Associated Press of more than a half-dozen fired employees offer a snapshot of the toll throughout the department. The departures include lawyers who prosecuted violent attacks on police at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021<\/a>, environmental, civil rights and ethics enforcers, counterterrorism prosecutors, immigration judges and attorneys who defend administration policies. They continued this week, when several prosecutors in Minnesota<\/a> moved to resign amid turmoil over an investigation into the shooting of a woman by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer.<\/p>\n \u201cTo lose people at that career level, people who otherwise intended to stay and now are either being discharged or themselves are walking away, is immensely damaging to the public interest,\u201d said Stuart Gerson, a senior official in the George H.W. Bush administration and acting attorney general early in the Clinton administration. \u201cWe\u2019re losing really capable people, people who have never viewed themselves as political and attempted to do the right thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Justice Connection, a network of department alumni, estimates that more than 230 lawyers, agents and other employees from across the department were fired last year \u2014 apparently because of their work on cases they were assigned, past criticism of Trump or seemingly no reason. More than 6,400 employees are estimated to have left a department that at the end of 2025 had roughly 108,000, the group says. <\/p>\n The Justice Department, for its part, says it has hired thousands of career attorneys over the last year. The Trump administration has characterized some of the fired and departed workers as out-of-step with its agenda.<\/p>\n Ben’Ary left with unfinished business, including the prosecution stemming from the Kabul airport bombing and the national security unit he led at the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia.<\/p>\n Left to pack his belongings, he posted a typed note near his door that functioned as a distress call, reminding colleagues they had sworn an oath to follow the facts \u201cwithout fear or favor\u201d and \u201cunhindered by political interference.\u201d<\/p>\n But, he warned, \u201cIn recent months, the political leadership of the Department have violated these principles, jeopardizing our national security and making Americans less safe.\u201d <\/p>\n _____<\/p>\n Since its founding in 1870, the Justice Department has occupied elevated status in American democracy, sustained through transitions of power by reliance on facts, evidence and law. <\/p>\n To be sure, there has always been a political component to the department, with lawyers appointed by the president.<\/p>\n But even during turbulent times, when attorneys general have been pushed out by presidents or resigned rather than accede to White House demands \u2014 as in the Watergate-era \u201cSaturday Night Massacre”<\/a> \u2014 the department’s rank-and-file have generally been insulated thanks to long-recognized civil service protections.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is completely unprecedented in both its scale and scope and underlying motivation,\u201d said Peter Keisler, a senior official in the George W. Bush Justice Department.<\/p>\n In his first term, Trump pushed out one attorney general and accepted another’s resignation but the workforce remained largely intact. He returned to office seething over Biden-era prosecutions of him, vowing retribution.<\/p>\n The firings began even before Bondi arrived last February. Prosecutors on special counsel Jack Smith’s team that investigated Trump<\/a> were terminated days after the inauguration, followed by prosecutors hired on temporary assignments<\/a> for cases resulting from the 2021 Capitol insurrection.<\/p>\n “The people working on these cases were not political agents of any kind,\u201d said Aliya Khalidi, a Jan. 6 prosecutor who was fired. \u201cIt\u2019s all people who just care about the rule of law.\u201d<\/p>\n The firings have continued, at times surgical, at times random \u2014 almost always without explanation. <\/p>\n Adam Schleifer, a Los Angeles prosecutor targeted in a social media post by far-right activist Laura Loomer<\/a> over past critical comments of Trump, was fired in March. The Justice Department the following month fired attorney Erez Reuveni, who conceded in court that Salvadoran national Kilmar Abrego Garcia<\/a> was mistakenly deported. Reuveni later accused the department of trying to mislead judges to execute deportations. Department officials deny the assertion.<\/p>\n Two weeks after Maurene Comey completed a sex trafficking trial against Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs,<\/a> the New York prosecutor was fired, also without explanation. Like Ben’Ary, she penned a pointed farewell<\/a>, telling colleagues that \u201cfear is the tool of a tyrant.\u201d Her father \u2014 former FBI Director James Comey, a frequent Trump target \u2014 uttered those same words after being indicted<\/a> in September in a case that has been dismissed. <\/p>\n Among the most affected sections is the storied Civil Rights Division. A recent open letter of protest was signed by over 200 employees who left in 2025, with several supervisors recently giving notice of plans to depart.<\/a> The Public Integrity Section, which prosecutes sensitive public corruption cases, has also been hollowed out by resignations. <\/p>\n The Justice Department has disputed the accounts of some of those who have been fired or quit and has defended the termination of those who investigated Trump as \u201cconsistent with the mission of ending the weaponization of government.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the most efficient Department of Justice in American history, and our attorneys will continue to deliver measurable results for the American people,\u201d the department said in a statement. More than 3,400 career attorneys have been hired since Trump took office, the department says. <\/p>\n The departures have caused backlogs and staff shortages, with senior leaders soliciting job applications. It has affected the department\u2019s daily business as well as efforts to fulfill Trump\u2019s desires to prosecute political opponents.<\/p>\n Desperate for lawyers willing to file criminal cases against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, the administration in September forced out the veteran U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia<\/a>, replacing him with Lindsey Halligan<\/a>, a White House aide with no experience as a federal prosecutor. <\/p>\n Halligan secured the indictments but the win was short-lived.<\/p>\n One judge later identified grave missteps<\/a> in how Halligan presented the Comey case to a grand jury. Another dismissed both prosecutions outright<\/a>, calling Halligan’s appointment unlawful.<\/p>\n Smith, the special counsel who investigated Trump but left before he could be fired, has himself lamented the losses. \u201cThese are not partisans,\u201d he recently told lawmakers. <\/p>\n \u201cThey just want to do good work,\u201d he added, \u201cand I think when you lose that culture, you lose a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n _____<\/p>\n Khalidi joined the department in 2023 in a group of new prosecutors hired to help with the hundreds of cases stemming from the Capitol riot.<\/p>\n Upon Trump’s return to the White House, she watched cases she prosecuted get dismantled by Trump\u2019s sweeping clemency for all 1,500 defendants charged in the riot,<\/a> including those who attacked police.<\/p>\n