US Attorneys Said to Be Told to Justify Keeping Newest Prosecutors

Justice Department headquarters has given all 93 US attorneys two business days to explain why prosecutors they’ve hired in the past two years who aren’t focused on Trump priorities such as immigration and public safety should be retained, said five people briefed on the situation.

Although the nation’s chief prosecutors haven’t been told exactly how the department will use this information, some are treating it as a weekend assignment to save the jobs of numerous line attorneys and support staff on probationary status who aren’t pursuing cases aligned with the president’s agenda.

US attorneys must provide by Feb. 10 justifications for keeping anyone with less than two years of service who doesn’t work on immigration enforcement, national security, or public safety, said the individuals, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. The request came from a senior career official who is herself being kept in the dark about the purpose of the mandate.

Recent hires who don’t fall into those three specified categories would potentially include prosecutors specializing in white collar, civil fraud, and civil rights investigations.

The directive is the latest signal about how the Trump DOJ intends to shrink the size of its workforce. Prior guidance from the federal government’s HR office required agencies to assemble lists of new hires for possible termination and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s day one memos warned employees could face termination over their politicization or disobedience.

In a memo Thursday from the Executive Office for US Attorneys and in a followup call Friday, US attorneys were instructed to identify the probationary status of anyone hired in the past two years and then provide details about their work if they deserve to stay.

Determining when each assistant US attorney surpasses their probationary term—making them tougher to fire—is a complicated exercise. It generally lasts two years into the job, but that can be shorter or longer depending on prior government service, security clearances, and other factors.

Adding to the frustration for the US attorneys is that the senior official tasked with delivering the orders—an EOUSA director appointed by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland in October—didn’t know answers to their questions about what would come of the identified employees.

The directive to the field comes a week after Bloomberg Law reported that senior DOJ political appointee Emil Bove asked US attorneys to recruit line prosecutors for assignments to border districts.

On Feb. 5, Bondi, hours after being sworn into office, issued memos to diminish white collar enforcement by redirecting foreign corruption, money laundering, and overseas lobbying transparency prosecutors to focus more narrowly on cartels and transnational crime.

The US attorneys, a mix of holdover Biden appointees, acting career officials, and interim leaders installed by Trump, will now have the next few days to make their case to Justice Department headquarters about retaining prosecutors involved in corporate crime and other fields that weren’t singled out as priorities.

The share of the approximately 6,000 AUSAs who are probationary is unknown, but at certain large offices, especially those with higher turnover, it may be in the dozens.