The acting attorney general on Monday fired more than a dozen prosecutors who worked on the two criminal investigations into Donald J. Trump for the special counsel Jack Smith, saying they could not be trusted to “faithfully implement” the president’s agenda, a Justice Department spokesman said.
Justice Department veterans called the firings an egregious violation of well-established laws meant to preserve the integrity and professionalism of government agencies.
What made it all the more jarring, current and former officials said, was that such a momentous and aggressive step had been initiated by an obscure acting attorney general, James McHenry, operating on behalf of a president with a stated desire for vengeance, and few advisers with the stature or inclination to restrain him.
The department did not name the fired prosecutors. But a person who worked with some members of Mr. Smith’s team said that many of the dismissals appeared to target career lawyers and most likely violated civil service protections for nonpolitical employees.
The move was abrupt, but not unexpected: Mr. Trump had vowed to fire Mr. Smith as soon as he took office, but the special counsel and some of his top prosecutors quit before Inauguration Day. Others, however, including some assigned to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, returned to their old posts.
The announcement kicked off a second week of convulsive change at a department Mr. Trump has vowed to dismantle and reconstruct, ushering in a new era of more direct White House control of federal law enforcement agencies.
In the letters to the prosecutors, which were transmitted electronically on Monday afternoon, Mr. McHenry claimed that Mr. Trump had constitutional authority over personnel matters under Article II of the Constitution to fire career staff members, rather than arguing they were terminated for cause based on poor performance or improper conduct.
“Given your significant role in prosecuting the president, I do not believe that the leadership of the department can trust you to assist in implementing the president’s agenda faithfully,” the firing memo said.
Greg Brower, who was a U.S. attorney during the George W. Bush administration, said the move was unheard-of.
“This is unprecedented, given the career status of these people, which makes them not subject to dismissal by the president, and the apparent lack of any cause that the department has been able to articulate,” Mr. Brower said. “And so I suspect we will see them exercise their rights to appeal” to the Merit Systems Protection Board, an independent agency that reviews the claims of dismissed civil service workers and can reinstate them.
The rationale expressed in the firing memo contradicts decades of civil service law, which says employees can be fired only for misconduct or poor performance, not for doing their jobs, said Kristin Alden, a lawyer who specializes in federal employment issues.
“The whole reason we have the Civil Service Reform Act is to get away from the spoils system,” she said.
The firings, reported earlier by Fox News, came just hours after news of a major personnel move made by the Trump team that underscored its intention to quickly remove officials who might contradict its plans. The department’s most senior career official, a well-respected department employee responsible for some of the most sensitive cases, was reassigned to a much less powerful post.
Were that official, Bradley Weinsheimer, to remain as the associate deputy attorney general, he would have handled critical questions about possible recusals — a thorny issue for a department that will soon be run by a number of Mr. Trump’s former lawyers.
It follows the reassignments of some of the department’s most experienced and highly regarded supervisors, including top officials with expertise in national security, international investigations, extraditions and public corruption. On Monday, one of them, the chief of the public integrity section, resigned.
It is not yet clear who will replace them.
Like many of the other officials who have received transfer emails, Mr. Weinsheimer has been given the option of moving to the department’s sanctuary cities task force — an offer seen by some in the same situation as an effort to force them into quitting.
Mr. Weinsheimer, a respected veteran of the department for three decades, played a critical role under multiple administrations, often acting as a critical arbiter of ethical issues or interactions that required a neutral referee.
He was appointed to his current role on an interim basis by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in July 2018 during Mr. Trump’s first term, a move that was made permanent by one of his successors, William P. Barr.
Mr. Weinsheimer also served four years in the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which investigates complaints about prosecutors. An email to his government account was not immediately returned.
In 2021, Mr. Weinsheimer cleared the way for former Trump administration officials to testify before Congress about the president’s actions after the 2020 elections — over the objection of Mr. Trump’s lawyers. But transcripts showed that he had tried to strictly limit the scope of questioning, to the ire of Democratic committee staff members.
Mr. Weinsheimer also ran point for the department in a testy series of exchanges with President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s lawyers over the inclusion of the highly damaging assessment of Mr. Biden’s mental acuity contained in the special counsel report on his handling of classified information.
Also on Monday, the chief of the Justice Department’s public integrity section stepped down rather than be forced to transfer.
The chief, Corey Amundson, was informed in recent days that he would be reassigned to work on immigration. Mr. Amundson was one of many senior career officials told he was being sent to work on the task force focused on sanctuary cities — jurisdictions that are expected to be reluctant to comply with administration officials trying to ramp up deportations and immigration arrests.
In his resignation letter, which was obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Amundson recounted the many significant corruption cases he oversaw in his 26 years at the department.
“I spent my entire professional life committed to the apolitical enforcement of federal criminal law and to ensuring that those around me understood and embraced that central tenet of our work,” he wrote in his letter to Mr. McHenry. “I am proud of my service and wish you the best in seeking justice on behalf of the American people.”
He added that he wished the department well as it pursued Mr. Trump’s agenda, “including to protect all Americans from the scourge of violent crime and public corruption.”
