Former Department of Justice staffers have signed off their farewells with notes slamming Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi for causing “irreversible damage” to the agency.
Nearly 5,500 employees have left the DOJ since Trump took office in January, either by taking buyouts, quitting, or being fired, leading some to complain in their parting messages of a “toxic work environment.”
The Justice Connection, a network of FBI alumni and DOJ, has compiled a hefty tranche of farewell messages, seen by Axios, expressing discontent with how Bondi and the Ccommander–in–chief are running the agency.
Stacey Young, Executive Director of The Justice Connection, wrote in her own message that DOJ employees are being forced to “put loyalty to the President over the Constitution, the rule of law, and their professional ethical obligations."
Meanwhile, three assistant U.S. attorneys, who resisted dropping corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, claimed in a joint statement that the DOJ has “decided that obedience supersedes all else.”
"There is no greater privilege than to work for an institution whose mandate is to do the right thing, the right way, for the right reasons," they wrote in a collective statement. "We will not abandon this principle to keep our jobs."
Also, Anam Rahman Petit, an immigration judge at the DOJ, claimed that the federal agency was "replacing career judges with less experienced or politically malleable ones reflects a systemic effort to reshape the bench with individuals more likely to deny cases without regard for due process."
Since January, the DOJ has become increasingly mired in controversy, with many farewell notes pointing to the growing criticism that the federal agency is being used to target Trump’s political enemies.
Nearly all of the farewell messages are very complimentary about the DOJ itself, instead limiting their criticisms to Trump and Bondi’s stewardship of it.
Former trial attorney Carrie A. Syme published her own post on LinkedIn, writing that she did not “recognize” the “current incarnation of the DOJ.”
However, she urged readers to "please remember that the vast majority of DOJ attorneys are people of goodwill who are trying to maintain a true sense of justice."
Trump has often claimed that the DOJ was “weaponized” against him, while simultaneously bringing legal cases against his political enemies, including former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and even a case against the Justice Department itself.
Last month, the president demanded that the Department of Justice pay him $230 million in compensation for federal investigations into him.
Trump’s two complaints focus on the FBI investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago in 2022, over alleged mishandling of classified documents by the then-former president.
However, several of his legal cases, including those aimed at Comey and James, have collapsed after a judge ruled that Trump had illegally appointed the prosecutor.
The Trump administration has threatened to try again to bring charges against Comey and James.
“The facts of the indictments against Comey and James have not changed, and this will not be the final word on this matter,” a White House spokesperson told NewsNation reporter Libbey Dean.
The Independent has contacted the DOJ and the White House for comment.
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