In a stunning escalation of internal purges at the Justice Department, Attorney General Pam Bondi has fired Joseph Tirrell, the department's top ethics lawyer, reportedly over his resistance to keeping a box of cigars gifted by mixed martial-arts star Conor McGregor.
Ethics Clash at the Heart of the DOJ
Joseph Tirrell, who served as the director of the DOJ's Departmental Ethics Office since July 2023, revealed his termination in a LinkedIn post that included Bondi's removal letter. The short letter cited 'Article II of the U.S. Constitution,' the executive-branch removal clause, but offered no substantive reason and even misspelled his name.
Tirrell, a career public servant with service in both the U.S. Navy and the FBI, said his team of around 30 ethics attorneys had long resisted attempts by Bondi's office to retain gifts that violated federal rules. Among those was a box of Conor McGregor cigars.
He recounted how he pressed Bondi's staff, insisting they either pay for the item, return it, or destroy it, but the pressure to keep the gift kept recurring.
Tirrell told The Daily Beast that the desire to accept the cigars was not isolated. He described a pattern: requests for favours, lavish gifts, and a refusal to comply with standard ethics protocols.
Political Purge or Ethics Enforcement?
Tirrell's firing comes amid a wider shake-up in the Justice Department. On the same day he was dismissed, more than 20 other career employees, many connected to former Special Counsel Jack Smith's January 6 investigations, were also removed by Bondi's so-called 'Weaponization Working Group.'
Tirrell had previously approved roughly £110,000 ($140,000) of pro bono legal services from Covington & Burling for Smith, an arrangement that drew scrutiny once Smith resigned.
That fact-finding role made Tirrell a key ethical check on Bondi's staff, one that some believe became increasingly unwelcome.
Tirrell's LinkedIn post made a heartfelt appeal to his public service calling. He wrote that he had sworn an oath to "'support and defend the Constitution' repeatedly, but hinted that his removal underscored a broader crisis of conscience within the department.
Gift-Keeping Over Governance
Tirrell's central contention is that Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel sought to hang on to unauthorised gifts. He pointed to not only the McGregor cigars, but also a FIFA soccer ball.
He told The Daily Beast: 'You can pay for the item or you can return the item or you can throw the item away. There's no other way to do this.'
From Tirrell's perspective, the failure to enforce ethics rules on gifts represents a deliberate erosion of internal checks, and a signal that the department's ethical guardrails are being dismantled.
A Justice Department spokesperson, by contrast, has insisted that 'any ethics advice received from career ethics officials has been followed and not overruled.' But, given the timing and nature of the firings, many senior DOJ lawyers and outside observers see a more troubling pattern.
Tirrell's removal is deeply symbolic. Scott MacFarlane, Justice correspondent for CBS News, warned that the loss of career ethics oversight risks leaving prosecutors without recourse when they face improper orders.
If Tirrell's account is accurate, the refusal to return or pay for McGregor's cigar box suggests more than a technical violation: it may reflect a shift in values at the heart of the DOJ.
Without a trusted internal ethics office, dissenting voices may be silenced, and career attorneys who push back against political directives may find themselves out of a job.
