Trump administration removes senior career officials from key Justice Department positions

The Trump administration has removed or reassigned several top career officials in the Justice Department’s national security and criminal divisions, according to multiple people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.

Two of the people said that at least 15 experienced career staffers across several divisions were removed from their positions and reassigned, a sign that the new president and his aides plan to carry out their promises to dramatically reshape the agency, including to focus more on immigration enforcement.

As a way to skirt legal protections afforded to career staffers, many of the officials were transferred to other positions inside Justice, where they would probably have less influence on the department’s big decisions, the people said. The officials will have to decide whether to stay in their new assignments or leave the agency.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

Trump and his allies have long attacked the Justice Department and accused it of unfairly targeting them, including during special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of possible links between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. The animosity escalated after Trump finished his first term, as the agency investigated both Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and his alleged mishandling of classified documents and obstruction of government efforts to retrieve them.

Among the people being removed from the national security division is deputy assistant attorney general George Toscas, who has served there since 2006, according to three people familiar with the matter. Two people said he was transferred to a newly created Office of Sanctuary Cities Enforcement in the associate attorney general’s office. The office is tasked with identifying ways to enforce federal immigration laws, a top priority of the new president.

Toscas was a senior counterintelligence attorney who played a key role in deciding to search Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence to retrieve the classified documents as part of that federal investigation. He served as a deputy in the national security division during the first Trump administration.

“He has seen everything in both counterterrorism and counterintelligence,” said a former colleague in the National Security Division, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss information that has not been made public. “There is no one in the department who knows as much about prosecuting and investigating terrorists and spies as George Toscas.”

Eun Young Choi, another deputy assistant attorney general in the national security division, and Bruce Swartz, a longtime deputy in the criminal division who focuses on international affairs, also were removed from their posts and reassigned elsewhere, the people familiar with the matter said. They were notified of the change by email on Monday afternoon, the people said.

Choi was assigned to the sanctuary cities office like Toscas, two people said. Swartz, who has been in the department more than 30 years and has served as deputy assistant attorney general of international affairs for most of that time, was effectively demoted to be the deputy of the Office of Prosecutorial Development and Training, an office he used to oversee, three of the people said.

“He (Swartz) has served everyone from Jeff Sessions to Bill Barr to Eric Holder and Merrick Garland and is by far the most knowledgeable person on the planet about the relationships the department has with foreign governments, extraditions, rule of law,” said another former senior Justice official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity.

While many officials at Justice and other agencies leave government at the start of a new administration, these removals and reassignments were unusual because they were ordered just as Trump took office, said Mary McCord, a former Justice Department official who runs the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University.

Top deputy positions in the national security division are typically career positions, though it’s possible the Trump administration is removing the career people to replace them with political appointees, she said.

“I don’t believe there were ever any career people fired at transition since the national security division was founded,” McCord said. “One of the values of having career deputies in the national security division is consistency, institutional memory and the relationships that they build with our national security partners.”

The chief of the Justice Department’s public integrity section, Corey Amundson, is also being removed from his post, according to people familiar with the personnel move. The section oversees election crimes and investigations into public officials, and its chief is a nonpartisan career official, according to the Justice Department website. Amundson became chief during the first Trump administration.

On Monday night, hours after Trump’s inauguration, the Justice Department removed at least four top officials from the part of the agency that operates the nation’s heavily backlogged immigration courts.

Federal guidelines call for a 120-day moratorium on certain staff reassignments after new, Senate-confirmed agency leaders start their appointments. But that moratorium is not yet in effect at Justice, where attorney general nominee Pam Bondi and others tapped for top positions are still going through the confirmation process.

“We’re witnessing the dismembering of a core cadre of nonpartisan, institutional experience that is invaluable to the Justice Department’s mission, including that of protecting the national security of the United States,” said David Laufman, a former senior Justice Department official who served in both political and career positions under Republican and Democratic administrations.

For now, James McHenry, a longtime immigration enforcement official at Justice, is running the agency as acting U.S. attorney general. McHenry served during the Biden administration as the Justice Department’s chief administrative hearing officer, overseeing the department’s administrative judges. During the first Trump administration, he directed the Executive Office of Immigration Review.

Some experts say that incoming agency heads and political supervisors are not allowed to have other officials carry out reassignments before they arrive just to avoid the moratorium.

If the reassignments are a way to remove career leadership, it’s “very concerning,” said the second former senior Justice official, who noted that those being reassigned are some of the department’s most experienced and knowledgeable leaders. “The beating heart of Justice Department is the career workforce. ... That’s what really makes the department run, not the political relationship.”