69 of the roughly 110 lawyers in the #FederalPrograms Branch have voluntarily left the unit since #Trump's election in November or have announced plans to leave, according to the list compiled by former #DOJ lawyers & reviewed by Reuters.

The tally has not been previously reported. Using court records & LinkedIn accounts, Reuters was able to verify the departure of all but 4 names on the list.

#law #lawless #felon47 #judiciary #RuleOfLaw #constitution

Reuters spoke to 4 former #lawyers in the unit & 3 other people familiar with the departures who said some staffers had grown demoralized & exhausted defending an onslaught of lawsuits against the #Trump admin.

"Many of these people came to work at #FederalPrograms to defend aspects of our constitutional system," said one lawyer who left the unit during Trump's 2nd term. "How could they participate in the project of tearing it down?"

#law #lawless #felon47 #judiciary #RuleOfLaw #constitution

Critics have accused the #Trump admin of flouting the #law in its aggressive use of #ExecutivePower, including by retaliating against perceived enemies & dismantling agencies created by #Congress.

The Trump admin has broadly defended its actions as within the legal bounds of #PresidentialPower & has won several early victories at #SCOTUS. A WH spox told Reuters that Trump's actions were legal, & declined to comment on the departures.

#lawless #felon47 #judiciary #RuleOfLaw #constitution

"Any sanctimonious career bureaucrat expressing faux outrage over the President’s policies while sitting idly by during the rank weaponization by the previous administration has no grounds to stand on," #Trump WH spox Harrison Fields said in a stmnt🙄.

The 7 lawyers who spoke w/Reuters cited a punishing workload & the need to defend policies that some felt were not legally justifiable among the key reasons for the wave of departures.

#law #lawless #felon47 #judiciary #RuleOfLaw #constitution

Three of them said some career lawyers feared they would be pressured to misrepresent #facts or #legal issues in court, a violation of #ethics rules that could lead to professional #sanctions.

…Some turnover in the #FederalPrograms Branch is common between presidential administrations, but the 7 sources described the number of people quitting as highly unusual.

#Trump #law #lawless #felon47 #judiciary #RuleOfLaw #constitution

Reuters was unable to find comparative figures for previous administrations. However, 2 former attorneys in the unit & 2 others familiar with its work said the scale of departures is far greater than during Trump's first term & Joe Biden's administration.

The exits include at least 10 of the section's 23 supervisors, experienced litigators who in many cases served across presidential admins, according to 2 of the lawyers.

#Trump #DOJ #law #lawless #felon47 #judiciary #RuleOfLaw #constitution

In its broad overhaul of the #DOJ, the #Trump admin has fired or sidelined dozens of #lawyers who specialize in prosecuting #NationalSecurity & #corruption cases & publicly encouraged departures from the #CivilRights Division.

But the #FederalPrograms Branch, which defends challenges to White House & federal agency policies in federal trial courts, remains critical to its agenda.

#law #lawless #felon47 #judiciary #RuleOfLaw #constitution

The unit is fighting to sustain actions of the *cost-cutting* #DOGE formerly overseen by #ElonMusk; #Trump’s order restricting #BirthrightCitizenship & his attempt to freeze $2.5B in funding to #Harvard.

"We've never had an administration pushing the legal envelope so quickly, so aggressively & across such a broad range of government policies & programs," said Peter Keisler, who led #DOJ’s Civil Division under Republican President George W. Bush.

#law #judiciary #RuleOfLaw #constitution

"The demands are intensifying at the same time that the ranks of lawyers there to defend these cases are dramatically thinning."

The departures have left the #Justice Department scrambling to fill vacancies. More than a dozen lawyers have been temporarily reassigned to the section from other parts of the #DOJ & it has been exempted from the #FederalGovernment hiring freeze, according to 2 former lawyers in the unit.

#Trump #law #lawless #felon47 #judiciary #RuleOfLaw #constitution

#DOJ leadership has also brought in about 15 #political appointees to help defend civil cases, an unusually high number.

The new attorneys, many of whom have a record defending conservative causes, have been more comfortable pressing legal boundaries, acc/to 2 fmr lawyers in the unit.

#Trump #law #lawless #felon47 #judiciary #RuleOfLaw #constitution

"They have to be willing to advocate on behalf of their clients & not fear the political fallout," said Mike Davis, head of #ArticleIIIProject, a pro-#Trump legal advocacy group, referring to the role of #DOJ lawyers in defending the admin's policies.

People who have worked in the section expect the #FederalPrograms Branch to play an important role in the Trump admin's attempts to capitalize on a #SCOTUS ruling limiting the ability of #judges to block its policies nationwide.

#law #judiciary

Its lawyers are expected to seek to narrow prior court rulings & also defend against an anticipated rise in #ClassAction lawsuits challenging #Trump policies.

Lawyers in the unit are opposing 2 attempts by advocacy organizations to establish a nationwide class of people to challenge Trump's order on #BirthrightCitizenship. A judge granted one request on Thursday.

#DOJ #law #lawless #felon47 #judiciary #RuleOfLaw #constitution

4 fmr #DOJ lawyers told Reuters some attorneys in the #FederalPrograms Branch left over policy differences w/ #Trump, but many had served in the first Trump admin & viewed their role as defending the govt regardless of the party in power.

The 4 lawyers who left said they feared Trump admin policies to dismantle certain #FederalAgencies & claw back #funding appeared to violate the US #Constitution or were enacted without following processes that were more defensible in court.

#law #judiciary

Govt lawyers often walked into court with little information from the #WhiteHouse & #FederalAgencies about the actions they were defending, the four lawyers said.

…AG #PamBondi in Feb threatened disciplinary action against govt lawyers who did not vigorously advocate for #Trump’s agenda. The memo to #DOJ employees warned career lawyers they could not "substitute personal political views or judgments for those that prevailed in the election."

#law #felon47 #judiciary #RuleOfLaw #constitution

4 of the #lawyers Reuters spoke with said there was a widespread concern that attorneys would be forced to make arguments that could violate attorney #ethics rules, or refuse assignments & risk being fired.

Those fears grew when #DOJ leadership fired a fmr supervisor in the Office of #Immigration Litigation, a separate Civil Division unit, accusing him of failing to forcefully defend the admin’s position in the case of #KilmarAbregoGarcia, the man wrongly deported to El Salvador.

#Trump #law