More than 3,300 attorneys left the Justice Department between President Donald Trump's first day back in office and February 2026, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management, with former DOJ lawyers warning that the departures are weakening law enforcement and hindering prosecutions across critical areas including tax enforcement, anti-narcotics efforts, white collar crime, national security, environmental enforcement and civil rights.
The lawyers who left spent, on average, about 14 years at the DOJ, with about 740 holding leadership positions. Only about 800 attorneys have been hired to replace them, leaving significant gaps in institutional knowledge and experience. DOJ Civil Rights Division head Harmeet Dhillon told Breitbart News in August that about 75% of the division's lawyers had left in the first seven months of the new administration, or approximately 300 out of 400.
Institutional Knowledge Lost
Stacey Young, who worked as a senior attorney in the Civil Division and later in the Civil Rights Division over 18 years, said, "When political leaders come into the department and immediately begin acting like tyrants, and purging the people who know how to run things, that's going to have a really destabilizing effect, and it absolutely has." Young left the DOJ a few days into the new administration and has since founded Justice Connection, which supports those who have left and combats what it sees as threats to the rule of law under the Trump administration. Young said, "The job is just overwhelming, and it's become untenable for some people."
Former FBI senior intelligence analyst Philip Fields developed an online tool that breaks down OPM's data from January 2025-January 2026, showing the average tenure and leadership roles of departing lawyers. Fields said, "That doesn't mean that these people are all fresh out of law school. But... the assumption is that they're going to have far less experience and qualifications for these types of roles."
Impact Across Enforcement Areas
Some departures were firings, including dozens of prosecutors who worked on cases arising from the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, and prosecutors who worked on investigations into Trump. Several prosecutors resigned after the Trump administration ordered them to drop a bribery case against then-New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and others resigned over the DOJ's reluctance to investigate a federal immigration agent who shot and killed Minneapolis resident Renee Good and its desire to instead investigate Good's widow.
Gilbert Rothenberg, a former longtime official at the Tax Division, said the Trump administration dissolved the Tax Division in late 2025 and shifted tax lawyers to other divisions. Rothenberg, who retired from the DOJ in 2019, said, "The rank and file saw that, and they go, 'Holy moly! Is my job at risk?'" In February, an official wrote in a court filing that more than 40% of the lawyers who handle appeals in tax cases had retired, resigned, or been temporarily transferred over the previous year. Rothenberg said, "I've never understood an administration that doesn't want to bulk up the tax group at both IRS and DOJ to raise more money. From a public policy point of view, it's foolish."
Joseph Gerbasi, who spent decades in the Criminal Division and retired in March 2025 from his role as acting deputy chief for policy in the Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section, said only one person is left from what was a five-lawyer policy unit. Gerbasi said, "The cartel leaders are probably laughing at us. It's just going to result in fewer prosecutions, fewer extraditions, fewer successful damaging blows to the cartels."
Environmental and Civil Rights Enforcement Collapse
At least 140 lawyers from the DOJ's Environment and Natural Resources Division—a third of its lawyers—left in Trump's first year back in office, according to E&E News. A December analysis from Earthjustice found that the division's environmental enforcement section imposed only $15.1 million in civil penalties during the first 11 months of Trump's return to office, compared with $1.88 billion in civil fines the previous year. Andrew Mergen, a former official in the DOJ's Environment and Natural Resources Section, said, "If your agenda is 'drill, baby, drill' or 'mine, baby, mine,' there are going to be groups who are going to sue, and you're going to need to throw bodies at that."
The Trump administration dropped lawsuits brought under President Joe Biden that accused police departments in Louisville and Minneapolis of violating civil rights, and abandoned agreements governing policing practices in those departments. Instead, the division is investigating potential racial preferences in employment and university admissions, religious liberty issues and local limitations on gun ownership. Patrick Kent, a former DOJ Civil Rights Division lawyer who exited the department in 2025, said, "Even when there is ultimately a change in administration, you're not going to replace three quarters of lawyers who had served years, if not decades. The trust by the communities where we simply stopped enforcing our investigations is lost."
Courts Express Alarm
Minnesota federal Judge Patrick J. Schiltz, a President George W. Bush appointee, wrote in a Feb. 26 court order that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement violated 210 orders across 143 separate cases. Schiltz wrote, "Increasingly, this Court has had to resort to using the threat of civil contempt to force ICE to comply with orders. The Court is not aware of another occasion in the history of the United States in which a federal court has had to threaten contempt—again and again and again—to force the United States government to comply with court orders." Just Security identified 34 separate cases in which courts expressed concerns about noncompliance with judicial orders and 90 cases in which courts expressed distrust of government information and representations during the first year of the current administration.
California federal Judge Troy L. Nunley, a President Barack Obama appointee, sanctioned a DOJ lawyer in an immigration case for multiple failures to meet deadlines and follow orders, writing in an April 15 order, "While the Court recognizes that mistakes can occur, repeated violations of court orders cannot be excused as mere oversight," and imposing a $250 fine. Rothenberg said, "You have judges today questioning whether they can adhere to what a DOJ attorney tells them in court, and that's just unfathomable to me."
Prosecutorial Priorities Shift
The DOJ prosecuted 32,000 new immigration cases in its first six months, nearly triple the number that Biden's administration prosecuted in the same time, according to ProPublica, which analyzed DOJ and Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse data. ProPublica found a drop in prosecutions of nearly every other type of crime compared with the Biden administration's first six months. DOJ spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre said the drop partly reflects updated records on cases that were already closed and said the DOJ cannot vouch for the clearinghouse's data. She said, "This Department of Justice remains committed to investigating and prosecuting all types of crime, and the number of declinations is a direct result of our efforts to run the agency in a more efficient manner."
Baldassarre said in a statement that the DOJ has more than 10,000 lawyers committed to restoring public safety and upholding the rule of law, and is now "the most efficient Department of Justice in American history." Baldassarre said, "Our country has the lowest murder rate in 125 years, we've arrested more than 90 key cartel leaders, and removed millions of deadly doses of fentanyl from our streets – all on top of achieving a record 24 successful rulings at the Supreme Court." White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said, "President Trump will not waver when lawfully implementing the agenda he was elected on."
Recruitment Crisis and Long-Term Damage
The DOJ has struggled to attract top candidates for attorney openings, with Young saying, "It used to be that you'd get hundreds or thousands of applications for one attorney opening. And now we're seeing offices in some cases beg former lawyers, lawyers who left the offices, to come back." Mergen said, "I came here to be an evangelist for federal government work, and I'm now in a position where I am extremely cautious about how I talk about sending people to work in the federal government."
The DOJ has pursued prosecutions against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James after the president publicly called for it, and both cases were dismissed. The department has also opened investigations into Sen. Adam Schiff, D–California, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, and six members of Congress who urged military service members not to obey illegal orders, without saying what those might be. The department erected a banner of Trump on the side of its main building in Washington, D.C.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said, "The only group losing credibility are the radical, left-wing lower court judges issuing unlawful rulings to advance their own agenda." Jackson said many district court rulings against the administration were later overturned on appeal, and "President Trump's entire Administration is lawfully implementing the America First agenda he was elected to enact." She said the administration "will continue to comply with lawful court rulings and appeal those lawless opinions of radical left-wing district court judges." Baldassarre said the administration "complies with court orders and is committed to enforcing our nation's immigration laws."
Rothenberg said, "When the culture has changed to that degree, it's going to take many years for the culture to change and go back to where it was, where DOJ was independent from the president in terms of day-to-day operations." Young said, "All of that will take years and years to repair, if it can be repaired at all."
Why This Matters:
The mass exodus of experienced attorneys from the Justice Department represents a fundamental threat to the rule of law and equal protection under the Constitution. When three-quarters of civil rights lawyers leave, communities lose advocates who spent years building trust and pursuing accountability for police misconduct and discrimination. When environmental enforcement penalties drop from $1.88 billion to $15.1 million, polluters escape consequences while vulnerable communities bear the health costs. When federal judges—including Republican appointees—warn repeatedly that government attorneys are violating court orders and cannot be trusted, the basic functioning of the justice system breaks down. The collapse of tax enforcement means wealthy tax evaders face fewer consequences while working families shoulder a greater burden. The gutting of anti-narcotics units undermines the very cartel prosecutions the administration claims to prioritize. Most critically, the long-term damage to institutional knowledge, public trust, and the department's ability to recruit talented lawyers committed to impartial justice will persist long after this administration, weakening the legal protections that safeguard all Americans' rights and safety.