Over 3,300 attorneys have exited the Justice Department between President Donald Trump’s first day back in office in January 2025 and February 2026, with only 800 replacements hired, systematically weakening enforcement against corporate malfeasance, environmental destruction, and tax evasion while prioritizing immigration crackdowns and political targeting.
The exodus represents a significant loss of institutional knowledge, as departing lawyers averaged 14 years at the DOJ, with 740 holding leadership positions. This depletion has directly hindered the department’s capacity to enforce laws across critical areas including tax enforcement, anti-narcotics efforts, white-collar crime, national security, environmental enforcement, and civil rights.
In late 2025, the Trump administration dissolved the Tax Division, shifting its lawyers to other divisions. Former official Gilbert Rothenberg, who retired from the DOJ in 2019, called this "foolish" from a public policy perspective for not seeking to "raise more money" from the wealthy. An official court filing in February 2026 revealed that over 40% of lawyers handling tax appeals had retired, resigned, or been temporarily transferred in the previous year, further eroding the state's ability to challenge capital flight and surplus extraction.
The Environment and Natural Resources Division saw at least 140 lawyers, a third of its staff, leave in Trump’s first year back in office, according to E&E News. A December analysis from Earthjustice found that during the first 11 months of Trump’s return to office, the division’s environmental enforcement section imposed only $15.1 million in civil penalties, a stark contrast to the $1.88 billion in civil fines collected the previous year. This drastic reduction effectively privatizes the commons by allowing corporations to operate with reduced accountability. Former official Andrew Mergen noted that an agenda of "drill, baby, drill" or "mine, baby, mine" would inevitably face lawsuits, requiring legal resources that are now diminished.
Protecting Accumulated Wealth
The Civil Rights Division, under new head Harmeet Dhillon, saw approximately 75% of its lawyers depart in the first seven months of the new administration, about 300 out of 400. The administration subsequently dropped lawsuits initiated under President Joe Biden that accused police departments in Louisville and Minneapolis of civil rights violations, abandoning agreements governing policing practices. Instead, the division shifted its focus to investigating "potential racial preferences in employment and university admissions, religious liberty issues and local limitations on gun ownership," effectively redirecting state power away from protecting the dispossessed from state violence.
Zach Smith, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, stated that these changes and re-allocation of resources reflect the administration's prosecutorial priorities, noting the Civil Rights Division would prioritize "enforcing the Constitution’s guarantee of colorblind treatment for all Americans." The DOJ also exhibited reluctance to investigate a federal immigration agent who shot and killed Minneapolis resident Renee Good, instead desiring to investigate Good’s widow, demonstrating a clear bias in the application of state force. Several prosecutors resigned after being ordered to drop a bribery case against then-New York City Mayor Eric Adams, further illustrating the state's role in protecting specific political and economic interests.
The State's New Priorities
The DOJ prosecuted 32,000 new immigration cases in its first six months, nearly tripling the number prosecuted by the Biden administration in the same period, according to ProPublica analysis. This intensified immigration enforcement occurred concurrently with a reported drop in prosecutions for nearly every other type of crime compared to the Biden administration’s first six months. DOJ spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre claimed the department is "acutely focused on protecting our national security, eliminating transnational drug cartels and traffickers, prosecuting criminals, and safeguarding Americans from violent crime," while also asserting that immigration enforcement "has not deterred our ability to successfully investigate and prosecute other types of crime."
However, Joseph Gerbasi, who spent decades in the Criminal Division and retired in March 2025, noted that only one person remains from what was a five-lawyer policy unit, suggesting that "cartel leaders are probably laughing at us" due to fewer prosecutions and extraditions. The department has also pursued prosecutions against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, and opened investigations into Senator Adam Schiff, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, and six members of Congress who urged military service members not to obey illegal orders, all after public calls from the president. These actions, including the erection of a banner of Trump on the side of its main building in Washington, D.C., demonstrate the state apparatus being openly repurposed to serve the political agenda of the executive, rather than a neutral "rule of law."
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson affirmed this, stating President Trump "will not waver when lawfully implementing the agenda he was elected on," and that the administration "will continue to comply with lawful court rulings and appeal those lawless opinions of radical left-wing district court judges."
Erosion of Legal Apparatus
Federal judges have increasingly expressed concerns about the DOJ's noncompliance with judicial orders. Minnesota federal Judge Patrick J. Schiltz wrote in a Feb. 26, 2026, court order that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement violated 210 orders across 143 separate cases. Judge Schiltz wrote that he has "had to resort to using the threat of civil contempt to force ICE to comply with orders," an unprecedented situation in U.S. history. California federal Judge Troy L. Nunley sanctioned a DOJ lawyer in an April 15, 2026, order for repeated failures to meet deadlines and follow orders in an immigration case, imposing a $250 fine.
Former DOJ lawyers, like Stacey Young, who left the department a few days into the new administration and founded Justice Connection, describe the job as "overwhelming" and "untenable," leading to difficulties in attracting top candidates for attorney openings. Young stated that offices are now "begging former lawyers, lawyers who left the offices, to come back," a stark contrast to the past when "hundreds or thousands of applications" were received for a single opening. Andrew Mergen, a former official, expressed caution about recommending federal government work, indicating a systemic breakdown in the state's ability to maintain its own legal infrastructure.
Gilbert Rothenberg observed that the "culture has changed to that degree" that it will 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," while Young added that repair would take "years and years... if it can be repaired at all." DOJ spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre maintained that the department is "committed to enforcing our nation’s immigration laws" and "restoring law and order," despite the documented shifts in enforcement and the concerns raised by former officials and judges.