DOJ fires 20 more attorneys and staffers from Jack Smith's anti-Trump prosecutions

By 
 July 15, 2025

Former anti-Trump Special Counsel Jack Smith may have resigned before President Donald Trump took office to begin his second term, but dozens of other federal prosecutors and staffers who worked with him remained employed within the new administration's Department of Justice -- until now.

On Friday, at least 20 DOJ employees who previously worked on the two federal criminal cases against Trump were terminated, according to the Daily Caller.

Those firings followed around a dozen former Smith-linked DOJ employees being let go in January, and other reports indicated that more than a dozen others could also soon be looking for new jobs.

Smith-linked prosecutors and staffers terminated

The Daily Caller confirmed with its sources that the DOJ fired on Friday at least 20 individuals who'd worked with former Special Counsel Smith on either or both of the mishandled classified documents or 2020 election interference prosecutions that were launched against President Trump last year.

Per an unnamed official, the Friday firings at the DOJ included two prosecutors, 12 support staffers, and six U.S. Marshals.

Axios reported on Saturday that, according to its anonymous sources, there are around another 15 DOJ employees linked to Smith's two criminal prosecutions of Trump who could also soon be fired.

The terminations were said to be part of a broader "massive purge" of attorneys and staffers across the DOJ who took part in the effort to convict and imprison Trump or otherwise couldn't be trusted to support the current president's policy agenda.

The outlet further reported that Friday's firings were a result of an ongoing review by the "Weaponization Working Group" established earlier in the year by Attorney General Pam Bondi, which was tasked with identifying anti-Trump employees working against the president within the DOJ, including those who were "burrowed deep" and weaponizing the federal government to go after partisan opponents for political reasons.

Around three dozen fired in total since January

Reuters, which was among the first to report on Friday's firings at the DOJ, noted that the recently terminated prosecutors and staffers can now join the 14 former DOJ attorneys who'd worked with former Special Counsel Smith that were similarly fired in late January, shortly after AG Bondi took office.

According to the outlet's sources, upwards of 37 individuals linked to Smith's anti-Trump prosecutions have been let go since the current president was sworn into office to begin his second term.

Relatedly, Reuters also reported that an unspecified number of DOJ attorneys and staffers who'd worked on the political prosecutions of Jan. 6 Capitol riot defendants have also been fired since the new Trump administration began.

Firings were temporarily delayed by separate controversy

Axios reported that Friday's firings at the DOJ were supposed to have happened earlier that week but had been delayed for a few days by AG Bondi amid the controversy that erupted over alleged internal disputes between her and top FBI officials over the DOJ's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, including the assertions that there was no alleged "client list" and that the convicted pedophile and alleged sex trafficker had committed suicide and not been murdered in a jail cell.

The terminations were also allegedly pushed back by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, whom unnamed sources claimed wanted to be certain that the fired individuals were truly opposed to President Trump and his agenda and weren't previously just doing what they'd been ordered to do on the anti-Trump prosecutions.

Indeed, the Axios report noted that at least some of the attorneys and staffer fired on Friday had initially volunteered for the assignment to work on investigating and prosecuting Trump.

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