The New York Times reports Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors and agents are worried that a hobbled work force is hurting the agency’s ability to detect and stop terrorist plots, cyberattacks, mass violence and fraud.
“Across the Justice Department, rank-and-file prosecutors and agents have expressed serious concern that a denigrated, distracted and depleted work force hurts the government’s ability to identify and stop terrorist plots, cyberattacks, mass violence and fraud, putting the country in a weaker position,” the Times reports.
Advocacy group Justice Connection estimates that about 5,500 prosecutors, agents and other department employees left in 2025, reports the Times, and those who left include a disproportionate number of highly experienced prosecutors, including many who helped lead U.S. attorneys’ offices and veteran FBI agents.
Anonymous insiders also say Trump’s political appointees at the department have “purged its ranks of those they suspect are not loyal to the president’s agenda, including his pursuit of retribution against his rivals.”
Many DOJ agents and prosecutors who remain fear being dismissed for simply working on cases that draw unwanted attention from the agency’s partisan leadership. The pace of new cases has consequently slowed because “the remaining work force has inherited too many open prosecutions and investigations from those who left, giving them little time to focus on new matters,” according to the Times.
The department declined to answer questions about staffing levels, the Times claims, but interviews with current and former officials and numbers tracked by government advocacy groups and court filings suggest a “hobbled work force struggling to keep pace.”
“In major metropolitan areas across the country — including Miami, Houston and Denver — U.S. attorneys’ offices have lost at least a quarter of their work force, according to current and former officials,” said the Times. “The numbers in some key offices are particularly stark. In New Jersey — which was briefly run by a former personal lawyer to President Trump, Alina Habba — about 50 assistant U.S. attorneys departed the office last year out of roughly 150, including much of the office’s leadership.”
“You’re making it more likely something is going to be missed,” former federal prosecutor Samuel W. Buell told the Times. “The first question that happens whenever something horrific happens, whether it’s 9/11 or something like Bernie Madoff, is, ‘What did the Department of Justice and FBI know and why weren’t they in a position to stop this?’”
Read the New York Times report at this link.
