WASHINGTON (AP) — Michael Ben'Ary was driving one evening last October when he paused at a red light to check his work phone. He was in the middle of a counterterrorism prosecution so important that President Donald Trump highlighted it in his State of the Union address.
Ben'Ary said he was shocked to see his phone was disabled. He found the explanation later in his personal email account,
A veteran prosecutor, Ben'Ary handled high-profile cases over two decades at the Justice Department. Yet the same credentials that enhanced Ben'Ary's resume spelled the undoing of his government career.
His termination came hours after right-wing commentator Julie Kelly told her online followers that he had previously served as a senior counsel to the No. 2 Justice Department official in the Biden administration. Kelly also suggested Ben'Ary was part of the “internal resistance†to prosecuting former FBI Director . Ben’Ary was never involved in the case.
As approaches her first year on the job, the firings of attorneys like Ben’Ary have defined her turbulent tenure. The terminations and a larger voluntary exodus of lawyers have erased centuries of combined experience and left the department with fewer career employees to act as a bulwark for the rule of law as Trump tests the limits of executive power by
Interviews by The Associated Press of more than a half-dozen fired employees offer a snapshot of the toll. The departures include lawyers who prosecuted attacks on police at the , civil rights and ethics enforcers, immigration judges and attorneys who defend administration policies. They continued this week, moved to resign amid turmoil over an investigation into the shooting of a woman by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer.
“To lose people at that career level, people who otherwise intended to stay and now are either being discharged or themselves are walking away, is immensely damaging to the public interest,†said Stuart Gerson, a senior official in the George H.W. Bush administration and acting attorney general early in the Clinton administration.
Justice Connection, a network of department alumni, estimates that more than 230 lawyers, agents and other employees from across the department were fired last year. More than 6,400 employees are estimated to have left a department that at the end of 2025 had roughly 108,000.
The Justice Department says it has hired thousands of career attorneys over the last year. The Trump administration has publicly characterized some of the fired and departed workers as out-of-step with its agenda.
After he was fired, Ben'Ary who led the national security unit at the U.S. attorney's office for the Eastern District of Virginia, posted a note near his door reminding colleagues they had vowed to follow the facts “unhindered by political interference.â€
But, he warned, “In recent months, the political leadership of the Department have violated these principles, jeopardizing our national security and making Americans less safe.â€
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An unprecedented purge
The firings began before Bondi arrived last February. Prosecutors on were terminated days after the inauguration, for cases resulting from the 2021 Capitol insurrection.
"The people working on these cases were not political agents of any kind,†said fired Jan. 6 prosecutor Aliya Khalidi.
The Justice Department has disputed the accounts of some of those who have fired or quit and has defended the termination of those who investigated Trump as “consistent with the mission of ending the weaponization of government.â€
“This is the most efficient Department of Justice in American history, and our attorneys will continue to deliver measurable results for the American people,†the department said in a statement. It says more than 3,400 career attorneys have been hired since Trump took office.
The departures have affected the department’s daily business as well as efforts to fulfill Trump’s desires to prosecute political opponents.
Desperate for lawyers willing to file criminal cases against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, the , , a White House aide with no experience as a federal prosecutor.
Halligan secured the indictments but the win was short-lived. , calling Halligan's appointment unlawful.
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Firings via email
Upon Trump's return to the White House, Khalidi watched Jan. 6 cases she handled get dismantled by Trump’s .
Less than two weeks later, involved in Jan. 6 investigations triggered rumors of potential mass firings. As she prepared dinner one Friday evening, she received an email suggesting she had lost her own job.
The news came in September for Anam Petit, an immigration judge, who learned via email during a break between hearings that she'd been fired. She left to text her husband, then returned to work.
“I just put my phone back in my pocket and I went into the courtroom to deliver my decision, with a very shaky voice and shaky hands, trying to center myself back to that decision to so that I could relay it,†Petit said.
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‘Our country depends on you'
Trump used his State of the Union address last March to announce the capture of an ISIS-K militant charged in a Kabul airport bombing that killed 13 American servicemembers during the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Ben'Ary spent the next several months working on the case against Mohammad Sharifullah, but on Oct. 1, he was fired without explanation.
In his farewell note, he observed that in “just a few short months†career employees like himself had been removed.
“While I am no longer your colleague, I ask that each of you continue to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons,†Ben'Ary wrote. “Follow the facts and the law. Stand up for what we all believe in — our Constitution and the rule of law. Our country depends on you.â€
