President Trump has reassigned career Justice Department agents, including one high-ranking official who pushed for the shocking FBI raid of Mar-A-Lago.
At least 15 high-ranking DOJ officials have been reassigned to less influential positions, the Washington Post reported. The shuffle is part of Trump's promised overhaul of the DOJ and his effort to end the weaponization of government.
The officials were reassigned, rather than fired, to work around legal protections for career employees, the Post reported. These individuals could decide to resign rather than accept being moved to less desirable posts.
The reassignments reflect Trump's desire to shift the DOJ's focus away from politics and toward national priorities, like immigration enforcement.
As an example of that, Deputy Assistant Attorney General George Toscas was moved to Trump's newly created Office of Sanctuary Cities Enforcement. Toscas, a veteran of the DOJ's national security division, played a crucial role in orchestrating the FBI's controversial raid of Trump's home in 2022.
At the time, there was initial disagreement between the FBI and DOJ about whether a raid was justified. Toscas chewed out FBI officials who supported a voluntary search, telling them he did not "give a damn about the optics" of raiding a former president's home.
"You and your leadership seem to have gone from cautious to fearful,” Toscas reportedly wrote in an email to the former head of the FBI Washington Field Office, Steven D’Antuono.
Toscas also told D'Antuono that he was “way out of line on substance and form" for opposing the raid.
Months after his home was searched, Trump - who was a candidate for the presidency at the time - was charged by the Biden Justice Department with improperly retaining classified documents. The case was eventually withdrawn by prosecutor Jack Smith after Trump's re-election win in the fall.
For Trump and many Americans, the raid of Mar-A-Lago exemplifies the overreach and weaponization of the Biden Justice Department. The raid has even elicited some pointed criticism from Trump's normally reticent wife Melania Trump, who called it a "warning to all Americans."
Trump's nominee to lead the Justice Department, Pam Bondi, is a longtime Trump loyalist and former Florida attorney general who has echoed his criticism of government weaponization.
In one of his boldest moves since reclaiming the presidency, Trump pardoned nearly all of the 1,500 January 6th defendants, effectively ending the largest DOJ probe in history with one stroke.
Meanwhile, Trump's Justice Department has warned that state and local officials could face prosecution if they refuse to carry out Trump's immigration orders.
