Sixty-nine DOJ lawyers defending Trump administration policies in court have quit: report

Sixty-nine of the roughly 110 Justice Department lawyers who were in the unit that defends the Trump administration's policies in court have quit, according to a news report.

They are part of the department's Federal Programs Branch and have either voluntarily left since President Trump was elected in November 2024 or have announced their departure plans, according to a list compiled by unnamed former DOJ lawyers that was reviewed by Reuters.

The wire service was able to verify the departure of all but four names on the list with court records and LinkedIn accounts.

The seven lawyers with whom Reuters spoke said that one of the key reasons for the departures is a punishing workload and the need to defend policies that some felt were not legally justifiable. 

White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement, "Any sanctimonious career bureaucrat expressing faux outrage over the President’s policies while sitting idly by during the rank weaponization by the previous administration has no grounds to stand on."

A DOJ spokesperson told the wire service that lawyers in the unit are fighting an "unprecedented number of lawsuits" against Trump's agenda.

While some turnover in the Federal Programs Branch is common between presidential administrations, seven sources described the number of people leaving as highly unusual.

Two former attorneys in the unit and two others familiar with its work said the number of departures is far greater than during Trump's first term and Joe Biden's administration.

A DOJ spokesperson also said that the department is hiring to keep pace with staffing levels during the Biden administration.

Some of the administration's policies that the unit is defending in court are actions by the Department of Government Efficiency to cut costs, Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship, and his attempt to freeze $2.5 billion in federal funding to Harvard University.

"We've never had an administration pushing the legal envelope so quickly, so aggressively and across such a broad range of government policies and programs," said Peter Keisler, who led the DOJ's Civil Division under former President George W. Bush.

"The demands are intensifying at the same time that the ranks of lawyers there to defend these cases are dramatically thinning," he added.

The DOJ has temporarily reassigned more than a dozen attorneys to the unit from other areas of the department and has exempted the unit from the federal government hiring freeze, according to two former lawyers in the unit.

Also, DOJ leadership has brought in about 15 political appointees to help defend civil cases, an unusually high number.

Four former DOJ attorneys told Reuters that some in the unit left over policy differences with Trump, but many had served in the first Trump administration and saw their role as defending the government regardless of the party in power. They also said that government lawyers often walked into court with little information from the White House and federal agencies about the actions they were defending.