At least four Justice Department prosecutors have recently been fired as part of the Trump Administration’s plan to publicly accuse the Biden administration of unfairly targeting anti-abortion protesters for their religious beliefs, according to two people familiar with the firings and a Justice Department spokesperson.
The firings of the assistant U.S. Attorneys come as the DOJ plans to release a report Tuesday that concludes the prior administration weaponized the department to criminalize the conservative beliefs of people protesting outside abortion clinics. MSNOW first published the news about the coming report and its findings after obtaining an early draft of it last week.
In the cases the Trump administration cite as proof, however, juries sided with the government prosecutors and convicted protesters for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act or FACE Act, a 1994 law that made it illegal to use physical violence or threats to block access to medical providers. The law was passed after violent attacks on abortion providers and physical threats to staff and clients at medical facilities that performed abortions.
A DOJ spokesperson confirmed the firings on Monday when MS NOW asked about them. The firings include that of a veteran Civil Rights Division prosecutor Sanjay Patel, who led the team enforcing the FACE Act and whom Trump aides had put on administration leave in March amid the investigation of the medical clinic cases, according to the two people familiar with the removals.
“DOJ has terminated the employment of personnel responsible for weaponizing the FACE Act who still remained at the department,” a spokesperson told MS NOW.
Patel did not respond to a LinkedIn message and emails from MS NOW and could not be reached by phone.
The firings, two people said, were coordinated with the Tuesday release of the report so the Justice Department could boast of removing people involved in alleged “weaponization.”
Internal news of the firings spread inside the Justice Department and shook many employees already traumatized by the forced resignations and departures of hundreds of prosecutors whom Trump political appointees have pushed out of office in various ways.
Some resigned rather than comply with orders to prosecute Trump-targeted critics or other political tasks that the prosecutors believed were unethical and lacking in evidence. Some were terminated without cause, like the wide swath of prosecutors who sought to charge January 6 protesters who plotted violence and attacked law enforcement officers, or who investigated Donald Trump’s mishandling and retention of classified documents after he left the White House in 2021.
Julianne McShane contributed to this reporting
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