ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
The U.S. Justice Department is an institution in turmoil. This year, federal prosecutors have followed the president's lead to pursue criminal charges against some of his most vocal critics.
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LETITIA JAMES: This is not about me.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: No.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Yeah.
JAMES: This is about all of us...
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Yeah.
JAMES: ...And about a justice system, which has been weaponized.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Yeah.
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JAMES COMEY: My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I'm innocent.
SCHMITZ: That was, of course, former FBI Director James Comey, preceded by New York Attorney General Letitia James. NPR's Carrie Johnson has been covering the Justice Department for nearly two decades, and she joins us now.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Oh, happy to do it.
SCHMITZ: Now, Carrie, in your reporting since President Trump took office this year, you've talked about the brain drain at the DOJ. Give us a sense of the scale of that.
JOHNSON: More than 5,000 workers have left the Justice Department this year, by some estimates. That includes the acting director of the FBI and many of the other top FBI officials. At the Justice Department, the pardon attorney is gone. The ethics advisor is gone. Most of the prosecutors who took on public corruption are gone, as well as people who worked on cases involving the Capitol riot nearly five years ago. And at the Civil Rights Division, nearly 3 out of 4 lawyers are gone.
SCHMITZ: Wow. And how is all of that turnover impacting the work of the Justice Department?
JOHNSON: The first thing to say is that there have been a lot of mistakes, misstatements of law, like in a big Texas redistricting case. A Trump-appointed judge says the DOJ civil rights letter in that case contains so many factual, legal and typographical errors that even lawyers working for the Texas attorney general - allies of President Trump - called the letter legally unsound, ham-fisted and a mess.
Then there are these alleged misrepresentations to courts in deportation cases. In D.C., Judge Jeb Boasberg is demanding to hear from the Justice Department about whether lawyers intentionally flouted his order this year to turn planes around carrying Venezuelan migrants. Erez Reuveni spent 15 years at the DOJ. He later blew the whistle on what he saw as misconduct in immigration cases. Here's what he told me this year.
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EREZ REUVENI: The political leadership in charge of the DOJ didn't care one bit about our oaths to the courts, and that they had one and only one goal - put those people on planes, get them out of the country ASAP.
JOHNSON: The attorney general has called Reuveni a disgruntled employee and a leaker.
SCHMITZ: So, Carrie, what is the cost of all of this turmoil?
JOHNSON: People who have worked at the DOJ and the FBI really worry it's making the country less safe. The former acting director of the FBI and two other top officials there say they were fired for improper political reasons this year. Chris Mattei's a lawyer for some of those fired officials.
CHRIS MATTEI: When you kneecap an organization by getting rid of its leaders, you really compromise the FBI's ability to carry out its mission.
JOHNSON: Then another bunch of FBI agents who had nearly 200 years of experience got fired for taking a knee during racial justice protests five years ago.
SCHMITZ: So, Carrie, the Supreme Court said in an immunity case last year that a president has absolute control over the Justice Department. How is President Trump using some of that newfound authority?
JOHNSON: President Trump has been pretty clear about his intentions. He's been angry ever since the Biden DOJ charged him with federal crimes in cases that wound up being dropped after the election. Here's Trump delivering a major speech at the Justice Department headquarters in March.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Our predecessors turned this Department of Justice into the Department of Injustice. But I stand before you today to declare that those days are over, and they are never going to come back. They're never coming back.
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JOHNSON: There's now a pattern of the Justice Department going out of its way to help allies of the president and other people accused of political corruption. For instance, the president has granted clemency to several members of Congress - George Santos of New York, Henry Cuellar of Texas among them. He's also issued pardons of the former president of Honduras and other convicted drug kingpins. That undid a lot of work by federal prosecutors and agents. And at the same time, the Justice Department seems to be targeting Trump's political opponents, people like the former FBI director, Jim Comey, New York Attorney General Tish James and California Democratic Senator Adam Schiff.
SCHMITZ: So, Carrie, there's just so much to cover here. What are you going to be following in the weeks to come?
JOHNSON: The Senate still has advise and consent power and some oversight power, if the Republicans in charge now want to use that power. And there are some signs of infighting between DOJ leaders and the people at the top of the FBI - FBI Director Kash Patel, his deputy Dan Bongino. And that could produce some turnover in the coming weeks or months. And some nonprofit groups suggest accountability, for now, maybe simply documenting all the unusual and possibly unlawful things happening at the Justice Department.
SCHMITZ: That is NPR's Carrie Johnson, busy as ever. Thank you so much for joining us.
JOHNSON: Thanks for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF HYAKKEI'S "KAGEFUMI") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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