James McHenry testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill July 31, 2018 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images
The Department of Justice on Monday fired officials involved in the now-terminated federal criminal prosecutions of President Donald Trump by former special counsel Jack Smith.
The firings come a week after Trump was sworn in for a second, non-consecutive term in the White House.
“Today, Acting Attorney General James McHenry terminated the employment of a number of DOJ officials who played a significant role in prosecuting President Trump,” a DOJ official told NBC News.
“In light of their actions, the Acting Attorney General does not trust these officials to assist in faithfully implementing the President’s agenda,” that official said. “This action is consistent with the mission of ending the weaponization of government.”
The number and names of the fired officials were not disclosed by the department.
But NBC reported that an official familiar with the matter said career prosecutors Molly Gaston, J.P. Cooney, Anne McNamara and Mary Dohrmann were among those terminated.
“Firing prosecutors because of cases they were assigned to work on is just unacceptable,” former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance told NBC News.
“It’s anti-rule of law, it’s anti-democracy,” said Vance, who is an NBC News legal contributor.
Fox News reported earlier Monday that McHenry had fired more than a dozen officials who worked on Smith’s prosecutions of Trump.
Smith, who resigned from the DOJ on Jan. 10, had filed criminal charges against Trump in two separate cases: one in federal district court in Washington, D.C., the second federal district court in South Florida.
In the D.C. case, Trump was accused of crimes related to his attempt to reverse his loss to former President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
The election interference case was dismissed by the DOJ after Trump was elected president in November due to a department policy that bars federal prosecutions of sitting presidents.
Trump was charged in the Florida case with crimes connected to his retention of classified government documents after he left the White House in January 2021, and his efforts to prevent government officials from recovering those records from his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach.
The classified documents case was dismissed in July by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon after she ruled that Smith’s appointment as special counsel violated the U.S. Constitution.
The DOJ had appealed Cannon’s dismissal but dropped that effort after Trump won the 2020 election because of its policy related to prosecuting presidents.