Three licensee officials from the Ministry of Justice filed a complaint against the Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday after being part of a wave of endings agency earlier this summer.
The complainants of Thursday’s prosecution include Michael Gordon, a longtime federal prosecutor who also treated business on January 6. He was dismissed last month when he was dealing with a high -level fraud case against a man from Florida Accused of children on the fly having special needs On millions of dollars. The trial indicates that the dismissal “was a particular shock” for Gordon because it was chosen to help direct this case, and it was “personally congratulated” by civil servants.
Also joining the costume: Joseph Tirrell, the department Former senior ethical officialand Patty Hartman, a public affairs specialist The WHO supervised press releases to the cases of January 6 and helped maintain the content of a database from the Ministry of Justice online on the cases of capital seat.
In their trial, the three officials say that they have been informed of their layoffs in service notes of a page signed by Bondi which have not offered any specific reason to termination. The service notes cited article II of the American Constitution, which presents the president’s powers.
The trial maintains that Bondi and the Ministry of Justice have not followed the normal procedures that govern how and when civil servants can be dismissed. They ask a judge to order the Trump administration to “reintegrate them immediately” as an employee of the Ministry of Justice and to grant the return salary if necessary.
“The Attorney General does not have the absolute authority to simply withdraw employees from the MJ. More specifically, there are crucial railing that protect employees against an arbitrary or illegal dismissal,” said the trial.
During the dismissal of Tirell, the trial also says that it is due to the protections as a member of the higher executive service – a category of higher level employees which are not appointed by the president – and as a veteran of the navy.
“More specifically, this is a forbidden personnel practice to” take, knowingly recommend or approve any action of staff if taking such measures would violate a requirement of preferably veterans “,” the pursuit read, referring to the federal rules which offer former army members certain preferences in the government’s jobs.
Normally, says the prosecution, the complainants could go to a federal agency called the Merit Systems Protection Board to use their layoffs. But the MSPB was hampered by President Trump Decision to dismiss a member of the board of directorsMaking any file there “futile”, say the complainants.
Dozens of staff members of the Ministry of Justice have been dismissed, CBS News previously reported. The layoffs include prosecutors and officials who worked on January 6, 2021, Capitol Riot, as well as people related to criminal surveys on Mr. Trump.
In the weeks following the inauguration of Mr. Trump, senior officials Directed the FBI To draw up a list of agents who worked in the cases of January 6 – a radical dragnet since the Capitol Riot survey was the most important in the history of the Ministry of Justice, lounging more than 1,000 defendants. Meanwhile, leap facility A “armament working group” responsible for reviewing Mr. Trump’s federal criminal proceedings.
After his dismissal, Hartman castigated the Ministry of Justice in a Interview with CBS News.
“There was a line, was a very distinct separation between the White House and the Ministry of Justice, because it is not necessary to interfere with the work of the other,” Hartman told CBS News. “This line has definitely disappeared.”
CBS News contacted the Ministry of Justice to comment on the trial.
