Justice Department to Lose 4,500 Staffers to Buyout Offers (1)

Approximately 4,500 Justice Department employees have accepted the Trump administration’s offer to participate in its deferred resignation program, according to new budget documents.

The DOJ’s budget request to Congress for next fiscal year proposes eliminating 5,093 positions, which includes approximately 4,500 that are already vacant as a result of the administration’s effort launched under Elon Musk to scale back the federal workforce and spending, according to a summary released by the Justice Management Division’s budget staff.

The total represents an official accounting of departures under the program, also known as the Fork in the Road, allowing employees to take paid leave through the end of September before leaving. The department claimed in its budget proposal, posted two weeks after the White House released its version, that these resignations will create at least $470 million in savings. The Justice Department currently has funding for roughly 110,000 positions, according to the document.

The workforce will shrink more through voluntary early retirement available to certain employees through 2025, and additional reduction-in-force actions “will also be implemented as needed,” the agency said in its June 13 summary.

DOJ offices have seen widespread resignations of career attorneys since President Donald Trump took office. Trump has appointed new agency leaders who have quickly moved to implement the administration’s ideological goals and sidelined longtime career officials.

More than two-thirds of the roughly 380 career lawyers at the civil rights division, which enforces anti-discrimination laws, have left or been reassigned since January. The exodus followed efforts by political leadership to focus the unit’s resources toward conservative priorities, including anti-Christian bias and gun rights.

The administration would like to shrink the civil rights division from 626 total positions, including 386 attorneys, to 353 positions, including 193 attorneys, according to the budget summary.

The administration is also eyeing staffing cuts in other DOJ offices. The document proposes cutting 113 positions next fiscal year from the Environment and Natural Resources Division, a roughly 30% reduction.

Stacey Young, a former Justice Department attorney who founded an organization to support current department employees, said the number of resignations illustrates “the reshaping of the Justice Department into President Trump’s image” and Trump’s preference for loyalty over career experience.

“The attacks on the department have been detrimental not only to DOJ employees, but to the department as an institution—and the American public it serves,” Young said in a statement.

The DOJ didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Agency Overhaul

The voluntary exits come as the Trump administration pushes for deeper overhauls to the structure of the department and pushes to shift more law-enforcement resources to areas such as immigration and drug trafficking.

The department said it would transfer the INTERPOL Washington unit, which has worked with the International Police Organization as a standalone unit, to the US Marshals Service and eliminate its Office for Access to Justice, in moves that would cut more than 50 combined positions, according to the budget documents.

Officials also plan to eliminate the DOJ’s tax division and transfer its enforcement work to the department’s respective civil and criminal divisions .

The department noted the criminal division has already reduced the number of people working in its Office of International Affairs and sections responsible for prosecutions involving public officials and foreign bribery and reassigned them to what it deems “higher-priority work.”

The DOJ is also closing field offices throughout the US, including two in Sacramento and San Francisco that were part of the Environment and Natural Resources Division, according to the documents.

The field-office cuts are intended to “promote efficiency, generate budget savings, and ensure appropriate political supervision of DOJ employees by appointees in Main Justice,” DOJ said.

Meanwhile, it would devote $448,000 to a “firearm rights restoration initiation,” which would support the creation of an electronic case management system to process requests from people with felony convictions to have their right to own guns restored.

Former pardon attorney Liz Oyer has testified that she was fired earlier this year after she refused to recommend that actor Mel Gibson have his right to own firearms reinstated following a domestic violence conviction.

White House Proposal

The DOJ budget document follows the White House’s requests last month to cut funding for the department by nearly 8% overall. The administration has proposed combining the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives with the Drug Enforcement Administration and slashing the FBI’s budget by $545 million.

It would also eliminate the Community Relations Service, which was established during the Civil Rights Movement to serve as “America’s Peacemaker” and help communities deal with conflict, and cut funding for the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General, which investigates misconduct within the agency, by 28%.

The department acknowledged in its latest document that the cuts will reduce oversight of “critical” DOJ operations, including of national security, federal prisons, and FBI programs.

“While the OIG will mitigate impacts through attrition and a hiring freeze, the scope and frequency of independent oversight will be significantly curtailed,” the proposal says.