President Donald Trump has begun delivering on a central promise of his historic 2024 campaign by removing officials who obstruct his America First agenda.
Numerous top officials have been fired at the Department of Justice’s Executive Office of Immigration Review, which oversees the country’s immigration courts, NBC News reports. The firings, which occurred late Monday evening, include the following officials: chief immigration judge, Sheila McNulty; the acting director of the Executive Office of Immigration Review, Mary Cheng; the office’s general counsel, Jill Anderson; and its head of policy, Lauren Alder Reid, the news outlet noted.
Reid told the outlet that she was 'severely disappointed' that nobody gave her a heads up.
"My career Senior Executive Service colleagues and I are shocked and severely disappointed in the decision to remove us from our positions without notice or cause,” she bitterly told NBC News. “We have dedicated our careers to upholding the rule of law, regardless of the administration. Our continued pursuit of justice will not be diminished.”
The terminated officials were all civil servants, not political appointees.
Additionally, some DOJ officials were reassigned to different roles within the agency, sources familiar with the developments told the Associated Press. Bruce Swartz, veteran head of the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs, has been shifted to another job - while George Toscas, a longtime deputy assistant attorney general in the National Security Division, was reassigned. Toscas played roles in both former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information and Trump’s classified documents probe.
Nearly two dozen officials have been moved to new roles, AP said.
Trump, who recently faced twin (now closed) investigations from Biden-DOJ-appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith, vowed through his latest White House campaign to “demolish the ‘deep state.”
“We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country,” Trump pledged in Windham, New Hampshire in a 2023 speech.
Nonetheless, Trump’s efforts to improve the DOJ is already being met with resistance and chicanery from the Left.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has postponed the confirmation hearing for attorney general nominee Pam Bondi by one week due to an unnamed Democrat lawmaker. The hearing, originally planned to advance Bondi's nomination for a full Senate vote, has been rescheduled for January 29th.
Bondi, who served as Florida’s first female Attorney General, has vowed to restore a “one tier of justice for all” if confirmed to lead the DOJ.
“My overriding objective will be to return the Department of Justice to its core mission of keeping Americans safe and vigorously prosecuting criminals, and that includes getting back to basics, gangs, drugs, terrorists, cartels, our border and our foreign adversaries,” she testified during her confirmation process. “I believe we are on the cusp of a new golden age where the Department of Justice can and will do better if I am confirmed.”
