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The ongoing purge of Justice Department officials who investigated
President Trump and his allies continued this week, with the Justice
Department firing more than 20 employees who worked on the
investigations, sources told CBS News.

The firings, one source familiar with the terminations said, included
more than 20 people who worked on former Special Counsel Jack Smith's classified documents case against Mr. Trump and Smith's investigation
into Mr. Trump's attempts to overturn election results in 2020.

There have been at least 35 firings of Justice Department employees who
worked for Smith on the two investigations he oversaw, and at least 15
more could be fired, the source said.

Sources told CBS News that among those fired were paralegals who worked
for Smith's office, finance and support staff, and two additional
Justice Department prosecutors in North Carolina and Florida. Three
other top Jan. 6 prosecutors were fired in June.

The staffers were identified by the Justice Department's so-called "weaponization working group" which Attorney General Pam Bondi
established as one of her first priorities after she was confirmed, one
source said.

The attorney general established the "weaponization working group" to
review Biden administration law enforcement policies, according to the
source. The group is reviewing the two federal cases against Mr. Trump
pursued by former special counsel Smith and is examining prosecutions of rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. It is also
reviewing the Trump legal cases in New York — the "hush money" trial
pursued by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and the civil
enforcement action against the Trump Organization brought by New York
Attorney General Letitia James — neither of which involved federal prosecutors.

As the Justice Department began collecting information about the FBI
agents who worked on Jan. 6 investigations and fired career prosecutors
who worked on the cases, Bondi said in her directive that the working
group would investigate "improper investigative tactics and unethical prosecutions" versus "good faith actions by federal employees simply
following orders."

CBS News has reached out to the Justice Department for comment on the
firings.

One of the staffers who has been fired was Patty Hartman, who served as
a top public affairs specialist at the FBI and federal prosecutors'
offices. Hartman was fired Monday via a letter from the attorney
general. She worked on the District of Columbia U.S. Attorney's Office
public affairs team that distributed news releases about the more than
1,500 Jan. 6 criminal prosecutions.

In an interview with CBS News, Hartman warned of a continuing wave of retribution inside the agency.

"The rules don't exist anymore," Hartman said. "There used to be a line,
used to be a very distinct separation between the White House and the Department of Justice, because one should not interfere with the work of
the other. That line is very definitely gone."

The purge of Justice Department employees who worked on Jan. 6 cases
began shortly after Mr. Trump's second inauguration, when he installed a
former Jan. 6 defense attorney, Ed Martin, as the acting top prosecutor
in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Trump and his supporters have downplayed the damage, injuries and
trauma of the Capitol siege and have sought to recast convicted rioters
as "political prisoners."

The mass pardon of nearly all of the approximately 1,500 defendants
shuttered the prosecutions in January.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/justice-department-firings-include-trump-investigators-jan-6-prosecutors/

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