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Michael Romano, a former federal prosecutor, is used to asking the questions in courtroom, however now he is discovering himself on the opposite aspect, fielding the questions from witness tables at congressional hearings.
Twice already this 12 months, he is served as a witness at congressional hearings, warning that the Trump administration’s efforts to demote or fireplace Justice Division prosecutors who labored on instances involving President Trump or the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot pose a menace to democracy.
“It’s an honor to talk with you at this time,” Romano stated at a current Senate Judiciary Committee listening to about federal investigations, as he sat in a black leather-based armchair on the witness desk behind a placard figuring out him for the senators.
Romano is one in every of greater than 5,000 staff who’ve resigned, retired or been fired from the Justice Division within the first 12 months of Mr. Trump’s second administration. The big-scale purge – with each voluntary and involuntary departures – has gutted the company of its institutional reminiscence and lengthy expertise.
The historic turnover has confirmed to be a treasure trove for personal companies, native prosecutor’s places of work and political marketing campaign operatives.
They’ve capitalized on the wave of gifted ex-prosecutors like Romano looking for new work and new missions.
Romano left the Justice Division in March 2025, within the wake of President Trump’s overhaul of the company. He was an elite prosecutor with an ideal file towards the Capitol riot defendants, together with a few of the violent rioters who beat cops. He additionally prosecuted instances of financial espionage, property destruction concentrating on worldwide embassies in Washington and financial institution fraud.
On the personal regulation agency the place Romano is now working, he is grow to be a go-to congressional witness on the influence of the U.S. Capitol riot, defending the federal government’s prosecution of those that have been accused of misdemeanors.
At a Senate Judiciary Committee listening to this month, Romano advised senators, “There have been no small crimes on Jan. 6, 2021. I’ve heard the criticism that misdemeanor defendants, accused of trespass offenses, have been handled too harshly — and I strongly disagree with it. The individuals who trespassed on the Capitol, and dedicated disorderly conduct, enabled the mob violence.”
“It’s the most righteous effort I’ve been part of, with the best workforce of investigators, prosecutors, and workers I’ve labored with,” he testified.
Romano’s testimony has been a supply of encouragement for his former colleagues.
“What issues is that individuals with firsthand expertise are keen to lift issues after they consider one thing is amiss,” stated Greg Rosen, the previous head of the Justice Division’s Capitol Siege Part. “That type of engagement is not partisan; it is quintessentially American.”
Rosen additionally left the Justice Division in 2025 and now works for Rogers Joseph O’Donnell, a distinguished boutique litigation D.C. regulation agency.
As a non-public legal professional, Romano is marshaling his expertise to assist individuals enmeshed in labor disputes. He advised CBS Information he likes his new job and colleagues and says of the work, “It is essential. I feel quite a lot of the instruments that we used to analyze crime within the Justice Division can be utilized to analyze different kinds of wrongdoing.”
The D.C. U.S. Legal professional’s Workplace, the place Romano used to work, suffered heavy turnover in 2025, as Mr. Trump attacked the work of the workplace on its Jan. 6 prosecutions and because the administration sought to demote or take away prosecutors concerned. In a 2025 interview, D.C. U.S. Legal professional Jeanine Pirro revealed the workplace had been crushed by a staffing scarcity and wanted 90 extra prosecutors to handle the caseload.
The Justice Division’s Civil Rights Division has additionally been gutted by resignations and retirements over the previous 12 months, in line with a number of Justice Division sources and a report from the American Bar Affiliation.
Among the many departures is Sydney Foster, a prolific legal professional and former appearing chief of the Civil Rights Division’s Appellate Part. Final month, she joined the Washington Litigation Group, a non-profit authorized group whose mission is to curb authorities overreach. It is difficult a few of the controversial choices and insurance policies of the Trump administration.
The group’s president, Tom Inexperienced, stated Foster, along with her in depth appellate expertise and experience, is a “good match” for the agency.
Her departure was a notable loss for the Justice Division. She argued greater than 30 instances earlier than federal appellate courts for the federal government, and now she’ll be working with shoppers who’ve instances towards the Trump administration.
Foster stated it is a “important second for our democracy.”
“We’re specializing in bringing essentially the most impactful instances on this very important second,” she advised CBS Information.
The Washington Litigation Group is concerned in lawsuits difficult Trump’s renaming of the Kennedy Middle, the hollowing out of the Justice Division’s Group Relations Service and the legitimacy of a U.S. legal professional appointment by the Trump administration. It has landed different former Justice Division prosecutors, too. Amongst them are Mary Dohrmann and James Pearce, who each served on former particular counsel Jack Smith’s authorized workforce.
Different Justice Division alumni have shifted to native authorities work. One group has joined the Arlington County, Virginia Commonwealth’s Legal professional’s Workplace, in line with a spokesperson for the workplace.
Stacey Younger, the founder and govt director of Justice Connection, a company that helps ousted Justice Division workers, stated nonprofits and companies “are capitalizing on DOJ’s idiotic resolution to drive out many 1000’s of good profession staff.”
“Because the division loses generations of institutional data it might by no means get again, employers on the skin are benefiting from the unequalled expertise they’re snatching up,” Younger stated.
In Minnesota, the place the controversial killings of two U.S. residents by immigration brokers have been an element within the mass exodus from the U.S. Legal professional’s Workplace in Minnesota, two of the departed attorneys have launched a non-public agency.
One of many two, Joe Thompson, who was previously the workplace’s appearing U.S. legal professional, stated the apply can be a boutique regulation agency “targeted on white-collar protection, worldwide investigations, advanced business litigation, and disaster administration.” Thompson promptly landed a high-profile consumer, showing in courtroom final Friday as a protection legal professional for journalist Don Lemon, who has pleaded not responsible to federal costs within the controversial prosecution of a church disturbance final month in Minneapolis.
In January, Smith additionally launched his personal personal white-collar investigation and litigation agency with former authorities legal professionals Timothy Heaphy, David Harbach and Thomas Windom.
At the very least two different former Justice Division prosecutors are operating for federal workplace. Ryan Crosswell, a former public integrity prosecutor who give up amid the Trump administration’s controversial resolution to drop a federal legal case towards former New York Mayor Eric Adams, has declared his candidacy for a Home seat in Pennsylvania.
Crosswell has secured a sequence of high-profile endorsements, together with from the VoteVets political motion group, which champions Democratic political candidates.
And final week, J.P. Cooney, who was on the workforce that investigated and prosecuted Mr. Trump earlier than his second time period, introduced his intention to run for a Home seat in Virginia, if the state redraws its congressional maps later this 12 months.
Cooney advised CBS Information, “Donald Trump fired me due to my constancy to the rule of regulation as an alternative of to him.” He praised his former colleagues within the particular counsel’s workplace, U.S. Legal professional’s Workplace and Public Integrity Part, and stated, “I view it as a badge of honor for standing for the rule of regulation and the Structure.”
He is made Mr. Trump a distinguished a part of his early marketing campaign messaging and advised CBS Information, “The occasions of the final 12 months have disturbed me greater than at any level in my life.”
“I do not consider that there has ever been a second in American historical past {that a} single particular person, the president of the USA, posed an actual, grave menace to basic values that all of us share, like democracy, the rule of regulation,” Cooney stated.
The early response from donors and activists has been optimistic — he is raised greater than $200,000 within the opening days of his marketing campaign.
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