{"id":16883,"date":"2026-04-15T01:09:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T01:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/16883\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T01:09:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T01:09:15","slug":"justice-department-fires-4-prosecutors-accused-of-bias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/16883\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice Department fires 4 prosecutors accused of bias"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Trump administration fired four Justice Department prosecutors involved in cases against anti-abortion activists, accusing the Biden administration on Tuesday of abusing a law designed to protect abortion clinics from obstruction and threats.<\/a><\/p>\n

The firings are the latest wave of terminations of employees involved in cases criticized by conservatives or because they were perceived as insufficiently loyal to President Donald Trump\u2019s agenda. The terminations came before the release of a report<\/a> accusing the Biden administration of biased prosecutions under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act or \u201cFACE Act.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThis Department will not tolerate a two-tiered system of justice,\u201d Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, said in a statement. \u201cNo Department should conduct selective prosecution based on beliefs. The weaponization that happened under the Biden Administration will not happen again, as we restore integrity to our prosecutorial system.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report is the first released from the Justice Department\u2019s \u201cWeaponization Working Group,\u201d<\/a> created by former Attorney General Pam Bondi to scrutinize the federal prosecutions of Trump and other cases criticized by conservatives. <\/p>\n

Biden\u2019s attorney general, Merrick Garland, and Jack Smith, the special counsel who prosecuted Trump, have said they followed only the facts, the evidence and the law in their decisions. Critics of the Trump administration say Bondi \u2014 who was fired by Trump this month<\/a> \u2014 and Blanche are the ones who politicized the agency, with the norm-breaking actions that have stirred concern that the institution is being used as a tool to advance Trump\u2019s personal and political agenda.<\/p>\n

The Biden administration brought cases against dozens of defendants under the FACE Act, which makes it illegal to physically obstruct or use the threat of force to intimidate or interfere with a person seeking reproductive health services, and prohibits damaging property at abortion clinics and other centers. It was signed into law in 1994, when clinic protests and blockades were on the rise along with violence against abortion providers<\/a> such as Dr. David Gunn, who was murdered<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration alleges in the report that prosecutors under Biden often \u201cignored and downplayed\u201d attacks against pregnancy resource centers or houses of worship, which are also protected under the law. It also claims that the Biden administration pushed for harsher sentences against anti-abortion activists than it did in cases against abortion-rights defendants. Trump last year pardoned<\/a> anti-abortion activists convicted of blockading abortion clinic entrances, calling them \u201cpeaceful pro-life protesters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kristen Clarke, who led the Justice Department\u2019s Civil Rights Division under Biden, defended the prosecutions, saying the attorneys \u201cenforced the law even-handedly and put public safety at the center of this work.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Civil Rights Division brought law enforcement leaders, crisis pregnancy center representatives, faith leaders, and reproductive health care staff together to address the real violence, threats of violence, and obstruction that too many people face in our country when it comes to reproductive health care,\u201d Clarke said in an emailed statement on Tuesday. <\/p>\n

Former Civil Rights Division attorneys accused the Trump administration<\/a> of cherry-picking emails and other documents to paint a misleading picture of prosecutions that were supported by evidence presented to judges and juries. Maura Klugman, who was a deputy chief in the division\u2019s special litigation section until last year, described one of the fired lawyers, Sanjay Patel, as an ethical and \u201crespected career prosecutor who would never go out of bounds.\u201d <\/p>\n

The firings are part of a broader personnel purge that has shaken career Justice Department lawyers,<\/a> generally insulated from changes in administrations, thanks to long-recognized civil service protections.<\/p>\n

Justice Connection, a network of former department employees, said the agency leadership\u2019s \u201ccruelty and hypocrisy are on full display in this report.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey insist on zealous advocacy by career staff in advancing the President\u2019s priorities, while shaming and firing those who did just that in the prior administration,\u201d Stacey Young, a former department lawyer who founded Justice Connection, said in a statement. \u201cThey\u2019ve put career employees on notice: if they do their jobs, they face potential termination if future political leadership disagrees with the policy goals of prior leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Trump administration fired four Justice Department prosecutors involved in cases against anti-abortion activists, accusing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[10429,2040,840,10501,38,50,8,8267,10500,10502,10431,9,1488,67,10504,10503,3740,7,2631,54,13,100,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-16883","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-abortion","9":"tag-activism","10":"tag-conservatism","11":"tag-david-gunn","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-general-news","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-jack-smith","16":"tag-kristen-clarke","17":"tag-maura-klugman","18":"tag-merrick-garland","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-pam-bondi","21":"tag-politics","22":"tag-sanjay-patel","23":"tag-stacey-young","24":"tag-todd-blanche","25":"tag-top-stories","26":"tag-u-s-department-of-justice","27":"tag-u-s-news","28":"tag-united-states","29":"tag-united-states-government","30":"tag-washington-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116406056573824002","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}