What did Donald Trump do today?

He fired at least four Justice Department officials for having worked on the federal criminal cases against him.

The Department of Justice today confirmed via a spokesperson that James McHenry, the Acting Attorney General, had fired "a number of DOJ officials who played a significant role in prosecuting President Trump." The statement also made clear that this had been done at Trump's behest.

NBC News is reporting that four career prosecutors—Molly Gaston, J.P. Cooney, Anne McNamara and Mary Dohrmann—were among those Trump fired.

None of the prosecutors or investigators on Special Counsel Jack Smith's team were political appointees. All of them were assigned to the case as part of their normal duties.

Trump was indicted by two separate federal grand juries for felonies related to his attempts to stay in office in defiance of the 2020 election results, and his theft of and refusal to return boxes of highly classified government documents that he took from the White House and stashed at his private residence in Florida. His order firing people who investigated those crimes does not extend to state officials in Georgia prosecuting him for election fraud there. It also does not affect the New York City prosecutors who saw him convicted of 34 felonies related to his payment of "hush money" to a porn actress to conceal an affair.

Firing government employees without cause has been illegal for almost as long as the United States has had a civil service, but one of Trump's first-day acts was to sign an executive order redefining these and other non-political jobs as policy positions. This was a cornerstone of the ultra-conservative Project 2025, which became a political liability for Trump during the 2024 campaign. He denounced it on the campaign trail and denied it had anything to do with him, even though 144 of his former White House staff and campaign officials worked on it. He has since reappointed many of those same people to new roles and instructed them to implement Project 2025 orders.

The DOJ statement claimed that it was necessary to fire nonpolitical career public servants in order to end the "weaponization of politics."

Why does this matter?

• The government of the United States does not exist to satisfy Donald Trump's need for revenge.

• Purges of supposed enemies and loyalty tests are what authoritarian regimes do.

• It's wrong to lie to your own supporters about what you believe and what you plan to do if elected.