DOJ Tracker: February Update
Our monthly update to track the attacks on the rule of law and the Justice Department. Here’s what you need to know from February.
Welcome back to our Substack series to help you stay informed and engaged in protecting the Justice Department. Each month, we pull highlights from Justice Connection’s DOJ Tracker to offer a more digestible way to keep up with the latest attacks.
Here’s what happened in February.
Staff Shortages Risk Public Safety
In February, we saw some of the street-level impacts of DOJ’s brain drain that Justice Connection has been sounding the alarm on for over a year. Minnesota provides a particularly compelling story of how the loss of career staff can have dangerous consequences for public safety.
Droves of prosecutors have left the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office in the days and weeks since the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. As Justice Connection told CBS, “it had nothing to do with political disagreement; rather, this administration asked them to violate their legal and ethical responsibilities, and they believed the exit was their only option.” Although DOJ leadership initially chose not to investigate the shootings, it eventually opened an investigation into Pretti’s death – but barred state investigators from accessing evidence.
The Minnesota Star-Tribune reported on Feb. 27 that the U.S. Attorney’s Office is down to nearly half the lawyers it had in January 2025. With the staffing shortage and a dramatic uptick in immigration cases as a result of the White House’s recent enforcement surge, many criminal cases from the office’s usual workload have been pushed aside. Federal prosecutors in Minnesota are being forced to dismiss cases, let offenders go before they’re charged, or seek plea agreements or delays. In one instance, a 12-time convicted felon with multiple assault charges on his record was released because the office didn’t have enough prosecutors to pursue the case.
What’s happening in Minnesota is only the beginning. With this administration bent on forcing DOJ attorneys to choose between their ethical responsibilities and their jobs, we’ll continue to see more seasoned professionals leave the department. At the same time, DOJ is struggling to recruit new prosecutors: Between November 2024 and November 2025, U.S. Attorney’s Offices lost 14% of their staff. The New York Times reports that these losses disproportionately come from the senior levels of career attorneys because they are the most likely to find lucrative positions outside government. That means not only is DOJ losing personnel, but it’s losing institutional knowledge and expertise that can’t be replaced by remaining staff.
In the meantime, communities like those in Minnesota will suffer as more violent criminals, fraudsters, drug traffickers, and others go free.
Kash Patel’s Taxpayer-Funded Extravagances Raise Eyebrows
On the last day of the Olympics, someone quite unexpected went viral: FBI Director Kash Patel. The video of Patel chugging a beer and partying like a frat boy with the U.S. Men’s Hockey Team during a supposed “work trip” struck a nerve. It’s “not just a question of being vulgar or gauche, or refusing to even pay lip service to the flintier virtues that have traditionally marked the dignity of the director’s office,” Advisory Committee member and former FBI special agent Mike Feinberg wrote in a Justice Connection Substack post. At a “certain point, this childish indulgence in an unchecked id and a bottomless compulsion to be the center of attention takes a toll on the FBI’s actual work.”
The FBI does serious work and its director must be able to command respect from domestic and international audiences. Even President Trump reportedly disapproved of the locker room scene and of Patel’s use of a government plane to travel to Milan.
This isn’t the first time Patel has taken advantage of government resources for personal gain. While it’s policy for the FBI director to fly on government planes for security reasons, Patel’s frequent jetsetting has interfered with the agency’s ability to respond to crisis situations on multiple occasions. After the Brown University shooting, the FBI’s evidence response team drove overnight through a snowstorm to reach the crime scene by the next morning because there were no FBI planes available.
Moreover, it was recently revealed that Patel ordered an FBI SWAT team to provide full-time protection to his girlfriend, country music singer Alexis Wilkins. SWAT team members are usually deployed during high-risk situations like hostage negotiations and active shooter incidents. Spouses of former directors did not have personal security details, unless they were traveling with them. Patel reportedly ignored advice to seek legal review before ordering the unprecedented detail.
Kash Patel’s flashy lifestyle and public excesses are part of his brand. But the video seen ‘round the world brought new attention to how he might be taking advantage of his position and the agency’s resources to furnish that brand.
Here are a few other things you might’ve missed:
The Office of Personnel Management issued a final rule on “Schedule Policy/Career” that will strip civil service protections from approximately 50,000 career federal employees, including thousands at DOJ. Later in February, OPM proposed a rule that would prohibit fired federal employees from appealing to the independent Merit Systems Protection Board. Instead, they would have to appeal directly to OPM.
The fight between DOJ and the federal judiciary is ramping up.
Federal judges have been regularly threatening contempt charges against DOJ lawyers to get the government to comply with immigration-related court orders. In Minnesota, a military lawyer on detail to DOJ was held in contempt for violating a court order, and the chief judge identified 210 orders issued in 143 cases in which ICE officials had not complied with court orders. In New Jersey, the U.S. Attorney’s Office acknowledged violating court orders issued in more than 50 cases over a 10-week period.
In Virginia, the magistrate judge who signed a warrant for a Washington Post reporter’s electronic devices lambasted DOJ attorneys for failing to mention a crucial 1980 law that protects press freedom. The attorney replied that the decision to omit the law came from department officials several rungs above him.
Meanwhile, DOJ has reportedly begun asking U.S. Attorney’s Offices for examples of perceived judicial activism to support potential judicial impeachment referrals to Congress.