Second DOJ official who investigated Trump reassigned to immigration enforcement

Half a dozen top Justice Department officials have been told they are being removed from their jobs and reassigned to a new effort to take legal action against so-called sanctuary cities, four officials said from the DOJ to the affair with NBC News.

The sources spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal personnel matters.

Two of those reassigned, a senior DOJ official said, were Corey Amundson, who had been chief of the public integrity section, and George Toscas, who had been assistant attorney general in the national security division.

It was not previously known that Amundson had been reassigned. The Public Integrity Section prosecutes political corruption and played a role in both DOJ criminal cases against the former president.

NBC News previously reported that Toscas had been removed from his job. He played a key role in continuing the 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago for classified documents that then-former President Donald Trump had refused to return to the National Archives.

All section chiefs in the Division of Environmental and Natural Resources, which help enforce environmental law, have also been reassigned to the Sanctuary Cities Task Force, a source told NBC News.

One of the environmental division officials wrote in an email that they had been assigned to the “Sanctuary Cities Environmental Working Group,” citing an email they received from the acting attorney general who gave them 15 days’ notice to move to the new position.

“Everyone they don’t like gets thrown in there,” another official said.

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment.

It was unclear whether those who are reassigned were asked to temporarily relocate to other cities or whether the enforcement effort would be centered in the Justice Department’s headquarters in Washington.

As previously reported by NBC News, Acting Attorney General Emil Bove sent a labor market memo on Wednesday outlining a series of policy changes designed to incentivize the DOJ to find undocumented immigrants and enforce violations of immigration law.

The memo directed the department’s civil division to examine ways to take legal action against cities with so-called sanctuary laws that prohibit local officials from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement. The memo also directed prosecutors to investigate for potential prosecution of state or local officials who resist or fail to comply with the enforcement of federal immigration law.

Fear and anxiety

The moves come amid a series of other actions at the Justice Department that mirror what has happened at other federal agencies, including rolling back all diversity, equity and of inclusion, or DEI. The moves have fueled fear and anxiety among many career civil servants.

On Friday afternoon, the head of the Justice Department’s gender equality effort — a career official in the civil rights division — sent an email saying she was resigning. A source familiar with the matter said she moved after learning that the Office of Personnel Management was moving to prevent employee affinity groups across the federal government.

The manager, Stacey Young, wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times earlier this month about career employees’ concerns.

“To stay in our work, we will need more than exhortation; We will need legal, psychological and other support,” she wrote. “One of the reasons many federal employees are considering leaving government – ​​often after decades of serving our country under Republican and Democratic presidents – is because we are afraid. The new government leaders told us in aggressive terms that they wanted us to go or be miserable. »

Two Justice Department officials said the DOJ rescinded job offers to dozens of people from the Attorney General’s Specialization Program, a highly competitive and long-standing recruiting effort aimed at top law school graduates. Some courses would also have been canceled.

Trump administration officials say the measures were necessary as part of the president’s order imposing a 90-day federal hiring freeze. A former manager said he saw interns in tears after being informed their internships were canceled.