Washington — Attorney General Pam Bondi last week ousted the senior ethics attorney at the Justice Department who advised her and other senior officials on employee ethics, the latest firing that has come amid an ongoing purge of department employees.
Joseph Tirrell, who was director of the Departmental Ethics Office, wrote in a post on LinkedIn that he received a letter signed by Bondi on Friday informing him that he had been removed from his position. The letter stated that his employment with the Justice Department “is hereby terminated, and you are removed from federal service effective immediately.”
Tirrell wrote that in his role as the director of the Departmental Ethics Office, he was responsible for advising Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on employee ethics and oversaw the day-to-day operations of the department’s ethics program.
“My public service is not over, and my career as a federal civil servant is not finished,” he wrote. “I took the oath at 18 as a Midshipman to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States.’ I have taken that oath at least five more times since then. That oath did not come with the caveat that I need only support the Constitution when it is easy or convenient. I look forward to finding ways to continue in my personal calling of service to my country.”
Tirrell began working at the Justice Department’s ethics office in 2018 and became its director in 2023. He worked at the FBI for more than 10 years, and has spent more than two decades in federal service, according to the Justice Department.
A Justice Department source told CBS News that the agency has also pushed out an ethics adviser to Blanche, the deputy attorney general, and still does not have leadership officials at the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility. The office was established in the wake of the Watergate scandal and aims to hold Justice Department attorneys accountable.
Jeffrey Ragsdale, the former head of the Office of Professional Responsibility, was removed from his post earlier this year, according to the Washington Post, and the office’s website does not name a current leader.
Charles Work, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia, told CBS News that the Justice Department has removed those serving as its internal watchdogs.
“For prosecutors who encounter issues, problems or orders to violate their professional obligations, there is no more recourse. There is nowhere to turn for help,” he said.
Stacey Young, a former attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, told CBS News that Bondi “seems to be on a mission to eliminate anyone who could represent the conscience of the Justice Department.”
“Brad Weinsheimer? Pushed out. Jeff Ragsdale? Removed. Joseph Tirrell? Fired,” Young said. “It takes chutzpah to tell senators at your confirmation hearing that you’ll consult with career ethics officials about your conflicts of interest and then oust the most qualified experts in the room.”
Weinsheimer was a senior ethics official at the Justice Department who resigned earlier this year after he was reassigned to the department’s new sanctuary cities working group, Reuters reported in February.
Young, meanwhile, resigned from her position at the Justice Department earlier this year and now leads Justice Connections, an advocacy group made up of former Justice Department employees.
Since President Trump returned to the White House, administration officials have overseen a gutting of the Justice Department. Just days after his inauguration, roughly a dozen Justice Department employees who worked for former special counsel Jack Smith were removed from their roles.
More than 20 employees who worked on Smith’s investigations into Mr. Trump were also fired last week, a source familiar with the removals told CBS News. Those who were removed from their roles include paralegals who worked in Smith’s office, finance and support staff, and two federal prosecutors in North Carolina and Florida, sources told CBS News.
One of the impacted employees, Patty Hartman, who was a top public affairs specialist, told CBS News that the line that aimed to keep the Justice Department’s work separate from the White House is “very definitely gone.”
Hartman worked on the public affairs team for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, which shared press releases about those charged for their alleged roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. On his first day back in office, Mr. Trump pardoned roughly 1,500 defendants who were convicted of crimes related to the attack.
