Trump Said to Oust DOJ’s Veteran Diplomat, Civil Rights Head (1)

Bruce Swartz, globally renowned for representing the Justice Department in some of its most sensitive foreign dealings, has resigned rather than accept a Trump demotion.

The 30-year veteran stepped down instead of taking a reassignment he received shortly after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, according to a person familiar with Swartz’s decision and an autoreply message from Swartz’s DOJ email account.

Separately, the Trump DOJ leadership has ordered the transfer of the interim civil rights division leader to the new sanctuary cities enforcement group, two individuals briefed on the matter said.

Swartz played critical roles in extraditing Mexican drug lord El Chapo and navigating relations with Central America’s Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, among other high-profile negotiations.

In response to a Sunday email, Swartz sent an automatic reply with a single sentence: “I have resigned from the Department of Justice.”

Swartz had been given 15 days to decide whether to take a post as deputy of an overseas prosecution office he’d overseen for decades, said two people, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He was among a slew of early reassignments of career officials involved in work deemed adverse to Trump’s agenda.

A reason for his removal isn’t known, but Swartz advised Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office on international issues that arose in the investigation of Trump’s ties to Russia.

Current and former department officials said the loss of Swartz’s institutional knowledge and foreign connections is a particular blow, even compared to the dozens of other civil servants targeted by Trump.

Swartz had developed extensive relationships with overseas law enforcement and intelligence agencies, which has proven valuable in combatting transnational crime, multiple DOJ alums said.

“To just kind of throw him on the trash heap is really foolish,” said Leslie Caldwell, who was Swartz’s supervisor for three years as head of the Criminal Division in the Obama Administration. “He’s going to be hard to replace. Now they’re going to send DOJ’s representative to ‘name that country’ when we’re seeking an extradition of a very sensitive person or some other difficult situation and” that person “won’t have the same automatic credibility that Bruce has.”

Also this weekend, DOJ transferred Kathleen Wolfe, a career official who’s been the acting civil rights head since Trump took office, to report to the sanctuary cities team that’s become a repeat landing spot. It followed two civil rights appellate supervisors receiving post-Inauguration transfers to the same immigration group.

Wolfe, a career senior manager and disability rights specialist, wasn’t expected to remain atop the civil rights division for long, but her removal accelerates the new administration’s shakeup at an office poised for a major overhaul. Trump officials have signaled plans to reshape its anti-bias and equity focus to investigate diversity programs, while ceasing police accountability probes.

Shortly after she became the career placeholder until Trump nominee Harmeet Dhillon were to be confirmed, Wolfe received a memo from the newly-installed DOJ chief of staff ordering her staff to indefinitely halt all new litigation.

DOJ spokespeople didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Wolfe couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Several media outlets first reported on Swartz’s initial reassignment on Jan. 21.

Post-Sept. 11

Swartz leaves a Criminal Division deputy assistant attorney general post that he was originally appointed to in the Clinton administration. He took on the role of advising all levels of the department—from attorneys general down to line attorneys—on international affairs.

The job took on added significance as the volume of requests for overseas evidence and fugitives has exploded this century.

The George W. Bush administration retained him as a career deputy to ensure continuity in cross-border relations, said Betsy Burke, a retired DOJ international affairs attorney who’s known Swartz since the early 1990s.

Burke traveled with Swartz and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft in the period after the Sept. 11 attack. She recalled that Swartz introduced Ashcroft—a career politician who wasn’t steeped in foreign relations—to his Canadian and G8 contacts to ease his transition at a delicate moment.

Caldwell remembered visiting Guatemala with Swartz and then-Vice President Joe Biden during negotiations to curb the flow of immigration across the Southern border. She was struck by how well-known and regarded Swartz was within the State Department, including from US ambassadors in Central America.
“We are less safe today internationally post-Bruce Swartz than we were while he was there,” Burke said.