Ex-DOJ Official Says Trump Team Ditched Digital Litigation Focus

Justice Department leaders abandoned a Trump first-term priority of addressing litigation challenges for prosecutors overwhelmed by electronic evidence, said a DOJ official in a scathing farewell message.

“In May 2025, DOJ’s new leadership and the White House disbanded all of those institutional structures” to improve how criminal and civil attorneys process soaring levels of digital data, said John Haried, the department’s electronic litigation director, in a LinkedIn post Saturday announcing he’d departed Dec. 1—"well before I wanted.”

“They did not replace them with new or better ideas. They simply discarded them,” added Haried. “The current leadership has shown zero interest in improving DOJ’s litigation capabilities or grappling with the enormous challenges of litigation in the digital age. Within weeks havoc set in for DOJ’s investigative agents, lawyers, and litigation staffers. I lost hope.”

Haried described his work during the Biden administration coordinating between top DOJ leaders and litigating components to mitigate what former department attorneys have called an existential obstacle to modern-day cases. The inability to process terabytes of evidence collected from hard drives and smartphones has stalled investigations and caused discovery errors that tank cases or lead to ethics complaints.

Haried was referring to initiatives that stemmed from late in President Donald Trump’s prior administration when Attorney General William Barr issued a policy to marshal resources across the department to confront the problem. After Joe Biden won the election, DOJ inserted language into the Justice Manual in December 2020 to require that employees maintain e-litigation proficiency and prevent the incoming administration from disinvesting in the project.

DOJ spokespeople didn’t immediately provide a comment. Haried also didn’t immediately reply to messages seeking further explanation about the “havoc.”

The May 2025 time period when he said DOJ scrapped the e-litigation work coincided with the department’s implementation of an executive branch reorganization mandate to slash costs and shrink the government footprint.

It’s unclear how eliminating the electronic evidence training and other supports may have affected DOJ attorneys in particular cases, but it comes during a mass exodus of veteran prosecutors and judges’ criticism of the department’s legal work.

Haried, a 35-year department attorney, said that the discarded programs were “working well,” including an advisory council consisting of 32 members from every DOJ component, an e-litigation integrity and technology office, and 300 e-litigation experts spread across all offices.

Former department officials who’ve focused on digital evidence issues have described it as an apolitical area that requires leadership buy-in, significant resources, and patience before any solutions can start yielding results. Even then, DOJ attorneys have recognized that they’re often disadvantaged working opposite lawyers at well-financed defense firms with more sophisticated software tools.

In his July 2020 memo, Barr demanded a “comprehensive, long-term plan to ensure that the Department’s eLitigation capabilities are commensurate with our status as the preeminent litigating institution in the United States.”

This included setting up an e-litigation steering committee, which the outgoing Trump DOJ emphasized in early 2021 to the Biden transition team was essential.

“It is critical that this initiative continue its progress during and beyond transition,” the transition materials said.