Trump DOJ Said to Unwind Apolitical Civil Rights Career Hiring

The Justice Department is consolidating civil rights attorney hiring authority with a handful of Trump-aligned supervisors, departing from practices that were designed to avoid politicization, according to six current and former DOJ lawyers.

The supervisors are leading the hiring effort as the administration transforms anti-discrimination and election integrity enforcement. About 75% of the civil rights division’s roughly 400 career attorneys have left in President Donald Trump’s second term.

The revised process diverges from procedures that put hiring in the hands of career staff in response to a politicized recruitment scandal during President George W. Bush’s administration.

At least two of the new hires were removed or suspended from prior local prosecutor positions while facing legal and professional complaints, according to their former supervisors and court filings in one instance.

About a dozen other newcomers bring conservative credentials and minimal experience in traditional civil rights law, according to their LinkedIn pages and professional biographies.

“It felt very much like they were violating the current process in the civil rights division for hiring,” said Jen Swedish, who left as deputy chief of the division’s employment litigation section in May. “They are turning the division on its head and they want people who will be willing to enforce the laws the way they see them politically.”

Three of the four managers selecting new hires had no prior DOJ supervisory experience, said multiple former civil rights division colleagues.

They started overseeing applications to vacancies that were posted in May, shortly after the division forcibly reassigned to lower-level roles at least 10 supervisors who previously could’ve led the process.

In a statement, DOJ’s top civil rights official Harmeet Dhillon said her office still “applies the time-honored hiring practices used by previous administrations” and “we look forward to continuing” them.

“We are proud of the exceptional attorneys we have hired,” Dhillon said.

Former officials said that the Trump DOJ has bypassed prior commitments by handing hiring responsibilities to a select few who were integrated into the division’s leadership team.

Prompted by an internal watchdog’s 2008 findings that civil rights officials violated civil service law by favoring Republican job candidates, the division in 2009 overhauled its policy to wall off political leaders.

It established that committees within each section staffed with career lawyers and chiefs conducted the hiring process for trial attorney candidates, and political appointees didn’t get involved until the final sign-off.

The new protocols signal how Dhillon intends to carry out her promise to eradicate the office’s “woke ideology” as her team implements Trump’s agenda targeting voter fraud, DEI practices, and transgender protections. The division was created in 1957 by landmark civil rights legislation to enforce anti-discrimination law.

The four attorneys steering the current hiring process had volunteered to temporarily transfer to the division’s leadership office early in Trump’s second term, multiple current and former colleagues said. Their elevation comes as the division has shifted its focus toward conservative priorities, including anti-Christian bias and gun rights.

The group includes Jeffrey Morrison, who is now the acting chief of the employment and education units that have investigated university hiring practices. Morrison, who in January filed a challenge to his co-workers’ unionization campaign, is joined by Jonas Geissler, Andrew Braniff, and Hilary Pinion in the hiring efforts, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Several colleagues said they were alarmed by the four managers’ coordination with leadership in pivoting the division’s mission. In a farewell email last month, Barbara Schwabauer, who spent 15 years in the division, criticized unnamed “long-time colleagues who volunteered to help disintegrate the division.”

In a statement, Dhillon said, “These employees are long-serving, well-respected career attorneys who each received dozens of Department awards for their work and bipartisan recognition from several administrations, including Presidents Obama and Biden.”

Dhillon added that any suggestion “they are operating in a political capacity is dishonest.”

First Recruits

In August, Dhillon posted a photo on X of 12 new lawyers, calling them “a new class of Civil Rights Warriors.”

Many of the new hires don’t have experience in civil rights areas traditionally handled by the division, and some have worked at conservative and libertarian legal organizations such as Pacific Legal Foundation and the Alliance Defending Freedom.

At least two worked for Virginia’s attorney general, while others focused on commercial and business litigation.

Dhillon, who’s often posted on social media that she’s hiring, said in her statement, “The Department wants talented and hardworking attorneys who believe in the rule of law and have a passion for serving their country.”

New Hires

One August arrival, David Vandenberg, was forced out as an assistant district attorney in El Paso, Texas, by a newly elected DA after supervisors received numerous complaints about his volatile and unprofessional behavior towards judges, colleagues, and other citizens, said Penny Hamilton, who supervised him. The newly elected Democratic DA retained all but three of roughly 60 prosecutors, including multiple Republicans, Hamilton said.

Vandenberg is facing five misdemeanor animal welfare charges in El Paso, including neglect and confining a pet in a motor vehicle, according to municipal court records. He is also a defendant in a civil suit alleging “intentional vehicular assault” stemming from a hit-and-run, court documents show.

In the latter incident, he’s accused of flashing his DA’s badge before leaving the scene of an accident with a mother driving her three children.

Vandenberg didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Another new career hire, Eric Neff, was placed on administrative leave in November 2022 by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office after his indictment of an election software CEO was abruptly dismissed, Neff said in a court filing.

Neff relied on a tip from an election conspiracy group to initiate his probe into the company’s purported storage of poll worker data on Chinese servers, the DA’s office and the group’s co-founder have said.

Neff was then sued by the executive on claims Neff violated his civil rights through “malicious prosecution.”

The DA’s office settled the case for $5 million in 2024. Neff was reinstated in April 2024 in a diminished role, which he alleged in his tort claim against the DA’s office was in retaliation for his objections to the “politically motivated” dismissal of the case.

Neff permanently left the office later in 2024, becoming a contributor to the website redstate.com. Neff’s most recent piece in March argued Trump would “have many legitimate grounds” to seek impeachment of US Chief Justice John Roberts.

“I led a distinguished 12-year career as a prosecutor, across multiple jurisdictions, trying more than 50 jury trials to verdict and obtaining justice for victims of murder” and other crimes, Neff said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg Law shortly before he joined DOJ. “I committed no wrongdoing” in the election case, he said.

“The characterizations made about David Vandenberg and Eric Neff are misleading and incorrect,” said a DOJ spokesperson, who declined to elaborate.