Trump DOJ Upheaval in Virginia Hobbles National Security Unit

President Donald Trump’s overhaul of the Virginia US attorney’s office prosecuting his foes has driven out the leadership of its national security unit, draining its experience disrupting terrorists and spies.

The Eastern District of Virginia, long known as the Justice Department’s premiere destination for counterterrorism and espionage investigations, lost both its national security supervisors and other leaders overseeing such cases. The firings and resignations stem from Trump’s pressure on the office to indict former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

The office’s national security team is down to five members from nine or 10 in prior years; one is part time and another is diverting attention to a task force, said three lawyers familiar with Eastern Virginia operations. That loss of hard-to-replace institutional knowledge will damage the unit’s credibility with the intelligence community and strain its bandwidth to disrupt overseas plots before they materialize, multiple veteran prosecutors said.

“If you lose that kind of depth in your pool, that in and of itself is a significant blow,” said James P. Gillis, who retired in 2022 after 20 years as an Eastern District national security prosecutor. “If you put that in the whole context that we’re operating in now, it is I’m sure very devastating.”

Trump’s installation of an inexperienced loyalist, Lindsey Halligan, as interim US attorney to personally indict his perceived enemies has spillover effects on the office’s national security portfolio. Decades of carefully cultivated expertise will now suffer, according to a dozen former prosecutors and other attorneys briefed on the situation. Some of them spoke anonymously to share internal office details.

Although several skilled national security line attorneys remain, the former prosecutors and other lawyers said they fear existing cases will be compromised, intelligence analysts will stop sharing information to less-experienced attorneys, and the US will be more vulnerable to attacks.

“That’s where the void is—that transfer of information and decisions that need to be made on how, when, and if to prosecute a case. There’s a total breakdown there,” said Judge Liam O’Grady, formerly of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, who retired in 2023.

The depleted unit has still been active of late, including charging a former Pentagon contractor with mishandling classified information. But former prosecutors worry the team will struggle to keep up and lack vision from the top to keep their cases prioritized. The office has had no top deputy running operations for the past 10 days.

DOJ media representatives didn’t address questions on how the US attorney’s office plans to offset the brain drain or whether Halligan has been engaged on national security matters.

“It is absurd to suggest that national security is anything but a top priority for this Justice Department including all of our US Attorneys and it is clear this story is not serious attempt at journalism but rather lazy and inaccurate speculation,” spokesman Chad Gilmartin said in a statement.

Preferred Venue

The Eastern District of Virginia has become a go-to jurisdiction for complex and historic prosecutions of international terrorists and spies going back to the Cold War. Home to the Pentagon, CIA, and other intelligence agency headquarters, the suburban Washington district established venue to obtain guilty pleas from prominent Russian spies infiltrating the CIA and FBI, the only US court conviction connected to 9/11, and the conviction of a man DOJ called the highest-ranked ISIS fighter to face a US jury trial.

That reputation depended on one generation of assistant US attorneys training the next on navigating the immunity doctrine on war combatants, mapping out prosecutions to avoid disclosing classified information, or knowing when to rein in FBI agents from infringing on civil liberties.

The abrupt departures this past month imperil that tradition, former prosecutors say.

The Comey indictment triggered the resignation of his son-in-law Troy Edwards, who’d served as the Eastern District’s deputy national security chief. Michael Ben’Ary, the head of the national security unit, was fired the following week after a Trump ally wrongly accused him of resisting pressure to charge Comey, according to multiple media reports.

The unit is now led by an acting chief, Seth Schlessinger, a well-regarded prosecutor who’s dividing attention with his permanent deputy criminal chief role.

Before his termination, Ben’Ary was preparing to serve as lead prosecutor in the trial of Mohammad Sharifullah, who’s accused of orchestrating a bombing that killed 13 US service members in Afghanistan during the US withdrawal in 2021. Attorney General Pam Bondi touted the case as an example of “President Trump’s strong leadership on the world stage.”

Another attorney substituted in two months before the complicated trial is set to begin.

Intelligence, FBI

A few other US attorney’s offices also have extensive experience on national security matters, as prosecutions of some foreign defendants can be tried wherever their plane lands in the US.

But the Alexandria, Va.-based Eastern District has developed a particular bailiwick and relationships with the intelligence community over decades of sensitive cases, making it uniquely situated to support the FBI in rooting out terrorism plots.

Intelligence analysts are known for being reticent to share information with even the prosecutors they know and trust out of fear that they won’t know how to protect methods and sources in criminal cases.

Further hampering the Eastern District, its partners at the FBI’s Washington field office, which is assigned to the Middle East, have been redirecting agents from national security to Trump priorities of immigration enforcement and DC street crime, said three people familiar with office operations.

When FBI agents are freed up and in need of national security legal guidance, they may need to turn elsewhere.

“You can’t advise the FBI if you don’t have the experience necessary to avoid the traps, and that’s what I’m afraid of,” said O’Grady, who’s also a former Eastern District prosecutor. “They’ve got no one to go to to understand how to work the case up.”