Attorney General Todd Blanche announced on Monday that he has accepted the resignation of Brett Shumate, the Assistant Attorney General who ran the Justice Department's Civil Division — making Shumate the fourth senior Justice Department official to resign since the Republican losses in last week's midterm elections.
Announcing the decision, Blanche wrote: “Today I accepted the resignation of Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate of the Civil Division. Under his leadership, the Division pursued important affirmative litigation to challenge sanctuary policies and delivered key wins in lawsuits against local policies that endangered federal law enforcement. The Division also secured historic settlements to end illegal corporate DEI practices and shuttered dozens of clinics which were providing so-called ‘gender affirming care’ to minors. We are grateful for Brett's service at DOJ and wish him continued success.”
Shumate confirmed the departure in his own post the same day: “Inauguration Day was my first day running the Justice Department's Civil Division and today is my last. Thanks to President Trump, AG Bondi, and AG Blanche for trusting me with the Justice Department's largest litigation component. And thanks to the countless friends and colleagues at the Justice Department and throughout the federal government who helped me along the way.” No reason for the resignation was given by either man, and it was not immediately clear why Shumate was leaving. No successor or acting head was announced.
The three senior officials who resigned before him are Harmeet Dhillon, who led the Civil Rights Division; John Eisenberg, who headed the National Security Division; and Jason Reding Quiñones, a U.S. attorney who pursued probes into past criminal investigations of President Trump. The Civil Division is the department's largest litigation component — the office that defends the administration's policies in court — and it has lost significant staff since the President returned to office, including in the very unit that defends his policies; under Shumate it had recently offered signing bonuses of up to $25,000 to rebuild its ranks.
For ordinary Americans, the Civil Division is the office that carries their government's cases into courtrooms across the country — the sanctuary-city suits, the challenges to corporate diversity mandates and the defence of the administration's immigration enforcement all run through it. Four senior departures in a week means the department is changing the lawyers at the top of that work at the very moment a new Congress is preparing to challenge the administration's agenda in court — and who fills those chairs will decide how hard the government fights for the policies voters were promised.
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