Attorney General Pam Bondi—who has been actively removing Justice Department personnel connected to the Jan. 6 prosecutions and the legal cases against former President Donald Trump—has now dismissed the department’s top ethics advisor, Bloomberg reported Sunday.
Joseph Tirrell, a Navy veteran with nearly 20 years of federal service, was fired on Friday via a brief letter from Bondi, who offered no explanation for the termination. That same day, Bondi also ousted 20 DOJ employees tied to Trump-related prosecutions. In recent weeks, she has similarly dismissed staff involved in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot cases. Tirrell had reportedly provided ethics guidance to Special Counsel Jack Smith during Trump’s prosecution, according to Bloomberg.
“My public service is not over, and my career as a Federal civil servant is not finished,” Tirrell posted on LinkedIn Monday. “I took the oath at 18 as a Midshipman to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States.’ I have taken that oath at least five more times since then. That oath did not come with the caveat that I need only support the Constitution when it is easy or convenient.”
He added: “I believe in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ I also believe Edmund Burke was right when he said, ‘the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.’”
Tirrell was responsible for advising Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and other DOJ leaders on a range of ethical issues including financial disclosures, conflicts of interest, gifts, and recusals. He also oversaw ethics compliance for the department’s 117,000 employees, and previously worked as an ethics attorney at the FBI.
