Blanche Exposes Himself as DOJ Loses Lawyers Faster than They Can Hire!!!

Attorneys Brian Kabateck and Shant Karnikian break down the exodus from the Department of Justice, where internal charts that were reportedly emailed to news organizations by mistake show career staff leaving faster than the department can hire replacements. The hosts note that DOJ employed roughly 107,000 people when President Biden left office and has since lost somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 positions, including prosecutors, civil litigators, appellate lawyers, paralegals and support staff. The reporting they discuss shows caseloads per lawyer climbing sharply, including an 84% jump in commercial litigation and a 44% increase in the Federal Programs Branch, which defends executive orders and agency actions, even as that branch shrank from 113 lawyers to about 71. Brian and Shant explain why this matters well beyond criminal prosecutions: DOJ also defends the United States in civil lawsuits, enforces environmental and civil rights laws, and handles specialized appellate work, and the number of active civil cases against the government has reportedly grown from about 13,000 to 19,000. They examine why veteran attorneys with public-service motives and government pensions are walking away, from politicized pardons and unqualified supervisors to reported signing bonuses of $25,000 for new hires, and they warn that the damage to DOJ's pipeline of top law school graduates will not be repaired overnight by the next administration. The department has said it still has more than 10,000 lawyers. Brian's bottom line: when the nation's law enforcement agency cannot keep its best lawyers, every American who depends on the courts, from crime victims to injured plaintiffs suing the government, ends up paying the price.

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