Michael Romano, a former federal prosecutor, is used to asking the questions in court, but now he’s finding himself on the other side, fielding the questions from witness tables at congressional hearings.
Twice already this year, he’s served as a witness at congressional hearings, warning that the Trump administration’s efforts to demote or fire Justice Department prosecutors who worked on cases involving President Trump or the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot pose a threat to democracy.
“It is an honor to speak with you today,” Romano said at a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about federal investigations, as he sat in a black leather armchair at the witness table behind a placard identifying him for the senators.
Romano is one of more than 5,000 employees who have resigned, retired or been fired from the Justice Department in the first year of Mr. Trump’s second administration. The large-scale purge – with both voluntary and involuntary departures – has gutted the agency of its institutional memory and long experience.
The historic turnover has proven to be a treasure trove for private firms, local prosecutor’s offices and political campaign operatives.
They’ve capitalized on the wave of talented ex-prosecutors like Romano seeking new work and new missions.
Romano left the Justice Department in March 2025, in the wake of President Trump’s overhaul of the agency. He was an elite prosecutor with a perfect record against the Capitol riot defendants, including some of the violent rioters who beat police officers. He also prosecuted cases of economic espionage, property destruction targeting international embassies in Washington and bank fraud.
At the private law firm where Romano is now working, he’s become a go-to congressional witness on the impact of the U.S. Capitol riot, defending the government’s prosecution of those who were accused of misdemeanors.
At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this month, Romano told senators, “There were no small crimes on Jan. 6, 2021. I have heard the criticism that misdemeanor defendants, accused of trespass offenses, were treated too harshly — and I strongly disagree with it. The people who trespassed at the Capitol, and committed disorderly behavior, enabled the mob violence.”
“It is the most righteous effort I have been a part of, with the finest team of investigators, prosecutors, and staff I have worked with,” he testified.
Romano’s testimony has been a source of encouragement for his former colleagues.
“What matters is that people with firsthand experience are willing to raise concerns when they believe something is amiss,” said Greg Rosen, the former head of the Justice Department’s Capitol Siege Section. “That kind of engagement isn’t partisan; it’s quintessentially American.”
Rosen also left the Justice Department in 2025 and now works for Rogers Joseph O’Donnell, a prominent boutique litigation D.C. law firm.
As a private attorney, Romano is marshaling his experience to help people enmeshed in labor disputes. He told CBS News he likes his new job and colleagues and says of the work, “It’s important. I think a lot of the tools that we used to investigate crime in the Justice Department can be used to investigate other sorts of wrongdoing.”
The D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, where Romano used to work, suffered heavy turnover in 2025, as Mr. Trump attacked the work of the office on its Jan. 6 prosecutions and as the administration sought to demote or remove prosecutors involved. In a 2025 interview, D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro revealed the office had been crushed by a staffing shortage and needed 90 additional prosecutors to manage the caseload.
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has also been gutted by resignations and retirements over the past 12 months, according to multiple Justice Department sources and a report from the American Bar Association.
Among the departures is Sydney Foster, a prolific attorney and former acting chief of the Civil Rights Division’s Appellate Section. Last month, she joined the Washington Litigation Group, a non-profit legal organization whose mission is to curb government overreach. It’s challenging some of the controversial decisions and policies of the Trump administration.
The group’s president, Tom Green, said Foster, with her extensive appellate experience and expertise, is a “perfect fit” for the firm.
Her departure was a notable loss for the Justice Department. She argued more than 30 cases before federal appellate courts for the government, and now she’ll be working with clients who have cases against the Trump administration.
Foster said it’s a “critical moment for our democracy.”
“We are focusing on bringing the most impactful cases in this very critical moment,” she told CBS News.
The Washington Litigation Group is involved in lawsuits challenging Trump’s renaming of the Kennedy Center, the hollowing out of the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service and the legitimacy of a U.S. attorney appointment by the Trump administration. It has landed other former Justice Department prosecutors, too. Among them are Mary Dohrmann and James Pearce, who both served on former special counsel Jack Smith’s legal team.
Other Justice Department alumni have shifted to local government work. One group has joined the Arlington County, Virginia Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, according to a spokesperson for the office.
Stacey Young, the founder and executive director of Justice Connection, an organization that helps ousted Justice Department staff, said nonprofits and firms “are capitalizing on DOJ’s idiotic decision to drive out many thousands of brilliant career employees.”
“As the department loses generations of institutional knowledge it may never get back, employers on the outside are benefiting from the unmatched talent they’re snatching up,” Young said.
In Minnesota, where the controversial killings of two U.S. citizens by immigration agents have been a factor in the mass exodus from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota, two of the departed attorneys have launched a private firm.
One of the two, Joe Thompson, who was formerly the office’s acting U.S. attorney, said the practice would be a boutique law firm “focused on white-collar defense, international investigations, complex commercial litigation, and crisis management.” Thompson promptly landed a high-profile client, appearing in court last Friday as a defense attorney for journalist Don Lemon, who has pleaded not guilty to federal charges in the controversial prosecution of a church disturbance last month in Minneapolis.
In January, Smith also launched his own private white-collar investigation and litigation firm with former government lawyers Timothy Heaphy, David Harbach and Thomas Windom.
At least two other former Justice Department prosecutors are running for federal office. Ryan Crosswell, a former public integrity prosecutor who quit amid the Trump administration’s controversial decision to drop a federal criminal case against former New York Mayor Eric Adams, has declared his candidacy for a House seat in Pennsylvania.
Crosswell has secured a series of high-profile endorsements, including from the VoteVets political action group, which champions Democratic political candidates.
And last week, J.P. Cooney, who was on the team that investigated and prosecuted Mr. Trump before his second term, announced his intention to run for a House seat in Virginia, if the state redraws its congressional maps later this year.
Cooney told CBS News, “Donald Trump fired me because of my fidelity to the rule of law instead of to him.” He praised his former colleagues in the special counsel’s office, U.S. Attorney’s Office and Public Integrity Section, and said, “I view it as a badge of honor for standing for the rule of law and the Constitution.”
He’s made Mr. Trump a prominent part of his early campaign messaging and told CBS News, “The events of the last year have disturbed me more than at any point in my life.”
“I don’t believe that there has ever been a moment in American history that a single person, the president of the United States, posed a real, grave threat to fundamental values that we all share, like democracy, the rule of law,” Cooney said.
The early response from donors and activists has been positive — he’s raised more than $200,000 in the opening days of his campaign.
