Thousands of people have left the Department of Justice since the Trump administration took office.

Posted by All In with Chris Hayes, Sep 19, 2026Checked Oct 30, 2026

Polygraph verdictTrue

Sources: 6 support1 context
Said: 1 time·
Confidence: 90%

All In with Chris HayesSep 19, 2026

As of 2026-09-19, multiple tier1 and tier2 sources show thousands of DOJ employees left the department after Trump returned to office: OPM-based figures cite roughly 10,000 workers lost, 3,300+ attorneys departed, and over 5,000 workers left by some estimates.

This claim is about the present, so it is judged as of the day it was checked.

What was said

… it, this point because they sacked hundreds of lawyers simply because they had done their job of working on the January 6th investigation and prosecution, and they're very open about it. And they're basically none of them left in the Department of Justice. Thousands of people have been forced to leave or have left the Department of Justice since they got in there. So that's just standard operating practice on their part. And when they say it's not partisan, that's comical because the whole thing is partisan. …

All In with Chris Hayes · Sep 19, 2026· from the transcriptPost →

What we found

Supports. The Hill, citing OPM, reports the Justice Department lost roughly 10,000 workers since the start of the Trump administration, including component agencies such as the FBI and Bureau of Prisons.[4]

Supports. Reuters, using Justice Department management records, reports the Trump administration cut more than 4,000 employees from top law-enforcement agencies, including about 2,600 from the FBI.[1]

Supports. NPR reports more than 5,000 workers have left the Justice Department in the year since Trump took office, by some estimates.[5]

Supports. AP reports the firings and a larger voluntary exodus of lawyers have erased centuries of combined experience at the department.[2][6]

Supports. USA Today, citing OPM data, reports more than 3,300 attorneys left the Justice Department between Trump's return and February 2026.[7]

Context. The DOJ's own FY2026 budget document projects nearly 14,000 fewer employees than January 2021, and states about 4,000 employees were expected to leave through its Deferred Resignation Program, corroborating the scale of departures.[3]

Context. Some figures are disputed in scope: DOJ says it has hired staff and has over 10,000 lawyers, so the net loss is smaller than gross departures, but the claim concerns departures, which remain in the thousands.[4][7]