Adam Cohen confirmed the update in a post on LinkedIn last week.
A top U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) official who oversaw an organized crime and drug trafficking task force said he was fired last week.
Adam Cohen, who was the director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, said in a March 8 post on LinkedIn that he was dismissed by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
“I received a two-sentence memorandum addressed to me from the Deputy Attorney General (DAG),” Cohen said. “It stated that I had been removed from my Senior Executive Service position and that pursuant to Article II of the Constitution, my employment with the U.S. Department of Justice was terminated.”
Cohen said he was shocked by the dismissal.
“I had met with the Acting DAG every Tuesday evening (including 3 days before) to talk about important violent crime initiatives,” he said. “I had spent last weekend editing a memorandum sent out under the DAG’s signature 18 hours before my termination.”
Elsewhere in his March 8 post, Cohen suggested that politics may have played a role.
“My personal politics were never relevant. Not until yesterday,” he wrote. “Putting bad guys in jail was as apolitical as it gets.”
A former lawyer for President Donald Trump in his New York City criminal trial, Blanche was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the deputy attorney general on March 5. Emil Bove, Trump’s former attorney who worked on the same case, served as deputy attorney general in an acting capacity before Blanche took over.
The Epoch Times contacted the DOJ for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
Liz Oyer, who served as pardon attorney since 2022, was also terminated on March 7, according to a memo she shared on LinkedIn, citing Trump’s executive authority under the U.S. Constitution.
“I’m sad to share that I was fired today from the job I have poured my heart and soul into for the last three years,” she wrote in a statement on the social media site. “I am so proud of the team we built in the Office of the Pardon Attorney, who will carry on our important work. I’m very grateful for the many extraordinary people I’ve had the opportunity to connect with on this journey. Thank you for your partnership, your support, and your belief in second chances.”
Oyer’s former office reviews clemency requests from people convicted of federal offenses and makes recommendations to the White House on whom the president should pardon.
The terminations are the latest instance of the Trump administration removing career DOJ officials, who typically keep their positions across presidential administrations.
Trump-appointed officials previously reassigned several veteran national security and criminal prosecutors to a newly created immigration office. The top career ethics official left the Justice Department after facing a similar reassignment.
Trump has been critical of the DOJ in recent years, accusing the department of targeting people for political reasons. The former president himself was charged in two separate jurisdictions by former special counsel Jack Smith over election-related and classified documents charges.
In an order issued on Jan. 20, Trump said he would move to end “the weaponization of the federal government,” adding that the DOJ under the previous administration engaged in an “unprecedented, third-world weaponization of prosecutorial power to upend the democratic process.”
“The Department of Justice even jailed an individual for posting a political meme,” Trump said in the order. “And while the Department of Justice has ruthlessly prosecuted more than 1,500 individuals associated with January 6, and simultaneously dropped nearly all cases against [Black Lives Matter] rioters.”
Reuters contributed to this report.