Shortly after she was confirmed, Attorney General Pam Bondi told lawyers at the Department of Justice that it was their job to, quote, zealously advance, protect and defend the policies of the United States as set by the president.

It was an early example of the ways in which the Trump administration has sought to transform the DOJ into the president's tool for promoting his agenda and challenging detractors.

Justice correspondent Ali Rogan and the NewsHour politics team have been reviewing the events of the past year

to better understand how this transformation is playing out.

And Ali joins me now.

So, Ali, we know a big part of this story is the number of attorneys who've left the DOJ. What have you found?

Yeah, Omna, since last January, the DOJ workforce has fallen by about 8%, which represents about 9,000 employees.

About a fifth of that were people who accepted the Doge offer at the beginning of the administration to retire or leave. But if you look at this

chart of total DOJ staffing changes by fiscal year, they're usually not that drastic. They increase

a little one year, they decrease a little the next year. But then in fiscal year 2025,

there is a significant drop. To what should we understand about that? Why are people leaving?

Yeah, I've spoken to a number of attorneys who have served in both Democratic and Republican administrations,

many of them including the first Trump administration, and they say that it is normal

for policy priorities in the Department of Justice to change, depending on who's in office, what party.

That's even what was done in the first Trump administration, but they say this time is very

different.

And Attorney General Bondi seems to be taking directions directly from President Trump.

These attorneys have many different reasons for leaving.

Some of them were motivated by

the dismissal of some prosecutors who worked on January 6 cases. Others left after the prosecution

of Kilmar-Abrego-Garcia after he was wrongly deported. Some lawyers have quit in response

to the DOJ's hands-off approach to the immigration actions we're

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