White House Lawyers Secretly Prep Trump Team for Brutal Midterms

“The system sucks, this job sucks, I am trying with every breath I have to get you what I need,” said attorney Julie Le when pressed as to why the government had failed to follow judicial orders. Since then, Le was removed from the temporary position and reshuffled back to ICE. She has since leveraged the notoriety of her remarks to launch a congressional bid for Minnesota’s 5th congressional district.

The DOJ’s appellate staffs vary in size but altogether account for more than 150 positions, according to a 2012 write-up in Scotusblog by Al J. Daniel Jr., a former DOJ appellate attorney.

Yet that’s just the tip of the iceberg for the department’s staffing woes. There were an estimated 10,000 attorneys working across the Justice Department before Donald Trump returned to the White House. By September 2025, that number had been nearly halved: Justice Connection, an advocacy group that tracks DOJ departures, estimated that around 5,500 people (not all of them attorneys) had left the department, either by their own volition, by accepting the Trump administration’s buyout, or by being fired.