A 17-year former Justice Department official is warning of a wave of retribution inside the agency.
Patty Hartman, who served as a top public affairs specialist at the FBI and federal prosecutors' offices, told CBS News, "The rules don't exist anymore."
Hartman, who was fired on Monday via a letter from Attorney General Pam Bondi, is the fourth person connected to the agency's work on January 6, 2021, Capitol riots to be terminated in the past month.
"There used to be a line, used to be a very distinct separation between the White House and the Department of Justice, because one should not interfere with the work of the other," Hartman told CBS News. "That line is very definitely gone."
Hartman is not a prosecutor, but worked on the District of Columbia U.S. Attorney's Office public affairs team that distributed news releases about the more than 1,500 January 6 criminal prosecutions.
"I am not political. I do not serve a president or a party," she said. "I serve the American people, the Department of Justice and its mission and the citizens in the district where I work. I've been doing that for almost 20 years."
The purge of Justice Department employees who worked on Jan. 6 cases began shortly after President Trump's second inauguration, when he appointed a former Jan. 6 defense attorney, Ed Martin, as the acting top prosecutor in Washington, D.C.
Multiple prosecutors were promptly terminated.
The latest wave of dismissals included Hartman and three other prosecutors who helped handle some of the Jan. 6 cases. She said those dismissals appear to be a form of retaliation from the administration.
Mr. Trump and his supporters have downplayed the damage, injuries, and trauma of the Capitol siege and have sought to portray convicted rioters as "political prisoners."
The mass pardon shut down the prosecutions in January.
Hartman said her firing on Monday took her by surprise. Her computer appeared to shut down by itself while she was in the middle of working on a press release, she said, and then an agency official handed her a termination letter bearing the signature of Attorney General Pam Bondi.
She characterized her dismissal as an indication of a broader destabilization within the Justice Department and Trump administration. In a social media post this week, she wrote, "We appear to be driving straight into an abyss that holds no memory of what democracy is, was, or should be."
"The people in charge who are supposed to protect us — our fellow Americans whom we elected, along with those who were appointed, and who took an oath to protect this nation and our Constitution — now use the Constitution as a weapon to suit their own ends. And the most terrifying fact is, their roadmap is very long," Hartman also wrote.
She told CBS News she had been fired without due process and said she is considering a legal challenge over her termination.
Hartman said the administration has "just thrown all of the rules out the window, like we are falling into a crevasse or an abyss, and I really, truly hope that the country can pull out of it."
One of Hartman's colleagues, who asked for anonymity to avoid retaliation for speaking publicly, told CBS News, "Patty's firing really pisses me off. It's so unconscionably petty and vindictive. Who is the constituency for firing Patty? Even the most rabid Jan. 6 apologists weren't calling for the firing of the woman who wrote the press releases."
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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