More than 10,000 lawyers, many of them from the U.S. Department of Justice, have left the federal government during the second Trump administration. “Their departures show how rapidly the president has eroded the image of the federal government as the gold standard for lawyers seeking public service roles,” writes The New York Times.

Politics and legal affairs editor Naomi Schalit spoke with John E. Jones III about the mass departure of federal government lawyers, as well as other recent issues related to the Department of Justice. Jones, now the president of Dickinson College, is a retired federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush and confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate in 2002.

Schalit: What are the repercussions of this exodus of lawyers?

Jones: One thing that I could rely on as a federal judge was the professionalism of the Department of Justice, and hand in hand with that was its collective credibility.

When you have an exodus of those professionals, and when you have, unfortunately, Department of Justice attorneys going into federal courts across the country and outright misrepresenting – the stronger word is lying – to federal judges, it really creates a massive reputational problem for the department.

So “massive reputational problem for the department” means what happens between lawyers and judges. What are the on-the-ground implications of that for people who are caught up in the justice system?

It’s well to remember that the attorney general’s client – the Department of Justice’s client – is the United States of America. It is not the president of the United States, even though one would think that based on the way this........

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