Joseph Tirrell was reaching the end of a vacation on 11 July, and watching TV at home. He checked his email on his phone and saw a message from his employer, the Department of Justice. He thought it was strange that he was receiving email from the government on his personal account. Inside was a message that he was being fired from his job as the top ethics official at the department.<\/p>\n
The notice, signed by Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, did not give a reason for his firing. It also misspelled his first name<\/a>, addressing it to \u201cJospeh W Tirrell\u201d. Tirrell called his bosses at the department, who at first seemed as surprised as he did, before eventually confirming that he had in fact been terminated.<\/p>\n At the start of the year, Tirrell knew that he might attract scrutiny from the incoming administration because he had signed off<\/a> on special counsel Jack Smith receiving pro-bono legal services from a private law firm as he prepared to leave the government, something Tirrell said was clearly allowed<\/a> under the department\u2019s ethics rules. As the department\u2019s top ethics official, he was responsible for overseeing ethics compliance across the agency and training the department\u2019s top officers in their obligations. But as months passed and Tirrell remained in his job, he thought he was safe.<\/p>\n Tirrell is one of scores of career federal employees this year who have been dismissed without reason. He is now suing<\/a> the department over his firing.<\/p>\n Those dismissed include prosecutors<\/a> who worked on January 6 cases, FBI agents<\/a> who kneeled during the 2020 George Floyd racial justice protests, and those who worked under <\/a>Smith, who criminally charged Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and retain classified documents. Many of those employees and other experts have said the firings create a dangerous environment in which career non-partisan federal employees, who are supposed to be protected from political interference, live in fear of losing their jobs for simply doing what is asked of them.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the reason to fire the senior ethics attorney at DoJ is pretty clear. It\u2019s to send a message,\u201d he said. \u201cThe message is: \u2018Do what we tell you to do, or you\u2019ll lose your job.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Tirrell, 51, joined the FBI as an ethics lawyer in 2006 before joining the justice department in 2018. In every administration, he said, there were requests about whether or not employees could accept certain gifts or attend certain events. Usually those were dispensed with quickly, so he and his staff could focus on more complex ethical matters, like potential conflicts of interests.<\/p>\n But this year, Tirrell found himself fighting protracted battles over those smaller matters that usually would be resolved fairly easily.<\/p>\n When Tirrell trained Bondi on the justice department\u2019s ethics rules, he wanted to be mindful of her time, so he prepared in advance for some hot topics he thought might come up, including the Hatch Act and ethical considerations around Bondi\u2019s prior work for Trump. But when he got to the training, he said Bondi and her chief of staff were focused on a smaller question: could the attorney general accept commemorative challenge coins from subordinates in the department?<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve pretty much said you can\u2019t accept gifts from employees unless it\u2019s your birthday or Christmas or Hanukkah or a similar kind of holiday where people give gifts,\u201d Tirrell said. \u201cWe spent more time than I thought was warranted on something, in frankly my view unimportant, as whether or not you could accept a challenge coin from whomever.<\/p>\n \u201cThere seemed to be a lot of importance by these officials placed on [the] appearance of them getting stuff,\u201d he added. \u201cOn the appearance of them showing their willingness to accept that gift.\u201d<\/p>\n For example, early on in the administration, Bondi received a box of cigars from the mixed martial artist Conor McGregor<\/a>, with a note congratulating her on becoming the attorney general, Tirrell said. The value of the gift exceeded what Bondi could accept under the department\u2019s ethics rules, so the attorney general had three options: pay for the gift herself, send it back, or destroy it. (Tirrell said in his experience, employees will rarely open their pocketbooks to personally pay for a gift.)<\/p>\n \u201cImmediately I got the sense they were reluctant to send things back or destroy stuff,\u201d he said referring to the attorney general\u2019s office. \u201cIt\u2019s like: \u2018No we can\u2019t send it back, I mean what does that say?\u2019\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Seeking to build a rapport with Bondi\u2019s office, Tirrell said he figured out a way to keep the cigars. The department would accept the gift and put it on display for everyone to see, preventing Bondi from personally benefiting from the cigars. \u201cNobody gets to smoke the cigars,\u201d he said. \u201cWe put the box up, which had some engraving on it I think, and the AG gets to say: \u2018Oh look how nice Mr McGregor and the MMA organization [are], they\u2019re good members of the community.\u201d<\/p>\n Tirrell said he felt relatively comfortable with his decision. MMA is set<\/a> to hold a fight at the White House on Donald Trump\u2019s birthday next year and one of the potential participants is McGregor. \u201cIf we\u2019d known more about that at the time, we might have raised more concerns about the ethics of accepting that gift,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n A justice department official said the cigars and cigar box were destroyed.<\/p>\n