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Attorney General Bondi fired Miami prosecutor Rosenzweig over years-old anti-Trump blog posts, part of DOJ purge of critics

Attorney General Pam Bondi fired federal prosecutor Will Rosenzweig from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida in Miami on September 23, 2025, less than three hours after conservative commentator Natalie Winters publicized years-old blog posts Rosenzweig had written as a private citizen criticizing Donald Trump. Rosenzweig, a five-year veteran of the office, was two weeks from trying a multimillion-dollar Medicare fraud case at the time; his firing was part of what reporting described as a broader personnel purge inside the Justice Department of prosecutors and agents seen as insufficiently loyal to the administration.

Jurisdiction
Federal
Location
Miami, Florida

Abuses documented

Actors

On September 23, 2025, Attorney General Pam Bondi fired Will Rosenzweig, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Florida, by email less than three hours after conservative commentator Natalie Winters posted a screenshot of Rosenzweig's LinkedIn profile alongside years-old blog entries in which Rosenzweig, writing as a private citizen, had criticized Donald Trump. Winters tagged Bondi and other senior Justice Department officials in the post and wrote "Fire him." Rosenzweig, a five-year veteran of the Miami U.S. Attorney's office, was out of town with his family observing the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah when he learned of his termination.

The firing came two weeks before Rosenzweig was set to try a multimillion-dollar Medicare fraud case and nearly derailed it: a colleague in the office asked the presiding judge to delay the proceedings, warning that without a prosecutor sufficiently familiar with the case the office might have to consider dismissing the indictment. The judge kept jury selection on its original schedule but pushed back the presentation of evidence several weeks to let the office bring a new prosecutor up to speed.

Rosenzweig's blog, which he started in January 2016 and which had gone dormant by 2019, covered a range of topics — travel, sports, politics — including criticism of Trump written before Rosenzweig joined the Justice Department. Reporting described his firing as part of a sweeping personnel purge inside the Justice Department over the following year and a half, removing career prosecutors and agents regarded as having worked against the administration's interests or as insufficiently loyal to it.

Updates

2026-08-07 — Rosenzweig sued DOJ alleging First Amendment retaliation [3, 4, 5, 6]

Rosenzweig sued the Justice Department in federal court in Miami on August 7, 2026, alleging his firing violated his First Amendment rights and seeking reinstatement, backpay, and a declaration that the termination was unlawful. The lawsuit alleged the firing was "neither isolated nor inadvertent" but part of a wider campaign of political firings, and said a supervisor told Rosenzweig that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida had discussed his blog posts before he was terminated.

Why we recorded this

A functioning Justice Department depends on career prosecutors being insulated from removal over their private political views, so that criminal cases are staffed and tried on the merits rather than on loyalty tests. Attorney General Pam Bondi fired veteran federal prosecutor Will Rosenzweig within three hours of a commentator surfacing blog posts Rosenzweig had written years earlier, as a private citizen, criticizing Donald Trump — while Rosenzweig was two weeks from trying a Medicare fraud case. This archive records the firing because using the power to hire and fire career prosecutors to punish private political speech converts the Department's personnel authority into an instrument for enforcing political conformity, rather than competent, insulated law enforcement.

Sources

  1. Bondi's firing of federal prosecutor in Miami threatened to derail big Medicare fraud trial — Tampa Bay Times primary accessed August 8, 2026
  2. Pam Bondi Fires Another Prosecutor in Miami — Political Wire secondary accessed August 8, 2026
  3. Federal prosecutor who was fired over years-old blog posts critical of Trump sues Justice Department — NBC News primary accessed August 8, 2026
  4. Federal prosecutor who was fired over years-old blog posts critical of Trump sues Justice Department — Associated Press (via ClickOrlando) primary accessed August 8, 2026
  5. Prosecutor fired over blogposts critical of Trump sues US justice department — The Guardian primary accessed August 8, 2026
  6. Lawsuit from ex-federal prosecutor details how a MAGA influencer's social media post led to his Rosh Hashanah firing — CNN primary accessed August 8, 2026

See also