Exclusive: Top Justice Department Official in Trump Classified Documents Case Resigns

Counterintelligence chief Jay Bratt feared Trump would retaliate by firing him

A top Justice Department national security prosecutor has become an early casualty of the incoming Trump administration, abruptly resigning from the department last week before incoming appointees can retaliate against him for his key role in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the former president.

Jay Bratt (Justice Department photo).

The resignation of Jay Bratt, a career lawyer who served as chief of the counterintelligence and export controls section inside the national security division before being detailed to Smith’s staff, has not been publicly announced by the department.

But three sources familiar with the move described it to SpyTalk as a significant and even chilling event previewing a potential exodus of seasoned government lawyers and FBI agents who fear the wrath of Pam Bondi, Trump ’s pick for attorney general, Kash Patel, his intended nominee for FBI Director, and their expected army of MAGA loyalists in line to fill out top posts. 

“They’re forcing him out. There isn’t any doubt that, like [FBI Director Chris] Wray, he’s leaving to get ahead of the axe,” said one former Justice official who attended a farewell party for Bratt at the Justice Department’s seventh floor media center on Friday. 

Reached by phone on Sunday, Bratt, 65—who served as a Justice lawyer for more than three decades—confirmed his departure, but declined to comment further. Bratt, who had achieved senior executive status within the department, has told friends and colleagues that he concluded it “wasn’t worth it” to stay at the department only to fight what he fully expected to be a “wrongful termination” notice from his new bosses at Justice, according to a source familiar with his conversations.  

(In 2018, Trump’s attorney general Jeff Sessions fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was deeply involved in investigations relating to the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia, and removed his pension. But McCabe successfully sued to win it back, arguing that the action was politically motivated.) 

Upbeat Sendoff

Bratt’s farewell party at the Justice Department, the former official said, was largely devoid of “gallows humor,” featuring instead encomiums to Bratt’s lengthy career at Justice. Matthew Olson, the assistant attorney general for national security, and a longtime colleague, praised Bratt as the “consummate go-to guy. He’s the prosecutor who takes on the hardest cases and is never afraid and never falters under pressure.”

Perhaps most notable was the presence of Smith, the special counsel, and several members of his staff, including Julie Edelstein, a young and upcoming prosecutor who served as Bratt’s deputy and, according to a knowledgeable source, is also resigning from the department. 

Smith spoke briefly, telling the gathering of current and former officials how much he appreciated working with a prosecutor like Bratt who “didn’t shrink from making” tough decisions. It was a veiled reference to Bratt’s clashes with Trump’s lawyers during the Smith investigation and, according to the former official, drew a few soft  chuckles and murmurs from the crowd. 

There is little secret why Bratt had become a prime target for Trump loyalists. Starting as a junior lawyer in Justice’s civil division, Bratt moved to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington D.C. and rose through the ranks to become the office’s chief national security prosecutor before moving back to Main Justice in its new national security division. In Feb. 2018, during the first Trump administration, he took over as chief of the counterintelligence section.

Into the Breach

It was a role that put him in charge of all the department’s espionage, foreign agent registration and export control cases. But because his portfolio also included the mishandling of classified documents, Bratt eventually found himself in the middle of a case that would ultimately upend his career: an investigation into then-former President Trump’s failure to return government documents he had taken with him when he left the White House in January, 2021. 

 After receiving a referral from the National Archives that some boxes that Trump had returned included classified material, Bratt launched the initial investigation into the matter and later, in May, 2022, approved a subpoena requiring Trump to return all the classified documents he had taken with him amid concerns that foreign adversaries might gain access to them. 

After obtaining evidence that Trump employees at Mar-a-Lago may have been moving boxes that hadn’t been returned, Bratt later pushed for a warrant to search the president’s home—a move that was resisted by Steven D’Antuono, the top FBI agent overseeing the case, who viewed the Justice prosecutor as being overly “aggressive,” according to Where Tyranny Begins: The Justice Department, the FBI and the War on Democracy, a book by veteran journalist David Rhode. But D’Antuono’s objections were overruled by senior FBI officials, resulting in the August 2022 FBI search of Mar-a-Lago that recovered another 102 documents with classified markings. The search enraged Trump and put  both Bratt and FBI Director Wray in the cross-hairs of the former president and his lawyers. 

Bratt later faced a claim of misconduct by Stanley Woodward, a lawyer for Walt Nauta, Trump’s valet, who was allegedly involved in moving boxes at Mar-a-Lago as part of an effort to obstruct the investigation. ,Woodward, whose legal fees were being paid by one of Trump’s super pacs, claimed that Bratt brought up a standing application Woodward had to become a D.C. judge during a conference on the documents case, and warned him that the lawyer wouldn’t want “to do anything to mess that up” — a statement that Trump lawyers asserted was a “quid pro quo” threat to force Nauta’s cooperation. Smith’s office later responded in court papers that “three other federal prosecutors attended the meeting and are clear that no such thing occurred,” although the filing did acknowledge there was a brief discussion of Woodward’s application, but that it was Woodward, not Bratt, who first mentioned it. 

“At no point did Bratt respond with anything that could be considered a threat or a suggestion of a quid pro quo,” the Smith filing said. 

Still, in what one Justice source described as an “abundance of caution,” Smith’s office later referred the allegation to the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility or OPR, the unit that polices the conduct of Justice Department lawyers. By resigning, Bratt is no longer within OPR’s jurisdiction and has no obligation to cooperate in any future probe. 

But Bratt's resignation doesn’t end his ordeal. House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, has launched his own investigation into the conduct of Smith’s team and has specifically demanded Bratt’s testimony. That threat, which continues to hang over him, has forced Bratt to hire his own lawyers to resist any subpoenas—one more cost of having run afoul of the once and future president.

On Saturday, Trump’s transition team announced that Woodward would join the new White House staff as a senior counselor.

Correction: Due to an editing error, Julie Edelstein was described in an earlier version of this story as a “young incoming” prosecutor. The text has been corrected to read “young and upcoming prosecutor.”