WASHINGTON – A senior Justice Department prosecutor who led the investigation into former President Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents has resigned. Jay Bratt, 65, led the investigation overseen by special counsel Jack Smith into documents Trump from the White House when he left office in January 2021.
“I have left the Department of Justice as of January 3, 2025,” Bratt said in an automated email response on his Justice Department personal account.
Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr confirmed to USA TODAY that Bratt had retired after spending 34 years at DOJ.
For a time, many legal observers had regarded the classified documents case as the most perilous of all the legal threats and prosecutions of the former president. A Trump-appointed judge in Florida later dismissed the case, and the Justice Department dropped its appeals after Trump won election in November, citing a policy against prosecuting sitting presidents.
A former DOJ colleague said top Justice Department officials held a retirement party for Bratt last Friday afternoon at DOJ headquarters. The colleague, who is familiar with Bratt’s thinking, said his decision to retire was based, at least in part, on that fact that the classified documents case that he worked on for years no longer exists.
“If the case were still proceeding, would he be retired? Probably not,” the former colleague said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss Bratt’s decision. “But it’s gone, and he’s 65 and he said, ‘I think I’m ready.'”
In October, Trump said he would fire Smith “within two seconds” and in November the Washington Post − citing two members of Trump’s transition team − reported Trump plans to fire Smith’s entire team, “including career attorneys typically protected from political retribution.”
Bratt’s retirement was first reported by Michael Isikoff of SpyTalk, who quoted three sources familiar with Bratt’s departure saying he was forced out.
“There isn’t any doubt that, like (FBI Director Christopher) Wray, he’s leaving to get ahead of the axe,” a former Justice official who attended the farewell party for Bratt told SpyTalk.
Bratt did not respond to requests for comment.
Trump has threatened to retaliate against those who investigated the Trump’s actions during his first term. He has nominated loyal supporters, Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, to head the Justice Department and FBI, respectively.
On Dec. 11, two weeks after Patel’s nomination, Wray said he plans to resign at the end of President Joe Biden’s term this month, a decision he made public two days after a key Senate Republican called for his departure and after Trump kept a steady drumbeat of support for a replacement in the next administration.
Bondi, a former Florida attorney general, defended Trump during his first impeachment trial.
Bratt spent three decades at the Justice Department, including a stint at the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington D.C., before joining DOJ’s National Security Division. He has specialized in prosecuting export violations, including going after Iranian and Chinese traffickers seeking to obtain nuclear weapons technology and components.
He was appointed as chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section in October 2018, where he also oversaw some of the nation’s most sensitive espionage investigations.
In 2022, Bratt became a lightning rod for criticism by Trump and his supporters for his role in the FBI search of Trump’s Palm Beach estate, Mar-a-Lago, and subsequent seizure of classified documents that Trump had refused to return.
Bratt personally tried to negotiate with Trump’s lawyers in an effort to get Trump to return the documents and avert an FBI search. When Trump refused, the FBI got a judge to authorize the search based on probable cause that evidence of a potential crime could be found at the location
Trump made inflammatory claims about what he called the FBI “raid,” saying it was based on a political vendetta. Last May, Smith asked a judge to limit Trump’s ‘false and inflammatory’ claims about the FBI search.
Stanley Woodward, a lawyer for one of Trump’s co-defendants, claimed he was threatened by Bratt in 2023, prompting an angry legal response from Smith, who called the allegations “implausible, if not ludicrous tale.” Trump named Woodward as a senior counselor in his upcoming on administration on Saturday.
The Justice Department ultimately charged Trump in connection with the case, despite his claims that he had a standing order that automatically declassified any documents he took from the Oval Office into the private residence of the White House.
Authorities found about 100 classified documents during the search, which were used as evidence in the case against Trump and several associates. Trump was also charged with obstructing U.S. government attempts to retrieve them.
In July, Cannon − the federal judge in Florida hearing the classified documents case −dismissed it, siding with defense lawyers who said special counsel Smith was illegally appointed by the Justice Department.
Smith, who also charged Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, appealed Cannon’s ruling.
But three weeks after last year’s election, Smith effectively ended the classified documents case by dropping his appeal of Cannon’s dismissal of those charges. And another judge acting on Smith’s request dismissed the charges that Trump tried to steal the election in 2020.
Bratt’s departure doesn’t mean his potential exposure goes away. House Republicans have been investigating all of the investigations into Trump and have targeted Bratt.
And on Monday, a Trump ally once considered for top Justice Department roles in the new administration issued a new threat to Bratt on the social media platform X for what he said was the “illegal Mar-a-Lago raid.”
“You can run, Jay Bratt. But you can’t hide,” said Mike Davis, former chief counsel for nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee who now runs the Article III Project, a conservative legal advocacy group.
