Trump appointees at the Justice Department are reassigning the department’s senior career official, Bradley Weinsheimer, who oversaw a range of sensitive interactions involving prosecutors, Mr. Trump’s legal team and the Biden White House, according to two people briefed on the move.
The transfer of Mr. Weinsheimer, the associate deputy attorney general, is part of a larger effort by the Trump team to exert greater direct control over department headquarters.
It follows the similar reassignment of some of the department’s most experienced and highly-regarded supervisors, including top officials with expertise in national security, international investigations, extraditions and public corruption. On Monday, one of them, the chief of the public integrity section, resigned.
It is not yet clear who will permanently replace them.
Like many of the other officials who have received transfer emails, Mr. Weinsheimer has been given the option of transferring to the department’s sanctuary cities task force — an offer seen by some in the same situation as an effort to force them into quitting.
The transfer of Mr. Weinsheimer is the clearest sign yet that the Trump team is moving quickly to remove officials who might halt, delay or revise actions they deem inappropriate by political appointees.
Mr. Weinsheimer, a respected veteran of the department for three decades, played a critical role under multiple administrations, often acting as a critical arbiter of ethical issues or interactions that required a neutral referee.
He was appointed to his current role on an interim basis by Attorney Jeff Sessions in July 2018 during Mr. Trump’s first term, a move that was made permanent by a successor to Mr. Sessions, William P. Barr.
Mr. Weinsheimer also served four years in the department’s office of professional responsibility, which investigates complaints about prosecutors. An email to his government account was not immediately returned.
In 2021, Mr. Weinsheimer cleared the way for former Trump administration officials to testify before Congress about the president’s actions after the 2020 elections — over the objection of the Trump legal team. But transcripts showed that he tried to strictly limit the scope of questioning, to the ire of Democratic committee staff members.
Mr. Weinsheimer also ran point for the department in a testy series of exchanges with President Biden’s lawyers over the inclusion of the highly damaging assessment of the former president’s mental acuity contained in the special counsel report on Mr. Biden’s handling of classified information.
The resignation of the head of the Justice Department’s public integrity section on Monday put into stark relief the effect of the Trump administration’s reassignment of career officials.
The chief, Corey Amundson, was informed in recent days that he would reassigned to work on immigration. Mr. Amundson was one of many senior career officials told he was being sent to work on a task force focused on sanctuary cities — jurisdictions that are expected to be reluctant to comply with administration officials trying to ramp up deportations and immigration arrests.
In his resignation letter, which was obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Amundson recounted the many significant corruption cases he oversaw in his 26 years at the department.
“I spent my entire professional life committed to the apolitical enforcement of federal criminal law and to ensuring that those around me understood and embraced that central tenet of our work,” he wrote in his resignation letter to the acting attorney general, James R. McHenry. “I am proud of my service and wish you the best in seeking justice on behalf of the American people.”
He added that he wished the department well as it pursued Mr. Trump’s agenda, “including to protect all Americans from the scourge of violent crime and public corruption.”
