About a week before an obscure Trump aide fired her, U.S. Attorney Tara McGrath called a meeting to see how her San Diego staff was holding up under “Main Justice” orders.
McGrath asked her prosecutors — and agents from FBI, DEA and other areas — about a Department of Justice directive to spend as much as 25% of their time combating illegal immigration.
An “immediate clamor” ensued, she said.
“I had to say OK, OK — hold on,” she told Times of San Diego this week. “Let me hear from you one at a time.”
Going around the room, she heard “example after example” of headaches. A search warrant delayed. Grand Jury testimony postponed. And “an agent wasn’t available to take a phone call for a day because they were out on surveillance on an immigration matter.”
McGrath says investigators who typically work on national security or fentanyl abatement, as well as ATF agents targeting ghost gun makers, were spending less time on their specialties.
“That is 20% less of their time being devoted to public corruption, guardian complaints, national security, … human trafficking cases,” McGrath said in a phone interview. Also handicapped was the Elder Fraud Task Force with the FBI in San Diego County, which “has made leaps and bounds of progress to identify and freeze scammed money.”
Agents who prevent terrorist attacks were handicapped, McGrath said Monday after agreeing to my interview request. (She made similar comments to KPBS.)
“They’re doing intelligence-driven work, and they are the agents who keep us living safely 25 miles from one of the most dangerous cities in the world,” she said, referring to Tijuana and its five murders a day on average.
“We are safe here because our expert law enforcement have been doing incredible work for years and years and years and now that’s all been upended.”
‘No Backfill for Them’
McGrath, a former Marine captain working in the legal realm, acknowledged that a new administration brings new crime-fighting priorities.
But virtually 100% of agents working out of the downtown Front Street federal building (and El Centro office) are juggling added duties, she said.
“When those agents aren’t doing that work, there’s no backfill for them,” she said. “Which means that work slips through the cracks. These are the agents who prevent school shootings.”
DOJ headquarters in Washington didn’t respond to my questions and a request for comment on McGrath’s remarks. But experts echoed her concerns.
La Jolla’s Harry Litman — well-known for his newspaper columns, “Talking Feds” podcast and cable-TV appearances — is a former U.S. attorney and deputy assistant attorney general under Janet Reno in the 1990s.
He also noted the custom of different administrations stressing different priorities.
“But I’ve never heard of this sort of across-the-board quota,” he said via email. “And to the extent it displaces prosecutors who have developed expertise in other areas and forces them to work in a new specialty, you have to expect it will detract from the office’s overall impact, especially in big complicated federal cases that require the most experienced prosecutors.”
Agreeing was Erin Sheley, a criminal law professor at San Diego’s California Western School of Law.
“What is unusual is the intent to prioritize nonviolent civil offenses over the prosecution of actual violent crime,” Sheley said in a phone interview. “Drug cartels, Fentanyl pushers — the people that actually one would think … Trump would want prosecuted.”
Sheley didn’t mince words.
“It is unbelievably ironic to me that the desire to vilify noncriminal immigration for the purposes of expressing a policy of xenophobia and racism is going to come at the cost of prosecuting actual transborder violent crime, which one would assume would be of greater importance,” she said.
Vance Delayed Confirmation
Tara Katherine McGrath, 51, has seen this movie before — featuring similar actors.
In 2023, her presidential nomination to be U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California was held up for four months by then-Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, who had vowed to “grind the Department of Justice to a halt” as a protest of Trump being prosecuted for federal crimes.
On the Senate floor, Sen. Dick Durbin railed against the Republican’s delay in confirming McGrath and several others.
twitter.com/SenatorDurbin/status/1707117518719000691?class=en“Notably, Ms. McGrath led the investigation of a large-scale racketeering and drug-trafficking operation run by the Mexican cartels in San Diego County that resulted in 51 indictments against 40 defendants,” Durbin said.
“How many times have we heard members from the other side of the aisle talk about the scourge of fentanyl in the United States, the narcotics that are killing too many Americans every single day? What is going to stop that?”
He said one part of the equation was a criminal prosecutor who knows how to bring them to court “and hold them responsible for the deadly narcotics and deaths across America.”
Durbin added: “Why in the world would we stop Ms. McGrath from becoming a U.S. attorney in California, where she has a proven record of doing just that? By holding up her nomination for no specific reason, we are jeopardizing the safety of so many people who innocently expect us to do our duty.”
McGrath was nominated March 21, 2023. She was finally sworn into office Oct. 5.
Today, McGrath says Vance had nothing to do with her being removed as San Diego’s chief federal law enforcer. But the way she was fired bore Trumpian earmarks.
Typically, U.S. attorneys are given the courtesy of a deadline to resign — even offering a boilerplate form letter to use.
Not this time.
Fired by Unknown Gaetz Ally
On Feb. 12, she received an email that said: “Dear Tara. On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, your position as United States attorney has been terminated. Thank you for your service.”
It was signed by Sergio Gor — someone McGrath had never heard of.
She Googled Gor and learned he was a crony of former Rep. Matt Gaetz — even officiating at the disgraced congressman’s wedding.
“This guy is now somehow a personal adviser to the president of the United States,” McGrath said.
Cal Western’s Sheley decried the “lack of dignity with which this White House” fired DOJ leaders, which she called “jarring, unsettling and sudden as possible. … It does not surprise me that they didn’t handle this transition with the level of respect that any other U.S. president would have provided.”
Last July, McGrath was profiled for the website of the Federal Bar Association’s San Diego chapter.
Alexandra Wallin wrote:
Tara recalls one crucial moment in her life, which took place on the road to her first-year orientation at University of Michigan Law School. While driving, Tara was listening to a radio story about a woman hiding in a basement in Afghanistan. This woman was discussing her life working in communications when the Taliban put a target on her back because she was a woman. Driving in her small Ford with miles of road ahead of her, Tara glanced down at her wallet that had her single credit card in it. She realized that the road ahead of her was wide and open. She had a driver’s license and a credit card: she could drive anywhere she wanted and could buy whatever she needed. And she was driving to school to pursue a law degree.
In that moment, Tara asked herself, “Why am I in this place on earth with an open road ahead of me, while this woman is trapped in a basement?” But she already knew the answer: Because she is an American.
Countless people had made sacrifices so that she could live the life she has in America. This moment solidified her interest to join the military, so she could protect the freedom of others. During the summer between her first and second years of law school, Tara attended Officer Candidates School. After graduating from law school, she served for four years as a judge advocate on active duty in the Marine Corps.
During her time as a Marine lawyer, McGrath came to appreciate the nonpartisan judge advocate generals like ones recently fired by Trump.
Confident in Military Leaders
“To behave in a partisan way when you are part of the structure of the United States military and to make a partisan move to replace the lawyers absolutely has a chilling effect,” she said.
Is she confident military leaders would refuse to carry out illegal orders from Trump?
“I am absolutely confident that our military leaders will not abide by unlawful orders,” she said.
The married McGrath — out of public service for the first time in decades — now says she has “many irons in the fire” as she seeks private-sector work in San Diego, where she considers herself settled.
“I’m thinking about what calls to me next while also thinking about how I can stay true to that person who was in that car 25 years ago whose genuine commitment and patriotism pulses through me with every heartbeat,” she said.
According to online records, McGrath made $193,000 a year as U.S. attorney.
I asked her if she would recommend lawyers seek jobs with the San Diego DOJ.
First she noted the mootness of the question. A federal hiring freeze is on.
But she said: “I’m hesitant to say that everyone should just not work for the federal government until the Trump Administration is over because I think that would cause our society to collapse.”
McGrath went on to say: “It was the honor and the privilege of my career to serve with the people in that office. And I would encourage anyone to become a colleague to the people who are in the San Diego office.”
But she “absolutely recognizes” that current DOJ leadership is “not offering support or a clear decision-making path where the rule of law is the priority. Instead the leadership … is issuing memos that say things like: We’re going to restore the integrity and credibility of the Department of Justice.”
McGrath said an early memo implied that DOJ people working for decades lack integrity and credibility.
“That is not my experience,” she said, “and that language is insulting to the public servants who devote their careers to serving the Constitution and serving their fellow citizens. … This DOJ is telling DOJ lawyers that they are the president’s lawyers. And I disagree with that. DOJ lawyers work for Americans and they swear their oath to the Constitution.”
McGrath uses terms like “battering rams” being used against American justice and “a nuclear bomb” going off with the pardoning of January 6 rioters. She is speaking out of concerns for how public servants are being treated, about the rule of law and public safety.
“Any one of those three things would be adequate catalyst for me to speak out and yet all three of them exist simultaneously right now in a way where we have crossed the line from red flags to actual damage,” she said. “I can’t sit by and watch while the fundamental pillars of what’s important to our democracy, which is that prosecutors operate independently without partisanship and can do that with the support of their leadership.”
She said a current chilling effect on DOJ will have an impact for years to come.
Advice for the Citizenry
“The question now is: Will people speak out?” she asked.
She urges citizens to donate to organizations that fight for democracy, call representatives to express “anger and high expectations” and attend Town Halls, whether virtual or in person. “People who have not previously been active … this is not a time to assume that what’s happening is OK, or it’ll be fine…. It’s genuinely unprecedented.”
In her future career, McGrath says she’s interested in ways she be a role model for public service — a leader who supports and empowers people around her to do good work.
She’d like “ways that I can help people advance their careers by giving clear instruction and guidance.
“I found meaning in public service, but I think there’s lots of ways to find meaningful work in the private sector as well — helping corporations comply or abide by regulations and policy requirements, how to build programs within a corporation that are fair and equitable but also through leadership and supporting education and public engagement.”
For her entire career, she said, “I have either worn a uniform or carried a badge. And so this is the time of transition for me. But I do still intend to find meaningful work where I’m supporting and helping others.”
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