A former federal prosecutor is suing the Department of Justice after he was fired for an anti-Trump blog, per reports.
According to reporting by The New York Times, right-wing influencers celebrated the firing of Will Rosenzweig last year, but he's now suing the DOJ. Rosenzweig was two weeks away from trying a multimillion-dollar Medicare fraud case when he was targeted by right-wing influencers and then fired by the Trump administration, according to reporting by ABC News.
Rosenzweig, who worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Florida, was fired only hours after MAGA influencer Natalie Winters posted a photo on social media of his LinkedIn account and claimed that he "secretly ran anti-Trump blog for YEARS attacking Trump," according to reporting by CNN.
The Times reported that Laura Loomer posted that Winters "got him fired" shortly after former Attorney General Pam Bondi dismissed him.
His lawsuit, filed in a Miami court on Friday, now demands financial damages and that he get his job back, per The Times. The lawsuit warns that the DOJ is setting a criterion that would only allow people who have always been loyal to the government to work for it, according to ABC News.
Rosenzweig's lawsuit said that his blog was "effectively defunct" by January 2019 and was started before President Donald Trump was elected to office.
"The Department's conduct rests on a single premise: a citizen must forever refrain from criticizing the government and its leaders to remain eligible to serve it," his lawsuit reads. "That rule would force every American who might one day serve to choose between speaking freely now and working for the government later."
The lawsuit claimed that the DOJ violated his right to free speech by firing him. Reports also mention that Rosenzweig was fired amid a sweeping personnel purge in the DOJ and that a growing list of former prosecutors and federal agents have gone to court in an effort to fight back.
"Conditioning public employment on political loyalty, where a party card rather than merit opens the door to a government job, is a way of life in Havana and Caracas," Rosenzweig's lawsuit reads, per ABC News. "It has no place here."