Three former officials from the U.S. Justice Department have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, claiming their dismissals were “unlawful.” One plaintiff argues his dismissal was linked to his involvement in prosecuting individuals charged in connection with the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Michael Gordon, who served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Middle District of Florida, recounted that he was in the midst of an interview in his Tampa office in late June when he unexpectedly received a termination letter. The complaint, filed on Thursday, states that the letter arrived “without prior notification or a performance-based reason,” despite Gordon having received a top rating of “Outstanding” just two days earlier in his mid-year DOJ performance evaluation.

The dismissal announcements of DOJ Supervisory Public Affairs Specialist Patricia Hartman and DOJ Departmental Ethics Office Director Joseph Tirrell – the other two plaintiffs in the lawsuit – were similar in their unexpectedness and brevity.

Hartman was working in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia at the time of her firing about two weeks after Gordon’s. For a seven-month stretch from December 2022 to June 2023, she was “the primary official handling public affairs work specific to the government’s prosecution of criminal cases concerning the January 6, 2021 insurrection,” the complaint states.

The Thursday lawsuit makes no mention that Tirrell – an executive in charge of advising Attorney General Pam Bondi and other senior DOJ officials on employee ethics – had anything to do with the aftermath of the Capitol insurrection. But he, too, noted how his summer firing provided no explanation.

The plaintiffs maintain that they were denied due process and that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and the DOJ violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) with their dismissals. They claim that they can’t even appeal their dismissals via the regular departmental avenue because the agency that would hear their case – the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board – has been gutted by the Trump administration and “lacks a quorum to vote on any petitions for review.”

They are seeking a jury trial in the U.S. District Court of Columbia and an order requiring them to be reinstated to their positions.

The complaint says Gordon was fired on the same day as two other assistant U.S. attorneys who had worked on prosecuting Jan. 6 defendants, “indicating that Mr. Gordon’s termination was retaliation for prosecutions that were perceived as politically-affiliated.”

He spoke with NBC News, recounting his shock over his firing. “No explanation. No advance warning. No description of what the cause was,” Gordon said. “Now, I knew why. I knew it had to be my Jan. 6 work.”

Hartman went a step further.

“I was never given an explanation for my termination,” Hartman – a DOJ employee for nearly two decades – told the outlet. “Based on my performance reviews, which have always been outstanding, I have to believe that something else was driving this. The bottom line is this, in my mind, amounts to psychological terrorism. You are removing people who were good or excellent at their jobs with no explanation.”

The attorneys in the three plaintiffs’ case are also notable. Attorney Mark Zaid has sued the Trump administration himself over the revocation of his security clearance, and Abbe Lowell is well-known for representing high-profile clients, including Hunter Biden and Ivanka Trump.

The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, a woman well-acquainted with cases stemming from Jan. 6. Last week, she dismissed a lawsuit from a group of FBI agents seeking to prevent the Trump administration from publicly identifying those who worked on Jan. 6 investigations. The Joe Biden appointee also presided over the cases of several Capitol riot defendants, including Ryan Samsel, a man convicted for particularly violent attacks during the insurrection.

Approximately 200 Justice Department employees have been fired since President Donald Trump returned to office in January, several outlets estimate, citing Justice Connection, a “network of DOJ alumni mobilizing to protect our former colleagues.” Several of those fired were Jan. 6 prosecutors.

Roughly 1,500 convicted Capitol rioters were pardoned on the first day of the new Trump administration.

Gordon, who was touted by former colleagues as a skilled prosecutor, remains proud of his work.

“When prosecutors are punished for doing their jobs, we all lose the protection of the law,” he told the Associated Press this week. “I can’t just sit back and watch and let my children grow up in a country where justice means whatever the president says it is and not what the law says.”

“I feel like my firing is a small story, but what it means is a bigger one,” he added. “I’ve spent my whole professional career as a lawyer fighting on behalf of the government. And now they’ve forced me into a position where I am fighting the government.”

Law&Crime reached out to the DOJ for comment on the lawsuit.