The DOJ has fired two senior fraud section officials who worked on former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into US President Donald Trump.
Jonathan Haray, the second-in-command at the Fraud Section’s market integrity and major frauds unit (MIMF), and Timothy “Tad” Duree, an assistant chief at the health care fraud unit, were terminated from their positions earlier in week commencing 27 January 2025, GIR has learned.
The firings, which have not previously been reported, come amid a major shake-up at the DOJ. Earlier in week commencing 27 January 2025, the agency’s interim leadership fired more than a dozen career lawyers who worked for the Smith team that investigated Trump. Smith was appointed in November 2022 to oversee two probes: one into Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the other into his handling of classified documents.
Those prosecutors received termination letters from acting US attorney general James McHenry stating that they could not be trusted to implement Trump's agenda, according to news reports. “You played a significant role in prosecuting President Trump,” the letters reportedly said. “The proper functioning of government critically depends on the trust superior officials place in their subordinates.”
It is unclear whether Haray and Duree were fired as part of the same purge. However, both served on Smith’s special counsel team investigating Trump.
Haray’s name appeared on a grand jury subpoena linked to the special counsel probe into Trump’s actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election, according to a 2023 report by Politico. The subpoena led to a tense altercation between FBI agents and a former Trump campaign aide, per the report. Duree also worked on Smith’s special counsel team, according to an ABC report from April 2023 and to court testimony by conservative nonprofit Judicial Watch.
Former Fraud Section officials who spoke to GIR on the condition of anonymity said the firings are unfair given Haray and Duree’s long track records of prosecutorial work. The terminations also ignore established protocol, they said.
“Removing people in leadership during a change in administrations is normal, but there’s usually a process to make sure that there’s someone to fill their jobs,” said a former Fraud Section official. “There’s usually a transition period.”
“Removing assistant chiefs two weeks into an administration – I’ve never seen that,” the former official added.
Another former Fraud Section official said the terminations of Haray and Duree are damaging for the DOJ.
“This action undermines the credibility of the career prosecutors as well as the political appointees who ‘supervise them’,” they said. “This also creates a de facto political patronage system within the career ranks that has not previously existed.”
“It is Tammany Hall within the RFK building,” the ex-official said, referring to a corrupt New York City organisation that was known for its influence over city politics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The RFK building in Washington, DC is the headquarters of Main Justice.
Seasoned prosecutors
Over the last decade, Haray and Duree have prosecuted both corporations and individuals in numerous high-profile cases involving allegations of fraud, foreign bribery, and more.
Haray was part of the DOJ team that recently prosecuted Boeing for allegedly violating the terms of a $2.5 billion deferred prosecution agreement reached in 2021 after the deadly crashes of two jetliners.
Before joining Main Justice, he served for more than a decade as a prosecutor for the US attorney’s office in Washington, DC, eventually rising to deputy chief of the office’s fraud and public corruption section. In 2014, after a one-year stint as assistant chief litigation counsel at the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Haray left the government to join DLA Piper’s litigation practice in Washington, DC.
He returned to the government in late 2022 to serve as an assistant special counsel at Main Justice, around the time that Jack Smith was appointed to investigate Trump’s role in the 6 January 2021 events. About one year ago, he left the special counsel’s office to become the principal assistant deputy chief of the MIMF unit.
At DLA Piper, Haray focused his practice on advising and defending clients facing investigations for securities violations and foreign corruption. In 2019, he was part of a team of lawyers who helped guide Telefónica Brasil to a $4 million settlement with the SEC for violating the books and records and internal controls provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
At the US attorney’s office in Washington, DC, Haray investigated and prosecuted cases involving allegations of foreign bribery, fraud, money laundering, and banking violations, according to a lecturer biography on the website for the George Washington University Law School.
Haray prosecuted individuals involved in a massive bribery scheme in West Africa. In 2012, he signed off on a notice stating that Siemens had completed a four-year compliance monitorship as part of a nearly $800 million settlement for widespread FCPA violations.
Duree got his start at the Fraud Section in 2016 after serving for more than three years as a line prosecutor at the US attorney’s office for the Western District of Texas, according to a LinkedIn profile. He served for more than four years as a trial attorney at the Securities and Financial Fraud unit before rising to assistant chief of the Health Care Fraud unit in September 2020, where he oversaw the Newark Health Care Fraud Strike Force.
In 2018, Duree was part of a Fraud Section team that prosecuted French bank Société Générale for scheming to bribe Gaddafi-era Libyan officials and manipulating the London interbank offered rate (LIBOR). The investigation led to a $585 million resolution with the bank in the first-ever joint US-France foreign bribery settlement.
Before joining the DOJ, Duree worked as a law clerk for US District Judge Alia Moses in the Western District of Texas and as an associate for Washington, DC-headquartered law firm Wiley Rein.
The DOJ declined to comment. Haray and Duree did not respond to requests for comment.
This article was first published in Lexology PRO's sister title Global Investigations Review (GIR) on 31 January 2025.