The department has hemorrhaged thousands of veteran attorneys since Trump returned to office thanks to the president’s revenge campaigns, violent immigration crackdown, and increasingly overwhelming workloads.

The government has lowered hiring standards and resorted to offering $25,000 signing bonuses, despite historically being deluged with applications from lawyers who were happy to take a pay cut in exchange for the prestige and satisfaction of federal service.

Over the past few weeks, the deputy attorney general’s office told all 93 U.S. attorney’s offices that every prosecutor must maintain at least “25 open matters” at all times, four people told Bloomberg Law.