A longtime Department of Justice employee who lost his job after a secretly recorded video of him criticizing the Trump administration went public is now suing, claiming his constitutional right to free speech was violated.
Joseph Schnitt, a DOJ employee for more than 23 years, was terminated in September after footage surfaced of him speculating about the so-called “Epstein files.” In a 23-page lawsuit filed Monday, he alleges that the DOJ and Attorney General Pam Bondi “retaliated against” him for “quintessential protected speech” and “unlawfully removed him from federal service due solely to the expression” of those views.
According to the complaint, Schnitt met a woman who identified herself as “Skylar” on the dating app Hinge in July. After several weeks of messaging, they agreed to meet in person, and on Aug. 4 they went on a date at a restaurant in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia.
Schnitt says he had no idea their 60- to 90-minute conversation was being recorded.
During the date, “Skylar” asked about Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and the government’s plans to release investigative files related to the convicted sex offenders. In the video later published online, Schnitt can be heard suggesting that the Trump administration would selectively shield certain individuals.
“They’ll redact every Republican or conservative person in those files, leave all the liberal Democratic people in those files,” he says in the clip, which was posted in September by self-described “Guerrilla Journalist” James O’Keefe. Schnitt also speculated that Maxwell’s transfer to a minimum-security prison was the DOJ “offering her something to keep her mouth shut.”
The lawsuit notes that Schnitt’s Hinge profile did not identify him as a DOJ official or as acting deputy chief for the Federal Witness Security Program; it simply listed his job as “case analyst at government.” In O’Keefe’s edited 8-minute video, however, Schnitt is heard stating that he is a long-serving DOJ employee.
Schnitt and the woman met once more, but he says he “steered the conversation” away from Epstein, and no footage from that second date appears in the posted video.
Roughly a month after their first date — and hours before the video was released — Schnitt received a text asking if he had any comment on quotations from a “hidden camera interview with an undercover reporter.” Realizing something was wrong, he went to his supervisor, who told him to email the acting director of the DOJ’s Office of Enforcement Operations.
In that email, Schnitt wrote that his remarks were “strictly his own personal opinion and only based on what he had learned in the media,” and not derived from “any official information.” He believed, the lawsuit says, that the email “would be for internal use by his leadership only.”
Instead, within about an hour of the video going live, the DOJ published his explanation on its official X account. The next day, Sept. 5, he was fired for making “publicly inappropriate comments that were detrimental to the interests of the Department.”
Schnitt and his attorney Mark Zaid argue the firing was unlawful. They say his comments are protected by the First Amendment because they were made on his own time, in a private setting, and were based solely on publicly available information.
“Mr. Schnitt’s protected speech did not take place in a Government facility, use Government equipment, or rely upon Government systems or databases. It did not consist of any information Mr. Schnitt learned during the course of his official duties,” the lawsuit states. “His protected speech consisted exclusively of open source, publicly available information reported in the news media, as well as his own personal opinions on matters of public concern.”
The complaint also points out that, by releasing his email, “the Defendants publicly confirmed that Mr. Schnitt had no official knowledge about the case and that his comments were made in his personal capacity only.”
Schnitt says his remarks were the sole reason for his firing and that the Trump administration “did nothing to determine whether Mr. Schnitt’s protected speech had actually caused any kind of disruption or hampered his ability to perform his employment responsibilities.”
He further claims he was denied due process because “no opportunity was ever provided to Mr. Schnitt to respond” to the decision to terminate him. He appealed to the Merit Systems Protection Board on Nov. 16 — the body that reviews federal personnel actions — but “no actions have yet occurred,” according to the lawsuit.
Schnitt also contends he was targeted in a “complete set-up” by the woman on the date, identified in the complaint as Dominique Phillips, who has previously been linked to conservative nonprofit Turning Point USA.
He is seeking immediate reinstatement to his position, a declaration that his firing “was in retaliation” for his protected speech, and back pay.
The so-called “Epstein files” have been a persistent source of controversy for the administration, as critics have faulted the president, Bondi, and other officials for failing to fully release documents related to the disgraced financier.
