Many in government are worried about Trump's return. At DOJ, they're terrified.
Trump blames DOJ for much of his torment over the past four years. Lawyers there fear what's next.
A collective sense of dread has taken hold at the Department of Justice, which drew Donald Trump's rage like no other part of the federal government during his campaign.
Some career attorneys at DOJ are already considering heading for the exits rather than sticking around to find out whether threats from Trump and his allies are real or campaign bluster. Those threats range from mass firings of "deep state" lawyers to expelling special counsel Jack Smith from the country.
"Everyone I've talked to, mostly lawyers, are losing their minds," said one DOJ attorney, who like most of the people interviewed for this article was granted anonymity to speak freely about colleagues and avoid retribution from the president-elect and his allies. "The fear is that career leadership and career employees everywhere are either going to leave or they're going to be driven out."
While alarm over Trump's return is widespread throughout the federal bureaucracy, it is perhaps most acute at the Justice Department, which was at the center of many of the major controversies of his first term.
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"Many federal employees are terrified that we'll be replaced with partisan loyalists -- not just because our jobs are on the line, but because we know that our democracy and country depend on a government supported by a merit-based, apolitical civil service," said Stacey Young, a trial attorney in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division who won an award from Barr in 2020 and is president and co-founder of the DOJ Gender Equality Network.
LOL.
It all adds up to a feeling of trepidation for many of the department's rank and file.
"We've all seen this movie before and it's going to be worse," said one former DOJ official who served under Trump and several of his predecessors. "It will be worse. It's just a question of how much worse it's going to be."
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Most of Mueller's top deputies have left government or returned to lower-profile jobs. But other lower-ranking lawyers with ties to the Mueller probe remain at the department. Staffers who offered even peripheral or routine assistance to either Mueller's team or Smith's team now harbor concerns that they will be frozen out by a president who campaigned on exacting revenge.
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Current and former employees said a more conventional pick -- like Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) or former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe -- would signal more upheaval than eight years ago but perhaps not tectonic changes. A more radical choice -- like Ken Paxton, the ultra-conservative Texas attorney general, or Kash Patel, a former Trump National Security Council aide and frequent Trump attack dog -- would portend extreme turbulence for the department, the veterans said.
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"It is absolutely a part of the calculus," one former senior DOJ official said. "If you have one of these type of extreme candidates ... you will see a significant amount of career staff say, 'I don't want to be a part of this. This is antithetical to who this department is. I think that will absolutely inform whether or not a good chunk of career staff -- whether people stay or go."
This is all worth reading, but I'll bold the most important parts for you slack-jawed yokels. Mark Paoletta is that "key Trump lawyer" I mentioned in the headline.
His message: Go get Daddy's belt.
Mark Paoletta
@MarkPaoletta
President Trump was elected by the American people to carry out his agenda, which includes:
Securing the southern border, mass deportations of illegal aliens (beginning with rapists and murderers), surging resources to process immigration/asylum claims to clear out backlog and end widespread abuse of the asylum system, ending automatic citizenship for children of illegal aliens, and taking federal actions to prevent sanctuary cities from obstructing federal immigration enforcement,
Restoring law and order across our country, including rescuing our cities from mob violence and left-wing soft on crime prosecutors,
Immediately stopping the lawfare and persecution of political opponents that is unprecedented in American history and destroying our democracy,
Granting pardons or commutations to January 6th defendants and other defendants who have been subjected to politically-driven lawfare prosecutions and sentences,
Abolishing DEI in government and taking action against those companies and universities that engage in racial discrimination,
Protecting Americans' right to speech, religion, and the Second Amendment,
Protecting religious liberties, including investigating and prosecuting the horrific antisemitism ripping through this country,
Protecting parents' rights from irreparable transgender surgeries and procedures on minor children, and investigating those who have pushed this on minor children;
Paving the way for an energy boom and American Energy Golden Age,
And holding accountable those who weaponized their government authority to abuse Americans.
These are all positions President Trump campaigned on and that career DOJ lawyers may be working on to accomplish President Trump's lawful agenda that was approved by a landslide vote of the American People. DOJ career employees do not set the agenda. In fact, they are required to help implement this agenda.
Hopefully, they will be as committed to helping President Trump implement his agenda as they did for President Biden. Of course, political leadership welcomes feedback to help improve a project. But once the decision is made to move forward, career employees are required to implement the President's plan.
Of course, no one will push them to implement flagrantly illegal actions like President Biden did with his student loan plan, where he thumbed his nose at the Supreme Court's ruling and then tried to implement another illegal plan which was struck down. (In fact, the media was cheering on his law-breaking). I don't recall reading any stories about career attorneys being concerned about working on this blatantly illegal action.
If these career DOJ employees won't implement President Trump's program in good faith, they should leave. Those employees who engage in so-called "resistance" against the duly-elected President's lawful agenda would be subverting American democracy.
Finally, those that take such actions would be subject to disciplinary measures, including termination.
I look forward to President Trump's team Making America Great Again, especially at the Department of Justice and the FBI.
Yes, this is a great potential pick for AG, but Ed Morrissey thinks he might have to settle for a lesser, but still powerful, position overseeing the most corrupted parts of the DOJ.
Paoletta may not have a high enough profile to get nominated for Attorney General. That will most likely go to a governor or Senator with enough closeness to Trump to be trusted with the nod. However, there are any number of secondary positions where Trump can install Paoletta to be the AG's hatchet man, with Deputy AG being the most comprehensive and powerful. The next step down would be Associate AG, which would not have formal oversight over the FBI, ATF, or US Attorneys -- where much of the "Resistance" might form -- but still would have the Civil Rights Division and other interesting orgs in portfolio. Trump could keep Paoletta in the White House too as a means to keep an eye on the political appointees at DoJ.
As you know, the House was just called for Republicans. So that means that conservatives will control -- nominally, in the case of Congress -- all three branches of government, and both houses of Congress.
This leaves Democrats without a bastion of government power for their #Resistance efforts.
Thus, a new op begins: Convincing the public that the bureaucracy is the fourth branch of government, and has its own independent source of power enshrined in the Constitution, and is authorized to provide #Resistance to Trump despite being unelected bureaucrats who are part of the Executive branch, and therefore only have the power that the Chief Executive -- Trump -- has, and must use that power to act as the Chief Executive demands.
But no, the Constitution is like 100 years old, man, and the left needs to conjure up a foothold in government. So FusionGPS's favorite leak recipient and dogged defender of the Deep State tells us that Aksually Trump's inferior officers have a right to take action independently from him and impose their own agenda on the government:
That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. DOJ lawyers are Trump's employees and must act as he directs, so long as his orders do not involve law-breaking. But in all matters of policy and priority -- Trump's orders are orders, not suggestion.
What the left is trying to claim is that all the leftwing bureaucrats filling the government -- who have taken over the government just as they took over the media, only hiring their fellow travelers until the whole institution is subverted -- get to make their own policy, despite being completely unelected and without any independent power in the Constitutional scheme of government.
But this is the new op, insisting that bureaucrats may boss around the elected president.
This is exactly as asinine as insisting that a congressman's staffers have the right to countermand his decisions and cast their own votes in Congress.
Now yes, they did cast their own votes in the case of Dianne Feinstein, but that was illegal.