The incoming Trump administration has a message for left-leaning Justice Department employees hoping to block or interfere with the next president’s agenda: Get out.
Mark Paoletta, a lawyer on President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team, told “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday that Justice Department prosecutors who won’t help with expected legal battles over the deportations of illegal immigrants, transgenderism in girls’ sports, and diversity, equity and inclusion policies should leave the department.
Politico reported that some federal attorneys and other staff had told the news site that they planned to leave before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, but some high-profile Trump critics urged the Justice Department’s “resistance” to stay to “tone down” the incoming president’s most aggressive policy changes.
“Who would have thought it’s controversial that when a new boss comes in with a new agenda, that the people who work there are going to support the President’s agenda, right?” Mr. Paoletta said on Fox News. “Only in the federal government — only with a deep swamp — do people, career employees, think that they get to run the joint as it were.”
In a social media post on Monday, Mr. Paoletta said any “so-called ‘resistance’” to Mr. Trump’s agenda from prosecutors would be “subverting democracy” and could result in firings.
A former federal prosecutor told The Washington Times that attorneys in the immigration and civil rights divisions will slow-walk cases with which they disagree politically.
The prosecutor said the agency’s 115,000 employees handle so much litigation that it’s easy for a case to get lost in the shuffle.
Still, slow-walking a case represents a break from traditional Justice Department protocol that calls for civil servants to put personal politics aside and align with the administration’s agenda.
The former prosecutor said that thwarting saboteurs depends on hiring savvy people to oversee the various divisions in the justice system.
“There are some activist lefties in the Justice Department who are shrewd and really good at the bureaucratic internecine wars,” the former prosecutor told The Times. “That’s why it’s super important to get really good deputy assistant attorneys general in there, who’ve been there, because that’s where the work gets done.”
The former prosecutor said he doubts Mr. Trump would sue Justice Department attorneys if he revived the Schedule F executive order from his first term and stripped them of their employment protections.
The Justice Department has been a target of Mr. Trump ever since the agency launched two criminal investigations against him.
During Mr. Trump’s first term, special counsel Robert Mueller investigated his 2016 campaign over allegations of collusion with Russia to aid his electoral victory. Mr. Mueller found no evidence of wrongdoing.
Special counsel Jack Smith has federally charged Mr. Trump with mishandling classified documents and with his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Mr. Smith has been winding down both cases since Mr. Trump’s election triumph last week.
Politico reported that changes in Justice Department staffing may be most severe in divisions that focus on national security and civil rights law. Shifting Republican priorities may cause natural attrition in the environmental and voting rights law divisions.
“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,” Stacey Young, a trial attorney in the Justice Department’s civil rights division, told the news site.
Mr. Trump has yet to select an attorney general to lead the department.
Names that have been floated include Sen. Mike Lee, Utah Republican, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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