Career DOJ attorneys who prosecuted Trump, J6ers, Bannon, Navarro consider leaving government jobs ahead of Trump term
“The investigators will be investigated … We can clean house next term, and that’s what has to happen.”
It’s a difficult decision for some Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers who have spent the last four years in the Biden administration forcing lawfare on President-elect Donald Trump: stay in government and risk facing Trump’s wrath or get out before Inauguration Day.
There are dozens of DOJ prosecutors who have been involved with anti-Trump cases that didn’t just target the incoming president but J6 protesters and key Trump aides like Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, The Wall Street Journal reported. Those who feel most vulnerable have solicited the advice of Attorney General Merrick Garland, who has reportedly advised them to stay put in order to preserve the corporate memory of the DOJ.
That counsel has apparently not always been embraced as many department lawyers are sending out their CVs in an attempt to return to private law. While a new president can be expected to purge the government of political staffers,“now, it’s seeping into a lot of career people,” Steve Nelson, a legal headhunter who helps lawyers get back to private law firms, told the WSJ.
“The number of people leaving, or looking at opportunities outside the Justice Department or elsewhere in the government, is way higher than it’s ever been before,” Nelson told the WSJ.
But although a slew of DOJ lawyers might aspire to pack up and leave, it’s not like there are a lot of vacancies at the lucrative law practices. So many of them are deciding to stay put and take their chances, preparing as best they can for the worst-case scenario of being subject to the same legal persecution that they have meted out to Trump and his allies.
Special counsel Jack Smith is perhaps the best example of a DOJ prosecutor who made a visceral enemy of Trump with their election interference charges and allegations that he improperly cared for classified documents. Smith has moved on from both of these actions, acknowledging that the DOJ does not prosecute a sitting president. His investigations ate up $50 million taxpayer dollars.
Pam Bondi, who is Trump’s nominee for attorney general, has indicated that she believes some retribution against the Biden DOJ would be justified. “The Department of Justice, the prosecutors, will be prosecuted, the bad ones,” The WSJ quotes Bondi as saying on Fox News last year. “The investigators will be investigated … We can clean house next term, and that’s what has to happen.”
Kash Patel, who is Trump’s choice to be the next director of the FBI, has also mused about getting even with the Democrats, although he has been telling senators that he has no intention of initiating any persecution against the Democrats who used the judiciary against Trump. Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) has said he believes him.