According to recent reports, multiple officials within the DOJ and FBI are concerned about the implications of President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Matt Gaetz as the incoming attorney general. Sources familiar with the matter claim that multiple current and former members of the government agencies are considering hiring legal representation as the Trump administration prepares to assume power.
The move to acquire lawyers from the officials demonstrates a palpable fear within government bureaucracy that Trump will follow through on his agenda of gutting the deep state. An NBC report quoted one former senior FBI official as saying, “Everything we did was aboveboard. But this is a different world.” The anonymous source reported fears that he and others will face extensive legal battles. However, he believes any attempts to prosecute him will be unsuccessful.
New York University Law School professor Stephen Gillers commented on Trump’s initiative to “neutralize” the power within the federal government, claiming, “Trump aims to neutralize sources of power that may impede him.” He added, “That includes the law and legal institutions. He will tolerate no interference when the department’s decisions will benefit Trump and his buddies or when its power can be deployed to retaliate against his enemies.”
Underscoring the Trump administration’s intentions to purge bureaucrats who are not committed to the president’s policies, adviser Mark Paoletta recently shared a lengthy post on X, warning federal employees. “Career DOJ lawyers must be fully committed to implementing President Trump’s policies or they should leave or be fired. Why do I keep raising this? Because there are several examples (below) of career staff sabotaging cases they disagreed with in the first Trump Administration. This can’t happen again,” he said.
Paoletta continued, “There are superb career employees in the US government. I know this from first-hand experience working as the General Counsel at OMB. I worked with terrific career lawyers who helped us figure out how to accomplish President Trump’s agenda. For example, it was a career lawyer who first suggested that we could tap funds at the DOD to build the wall.”
“I hope DOJ attorneys will embrace their responsibility to implement President Trump’s agenda,” the Trump advisor emphasized. He then highlighted aspects of Trump’s agenda they must support. “That is their constitutional duty. If the president wants to deport illegal aliens, secure the border, ban race-based “affirmative action” and DEI, investigate antisemitism, halt Big Tech censorship, grant pardons and commutations to Jan 6th defendants, he has every right to expect that these perfectly lawful policies are implemented, and it is absolutely unacceptable for career employees to seek to thwart this policy agenda,” he added.
He further stated, “The duty of a lawyer is to promote the objectives of his client within the bounds of the law, not to substitute his views for those of the client. Government lawyers may respectfully suggest alternative actions, but once the duly elected President makes a decision, it is the job of civil servants to carry out that decision to the best of their abilities whether they personally agree with it or not. Under the Constitution, the People vested ALL executive power in the PRESIDENT, not in the unelected lawyers who are to assist him in the exercise of that power.”
Watch Vivek Ramaswamy outline efforts to curb the government through D.O.G.E below:
"*" indicates required fields