Several current and former senior officials at the Justice Department and the FBI have begun contacting lawyers in anticipation of being criminal investigation by the Trump administrationaccording to three people familiar with their deliberations.
After Trump’s decisive election victory, many DOJ officials and aides were already nervous about the possibility that they will be targeted by Trump loyalists, particularly members of Congress. But the selection of former Rep. Matt Gaetza firebrand Trump ally who was the subject of a recent FBI investigation, to lead the department sharply heightened the sense of alarm, the sources said.
“Everything we did was honest,” said a former senior FBI official who began contacting lawyers because he expects to be prosecuted himself. “But it’s a different world.”
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of becoming even more of a target, does not believe any attempt to prosecute him will succeed. Judges and juries have the power to dismiss cases or find defendants innocent if they believe the charges are without merit.
But like many other current and former Justice Department officials, he is bracing for a potentially lengthy and costly legal battle, as well as the possibility of lengthy congressional investigations, after Trump takes office in January .
Career FBI employees are particularly vulnerable, the official added. As they earn less money than in the private sector, they depend on the pensions they receive after 20 years.
“Agents must serve 20 years,” the former top FBI official said. “These people don’t have options.”
A former senior DOJ official who served during Trump’s first term said he, too, saw Gaetz’s appointment as a sign of the seriousness of the president-elect’s promise to exact revenge on those who investigated him.
“He has to be able to control the department, which he can do through a loyal AG who is accountable to him,” the former DOJ official said.
Gaetz, who was the subject of a federal sex trafficking investigation that completed at no cost“He understands that he owes everything to Trump, who can also protect Gaetz with his pardon power,” the former official added. “Trump is confident that Gaetz will do whatever Trump tells him to do.”
Trump and his supporters have consistently maintained that all criminal investigations against him were politically motivated and that DOJ and FBI officials deserved to be prosecuted.
Weeks before Election Day, Steven Cheung, Trump’s spokesperson, called for the Jan. 6 charges and all federal and state criminal charges against Trump to be dropped.
“This entire affair is a sham and a partisan, unconstitutional witch hunt that should be completely rejected – just like ALL remaining Democratic hoaxes,” Cheung said.
Legal experts say Trump’s goal in investigating his investigators is simple: To intimidate anyone who dares to investigate Trump’s conduct.
“Trump aims to neutralize sources of power that could stand in his way,” said Stephen Gillers, an ethics professor at New York University Law School. “This includes the law and legal institutions. He will not tolerate interference when departmental decisions benefit Trump and his friends or when his power can be used to retaliate against his enemies.”
Shock within the DOJ
DOJ officials, including Attorney General Merrick Garland, were shocked by Trump’s decisive election victory. For the past four years, Garland has argued that strict adherence to post-Watergate standards requiring the DOJ to work in a nonpartisan manner in criminal investigations would restore public confidence in the DOJ.
Instead, some career Justice Department officials wept after the election, dismayed that large numbers of Americans apparently continue to believe Trump’s claims that the department is a cesspool of corruption.
DOJ and FBI officials say the Trump investigations were conducted properly. DOJ prosecutors obtained indictments from federal grand juries against Trump for his mishandling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
They expressed their perplexity about the criminal charges that could thus be brought against them. “There is no crime,” said a current law enforcement official. “What is the crime?” »
Mike Davis, conservative lawyer and Trump ally, argued that special counsel Jack Smith could be prosecuted for violating one of the laws Smith accused Trump of breaking regarding the 2020 election: anti-rights conspiracy.
The status says it is illegal for anyone to deny a person a federal right, such as voting. Smith argued that Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results disenfranchised voters in several states the right to have their votes counted accurately.
Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, said he didn’t see how Smith could be accused of denying Trump a federal right.
“I think it’s absurd,” he said. “I don’t see any legitimate charges that can be made against Smith.”
Somin warned that a prosecutor can investigate an individual over a long period of time and find that he or she violated unrelated federal laws that cover minor offenses.
If Trump’s attorney general, for example, appoints a special prosecutor to review federal criminal investigations into Trump, he could find that a DOJ or FBI official violated a federal law that does not pertain to the Trump investigations, such as a tax or drug offense. .
“If you think about it, a majority of adult Americans have probably broken federal laws, like smoking marijuana, at some point in their lives,” Somin said.
Special counsel Robert Mueller, during his investigation into whether Trump campaign officials coordinated with Russia during the 2016 campaign, charged several Trump associates with unrelated crimes. Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman, was convicted at just under four years old in prison after being convicted of tax and bank fraud.
A special counsel appointed by Attorney General Bill Barr, John Durham, then spent years examining the actions of the CIA and FBI in connection with Russian interference efforts in the 2016 election, ultimately obtaining a only guilty plea from an FBI lawyer who lied on a document.
But many of the people Durham investigated had to spend thousands of dollars in legal fees. Now a new group of DOJ and FBI officials are facing the perspective of also high legal costs.
Gillers, the NYU professor, said he believed Trump’s nomination of Gaetz was the beginning, not the end, of his efforts to get revenge on the department.
“Gaetz’s elevation is in part payback for Jack Smith’s two indictments,” Gillers said. “The Justice Department is Trump’s white whale, and like Captain Ahab, Trump is hell-bent on revenge.”