Powerful allies of President-elect Donald Trump signaled Wednesday they'll insert a loyalist regime within the Department of Justice and fueled the flames of a growing panic over the future of American democracy.
Trump ally Cleta Mitchell, transition team attorney Mark Paoletta and indicted lawyer Jeff Clark published lengthy manifestos on X calling for absolute loyalty to the president-elect from the thousands of attorneys who staff the Justice Department.
"Career DOJ lawyers must be fully committed to implementing President Trump’s policies or they should leave or be fired," wrote Paoletta.
"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."
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Paoletta argued Justice department attorneys should consider Trump their client and any refusal to follow a president's orders would be tantamount to subverting democracy.
"Under the Constitution, the People vested ALL executive power in the PRESIDENT, not in the unelected lawyers," Paoletta wrote. "Those who resist by trying to sabotage the duly-elected President’s agenda should be terminated for failing to do their jobs."
Clark almost immediately threw his support behind Paoletta's statement, arguing mass terminations and a Trump-loyal department would solve "serious problems" such as internal leaks.
Mitchell, who served as an informal aide to Trump as he tried to overturn Georgia's election results in 2020, added to Paoletta's screed with a call to terminate two entire departments.
"Every lawyer in the Voting Section and likely in the Civil Rights Division needs to be terminated," Mitchell wrote. "They are not supportive of Pres Trump or MAGA. There has to be a reckoning."
The impetus of this mass firing campaign appears to have been a Politico report detailing the sense of dread growing within the Justice department as Trump, who has promised retribution against "enemies from within," prepares to return to the White House, according to Politico reporter Josh Gerstein.
Gerstein reported Monday that the department’s 115,000 employees share concerns that Trump's White House could deliver a potentially fatal blow to the checks and balances meant to prevent him from claiming absolute power.
“Many federal employees are terrified that we’ll be replaced with partisan loyalists” said Stacey Young, a trial attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. "We know that our democracy and country depend on a government supported by a merit-based, apolitical civil service."
The bombardment of anti-Justice Department salvos coming from Trump world Wednesday spurred a rhetorical question and succinct analysis from constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kreis.
"Is this bad?" Kreis asked. "Seems bad."