Attorney General Merrick Garland and top Justice Department officials are encouraging career staffers to remain in their jobs through the next administration, stressing that institutional knowledge is important as a new leaders take hold, according to people familiar with those conversations.
The weeks since President-elect Donald Trump’s victory have been filled with uncertainty and tumult for many of the more than 100,000 individuals who work at the nation’s largest law enforcement agency, according to people familiar with the situation, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss information that has not been made public.
As top officials inside the Justice Department have led meetings about transition protocols, Trump and his allies have continued their vows to fire career staffers and seek retribution on those they consider their political enemies.
Trump has announced earlier in November that his personal defense lawyers, who represented him in his criminal cases, would be nominated for top Justice Department jobs. While some people interviewed said that those lawyers’ relevant job qualifications for the jobs were reassuring — two are former prosecutors — they were also concerned about whether Trump would expect the would-be officials to act like his personal counsel.
Nearly a dozen current and former Justice Department employees interviewed for this story in recent weeks — ranging from political appointees to career staffers — said there’s not yet a mass exodus bursting from agency headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue NW. They said the transition so far appears to be operating as it would during any administration change and there’s been little mention of Trump and his nominees in the transition meetings. Many career employees worked for Justice during the first Trump administration and are waiting to see who is appointed to head different divisions before deciding how to proceed.
“Now, for myself, I may be coming to the end of my tenure at the Justice Department, but I know that all of you will continue,” Garland said in a mid-November speech to staffers at the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York.
“You will continue in the department’s mission, what has always been its mission: to uphold the rule of law, to keep our country safe and to protect civil rights. You — the career lawyers of this district, the career lawyers of all the U.S. attorney’s offices, the career lawyers of the Justice Department as a whole — you are the institutional backbone of this department.”
More here
