Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher has been talking with career attorneys at the United States Department of Justice and has found that they are determined to stay on the job despite threats from President-elect Donald Trump and his allies.
According to Fisher, these lawyers know that the second Trump administration will likely be even more hostile to them than the first, and thus they are "steeling themselves for confrontations" should they receive improper orders to prosecute Trump's political foes.
“‘You will prosecute this person even though there’s no evidence against them,’ everyone knows that people here just wouldn’t do that,” one unnamed attorney tells Fisher.
One longtime DOJ veteran similarly tells Fisher that they are staying on because Trump's first-term team "did not have a significant impact on our work."
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"His people came in with some general distrust of us, like, ‘You are the deep state,'" this official said. "Then they got to know us and saw that we were good Americans who want to do the right thing."
The DOJ under current Attorney General Merrick Garland indicted Trump on multiple charges related to his handling of top-secret government documents and his efforts to illegally remain in power after losing the 2020 presidential election.
However, the department also indicted prominent Democrats during Garland's tenure, including former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), New York Mayor Eric Adams, and even Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden.
