It's no secret that Donald Trump would like to punish the prosecutors who went after him, but legal experts say there are some limits to what he can do to them.
Trump and his team are looking for retribution specifically against Jay Bratt, the counterintelligence chief within the Justice Department's national security division, and possibly his deputy Julie Edelstein, according to two sources familiar with the president-elect's legal team, and he also holds grudges against prosecutors J.P. Cooney and Molly Gaston, who worked in the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, reported NOTUS.
“I think there’ll be an effort," said one source. "If I was Jay Bratt, I’d be a little worried."
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Trump's legal team complained during the Mar-a-Lago investigation that prosecutors weren't playing fair and resented their aggressive pursuit of the case, and they remain bitter that trial-level prosecutors eagerly pursued a case against the former president – even if they concede their motives were personal and not political.
“People were doing their jobs,” one source said. “If there was any pushing of the rules, which there was, it involved ambition rather than politics. They weren’t trying to get Trump because they didn’t like his politics. This is a big case, one of the biggest in our country’s history.”
Trump insists he will not direct his Department of Justice to conduct investigations against specific individuals, his attorney general nominee Pam Bondi has already threatened retribution and he has nominated two of his defense attorneys, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, who have accused special counsel Jack Smith's team of misconduct, to oversee some of those same career prosecutors.
“If I’m walking in as Pam Bondi, I want every communication from the time of that meeting with Stanley Woodward, every text and email, every prosecutor in that room interviewed… a robust investigation, not just an OPR slow walk,” said a third source. “They should have to answer for it."
However, a former federal prosecutor who investigated Trump in the Manhattan district attorney's office said prosecutors enjoy many protections against being charged with crimes.
“You’re going to have to contend with prosecutorial immunity, which is very significant," said former prosecutor Solomon Shinerock. "Very few prosecutors get investigated for work they do in connection with their official duties, and that’s how it should be. Otherwise, you would have them acting like shrinking violets."
But even if those law enforcement officials escape Trump's wrath, Shinerock said there will still be damaging consequences for the DOJ as an institution.
“There are protections that make this whole thing a complete empty promise," he said. "It’s atmospherics and posturing. But it’s still effective if your goal is to simply deter others and be a bully. In the future, people are going to run scared … it’s a very effective way of undermining your enemy if you’re talking about gangland politics, which is the politics Trump knows.”
