Trump transition official warns Justice Dept staff against 'resistance'

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An attorney helping President-elect Donald Trump assemble his new administration warned career employees at the U.S. Justice Department on Monday that they could be fired if they tried to resist the Republican's agenda.

"If these career DOJ employees won't implement President Trump's program in good faith, they should leave. Those employees who engage in so-called 'resistance' against the duly-elected President’s lawful agenda would be subverting American democracy," wrote Mark Paoletta, an attorney at Schaerr Jaffe who is leading Trump's Justice Department transition team, in a post on X.

"Those that take such actions would be subject to disciplinary measures, including termination," he added.

Paoletta could not be immediately reached for further comment.

His post on X came in response to a Politico article which reported that many Justice Department career attorneys -- civil servants who typically remain in their posts from administration to administration regardless of which party holds the White House -- are alarmed by what a second Trump presidency will mean. Trump won a second term in last Tuesday's presidential election.

During his first term from 2017-2021, Trump regularly butted heads with government employees, particularly at the Justice Department. He said that his biggest mistake in office was hiring his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who then declined to shut down a probe into contacts between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian officials.

Justice Department employees protested many of Trump's first-term decisions on multiple occasions. In 2020, a team of federal prosecutors handling the case against Trump loyalist Roger Stone withdrew. One of those prosecutors later told Congress the group left to protest what they felt was political pressure to reduce their sentencing recommendation.

Critics also lambasted then-Attorney General Bill Barr for dropping the criminal charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn and trying to force the ouster of then-U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman in Manhattan, whose office was investigating former Trump attorney Rudolph Giuliani.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; additional reporting by Gram Slattery; Editing by Scott Malone and Jonathan Oatis)