Trump Justice Officials Conflicted About Return for Second Term

Trump-era Justice Department officials are wrestling over whether to return in a possible second term as they weigh personal ambition against the former president’s statements about prosecuting his political enemies.

The ex-president’s rapid consolidation of the Republican nomination has prompted increased chatter and vacillation in recent weeks among Trump DOJ political appointees and US attorneys about going back, according to six former officials.

Many are struggling with the choice, but are more open to serving than they were previously, while others are unequivocally opposed, according to interviews with 17 overall former Trump DOJ leaders—including multiple who were Senate-confirmed.

One former official said all of the Trump DOJ colleagues he’d recently spoken with are grappling with this dilemma.

“If we come back in and satisfy our ambitions, what is going to be staring us in the face?” said the source, who like most others was granted anonymity to share private conversations.

It’s a question those across government would confront should Trump win a second term starting in January 2025, but it’s more acute in the Justice Department with a tradition of prosecutors dedicated to a law enforcement mission, rather than a particular president’s agenda.

Those unsure about what they would do are primarily establishment conservatives committed to protecting institutional norms of DOJ independence from the White House. They said their talks with peers usually start by pondering who’d be the attorney general nominee.

Although Donald Trump and advisers have discussed selecting more loyal second-term officials, some of his past department picks who preferred other primary candidates are nonetheless coming around to the idea of returning as Trump’s prospects of regaining office improved this year and President Joe Biden’s candidacy weakened.

“Everyone would have to make their own decision,” said Stephen Boyd, the assistant attorney general for DOJ’s office of legislative affairs for most of Trump’s presidency.

Some of his fellow alumni would see it as an important way to serve their country or advance their careers, while “others will look at everything that happened in the last administration and since, and decide that’s just not something they personally or professionally can be associated with,” added Boyd, who said he has no plans to seek another government position.

Trump DOJ appointees, many of whom rose through the ranks starting as career line prosecutors, expressed varying degrees of alarm about the former president’s campaign talk of deputizing prosecutors to exact revenge on political opponents and those who’ve wronged him. At the same time, several downplayed it as hyperbolic and say they’d be honored to come back, if asked, but would be prepared to resign if they received improper orders from the White House.

Traditional Republican alumni who are supportive of Trump’s prior attorney general turned vocal critic William Barr aren’t necessarily deterred from returning. Some are actively reaching out to close friends to learn who else might return, while acknowledging the possibility they wouldn’t be welcomed back.

Trump and those close with him have promised a departure from the standard GOP administration personnel playbook, which they said led to first-term hires who wouldn’t do the president’s bidding.

Conservative nonprofits have been building a database of potential staffers for DOJ and other agencies who’d be screened to ensure alignment with the president’s agenda.

More mainstream Republican department officials, who may not make the cut under a more aggressive loyalty test, see themselves as natural contenders for ascending to higher DOJ positions in the next conservative administration.

But they’re given pause over what they’d be asked to do in a Trump 2.0—such as pardoning those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, prosecuting the Biden family, or deferring to the military in response to riots.

Gene Hamilton, executive director of the Trump-aligned America First Legal, said those who aren’t sure if they could serve in a new Trump administration have “misplaced angst.” They must also remember that “when you’re a political appointee serving in the executive branch, your client ultimately is the president.”

“His objectives are your objectives,” said Hamilton, who was counselor to the attorney general under Trump and wrote the chapter on DOJ in the Heritage Foundation’s presidential transition plans for 2025.

‘Quite Torn’

Many of the former officials debating a return or who are firmly against it have managed to navigate their association with Trump’s first term to land lucrative partnerships in Big Law. They’re contemplating their ability to remain employable on the other end of a second tour.

Reed Rubinstein, who held several political roles at DOJ under Trump and is now senior vice president at America First Legal, criticized former colleagues for fretting about Trump commanding the department to investigate foes.

“These hypotheticals—to me that’s virtue signaling. That’s not serious,” said Rubinstein, whose conservative legal advocacy group is led by former Trump administration adviser Stephen Miller. “If they just don’t like Trump and they don’t want to be associated with him, that’s fine. Free country, be honest, own it. You don’t have to manufacture these false fires.”

Still, the attorneys struggling over coming back aren’t just focusing on the former president’s speeches and interviews of late, in which he’s threatened to unleash DOJ against enemies. They’re also scarred by their experiences fending off White House interventions in Trump’s prior term and believe they’d be less capable in the next go-around of thwarting the president’s impulses.

“I can see why people are quite torn about the decision because, on the one hand, the people who hold those commitments to fair and just, independent prosecution are the ones who are so critical at a time like this and proved to be critical in the last couple of months of the last Trump administration,” said Rebecca Roiphe, a professor at New York Law School who’s researched the history of DOJ politicization. “But at a certain point I can understand feeling like it would be futile and that you’d just be adding cover to an administration that is hellbent on dismantling things that you care about.”

The decision for many will be based on whether a mainstream conservative is chosen as attorney general—a prospect Trump allies have indicated they’d avoid but that some former officials think could still be realized. A nominee such as Jeffrey Clark or someone who similarly fought to overturn the 2020 election results would make it easier for most of the former DOJ leaders to sit it out.

Personnel Matters

For the campaign rhetoric to ever come to fruition in a second Trump DOJ, it would rest in large part on whether he selects personnel who adhere to longstanding norms of nonpartisan investigations. As he faces criminal charges in two cases brought by DOJ, his vengeance plans would depend on the pedigree of political leaders who sign up to serve.

“It really is hard to overestimate the importance of the individuals who are there and what their commitments are and what their background is,” Roiphe said. If Trump is re-elected, it would become more crucial for veteran DOJ prosecutors to remain in senior roles because they’d have a “visceral reaction against” political prosecutions.

Yet some former US attorneys, who serve as their district’s top law enforcement officials, and Trump-appointed DOJ advisers are less inclined to take Trump’s words at face value. Several people pointed to his embrace of “lock her up” chants during rallies in his 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton, which were never borne out once he became president. And the ideological screening for a second term, they say, wouldn’t necessarily filter out all the careerist DOJ veterans who are committed to preserving the department’s independence.

Most of the Trump-appointed US attorneys “served their entire careers as prosecutors,” said Jay Town, the Senate-confirmed US attorney in the Northern District of Alabama from 2017 to 2020. “If they would be called to serve, whether it be general counsel for a department or back in the Department of Justice or maybe even back in their old office, I think it’d be very difficult for this group to say no.”