DOJ Apparatchiks Told to Lawyer Up and Flee the Country. Why?

If they did nothing wrong, what are they afraid of? After all, that's what they said about Donald Trump for years. Now that the script flipped, their tune has changed--dramatically.

Photo by Rocio Ramirez on Unsplash

As I reported last week, former and current apparatchiks for the Department of Justice are making plans to resign in advance of Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January.

Those headed for exits include Special Counsel Jack Smith and his top team of prosecutors, who just withdrew their appeal of Judge Aileen Cannon’s order dismissing the classified documents indictment in Florida and asked for a halt to the proceedings in the January 6-related case pending in Washington.

The resume-burnishing appears to extend to main Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (housed under the DOJ), and the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia office, which oversees the government’s ongoing prosecution of January 6 protesters. Anonymous “sedition hunters” who have aided the FBI in targeting and identifying hundreds of J6ers deleted their social media accounts over the weekend for fear of reprisal; the FBI reportedly paid the “sedition hunters” as FBI informants to help their pursuit of Trump supporters.

But the corrupt operatives in the DOJ are doing more than just looking for new jobs—some are looking for attorneys. The surprising nomination of former Representative Matt Gaetz as attorney general sent terror waves throughout the DOJ; Gaetz resigned his Florida House seat last week to prepare for a nasty confirmation fight and avoid release of a House Ethics report into debunked allegations about Gaetz’s conduct.

“Inside the Justice Department, some employees who had braced for the possibility of other names that had surfaced early in the transition were appalled when Trump made the Gaetz announcement,” CNN reported on Sunday. “One career official described hearing audible cries of ‘oh my God’ echoing down the hallway inside DOJ’s headquarters.”

NBC News also revealed that DOJ officials “wept” over Trump’s resounding victory. Why? Because they know their turn under the harsh lights of federal interrogators is coming next. “Multiple current and former senior Justice Department and FBI officials have begun reaching out to lawyers in anticipation of being criminally investigated by the Trump administration. The selection of former Rep. Matt Gaetz…to lead the department has sharply increased the sense of alarm.” One unnamed former top DOJ official admitted he “is bracing for a potentially long and costly legal battle, as well as the possibility of protracted congressional investigations.”

Creepy NeverTrumper and faux conservative Matt Lewis told MSNBC this morning reports that DOJ/FBI staffers are lawyering up demonstrates Trump’s desire to “weaponize” the department. “I think it’s real,” Lewis said about the likelihood of charges against corrupt government officials.

In fact, their criminal exposure is so serious that one longtime Democratic operative is advising top targets to leave the country. Mark Zaid, an attorney who represented self-described Ukrainian “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella, prompting the first impeachment of Trump in 2019, just told both CNN and Politico magazine that government officials worried they will be pursued by a Trump DOJ or Republican Congress should travel “outside of the country” right around Inauguration Day.

That appears to be the advice Zaid also is giving to Ciaramella, now a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

Further, anyone dismissing Trump’s threat to bring criminal elements inside the federal bureaucracy to justice are “naive and foolish,” Zaid said. Other retaliatory measures aside from prosecution, Zaid speculated, could include the revocation of security clearances or transfers to undesirable outposts such as Alaska.

The fear is so intense that Zaid also recommends that his clients seek mental health and other related services to deal with the stress of a potential prosecution. His team is “making sure we have lawyers, CPAs, psychiatrists and other experts in their fields ready and willing to volunteer their time for free to represent anyone who faces retaliation directly.”

Watching the Inauguration from The Hague? How Appropriate

So, who might flee the country? Smith and his top prosecutor, David Harbach, could return to the Hague in the Netherlands under the ruse of rejoining the war crimes trial against former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci. Attorney General Merrick Garland tapped Smith in November 2022 to leave that case and take on the special counsel’s role.

But why would anyone else leave the country around Inauguration Day? To wait and see if Trump signs an executive order authorizing an investigation of everything from the Russian collusion hoax and the Ukrainian impeachment operation to the coverup of the Biden family corruption ring? To wait and see if the acting attorney general appoints a special counsel to investigate Smith’s team as well as the events of January 6?

And therein lies the justified panic within the DOJ and national security state. The ground is fertile for multiple investigations with legitimate criminal liability for top officials including Smith, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and DC US Attorney Matthew Graves in addition to line prosecutors and investigators.

On the flip side, the same officials and talking heads who’ve insisted Trump should not have feared going to trial for any one of his politically-motivated indictments if he did nothing wrong certainly are singing a different tune now.