{"id":458,"date":"2024-11-21T18:01:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-21T19:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/?p=458"},"modified":"2025-02-21T19:19:08","modified_gmt":"2025-02-21T19:19:08","slug":"trump-wants-to-stack-the-dojs-leadership-with-his-personal-lawyers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/21\/trump-wants-to-stack-the-dojs-leadership-with-his-personal-lawyers\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump wants to stack the DOJ\u2019s leadership with his personal lawyers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"Trump

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Todd Blanche, the criminal defense lawyer in his New York hush money trial, to hold the No. 2 role in the Justice Department. | Mark Peterson\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), an accused sex offender known for his firm loyalty to Trump<\/a>, will not lead the Department of Justice. (Gaetz has denied wrongdoing.) Several other lawyers President-elect Donald Trump has close personal ties to, however, remain up for <\/strong>top DOJ jobs.<\/p>\n

This means that, regardless of who eventually becomes attorney general, at least three of the highest jobs in the Justice Department, the office that brings federal prosecutions, will be held by people whose records suggest they will advance Trump\u2019s personal interest. And unlike Gaetz, Trump\u2019s nominees for these three jobs have serious legal credentials and institutional knowledge, and thus are likely to be effective in advancing those interests.<\/p>\n

Trump chose Todd Blanche<\/a>, the criminal defense lawyer in his New York hush money trial<\/a> (the one where he faced charges related to money paid to keep a sexual encounter quiet), to be deputy attorney general. That\u2019s the No. 2 job in the Justice Department. The DAG, as this position is known within the department, wields tremendous power over federal criminal prosecutions. If successfully appointed, Blanche will supervise the 93 regional US attorneys<\/a> who bring the bulk of all federal prosecutions in the United States. So Blanche will have a great deal of authority over who is prosecuted.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Trump wants John Sauer<\/a>, the lawyer who represented him in the Supreme Court case holding that Trump is allowed to use the powers of the president to commit crimes<\/a>, to serve as solicitor general. The role oversees the Justice Department\u2019s legal strategy in the Supreme Court<\/a>, including arguing many of the most important cases. They also decide which cases the DOJ will appeal if the federal government loses a case in a trial court.<\/p>\n

Another one of Trump\u2019s personal criminal defense lawyers, Emil Bove<\/a>, will serve as principal associate deputy attorney general, and will hold the DAG spot on an acting basis until Blanche or some other Trump nominee is confirmed or otherwise formally appointed to the job<\/a>. Unlike the DAG and the solicitor general, Bove\u2019s new role does not require Senate confirmation<\/a>. So he will be able to move into this job on the first day of Trump\u2019s second presidency.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time a president has tried to put one of his personal lawyers in a position of high responsibility within government. President Lyndon Johnson, for example, named Abe Fortas<\/a>, his friend and personal lawyer, to the Supreme Court in 1965. If you know anything about Fortas\u2019s very brief tenure on the Court, you may know that appointment didn\u2019t end well<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Based strictly on their r\u00e9sum\u00e9s, all three men are conventionally qualified for these jobs. Both Blanche<\/a> and Bove<\/a> previously worked as federal prosecutors for nine years before entering private practice. Sauer is a former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia who previously served Missouri\u2019s solicitor general<\/a>. It\u2019s easy to see all three joining the Justice Department without much controversy if they were picked by, say, President Nikki Haley.<\/p>\n

But Trump talks often about using the DOJ to target his political adversaries and people he views as foes. An NPR report on October 22 found that Trump \u201cmade more than 100 threats to prosecute or punish perceived enemies<\/a>.\u201d That includes a threat to, in Trump\u2019s words, \u201cappoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family.\u201d <\/p>\n

Trump also accused former Rep. Liz Cheney, a prominent Republican critic of the incoming president, of \u201cTREASON\u201d and threatened \u201cTELEVISED MILITARY TRIBUNALS<\/a>.\u201d (Which, if they were to actually happen, would presumably take place in the Defense Department\u2019s legal structure, but could involve some DOJ personnel.)<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s decision to name Gaetz, a staunch loyalist, to lead the Justice Department created considerable alarm<\/a>. Historically, the White House has obeyed strong norms<\/a> against interfering with Justice Department prosecutorial decisions, but these norms have no legal force. A Trump loyalist like Gaetz could have torn down this barrier altogether. (If someone like him is confirmed atop the Justice Department, that barrier could still go.)<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s decision to appoint his personal lawyers to top DOJ jobs is equally concerning. Federal lawyers are supposed to represent the interests of the United States, not of any particular politician, while they work for the government. But Trump has selected three people who aren\u2019t simply accustomed to representing his personal interests, but who have also likely collected considerable legal fees from him.<\/p>\n

Blanche, Sauer, and Bove\u2019s conventional r\u00e9sum\u00e9s also mean that, if they use their DOJ posts to pursue Trump\u2019s personal campaign of vengeance, they are likely to be fairly effective in doing so. <\/p>\n

Blanche and Sauer still need to be confirmed \u2014 assuming that Trump doesn\u2019t use recess appointments<\/a> or some other method to get around the Senate confirmation process. But if Trump gets his way, his attorney general will now be backed by people who know the Justice Department and the culture of elite federal lawyers quite well.<\/p>\n

Update, November 21, 2 pm ET: <\/em><\/strong>This story, originally published November 15, has been updated to reflect the fact that former Rep. Matt Gaetz is no longer the nominee for attorney general.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Todd Blanche, the criminal defense lawyer in his New York hush money trial, to hold the No. 2 role in the Justice Department. | Mark Peterson\/Getty Images Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), an accused sex offender known for his firm loyalty to Trump, will not lead the Department of Justice….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":460,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump-investigations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":461,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458\/revisions\/461"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}