Anxiety And Dismay Inside The Justice Department After Trump Taps Gaetz As Attorney General

Donald Trump’s choice of Matt Gaetz to be attorney general has many Justice Department employees reeling.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s choice of Matt Gaetz to be attorney general has many Justice Department employees reeling, worried not only about their own jobs but the future of the agency that the Trump loyalist has railed against.

The president-elect’s pick of the Florida Republican sent a shock throughout the Cabinet department, considering Gaetz’s lack of experience in law enforcement and the fact that he was once the subject of a federal sex trafficking investigation. The names of well-regarded veteran lawyers had circulated as possible contenders for the job, but Gaetz’s selection was broadly interpreted as an indication of the premium that Trump places on personal loyalty and Trump’s desire to have a disruptor lead a department that for years investigated and ultimately indicted him.

Career lawyers at the department interviewed by The Associated Press, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share their feelings publicly, described a widespread sense of being stunned by the nomination — even outrage. They spoke of being flooded with calls and messages from colleagues as soon as the news broke.

Some inside the department were not immediately sure that Gaetz, who graduated law school in 2007 but has spent most of his career as a lawmaker, including in Congress, was even a lawyer. And some are already looking for new jobs as concerns grow over Gaetz’s rhetoric about going after the “deep state.”

Gaetz has claimed the department is “corrupt and highly political,” and strongly criticized the federal prosecutions of Trump and the Jan. 6 rioters. He also has suggested abolishing two agencies he would oversee as attorney general, the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He would arrive in the job without the legal experience of his predecessors, including the current attorney general, Merrick Garland, who as a high-ranking Justice Department official supervised the prosecution of the Oklahoma City bombing case before becoming a federal appeals court judge.