Trump wants to stack the DOJ’s leadership with his personal lawyers

On Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump revealed he will nominate Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), an accused sex offender known for his firm loyalty to Trump, to lead the Department of Justice. (Gaetz has denied wrongdoing.) On Thursday evening, Trump announced that three other lawyers he has close personal ties to will also be nominated to top DOJ jobs.

This means that four 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’s personal interest. Three of these four lawyers have serious legal credentials and institutional knowledge, and thus are likely to be effective in advancing those interests.

Trump chose Todd Blanche, the criminal defense lawyer in his New York hush money trial (the one where he faced charges related to money paid to keep a sexual encounter quiet), to be deputy attorney general. That’s 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 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.

Meanwhile, Trump wants John Sauer, 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, to serve as solicitor general. The role oversees the Justice Department’s legal strategy in the Supreme Court, 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.

Another one of Trump’s personal criminal defense lawyers, Emil Bove, 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. Unlike the DAG and the solicitor general, Bove’s new role does not require Senate confirmation. So he will be able to move into this job on the first day of Trump’s second presidency.

This isn’t 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, his friend and personal lawyer, to the Supreme Court in 1965. If you know anything about Fortas’s very brief tenure on the Court, you may know that appointment didn’t end well.

Based strictly on their résumés, all three men are conventionally qualified for these jobs. Both Blanche and Bove 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’s solicitor general. It’s easy to see all three joining the Justice Department without much controversy if they were picked by, say, President Nikki Haley.

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 “made more than 100 threats to prosecute or punish perceived enemies.” That includes a threat to, in Trump’s words, “appoint 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.” 

Trump also accused former Rep. Liz Cheney, a prominent Republican critic of the incoming president, of “TREASON” and threatened “TELEVISED MILITARY TRIBUNALS.” (Which, if they were to actually happen, would presumably take place in the Defense Department’s legal structure, but could involve some DOJ personnel.)

Trump’s decision to name Gaetz, a staunch loyalist, to lead the Justice Department is a cause for considerable alarm if you fear the United States sliding into authoritarianism. Historically, the White House has obeyed strong norms against interfering with Justice Department prosecutorial decisions, but these norms have no legal force. So someone like Gaetz could tear down this barrier altogether.

Trump’s 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’t simply accustomed to representing his personal interests, but who have also likely collected considerable legal fees from him.

Blanche, Sauer, and Bove’s conventional résumés also mean that, if they use their DOJ posts to pursue Trump’s personal campaign of vengeance, they are likely to be fairly effective in doing so. As a DOJ outsider known for performative political stunts, Gaetz may struggle to navigate the department’s internal bureaucracy or to resist its internal culture, which seeks to insulate prosecutorial decisions from the White House.

Blanche, Sauer, and Gaetz still need to be confirmed — assuming that Trump doesn’t use recess appointments or some other method to get around the Senate confirmation process. But if Trump gets his way, his ultraloyalist attorney general will now be backed by people who know the Justice Department and the culture of elite federal lawyers quite well.