By Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A lawyer who helped President-elect Donald Trump put together his new administration warned employees at the U.S. Justice Department on Monday that they could be fired if they tried to oppose the Republican’s agenda.
“If these career DOJ employees will not implement President Trump’s program in good faith, they must leave. Those employees engaged in so-called ‘resistance’ to the legitimate agenda of the duly elected president would undermine American democracy,” wrote Mark Paoletta. , an attorney at Schaerr Jaffe who is leading Trump’s Justice Department transition team, in a post on X.
“Those who take such actions will be subject to disciplinary action, including dismissal,” he added.
Paoletta could not immediately be reached for further comment.
His post on Trump will do. presidency will mean. Trump won a second term in last Tuesday’s presidential elections.
During his first term from 2017-2021, Trump frequently clashed with government officials, especially at the Justice Department. He said his biggest mistake in office was hiring his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who then refused to close an investigation into contacts between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian officials.
Justice Department officials protested many of Trump’s first-term decisions several times. In 2020, a team of federal prosecutors handling the case against Trump loyalist Roger Stone withdrew. One of those prosecutors later told Congress that the group left to protest what they said was political pressure to reduce their sentencing recommendation.
Critics also blasted then-Attorney General Bill Barr for dropping criminal charges against former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and seeking to oust then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, whose office was investigating former Trump attorney Rudolph Giuliani.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; additional reporting by Gram Slattery; Editing by Scott Malone and Jonathan Oatis)
