When President-elect Donald Trump returns to public office next month, he plans to bring more than a half dozen of his personal attorneys along with him.
They represented Trump in the four criminal and two civil cases brought against him after he left office, as well as in the attempt by Congress to impeach him when he was in office.
“It seems that their principal qualification is loyalty to the president over their qualifications for the job,” said David Cole, a constitutional law expert and professor at Georgetown Law.
A Spectrum News analysis found at least seven of Trump’s personal attorneys have been nominated or appointed to positions in his next administration, including his picks for the top four positions at the Justice Department – an agency Trump has criticized for years.
“These are bad people and we need an honest Justice Department, we need an honest FBI and we need it fast,” Trump said at a press conference in September.
Attorney general nominee Pam Bondi was on Trump’s legal team during his first impeachment trial and was part of his failed effort to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.
Lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, Trump’s picks for deputy attorneys general, led his defense team in his New York hush money trial and defended Trump in his two federal cases.
Solicitor general nominee Dean John Sauer argued before the Supreme Court in Trump’s presidential immunity case.
Cole called it disturbing that a president with so much legal baggage is seeking to install allies in top government jobs.
“Because the role of the Justice Department is to represent the United States,” he said. “It is not to do the bidding of a person who happens to be in the Oval Office in his personal capacity, and President Trump seems not to understand that.”
The Trump transition team declined to comment on this story. Trump allies point out most of these attorneys have held other positions before they defended the president-elect – Bondi, for example, was attorney general of Florida.
Cole said this could potentially reshape how the presidency and the Justice Department coexist, given Trump’s clear messaging about wanting loyalty above all else.
“It’s a corrupt system, and it’s a corrupt Justice Department,” Trump said at a campaign rally in October.
Cole phrased it like this.
“If you put in place somebody who runs roughshod over all of those guardrails, and appoints people who will let him run roughshod over all of those guardrails, then all of us are vulnerable to the abuses that he considers are in his personal interest,” he said.
Previous presidents have had close allies serve in top legal positions before. John F. Kennedy had his brother, Robert, serve as attorney general; and George Washington appointed his personal lawyer to serve as attorney general in 1795.
But Trump, who will be the first sitting president ever convicted of felonies, is hoping to have a large part of his legal team become part of the country’s.
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