Posted originally on the CTH on November 10, 2024 | Sundance
When the FBI and DOJ lawfare operatives want to frame their agenda and undermine their targets, they have historically leaked to the New York Times and Politico. Both outlets serve as the promoters for false or misleading information that benefits the bad actors inside the DOJ and FBI.
As a consequence, when the DOJ or FBI start freaking out, they run to the same New York Times and Politico.
Politico is reporting today about how the lawfare operatives inside Main Justice are panicking about what incoming President Trump will do.
WASHINGTON DC – A collective sense of dread has taken hold at the Department of Justice, which drew Donald Trump’s rage like no other part of the federal government during his campaign.
Some career attorneys at DOJ are already considering heading for the exits rather than sticking around to find out whether threats from Trump and his allies are real or campaign bluster. Those threats range from mass firings of “deep state” lawyers to expelling special counsel Jack Smith from the country.
“Everyone I’ve talked to, mostly lawyers, are losing their minds,” said one DOJ attorney, who like most of the people interviewed for this article was granted anonymity to speak freely about colleagues and avoid retribution from the president-elect and his allies. “The fear is that career leadership and career employees everywhere are either going to leave or they’re going to be driven out.”
While alarm over Trump’s return is widespread throughout the federal bureaucracy, it is perhaps most acute at the Justice Department, which was at the center of many of the major controversies of his first term.
Most of the department’s 115,000 employees were around for those controversies. Critics believed the Trump White House meddled in some of the department’s high-profile prosecutions. Both of Trump’s attorneys general, Jeff Sessions and William Barr, eventually lost the president’s confidence. And his first term ended with a stunning showdown between Trump and nearly all of his DOJ appointees as they resisted his attempts to cling to power.
But department veterans say those events pale in comparison to what they expect when Trump gets a second chance to try to remake the DOJ in his vision. They also know Trump’s anger at the department has only deepened in the past four years as it launched two unprecedented criminal prosecutions against him.
“Many federal employees are terrified that we’ll be replaced with partisan loyalists — not just because our jobs are on the line, but because we know that our democracy and country depend on a government supported by a merit-based, apolitical civil service,” said Stacey Young, a trial attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division who won an award from Barr in 2020 and is president and co-founder of the DOJ Gender Equality Network.
It all adds up to a feeling of trepidation for many of the department’s rank and file.
“We’ve all seen this movie before and it’s going to be worse,” said one former DOJ official who served under Trump and several of his predecessors. “It will be worse. It’s just a question of how much worse it’s going to be.” (read more)
Main Justice works closely with the FBI on what is loosely termed federal “law and order.” There are several positions within the DOJ that are familiar as a result of the modern weaponization that took place.
As an institution, Main Justice is now almost exclusively a Lawfare targeting mechanism.
The Dept of Justice unilaterally focuses all criminal investigative resources against the political enemies of the Administrative State.
This is not to say Republicans are targets, because often the republicans are beneficiaries of the targeting operation. Think about the example of Main Justice working with the IRS to target the Tea Party groups in 2010 and 2011.
The Republicans were much more opposed to the Tea Party than the Democrats were. The professional republican apparatus was furious about the primary victories of the Tea Party, and subsequently benefitted from the DOJ targeting of the various patriot movements.
FBI HQ left, Main Justice HQ right
Main Justice targets individuals, organizations and systems that government officials and politicians determine are a threat to the power structure. The Intelligence Community use their ability to conduct electronic surveillance to discover evidence against their targets. The IC then feeds the evidence to Main Justice giving them the targeting coordinates. The DOJ takes action based on the information from the IC, often using the FBI as the enforcement mechanism.
The entire structure of Main Justice as an institution is corrupt, top to bottom. Much like the FBI, there is no agency, office, or subsidiary set of personnel within the DOJ that is not compromised by the modern mission of the organization. This is a critical point to accept, because if it is not accepted then we repeat the mistakes of thinking an Attorney General alone can correct the problem. They cannot.
Within the DOJ there are several divisions that must be addressed simultaneously if any effort to take it down to brass tacks is going to succeed. This cannot be a delicate surgical approach, the effort to remove the corrupt lesion will need chainsaws not scalpels. The fine surgical details and cleaning will be for the next administration.
The interior silos each have an important role, and they include: (1) the DOJ-National Security Division (DOJ-NSD), (2) the DOJ Civil Rights Division, (3) the DOJ-Community Relations Service (DOJ-CRS), and (4) the DOJ Inspector General’s Office. These are the four key agencies within the larger Main Justice system that must be addressed from DC.
Of those FOUR AGENCIES, the single most important one is the DOJ-National Security Division (DOJ-NSD). This is the interior silo that was corrupted from its origin and remained intentionally without Inspector General oversight until 2017.
When we think of the common Lawfare targeting the enemies of the Deep State like Donald Trump, that’s the core purpose of the DOJ-NSD.
DOJ-NSD: […] ” The National Security Division (NSD) was created in March 2006 by the USA PATRIOT Reauthorization and Improvement Act (Pub. L. No. 109-177). The creation of the NSD consolidated the Justice Department’s primary national security operations: the former Office of Intelligence Policy and Review and the Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence and Export Control Sections of the Criminal Division. The new Office of Law and Policy and the Executive Office, as well as the Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism (which previously operated out of the Criminal Division) complete the NSD. The NSD commenced operations in September 2006 upon the swearing in of the first Assistant Attorney General for National Security.” (link)
The DOJ-NSD hides behind the justification of “national security” to cloud their activity. In many ways the DOJ-NSD and the CIA have the same cover story that allows them virtually omnipotent power.
The President has previously been hamstrung by the claimed importance and power of agencies under the guise of national security. As you can see from the origin, the Legislative Branch created the beast then cowered away from oversight. The worst outcome stemmed from the Judicial Branch who historically deferred to the national security apparatus.
To understand the dynamic with the Judicial Branch it is worth looking at the outcome of the DOJ-NSD targeting President Trump on the issue of classified records. Check the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals framing.
As you can see the DOJ-NSD knows how to use “national security” as a sword and a shield. This is essentially the issue now created by the DOJ-NSD targeting President Trump.
With the Legislative Branch compromised by their own creation, and with the Judicial Branch stuck inside an old paradigm of “national security” you can see how confronting the DOJ-NSD can only come from one place, THE OVAL OFFICE.
The President of the United States, hopefully Donald J Trump, is going to have to do what the other branches have failed to do, take apart the DOJ-NSD and remove all the functions of Main Justice to their pre-Patriot Act status. This is not going to be easy and will take a very specific type of person as U.S. Attorney General who both understands the issue and can, more importantly, articulate the problem to the larger American public.
So, we have some context for the positions that will be important. We need:
♦ An Attorney General (AG);
♦ A Deputy Attorney General (DAG);
♦ An Asst Deputy AG in charge of the NSD;
♦ An Asst Deputy AG in charge of the Civil Rights Division.
♦ And we need a key person in charge of the ultra-secretive DOJ Community Relations Service.
We need more, but these are the most critical positions to cover – AND REMEMBER, not a single person who has ever worked in Main Justice should ever be considered a candidate for any leadership position in 2025. If they worked in the corrupt DOJ system, they are corrupt – I do not care what capacity they worked in it before.
♦ The AG needs to be ultra clean with a spine of steel and a laser focus. The AG needs to totally understand the goals and objectives, without being told what the goals and objectives are. The AG needs to be independent, stable, strategic, brutally honest and keenly confident in his/her communication style with the attack media.
President Trump cannot spend exhaustive time instructing the AG on critical priorities. The AG needs to operate with skill, focus and self-motivated energy. The AG will be the focus of the Lawfare crew for removal/recusal. (Weissmann, McCord, Eisen, etc.)
♦ The Deputy AG needs to be intensely capable to stay on task with minimal supervision. The DAG is the git-r’-done person, no excuses, no apologies, no explanations. Raw, brutal, cold, quiet and determined. The DAG needs eyes of a mouse and ears of an elephant. The DAG needs to be a sponge, with total loyalty to the mission. The DAG also needs to be the bridge to the FBI.
♦ The Asst DAG in charge of the NSD will be walking into the heart of Obama/Holder’s created snake pit. This DOJ-NSD position covers Foreign Agent Registration Act violations (targeting) as well as the weaponized FISA constructs. The person put into this silo needs to completely understand the dynamic of the DOJ-NSD as the source of the most weaponized aspects.
♦ The Asst DAG in charge of the Civil Rights Division will be critical for all elements of election reform. The ADAG-CRD is going to be attacked, called racist and blasted by the Lawfare operatives. The Civil Rights Division DAG will be targeted by Marc Elias and hundreds of activist lawyers inside every aligned non-governmental agency who depend on the DOJ for enforcement and lawfare support.
♦ The person in charge of the Community Relations Service will need to head-off the FBI constructs and false flag attacks targeting the Trump administration. The CRS leadership will need to protect all of the DOJ team from the Antifa/BLM efforts as they are manufactured by the FBI silo operators. The head of the CRS needs to be intensely “anti-woke.”
