Justice Department personnel tell of discontent with Sessions
WASHINGTON — During his 20 months in office, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has swept in perhaps the most dramatic political shift in memory at the Justice Department, from the civil rights-centered agenda of the Obama era to one that favors his hard-line conservative views on immigration, civil rights and social issues.
Now, discontent and infighting have taken hold at the Justice Department, in part because Sessions was so determined to carry out that transformation that he ignored dissent, according to interviews over several months with two dozen current and former career department lawyers who worked under Sessions. Most asked not to be named for fear of retribution.
President Donald Trump has exacerbated the dynamic, they said, by repeatedly attacking Sessions and the Justice Department in political and personal terms. And he has castigated rank-andfile employees, which career lawyers said further chilled dissent and debate within the department.
The people interviewed — many yearslong department veterans, and a third of whom worked under both the Bush and Obama administrations — said that their concerns extended beyond any political differences they might have had with Sessions.
A department spokeswoman, Sarah Isgur Flores, said that Sessions and other senior law enforcement officials were committed to department’s mission of upholding the law, and that they had heard no complaints.
Driven by ideology
Sessions’ shift in the department’s priorities reflected Trump’s campaign promises to be tough on crime and crack down on illegal immigration.
Flores called Sessions’ changes “vital to reducing violent crime,” combating the opioid epidemic and securing borders.
But Trump appointees ignored the legal advice of career lawyers in implementing their agenda, four current Justice Department employees said.
In one instance, Sessions directly questioned a career lawyer, Stephen Buckingham, who was asked to find ways to file a lawsuit to crack down on sanctuary laws protecting unauthorized immigrants. Buckingham, who had worked at the Justice Department for about a decade, wrote in a brief that he could find no legal grounds for such a case.
Sessions asked him to come to a different conclusion, according to three people who worked with alongside Buckingham in the federal programs division and were briefed on the exchange.
To Buckingham’s colleagues, the episode was an example of Sessions stifling dissent and opening the department to losses in court. Buckingham resigned a few months later, and Sessions got his lawsuit. A federal judge dismissed most of the case, and the department has appealed.
Trump’s shadow
Trump has stoked much of the unease at the Justice Department. He assailed the prosecutors who won a conviction of his former campaign chairman. He castigated Sessions for not investigating perceived White House enemies and for daring to pursue cases against Republican lawmakers.
The president also has frequently targeted Rod Rosenstein, who as deputy attorney general oversees the day-to-day operations at the department as well as the special counsel investigation. In a turnabout this month, Trump declared his relationship with Rosenstein good, to the relief of some federal prosecutors.
More unnerving, employees said, was the president’s threat to remove the security clearance of Bruce Ohr, a civil servant who worked to combat Russian mobs and oligarchs. The message, said one lawyer in the criminal division: Doing your job can make you vulnerable to a career-ending attack.
As a target of Trump’s highprofile rebukes, Sessions has gained cautious support even from some rank-and-file lawyers who find his culture wars zeal distasteful. They cited instances where he pushed back on Trump’s broadsides and his simply enduring months of presidential invective.