“Career lawyers throughout the Justice Department let out a collective sigh of relief when they learned that former Rep. Matt Gaetz would not be their boss. But his withdrawal as President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general pick only slightly dissipated the tense and unsettled atmosphere that has prevailed in the department since Trump’s victory earlier this month.
“There are huge amounts of relief among career lawyers and the FBI that Gaetz is no longer in contention,” one former career DOJ official said Friday. Trump’s selection of former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi as his new attorney general nominee was perceived by many DOJ veterans as less of a norm-shattering, unorthodox, in-your-face choice than Gaetz, a bellicose MAGA provocateur who was investigated by the department for years over sex-trafficking allegations without any charges being filed. “In terms of Bondi, people haven’t freaked out like they did over Gaetz,” a career DOJ lawyer said Friday. “It doesn’t seem surprising to anybody. She’s obviously a loyalist, which makes the choice absurd, but we’ve expected that. … It definitely lacks the shock factor that Gaetz caused.””
