President-elect Donald Trump‘s selection of Rep. Matt Gaetz as his future attorney general has sent many Justice Department officials into a state of shock following an already tumultuous eight days since the election.
Several of the department’s roughly 110,000 career workforce, who spoke to ABC News on the condition of anonymity, described an atmosphere of dread over the prospect of Gaetz potentially taking the helm of the nation’s top law enforcement agency.
The Florida congressman, who has been an unvarnished critic of the DOJ, was recently the subject of a criminal sex trafficking investigation by the federal department he’s now been tapped to lead.
The U.S. attorney general role is selected by the president but confirmed to appointment by the Senate.
President-elect Donald Trump and Rep. Matt Gaetz.
AFP via Getty Images
“This can’t be real,” a Justice Department official told ABC News on Wednesday.
“Mass resignations if he gets sworn in,” another official added.
Others expressed doubts Gaetz would ultimately be successful in receiving confirmation from the Senate, based on the initial wave of reaction on Capitol Hill.
One official who spoke to ABC News, however, said they worried Gaetz’s nomination could be part of a broader effort to eventually secure confirmation of someone else who would previously have been seen as less palatable.
A major debate going on in the minds of many career officials at the moment is whether to remain in the Department of Justice for Trump’s second administration.
Trump has been vocal about using the agency as a tool of retribution against his enemies. Some federal prosecutors fear Trump’s direction could tear down important institutional norms that have governed the DOJ’s work since the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s.
Fears surrounding Trump’s use of the DOJ come amid recent warnings leveled by a top advisor to Trump’s transition, attorney Mark Paoletta.
Paoletta took to his X account to warn that any career officials who seek to “resist” the demands of Trump’s appointees will be swiftly punished and even face termination.
“I hope DOJ attorneys will embrace their responsibility to implement President Trump’s agenda,” Paoletta wrote on Wednesday, adding, “That is their constitutional duty.”
Current Attorney General Merrick Garland has yet to comment publicly on Trump’s selection of Gaetz.