The list of missteps at Donald Trump’s Justice Department over the past 14 months is not short, but among the most unsettling developments is the frequency with which Main Justice has fired federal prosecutors as part of a brazenly partisan purge. Making matters worse is the fact that U.S. attorneys’ offices have reportedly struggled to find qualified replacements, with lawyers feeling understandable reluctance to join an administration in which the rule of law has been overtly weaponized.
The DOJ, however, apparently has a solution in mind: Bloomberg Law reported that the department has decided to waive the policy that required newly hired federal prosecutors “to possess at least one year of experience practicing law.” From the report:
Many offices have previously adopted their own rules mandating at least three years of legal practice, rather than the nationwide baseline threshold of one year. But the reduced standards this month were implemented in federal districts such as Minnesota and Southern Florida that have experienced significant attrition to put new prosecutors to work straight out of law school.
The reporting has not been independently verified by MS NOW, but Bloomberg Law’s account was bolstered by online vacancy announcements published in at least a handful of offices across multiple states.
What’s more, the DOJ made no effort to deny the accuracy of the reporting, saying in a statement that it’s “proud to empower young and passionate prosecutors.”
Time will tell whether, and to what extent, these lower standards will affect federal criminal prosecutions, but I’m struck by the familiarity of the circumstances.
Indeed, it was less than a month ago when Reuters reported on the FBI’s lowering of its standards to make it easier for existing employees to become agents.
Months earlier, the Trump administration also lowered its standards for those seeking to work as agents at Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Around the same time, the Republican administration also lowered DOJ standards on the qualifications to serve as immigration judges.
Indeed, by some measures, the entirety of the Trump presidency has been a grand experiment in what happens when an administration embraces amateurism and de-professionalization.
Trump has informally lowered the standards for what it takes to lead the FBI, what it takes to serve in the Cabinet, what it takes to serve as a U.S. attorney, what it takes to be a success in the private sector and what it takes to serve as vice president.
The president himself was, in the recent past, a television reality show host who didn’t know anything about governing, never served a day in any public post and arguably had no business running to serve as the chief executive of the world’s pre-eminent superpower.
Trumpism, in other words, is defined in large part by a lowering of standards. The DOJ is apparently just keeping up.
As for the motivation behind these developments, some of the considerations are practical — the administration is desperate for prosecutors, and good applicants aren’t interested — but it’s also easy to believe there’s a larger strategy unfolding: Departments stripped of their most experienced staff and their professional standards are more easily manipulated.
The more this happens, in other words, the more the White House confronts a more compliant and obedient federal bureaucracy.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
