by Frank Holmes, reporter
Once President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January, a slew of federal employees could face prosecution over crimes they committed during the last four years, a leading Deep State attorney has warned.
Trump’s retribution against the Deep State “could be as harsh as criminal prosecution,” said Mark Zaid, on CNN.
“There is a whole host of usage of the laws—not even abuse of laws—the use of laws” that could land federal employees in jail in a few months.
Take a look —
Panic In DC- National security attorney Mark Zaid tells CNN's John Berman he is advising some of his clients, who are targets of President-elect Trump, to leave the country around Inauguration Day in January. pic.twitter.com/DchTtQGK2g
— Karli Bonne’ 🇺🇸 (@KarluskaP) November 11, 2024
One federal employee sent a text message to CNN that summed up the Deep State’s feelings: “We are in a dystopian hellscape.”
“Many in government are worried about Trump’s return. At DOJ, they’re terrified,” reported Josh Gerstein of Politico.
It’s so bad, DOJ employees say they are starting to go mental.
“Everyone I’ve talked to, mostly lawyers, are losing their minds,” a Justice Department employee who wanted to remain anonymous told Gerstein.
Prosecutors like Jack Smith are shaking in the boots with “”fear that “career leadership and career employees everywhere are either going to leave or they’re going to be driven out.”
Scared? Fear? These words don’t go far enough.
“Many federal employees are terrified,” said Stacey Young, who is currently part of the DOJ’s activist “civil rights” division.
Young also founded and runs the DOJ Gender Equality Network, the terminology usually used to promote transgender extremism.
“It will be worse. It’s just a question of how much worse it’s going to be,” said another prosecutor of the next Trump administration.
A lot of the turnover will hinge on whether Trump appoints an attorney general who will carry out the agenda the American people voted into office.
“You will see a significant amount of career staff say, ‘I don’t want to be a part of this. This is antithetical to who this department is,’” said another anonymous voice. “I think that will absolutely inform whether or not a good chunk of career staff—whether people stay or go.”
What are they so afraid of? “You need career people there to make sure that the maniacs in charge just can’t, like, run roughshod,” a current Justice Department lawyer told Politico.
It’s not just the Justice Department. Unelected rulers throughout the federal government are feeling the stress of having to serve the people.
“I would say there is a general feeling of dread among everyone,” an employee of the Energy Department—which has spent the last four years stopping Americans from drilling and fracking as they did under President Trump—told CNN.
“We are absolutely having conversations among ourselves about whether we can stomach a round two” of making America great again, a bureaucrats in the Environmental Protection Agency whined.
And the stress is not new, as Politico reported a month ago that “some federal employees are fearing Trump 2.0.”
Some federal workers arestarting to change their high-living lifestyles; an employee of the Department of the Interior said, “We have stopped doing any money-spending things because what if we’re without jobs in the next year?”
They’re worried Trump might hold them accountable for their own words.
“I can see them going back through E&E News articles”—a website dedicated to federal workers—“and saying, ‘You’re fired,’” said the unnamed employee.
“They’re so vindictive,” he ,or she, whined.
But the employees try to dress up concerns over their personal finances in worries about the United States itself.
“People are worried, but anybody who has half a brain is existentially afraid for the safety of democracy,” one employee told Politico last month.
The man who advised Barack Obama on ethics. Norm Eisen said it is very, very important to the preservation of the republic” that bureaucrats stay in place inside the Trump administration to act an the Resistance from within.
One of the top labor unions that represents federal employees, American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), said it’s all in.
“Our union will not stand by and let any political leader – regardless of their political affiliation – run roughshod over the Constitution and our laws,” the group said in a statement. “During President Trump’s first term, his administration attempted to gut many of our negotiated union contracts, downsize and relocate federal agencies at great disruption and cost to taxpayers, and replace tens of thousands of non-partisan civil servants with political appointees who would blindly do his bidding.”
Of course, that assumes they keep their jobs. Tesla founder and X owner Elon Musk plans to head up a new Department of Government Efficiency—and heads will roll.
Musk has threatened to fire up to one in every three federal workers.
The “secretary of cost-cutting” plans to reduce the federal bureaucratic budget by about $2 trillion.
President Trump plans to let Musk have free reign to remove unproductive employees, just as the Silicon Valley billionaire did after he bought Twitter and fired 80 percent of its workforce in 2022.
In an online video, President Trump promised he would “clean out the Deep State.” He said, as president, he will “immediately re-issue my 2020 executive order, restoring the president’s authority to remove rogue bureaucrats.”
Donald Trump’s plan to dismantle the Deep State.
1. “Immediately reissue my 2020 executive order, restoring the President's authority to remove rogue bureaucrats.”
2. “Clean out all of the corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus.”
3. “Totally reform… pic.twitter.com/Xhg297uWCe
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 8, 2024
And once he does, federal employees will have to work for the American people or work somewhere else.
And for those who broke the law under the Obama-Biden-Harris axis, their next job might be pressing license plates.