Several opening moves of Donald Trump’s latest round in the White House have raised the question: Is that legal? And perhaps more importantly: If not, what is anyone doing about it?
When it comes to the firings of Justice Department employees for having worked on Trump and Jan. 6 cases, lawyers representing affected workers wrote to the DOJ threatening legal action.
“These actions appear to be in violation of the due process rights of those to be unlawfully discharged,” the lawyers wrote Sunday to Emil Bove, who was one of Trump’s criminal defense lawyers and is now spearheading the president’s agenda at the DOJ.
Lawyers representing affected workers wrote to the DOJ threatening legal action.
“Most concerning, it has been reported that the Justice Department is planning to publicly disseminate the names of those employees they plan to or will actually be terminating, despite the risk of stigmatization,” the lawyers added. “Such action, which would be contrary to various laws, including the Privacy Act of 1974, 5 U.S.C. § 552a, would directly put the safety of all impacted individuals at risk as well as their family members.”
The lawyers said they “stand ready to vindicate their rights through all available legal means” if the DOJ proceeds with terminations or exposes employees’ identities. What those means are remains to be seen, but one of the early legal battle lines is being drawn in the administration’s effort to purge the people who worked on criminal cases or investigations implicating the now-president. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in Donald Trump’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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