Yet another DOJ official is running scared from Donald Trump.
The latest to pack up and take off before Trump takes office is Jay Bratt, a member of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team as well as having served as chief of the counterintelligence and export controls section inside the national security division.
Bratt has been fairly transparent that rather than being fired in disgrace or fighting a hostile termination, he would just rather get out now.
Time to Go
The law is the law, and if you have not done anything wrong, why would you be so terrified, especially as a member of the DOJ?
One would have to believe that they would know the justice system would never allow an innocent person to be prosecuted and found guilty, right?
I say that sarcastically, but these cases are pretty cut and dry.
They either broke the law to prosecute Trump, or they did not.
Now, in something like the hush money case, Trump actually did break the law, but it should have been a misdemeanor, not a three-dozen-count felony.
The fact that Judge Merchan did not knock this case down from the outset is a disgrace, but if Trump had not made the ledger entries the way he did, he would never have been in that mess in the first place.
These people know what the DOJ can do when it wants to, and even the smallest illegality can be blown up, so they are getting out.
A source close to Bratt stated, “They’re forcing him out. There isn’t any doubt that, like [FBI Director Chris] Wray, he’s leaving to get ahead of the axe.”
To be clear, turnover at the DOJ is pretty common, especially when you have a change of party.
The incoming Attorney General will want her own people running these offices, which is exactly what Merrick Garland did when he took office, so don’t buy into the media that this turnover is Trump exacting revenge.
But in the case of Bragg, who one FBI agent categorized as “aggressive” in his plan against Trump, well, maybe there is a thread that needs to be pulled.