Sen. Cassidy Claims DOJ Morale Is High. What a Joke.

DOJ employees deserve more than elected officials who stand up in Congress and lie (or fall for a lie) about their morale. They deserve the respect Congress used to show public servants.

Sen. Bill Cassidy delivers floor speech on Aug. 7 to explain his support of Todd Blanche for Attorney General. (Source: Sen. Bill Cassidy)

I’ve felt a near constant sense of anger in response to this administration’s assault on the Justice Department (my 15 new pounds from rage-eating is proof of this). Having spent the last year and a half running an organization that supports career DOJ employees, I’ve witnessed up close the harm this administration’s relentless attacks on them has caused.

I expected to explode with anger upon learning that Todd Blanche — their chief tormentor — would be confirmed as Attorney General. But when it happened, I didn’t. I was just really sad.

That feeling began during last Friday’s Senate floor speech by Senator Bill Cassidy, the lame duck from Louisiana who voted to convict President Trump of impeachment after January 6. Cassidy made the speech to announce that he would vote to confirm Blanche, all but guaranteeing that President Trump would get his Senate-approved Roy Cohn.

The speech was riddled with distortions, like when Sen. Cassidy said Blanche has been improperly blamed for the pardons of January 6 rioters without mentioning that Blanche touted those pardons as one of the Administration’s greatest achievements. He threw in some fanciful theories (“because of his previous attorney-client relationship with President Trump, Mr. Blanche would be precisely the person to push back on Mr. Trump”), and mixed them with false equivalences (“presidents of both parties have been guilty” of vindictive prosecutions). He concluded with self-pity: “I’ll be criticized for this vote. What’s new?”

But the moment that drove me to sadness was when Sen. Cassidy stated, with a straight face, that “morale is high” among DOJ employees. That claim, he said, came from two political officials who President Trump appointed.

If he’d bothered to talk to any of the actual career employees who comprise 99% of the department, they’d have explained the obvious truth: Morale can’t be high when hundreds of your coworkers have been fired illegally and almost 20,000 have left on their own. Confidence in the institution’s integrity suffers when you’re asked to prosecute the president’s foes, or violate a court order, or target vulnerable communities. It’s hard to believe that justice is the goal when you’re told you represent the President instead of the people — a guiding credo of Blanche’s leadership. And you won’t feel good about your job when you feel judged: by some who accuse you of being the “deep state,” and others who think ethical people should leave.

In fact, low morale doesn’t adequately describe what many of my former DOJ colleagues are going through. They’re experiencing the trauma that members of this administration, like OMB Director Russell Vought, promised to inflict. (In Vought’s own words: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”).

I know career employees are feeling trauma because I talk to them every day. They tell me it manifests in ways both psychological and somatic — severe anxiety, hair loss, nightmares, sleeplessness, loss of appetite, and extreme sadness. It’s why many are taking advantage of Justice Connection’s Mental Health Support Network. It’s a reason so many of them have left.

But despite the corrupt and captured leaders in charge, tens of thousands of career employees are still showing up every day to hold the line. They’re struggling to carry out their work in a way that still keeps us safe, secures our freedoms, and protects our pocketbooks. They draw their red lines and they resign or get fired when those lines are crossed — sometimes blowing the whistle along the way.

If enough of them leave, the Justice Department will collapse. If it does, the rule of law will collapse along with it. Senators know better than anyone that the laws they pass don’t enforce themselves.

DOJ employees deserve more than elected officials who stand up in Congress and lie (or fall for a lie) about their morale. They deserve the respect Congress used to show public servants — respect that served as a model for all Americans who benefit from their sacrifices.

Sen. Cassidy seemed to display his own sadness during his speech when he became visibly emotional at the very end of it. Hours later, he voted to confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General — delivering what may be the harshest blow to employee morale yet.