The Biden-Harris administration has deployed a
little-known hiring mechanism to staff key divisions of the Department of
Justice (DOJ) ahead of the 2024 election, according to documents provided to
the Daily Caller News Foundation by Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT).
https://dailycaller.com/2024/08/27/exclusive-biden-harris-admin-rapidly-trump-proofing-doj-as-election-looms/?utm_campaign=august28morningnote&utm_medium=email&utm_source=iterable&utm_content=morningnote
Hundreds of people, primarily lawyers and
judges, have been appointed to the Environmental and Natural Resources (ENRD)
and Antitrust and Immigration Review divisions of the DOJ using its “Schedule
A” hiring authority since President Joe Biden took office, documents shared
with the DCNF by PPT show. Schedule A hiring does not require appointments to be
made on the basis of merit and appointments do not expire at the end of the
current president’s term, meaning these bureaucrats will stick around even if
former President Donald Trump takes office in 2025, according to the Office of Budget and Management.
The hiring process is intended to benefit
people with “intellectual disabilities, severe physical disabilities or
psychiatric disabilities” but it can also be used to staff specialist positions
as chaplains, scientists, and attorneys or to fill critical hiring
needs, according to federal regulations.
“The Biden-Harris administration and its allies
have already signaled their intent to hamstring their successor and prevent a
future president from reversing their agenda,” PPT director Michael Chamberlain
said in an advance copy of a press release shared with the DCNF. “Exploiting
non-competitive hiring authorities to fill career civil service positions could
be just another component of this scheme. It’s no wonder that the public’s
trust in its government has all but disappeared.”
The DOJ used Schedule A to hire well over 100
immigration judges for its Immigration Review division, per the documents.
Immigration judges are responsible for deciding “whether a noncitizen may
remain in the United States or must leave the country,” according to the DOJ.
At the end of the 2020 fiscal year, around when
Biden took office, immigration courts had a backlog of roughly 1.3 million
cases, according to the DOJ. That number had ballooned to 3
million under the Biden-Harris administration, PBS reported in January.
“The administration is also using Schedule A to
install immigration judges — again, outside of the normal merit-based system —
who will rule on cases of those in a position to benefit from the
administration’s immigration policies,” PPT’s press release reads.
The DOJ also used Schedule A to hire a massive glut of
trial attorneys for its ENRD division, which is responsible for enforcing environmental laws like the
Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and the Safe Drinking
Water Act. The division focuses on climate change, environmental justice and
defending the interests of Native American tribes, according to its
website.
“The ENRD is a vital office in advancing the Biden-Harris
administration’s energy and climate policies, and the placement of Biden-Harris
loyalists is a means to defend those policies even if a future Trump (or other)
administration seeks to change them,” according to PPT.
The DOJ also took the opportunity to use Schedule A to beef
up its antitrust division with an army of trial attorneys, according to the
documents. Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan has adopted an aggressive
stance to antitrust enforcement, bringing action against Amazon, Meta, Kroger, Microsoft and Nvidia, among others.
“Until recently, antitrust enforcement was a relatively
technical and non-partisan division,” PPT’s press release reads. “But the
Biden-Harris administration’s increasingly aggressive implementation has
sparked complaints of politicized enforcement.”
PPT characterizes these DOJ appointments as one pillar in a
broader effort to “Trump-proof” the federal government ahead of November’s
election.
The Biden-Harris administration has advanced a federal rule that would make it more
difficult for the president to fire career bureaucrats. Employees at the
Environmental Protection Agency agreed to a new contract in May that will allow
them to avoid being fired so long as their work is conducted with “scientific
integrity,” Politico reported.
An army of left-of-center civil society organizations, like
the American Civil Liberties Union and National Immigration Law Center, are
also rapidly drafting litigation to counter actions taken
by a possible second Trump administration.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and
the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division both denied PPT’s records requests.
The DOJ did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller
News Foundation’s request for comment.