The time when the Department of Justice was a non-partisan force for the “rule of law” is over. It’s been over at least since Confederate Attorney General Jefferson Sessions got his Klan-sympathizing hands on the institution. Now, Main Justice is merely ground zero for President Donald Trump’s war on immigrants.
I can prove it. A tipster circulated the hiring plan sent to law schools about this year’s DOJ Honors program. In the past, the program has been called “the largest and most prestigious federal entry-level attorney hiring program of its kind.” This year, they’re pretty much only recruiting little Eichmanns.
From the email, emphasis mine.
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Number of available positions:
Honors Program – Approximately 195 positions in the following components:Antitrust Division (7)
Civil Division (21)
Civil Rights Division (5)
Criminal Division (7)
Drug Enforcement Administration (3)
Environment & Natural Resources Division (8)
Executive Office for Immigration Review (131)
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Office of General Counsel (3)
Indian Country Fellowship (1)
National Security Division (1)
United States Attorneys’ Offices in Arizona (2) (eligibility restrictions)
U.S. Trustee Program (6)
If you apply to the DOJ Honors program this year, you are complicit. If a future employer sees “DOJ Honors: 2019” on your résumé 10 years from now, they’ll know you were complicit.
I can hear the morally flexible strivers object to my characterization. “I just want to work for the Civil Rights Division.” Stop fooling yourselves. Stop lying to yourselves. The DOJ “civil rights” division is doing nothing of the kind under Sessions. And even if you are there, fighting what you think is the good fight, you’re just freeing up time and resources for others at the Justice Department to continue their policy of ethnic cleansing. There is no moral safe space when you are working for a corrupted and evil organization. And “corrupted and evil” is the only way you can describe the DOJ these days.
Leave this crap to the Federalist Society. Let them mark themselves as weak and desperate as they eagerly cloy to a racist organization for the status bump. Let students from Regent or Liberty scoop up these positions that defy the very concept of Christianity, and make hypocrites of themselves.
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The DOJ Honors program is TRASH now. This post constitutes fair warning. If you apply, you’ve earned the negative judgment and disrespect of your peers.
Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.