Former DOJ lawyer apologizes for not doing more to resist Trump

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A former Justice Department attorney who worked for the Office of Legal Counsel wrote an op-ed for The New York Times in which she offered an apology for not taking a stronger stance against President Trump.

Erica Newland, who joined the DOJ under the Obama administration after serving as a clerk for D.C. Circuit Judge Merrick Garland, said that her job "was to tailor the administration’s executive actions to make them lawful," but that she eventually worried that by helping Trump's orders get court approval, she was "doing more harm than good." Newland, who left in 2018, now regrets that she and others did not do more to fight against Trump when they had the chance.

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"Watching the Trump campaign’s attacks on the election results, I now see what might have happened if, rather than nip and tuck the Trump agenda, responsible Justice Department attorneys had collectively — ethically, lawfully — refused to participate in President Trump’s systematic attacks on our democracy from the beginning," Newland wrote. "The attacks would have failed."

Newland claimed that if she and her colleagues had refused to work with the Trump administration to accomplish its goals, the White House would have been left to rely on "second-rate lawyers " like the ones currently representing Trump's campaign.

In this Jan. 27, 2020, file photo President Trump listens during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)

"Had that happened," Newland said, "judges would have likely dismantled the Trump facade from the beginning, stopping the momentum of his ugliest and most destructive efforts and bringing much-needed accountability early in his presidency."

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Newland claims that she and her colleagues were complicit in Trump's agenda just by working in the administration, even if they were trying to temper his actions.

"No matter how much any one of us pushed back from within, we did so as members of a professional class of government lawyers who enabled an assault on our democracy — an assault that nearly ended it," she continued. "We owe the country our honesty about that and about what we saw. We owe apologies. I offer mine here."

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Fox News reached out to the Justice Department for comment, but they did not immediately respond.

Now, Newland works against the Trump administration as counsel for Protect Democracy, an organization that says its creation in 2017 was meant "to prevent American democracy from declining into a more authoritarian form of government."

Protect Democracy executive director Ian Bassin supported Newland, telling Fox News that public officials in the U.S. are loyal to an idea, not a leader. 

"Erica's piece raises some essential questions about how public officials need to carry out that obligation, and uphold the oath they take to do that," Bassin said.