Former Republican DOJ Officials Back Biden and Warn of Trump’s “Autocracy”

A group of former Republican Department of Justice officials have endorsed Joe Biden for president, becoming the latest Republicans to publicly break from Donald Trump.

The Biden campaign announced the endorsements from a bevy of former Justice Department appointees from the Reagan administration and both Bush administrations, as well as one from the President’s own transition team.

They include Donald B. Ayer, former deputy attorney general during the presidency of George H.W. Bush. Ayer explained his reasoning in comments to Politico,

“I think a lot of us are extremely alarmed, frankly, at the threat of autocracy,” Ayer said.

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“He’s going to be unleashed if he gets a second term. I don’t know what’s going to stop him.”

The former DOJ officials said they wanted to see a return to “basic honesty and integrity to the U.S. Department of Justice and to Executive Branch decision-making.”

“There’s no reasonable choice here at all,” they said.

“Trump is a person who is utterly unfit to serve. I don’t want to be apocalyptic but if he were reelected then all of the tendencies that we’ve seen in the first term — and they keep getting scarier and scarier — would [only get worse] in terms of the militarization and peaceful protests and the use of the justice system to do whatever he wants.”

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Darragh Roche

Darragh Roche is a journalist covering U.S. politics and media