Biden-Harris Caught ‘Trump-Proofing’ DOJ with Midnight Appointments

Using non-competitive hiring authority to load up offices key to agenda with career attorneys

Personnel is policy. What better way for the current administration to perpetuate its policies should Donald Trump retake the presidency than seeding federal agencies with permanent appointees? Think of it as an insurance policy for the Biden-Harris administration’s legacy.

Documents obtained by Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) indicate that the administration may be using an obscure hiring authority, bypassing the normal merit-based competitive hiring process, to beef up offices essential to protecting its agenda from a future administration. These hirings could be another step in the administration’s attempts to “Trump-proof” agencies and prevent the former president from enacting his agenda if he wins in November.

The documents show that the administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) is using “Schedule A” hiring authority to appoint hundreds of attorneys and judges to career civil service posts without competition from other candidates. According to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Schedule A authority can be used to hire people with “severe physical disabilities, psychiatric disabilities, and intellectual disabilities” but can also be used for hiring certain roles such as chaplains, scientists, and attorneys. Unlike other non-competitive appointments, such as the relatively small number of political appointments that Presidents can make, Schedule A positions last beyond the term of that President.

Federal law bars Schedule A appointments from being “policymaking or confidential in nature”. But the offices that the administration is staffing up are some of the most politicized at DOJ. The agency used Schedule A hiring authority to appoint at least 104 trial attorneys at the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD). According to its website, ENRD’s objective is the “collective pursuit of environmental justice.” 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.

The burrowing in doesn’t stop there. More than 150 attorneys were placed inside the DOJ’s Anti-Trust Division. Until recently, anti-trust enforcement was a relatively technical and non-partisan division. But the Biden-Harris administration’s increasingly aggressive implementation has sparked complaints of politicized enforcement. 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.

“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,” said PPT Director Michael Chamberlain. “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.”

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