As a former Justice Department lawyer and whistleblower, I recognize the bizarre and retaliatory techniques currently being wielded against public servants. The over-the-top tactics that Donald Trump and Elon Musk are using — placing people on administrative leave without due process, leaning on career civil servants to resign, locking people out of offices, accusing them of “complete and utter incompetence” despite years of unblemished federal service — are very familiar to most federal whistleblowers. I was one of them and now defend these employees for a living.
I got into this line of work because, when I blew the whistle on America’s first high-profile terrorism prosecution after 9/11, the government unleashed the full force of the entire executive branch against me — much of it over the top. Among other things, the Justice Department placed me under criminal investigation, though I was never told the reason (leaking unclassified information to the press is not a crime, and government whistleblowers are protected by law.) Then it got even stranger. Based on a secret report I was not allowed to see, the Justice Department referred me for discipline to the state bar associations where I was licensed to practice law. The state bars didn’t know how to respond, so they kept me (and my livelihood) in licensing limbo for years. But then the government's improvised retaliation hit warp speed when it put me on part of the “No-Fly List,” a terrorism watchlist that impeded my travel for years and had no redress mechanism. I thought things could get no worse than this Kafkaesque blackhole.
