As President Trump aims to radically reshape and reduce the federal work force, a new organization is forming that aims to support Justice Department employees who say they are facing professional and ethical crises in dealing with the administration’s orders.
The group, Justice Connection, is led by Stacey Young, a career federal prosecutor who stepped down last week as part of a wave of resignations and firings at the Justice Department after Mr. Trump’s return to power. For now, the group will focus on the department — but there are plans to replicate the model across other federal agencies.
The organization intends to provide guidance to remaining Justice Department employees on legal issues, whistle-blowing, leaking to the news media, aiding with digital and physical security and, if they resign, finding jobs in the private sector.
“The animus coming from the administration is unprecedented and terrifying,” said Ms. Young, an 18-year Justice Department veteran. “Most employees are terrified about the stability of their jobs. They’re worried about being fired or transferred or demoted or demeaned or doxxed. There are far more unanswered questions than answers right now, and the fear and confusion is palpable and may only grow.”
Ms. Young said she aimed to raise $1 million to maintain a staff of half a dozen people. They will eventually support employees in other federal agencies as well as the Justice Department, she said.
The group is likely to come under attack from members of the Trump administration and other Republicans, who have often railed against what they see as a “deep state” in Washington that is hostile to Mr. Trump’s political movement.
The organization appears to be anticipating such blowback, writing in a five-page prospectus that it would “combat the ‘deep state’ narrative.”
“The pernicious narrative that casts dedicated civil servants as villains poses an existential threat to a functional government and our democratic norms,” the prospectus states. “Efforts to counter it have been anemic. Justice Connection will fight against the lies by telling the truth — in Congress, online and in the press — about why a safe and just America requires career professionals at D.O.J.: F.B.I. intelligence analysts, victim advocates, forensic scientists, A.T.F. special agents and civil rights attorneys among them.”
In 2016, Ms. Young founded and served as president of the Department of Justice Gender Equality Network, which pushed for safe, healthy and fair workplace environments across the Justice Department and other federal agencies. Ms. Young shut down the organization because, she said, of intimidation from the new Trump administration before she resigned from the department last Friday.
Ms. Young is scheduled to testify on Friday before the House Judiciary Committee during a hearing about the rights, resources and options of recourse for Justice Department employees targeted by the Trump administration.
“The president had promised to dismantle the civil service, and they’ve been aggressively pursuing that project in just two weeks,” Ms. Young said. “Right now, D.O.J. employees are sitting ducks, and many well-meaning people are calling on them to just keep sitting. That’s not going to work. If they’re going to stay, they’re going to need help.”
Justice Connection will have an advisory board that includes a mix of career Justice Department lawyers and political appointees.
The new organization will be funded in part by the Government Accountability Project, a decades-old nonpartisan group that has focused on protecting and supporting government whistle-blowers.
“We understand the vital importance civil servants play at large as guardrails against abuses of power,” said Dana Gold, the senior director of advocacy and strategy at the Government Accountability Project. “They are the best mechanisms to protect the public interest.”
