A group of onetime Republican presidential appointees who served as senior ethics or Justice Department aides are endorsing Joe Biden for president, warning that Donald Trump has “weaponized” the executive branch and is putting in peril the legitimacy of the U.S. Justice Department.
“I think a lot of us are extremely alarmed, frankly, at the threat of autocracy,” Donald B. Ayer, former deputy attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration, said in an interview with POLITICO. “He’s going to be unleashed if he gets a second term. I don’t know what’s going to stop him.”
The former officials endorsing Tuesday served under the Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations.
The officials said they’re backing Biden in the hope of restoring “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. 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.”
For his part, Trump has railed against Democrats taking the reins at the Justice Department, saying that Biden would radicalize the nation’s response to protests. Trump has said he is the president whose chief interest is in maintaining law and order.
The endorsement for Biden and against Trump from a cadre of Republicans comes on the second day of the Republican National Convention. On Monday, former U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake led more than two dozen former GOP congressmen in forming “Republicans for Biden,” to coincide with the launch of the convention. Other Republican appointees to endorse Biden on Tuesday:
— Alan Charles Raul, who served as vice chair of the White House Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board under George W. Bush and served in roles with George H.W. Bush as well as associate counsel to the president in the Reagan administration.
— Charles Fried, former U.S. solicitor general under the Reagan administration and an associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
— Stuart Gerson, who worked as assistant attorney general under George H. W. Bush.
— Peter Keisler, former U.S. acting attorney general under George W. Bush.
— Paul Rosenweig, who served in the department of Homeland Security under George W. Bush.
— Robert Shanks, former U.S. deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration
— J.W. Verret, who served on Trump’s presidential transition staff.
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