Conversion to authoritarianism continues

Current and former national security officials are raising concerns over Attorney General William Barr's recent decision to remove the head of a Justice Department office that helps ensure federal counterterrorism and counterintelligence activities are legal – and replace him with a political appointee with relatively limited experience.

[...]

For much of the past decade, that little-known office has been led by Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brad Wiegmann, a 23-year career public servant, not a political appointee. But two weeks ago, Wiegmann, 54, was told he is being reassigned and replaced with a political appointee.

[...]

Last year alone, Wiegmann represented the Justice Department in three public congressional hearings, testifying about U.S. capabilities to fight the rise of domestic terrorism and the importance of conducting secret surveillance inside the United States and abroad.

At one of the hearings, a House Democrat tried to push Wiegmann into offering even indirect criticism of Trump's racially-charged rhetoric, but Wiegmann insisted: "It's just not my place as a career government official to comment on what either members of Congress or the president choose to say."

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[T]he new head of the office is 36-year-old Kellen Dwyer, a cyber-crimes prosecutor who joined the federal government six years ago and made international headlines in November 2018 when he accidentally revealed that federal charges had been secretly filed against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

  ABC

Not only inexperienced, but incompetent.

From 2018 to 2019, he served as a fellow at the conservative-leaning Leonine Forum, a non-profit organization that says its alumni are "committed to the cause of reintroducing the tenets of [the Catholic church] into the political, policy, legal, business, and cultural activities of society."

Before joining the Office of Law and Policy this month, he was an assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

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The timing of the personnel change – coming just two months before the U.S. presidential election, and in the midst of a battle against domestic terrorism and foreign interference in the election – has worried current and former members of the national security community.

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Past chiefs of the office have served as political appointees, while others – like Wiegmann – served as career officials, so, "It would not have been that unusual early in an administration to place a political [appointee] in that policy role, but to do that now is very unusual," one current U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

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Though a relatively small unit of fewer than two dozen attorneys, the Office of Law and Policy participates in almost every National Security Council meeting, works with congressional staff to draft new legislation, and conducts oversight of the FBI's intelligence-gathering activities.

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The concern from current and former officials stems from the Office of Law and Policy's role in national security: The office shapes government efforts by ensuring that new policies and executive actions don't violate federal law.

Which is precisely why Dwyer is being installed there.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.