Justice Department lawyers may soon pay a high price for lying to the courts

[Gothmog]

48. Washington Post-Opinion: Trump's corruption is getting worse.

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The Justice Department just announced that it will swap out the lawyers who are representing the administration in the legal battle over the effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. This battle continues because Trump ordered the administration to keep fighting to add the question, even though officials had surrendered after the Supreme Court ruled against it.

As The Post reports, the change in the legal team might signal “legal or ethical concerns” about Trump’s handling of the affair. One source said such concerns were harbored by some “career attorneys.”

It gets worse. A Justice Department lawyer tells the New York Times that due to the switch, no lawyers from the division that defends administration policies in court — the federal programs branch — will be working on the case.

The Times adds that the move strongly suggests that career lawyers “decided to quit a case that at the least seemed to lack a legal basis,” or worse, could force them to defend statements that “could well turn out to be untrue.”