The lawyers inside the State Department office, the staff who are the legal guardians of U.S. foreign policy, are increasingly afraid to do their jobs.
According to a new HuffPost report that quotes multiple former State Department attorneys, they describe an atmosphere of intimidation under President Donald Trump and many are afraid to speak out.
Employees at the U.S. Department of State have become hesitant “to give advice that the political appointees might not want to hear,” as officials “become guarded about what they say” in a climate where staff fear repercussions for raising legal red flags, the former lawyers told HuffPost.
HuffPost reports “a severe and unusual fear of being punished for doing their jobs has spread among staff at the State Department’s legal office, bolstering concerns about how the Trump administration is crafting foreign policy.”
According to the report, lawyers at the Office of the Legal Adviser at State, known as “L,” fear repercussions if they suggest the administration’s plans could break domestic or international law.” In other words, the attorneys tasked with warning leadership when policy might cross legal lines increasingly believe those warnings could come back to haunt them.
The report points to the president’s “drastic” international moves, including “strikes on accused drug boats in the waters around South America,” which left former State Department employees openly questioning whether any of the standard legal vetting is happening at all.
“It’s really difficult to imagine how any State Department lawyer could sign off on these strikes,” former “L” employee Charlie Trumbull told HuffPost, continuing: “That leads me to believe that the normal vetting process for vetting these things is not functioning as it did.”
Trumbull added there’s “much more hesitancy to give advice that the political appointees might not want to hear,” a line that captures the report’s core claim: legal analysis is being chilled by political power.
Another former lawyer told HuffPost that the culture inside “L” has historically been built around directness, even when it creates friction.
“We’ve always had a culture where we speak frankly, challenge things and really push ideas to ensure they’re solidly supported,” the former lawyer said.
But that lawyer described a new environment where the fear that giving unwelcome advice can lead to informal punishment, not necessarily a firing, but getting sidelined or quietly taken away from the work.
“There’s an underlying fear of, providing advice that wasn’t well-received and then being cut out of a subject, being further and further removed from the job that you spent your career trying to do,” the lawyer added.
And the report says the consequences may already be visible. According to HuffPost, “L” has experienced “a drastic and uncommon loss of staff since Trump’s second term began,” a sign that the strain is not just emotional, it is operational.
There are concerns at the State Department that it is increasingly dominated by partisanship, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his chief advisers suggest they are treating staff based on their loyalty to the Trump admin.
The department reportedly promoted some staff members through an unorthodox process and recalled dozens of career ambassadors, who typically remain in their posts when presidents change. This means several experienced State Department officials, who were promoted under Biden, could lose their jobs.
