A group of former Republican presidential appointees who served as senior ethics or Justice Department officials 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, reports Politico. “I think a lot of us are extremely alarmed, frankly, at the threat of autocracy,” said Donald Ayer, former deputy attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration. “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 Tuesday served in the Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations.
The officials are backing Biden in the hope of restoring “basic honesty and integrity to the U.S. Department of Justice and to Executive Branch decision-making.” 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. Among the Republican appointees to endorse Biden on Tuesday were Alan Charles Raul, vice chair of the White House Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board under George W. Bush, Charles Fried, former U.S. solicitor general under the Reagan administration and an associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Stuart Gerson, an assistant attorney general under George H. W. Bush, and Peter Keisler, former U.S. acting attorney general under George W. Bush.