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We’ve reported on how FBI officials were panicking when Trump won the presidential election, worrying that there would be a “bloodbath” of layoffs as the President-elect cleaned house after their endless persecutions of him.

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But now FBI and Department of Justice officials are freaking out even more with the announcement that Trump picked former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz to be his attorney general.

Multiple current and former senior Justice Department and FBI officials have begun reaching out to lawyers in anticipation of being criminally investigated by the Trump administration, according to three people with knowledge of their deliberations.

Following Trump’s decisive election victory, many Justice Department officials and career staffers were already nervous about the possibility that they would be targeted by Trump loyalists, particularly members of Congress. But the selection of former Rep. Matt Gaetz, a firebrand Trump ally who was the subject of a recent FBI investigation, to lead the department has sharply increased the sense of alarm, the sources said.

Hmm. If they didn’t do anything wrong, what are they so worried about?

Related:

FBI Employees Terrified of Being Fired When Trump Arrives: He’s ‘Going to Smash the Place to Pieces’

Trump Transition Team to DOJ Employees: Get With the Program or Get Out

BREAKING: Trump Names His Pick for Attorney General – and Catches Everyone by Surprise

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One official said he did nothing wrong but expects they’ll come after him anyway. For what, I wonder, if everything they did while conducting endless lawfare against Trump was “aboveboard?”

“Everything we did was aboveboard,” said a former senior FBI official who has started contacting lawyers because he expects to be prosecuted himself. “But this is a different world.”

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of becoming even more of a target, doesn’t believe any attempt to prosecute him will be successful. Judges and juries have the power to throw out cases or find defendants innocent if they deem prosecutions to be baseless.

But like many other current and former Justice Department officials, he is bracing for a potentially long and costly legal battle, as well as the possibility of protracted congressional investigations, after Trump takes office in January.

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“He is bracing for a potentially long and costly legal battle.” You mean, like the kind that Trump has been facing over and over again?

The Gaetz pick has ratcheted up their tension to 11:

A former senior Justice Department official who served during Trump’s first term said he, too, saw Gaetz’s nomination as a sign of the seriousness of the president-elect’s vow to exact revenge on those who investigated him.

“He needs to be able to control the department, which he can do through a loyal AG beholden to him,” the former Justice Department official said.

Related: Mollie Hemingway Gives Powerful Defense of Gaetz Pick for AG: ‘We’ve Had a Department of Injustice’

After watching the leadership of the DOJ and the FBI make a mockery of our justice system over the last four years —and turning it into a political weapon—it’s awfully tough to have any sympathy for these bad actors. In fact, I have exactly zero.

You reap what you sow.