The U.S. Department of Defense currently employs an individual with a clear disdain for former President Donald Trump, which she displayed while working under the wings of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Meet Samantha Goldstein, an attorney who previously wrote an op-ed denouncing Trump’s suitability for office, now ironically serving as an associate deputy general counsel.
Goldstein completed stints under Kamala Harris’ Senate office and Biden’s National Security Council prior to her role in the Trump administration. Though, regardless of her professional engagements, she kept up her commitment to undermining Trump’s presidency as just another cog in the extended federal bureaucracy following their vehement opposition.
The federal government typically hires around 2.3 million direct employees. Among these government employees, over 3,000 are politically appointed. That said, Goldstein successfully ‘burrowed in’, or transitioned from being a political appointee to a supposedly non-political position, leaving observers to question the impartiality of her role.
Before joining the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel as an attorney-advisor, Goldstein functioned as a senior counsel in the Office of Legal Policy within the same department. This transition led to an increase in her annual salary from $110,460 to $127,942.
Following her venture at the Department of Justice, Goldstein turned her sights towards Biden’s National Security Council, stepping into the role of deputy legal adviser in July 2024. However, she had luck to find her way back into the Department of Defense several months later, raising eyebrows among those who considered her previous, scathing criticism of President Trump.
Goldstein’s legal career took off in 2013 after her graduation from Harvard Law School with magna cum laude honors. She served as a legal clerk for the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals and the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, only adding to her impressive résumé.
In between her painstaking work, Goldstein also found time for politically charged activities. In 2016, she interned with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and later worked as special counsel for then-California Senator Kamala Harris in 2018, clearly aligning her views with Harris and the Democrats.
Prior to her service at the Department of Justice, Goldstein was engaged at the firm O’Melveny & Myers. Her tenure at the firm was noted for her explicit politicization by opposing Trump, exemplified by her co-authored op-ed in The Washington Post.
In her controversial op-ed, co-authored with Walter Dellinger, a Clinton administration veteran, Goldstein branded Trump as ‘unfit to hold office’, based entirely on their interpretation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report into allegations of collusion between Trump and Russia. It was clear they were using this platform to express their personal animus towards Trump rather than presenting an objective legal analysis.
Goldstein and Dellinger claimed that Trump’s inability to protect the United States against ‘an unprecedented attack on American democracy by a hostile foreign power’ was grounds for the claim that he was unfit for office. However, many Americans challenged their argument as nothing more than another salvo in the relentless effort to undermine Trump’s presidency.
Adding fuel to the fire, recent polls indicate that around 75% of federal employees based in Washington, D.C. earning $75,000 or more annually, who supported Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, would actively defy a legitimate Trump order if they deemed it disagreeable.
Alarmingly, the same survey insinuates that government employees show clear bias towards Democrats, threatening impartiality. Their votes suggest they might willingly oppose President Trump’s directives to further their personal political agendas.
A related study reveals that Democrats greatly outnumber Republicans among federal agency employees, by a ratio of 2-to-1. This stark imbalance raises questions about the political neutrality required to effectively carry out duties within such agencies.
The 2024 presidential election contributions also tell a worrisome tale, with federal employees directing a disproportionate 84% of their political donations towards Harris. If the federal workforce is overwhelmingly predisposed towards one political party, it threatens to impede the functioning of an unbiased executive branch.
While some might argue that federal workers’ political opinions should not interfere with the discharge of their duties, trends suggest otherwise. Current rules provide federal workers with protections that make them difficult to fire. This protects those who oppose the president’s initiatives, further complicating the executive’s role.