‘We were complicit’: Lawyer who worked for Trump administration pens op ed apologising to US

‘We owe the country our honesty’, says ex DOJ lawyer

A former Department of Justice lawyer has apologised for working under the Trump administration.

Erica Newland, who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel from 2016-2018, says she and her colleagues were "complicit" in supporting an "anti-democratic leader".

Writing in The New York Times on Sunday, Ms Newland said she stayed at the DOJ after Mr Trump's victory believing she could limit his influence on policy.

But, Ms Newland says, her talents as a lawyer ended up having the opposite effect, making policies such as the 2017 ban on Muslim-majority countries more acceptable to the courts.

Some two years after leaving her position, Ms Newland said she would have better served the country by immediately quitting after the president assumed office.

"If, early on, the Justice Department lawyers charged with selling the administration's lies had emptied the ranks...the work of defending President Trump's policies would have been left to the types of attorneys now representing his campaign," Ms Newland wrote.

"Lawyers like Mr Giuliani would have had to defend the Muslim ban in court."

In coming to that conclusion, Ms Newland said she and those who also worked at the DOJ during Mr Trump's tenure owe the country an apology.

"We owe the country our honesty about that and about what we saw," she said. "We owe apologies. I offer mine here."

Her comments come as Mr Trump continues to insist that he won the 2020 election, despite the electoral college recently confirming Joe Biden won.

"Big news coming out of Pennsylvania," Mr Trump tweeted on Monday morning. “Very big illegal ballot drop that cannot be accounted for. Rigged Election!”

He did not cite any evidence to go with that allegation.

Led by Rudy Giuliani, the president's legal team claims, without evidence, that the mass voter fraud took place at the 3 November poll.