DOJ sidesteps language endorsing legality of buyouts in email to staff

A small tweak to an email encouraging federal employees to take a buyout indicates the Justice Department wouldn’t vouch for the legality of the program.

The Trump administration is battling skepticism about a buyout package from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) offering eight months of pay for those who resign from their roles.

Across government Friday, employees were sent emails seeking to assuage concerns about the deal, with officials vouching “on behalf” of their agency that the offer is “valid, lawful, and will be honored.”

But the assistant attorney general for administration at the Justice Department declined to directly make that endorsement, writing instead that “OPM assures the federal workforce” that the deal is lawful.

A series of the government wide emails reviewed by The Hill indicate the Justice Department departed from the boilerplate language used by other agencies.

Those leaders used first-person language, writing on behalf of their respective agency that, “I am informing you that the offer is valid, lawful, and will be honored.”

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Critics have raised a host of legal and practical issues with the offer to pay government workers for eight months if they decide they do not want to comply with a new return to office mandate.

For one, the government is only funded through March under the current continuing resolution, raising questions about the ability to pay those who accept the deal through September.

The deal’s funding issues and legal issues are closely intertwined.

Legal experts who spoke to The Hill previously said the move likely violates the Antideficiency Act, which bars the government from spending beyond what is dictated in its budget and requires it to use federal funding as intended.

On Thursday night, federal workers also received a Q&A email about the offer, promising full pay and benefits and noting that employees could still work another job or take a vacation while collecting a paycheck.

It even encouraged private sector employment, saying, “The way to greater American prosperity is encouraging people to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector.”

But those assurances were countered in the Friday email, noting there could be exceptions.

The emails said that “subject to rare exceptions” employees would not be expected to work and that “except in rare cases” employees could take a job outside of government while on administrative leave.

The DOJ email departs from other agency emails on that front as well.

Though the Justice Department generally bars its employees from taking outside employment, in its email it writes that “in rare cases” DOJ staffers may be able to work an outside of government job.

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