By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered U.S. Justice Department employees not to post anything on social media related to their government work, following a wave of political appointees cheering Trump and criticizing his opponents online.

The directive, sent to U.S. Attorneys’ offices on Monday, appears to prohibit the kinds of social media posts routinely made by Trump’s political appointees on their official government accounts.

This change was initiated by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who has become frustrated by the rhetoric from political appointees, according to a source familiar with the matter.

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment.

While the department has always had social media restrictions, such as prohibiting discussions of non-public investigations or politically-charged statements that could damage departmental impartiality, the new policy is broader.

It restricts employees from including their department titles on any social media activity or reposting official government information like press releases. Employees must not use social media “in a way that damages the efficiency of the department,” states the policy.

Stacey Young, a former civil rights attorney at the department who left to create a DOJ employee advocacy group called Justice Connection, said the policy could restrict employees’ speech.

> “The new policy represents another unwarranted attack on DOJ employees – one that stifles their free speech in their private lives and creates new ways for the administration to oust career public servants who don’t toe the party line,” said Young.

Many of the department’s top Trump-appointed leaders have recently posted messages that would violate this new policy, which instructs them to avoid “injecting their political views into the work they perform” and to refrain from making comments “in reckless disregard for the truth” regarding any person the department interacts with, including judges.

The policy also prohibits employees from posting anything that might prejudice a proceeding or “heighten condemnation of an accused.”

Leo Terrell, a senior counsel in the Civil Rights Division leading its antisemitism task force, frequently posts on X showing his support for Trump. For instance, he said on X, “Democrats are jealous of President Trump!”

In a recent month, Terrell shared a post from Patrick Casey, a white nationalist who previously led the now-defunct Identity Evropa, which stated that Trump could “revoke someone’s Jew card.”

Aaron Reitz, head of the Office of Legal Policy, accused “Dem-appointed judges” of siding with cartels to undermine Trump’s “authority to conduct foreign policy” in an April 8 social media post.

Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed on X that law enforcement arrested a “top MS-13 national leader,” referring to MS-13, yet the criminal complaint stated only that investigators found “indicia of MS-13 association.” The department has moved to drop the charges and deport the suspect, 24-year-old Henrry Josue Villatoro Santos.

Ari Cohn, tech policy lead counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, commented that while government has some authority to restrict the use of personal social media accounts for official business, the new policy is so broad that it risks targeting employees for their views as private citizens.

> “The risk that these rules will be wielded in a partisan way to purge the DOJ of anyone who expresses a political view out of step with the leadership or administration is deeply concerning,” he told Reuters in a statement.