If former President Donald Trump wins the election in November, he will likely appoint a staunch loyalist to head the Justice Department and wage a legal battle against his political opponents. One of the top candidates for the post transformed from one of the ex-president’s biggest critics to a loyal lieutenant.

The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta recently profiled Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), who rose to prominence after his election in 2010 with the help of the far-right Tea Party movement. The son of former Reagan administration Attorney General Rex Lee, the Utah Republican grew up close to power in Washington, D.C. But as Alberta’s sources recalled, Lee differed from his father in his insatiable thirst for accolades and penchant for extreme partisanship.

One of those sources is former Rep. Enid Mickelsen (R-Utah), who later became chairwoman of the Utah Republican Party and witnessed Lee’s rise to power. She recalled thinking in Alberta, “There’s something wrong with this guy.” She said she knew Lee was different from his father, whom she “idolized” after he proposed abolishing birthright citizenship.

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“It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up,” Mickelsen said. “He told people what they wanted to hear, not the truth.”

Still, Lee was considered more of a Libertarian Party supporter than part of the MAGA faction. In 2016, the Utah senator led a failed attempt to field an alternative Republican ticket at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, in the hopes that Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Marco Rubio (R-Florida) would replace Trump. He decried Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric and even released a four-minute video calling for Trump to drop out of the 2016 race after the Access Hollywood tape surfaced, in which the future 45th President of the United States bragged about groping women without their consent.

But after the 2016 election, Lee was one of many Republicans who visited Trump Tower in New York to reconcile with the president-elect, hoping to “come clean” with the man he had vehemently opposed just months before. Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Illinois), who was part of the 2010 Tea Party wave, told Alberta he believed Lee’s libertarian leanings were authentic and was surprised when he fully supported Trump.

“If someone had told me back then that Mike Lee would sell his soul to Donald Trump, I would never have believed it,” Walsh said. “I still can’t believe it.”

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During Trump’s presidency, Lee frequently flew with him on Air Force One, helped him develop his defense strategies against impeachment, and was even one of the architects of Trump’s failed efforts to stay in office after he lost the 2020 election. In 2022, he started the Twitter account @BasedMikeLee (now X), which is known for frequently posting far-right memes and even disinformation.

“Once a politician who seemed to present himself as the modern-day Daniel Patrick Moynihan of the right, Lee is now a highly influential MAGA online influencer,” Alberta wrote. “It’s like Ned Flanders became a 4chan troll.”

Lee is rumored to be one of Trump’s leading candidates to be his next attorney general should he win back the White House. The former president has said during the campaign that he wants to politicize the Justice Department in order to indict and prosecute his political opponents. He will almost certainly order his next attorney general to drop the two federal criminal cases pending against him.

Click here to read Alberta’s full article in the Atlantic (subscription required).

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