Tend to agree, with particular attention to the peeve that hit me in the very first sentence: the phrase "career lawyers." Like I'm supposed to think "Ohh, THESE lawyers are experienced and smart, not like all those hobbyist amateur lawyers the Attorney General of the United States usually consults with! How dare he countermand these particular infallible and always-correct lawyers!!"
Have never heard the term used that way, and can't find anything about it. Even further off topic - yet not - have search engines' functionality and results quality really degraded this much? Apparently quoting a phrase doesn't even work anymore. I get loads of info on a career AS a lawyer.
Anyway, given that a political appointee would presumably be a relative newcomer, and a "career anything" tends to reflect a longer term of experience, are you saying there's no connotation whatsoever of expertise in this usage?
