Emil Bove Calls Resignation in Face of Unethical Order “Misconduct”

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Unsurprisingly, in his amicus filing, Paul Clement strongly recommended that Judge Dale Ho should dismiss the Eric Adams prosecution with prejudice. The most remarkable thing about Clement’s memorandum, as first noted by Josh Gerstein, is that Clement did not mention the Mike Flynn case, even while making claims directly undermined by it. (Adams’ own filing mentions Neomi Rao’s dissent in Flynn, and Emil Bove invoked it inaptly to say that because the amicus in Flynn did not seek discovery, it means no amicus would need to.)

Bove’s submission, signed as well by newly-confirmed Todd Blanche, is surprising, but not just for its inapt citation of Flynn.

Filed in the wake of multiple questions about his own ethical misconduct, Bove largely shifts a key premise of his own motion to dismiss, that it should be dismissed because of an appearance of impropriety. He largely replaces that justification, one of two made for dismissing the Adams case, to weaponization alone.

The first sentence of the section addresses his excuses for dismissing the case cites a paragraph that mentions only appearance of impropriety, then the transcript where he mentions weaponization but supports it by claiming an appearance of impropriety.

Dismissal is required, on consent, based on the Department’s conclusion that this prosecution reflects an improper weaponization of the criminal justice system, which has given rise to “appearances of impropriety and risks of interference with the 2025 elections in New York City.” Mot. ¶ 5; see also 2/19/25 Tr. 23.

But the balance of the passage relies entirely on his claim of weaponization, citing to Trump’s Executive Order making false claims that Biden politicized DOJ, and eventually citing an appellate decision in the Blagojevich case that threw out those quid pro quos that involved trading of official positions, but not those involving personal benefit (seemingly suggesting that Eric Adams would get no personal benefit from dismissal).

In this case, the Department has exercised the capacious prosecutorial discretion that supports the Motion pursuant to the anti-weaponization policy articulated by President Trump on his first day in office. Specifically, Executive Order 14147, entitled Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government, sets forth the following policy: “It is the policy of the United States to identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the Federal Government related to the weaponization of law enforcement . . . .” 90 Fed. Reg. 8235. The express “purpose” of the policy is to “ensure accountability for the previous administration’s weaponization of the Federal Government against the American people,” which included conduct “oriented more toward inflicting political pain than toward pursuing actual justice or legitimate governmental objectives.” Id.

It cannot be denied that President Trump’s anti-weaponization policy is in the public interest as an important reform in response to recent abuses of the criminal justice system. The purpose of the policy, like the Petite policy, “is to protect the individual from any unfairness.” Rinaldi, 434 U.S. at 31. “The defendant, therefore, should receive the benefit of the policy whenever its application is urged by the Government.” Id. Here, for the reasons set forth in the Motion and at the February 19, 2025 hearing, that means the pending charges must be dismissed.

[snip]

As a legal matter, the Department’s conclusion that dismissal would serve the public good by deterring weaponization, and promoting Executive Branch national security and immigration objectives, is entirely proper. Every action that a diligent public servant takes should be designed to advance the public good, which is what the Motion seeks to achieve. If taking such steps were treated as the equivalent of a personal gift or bribe, whether under the ethics rules or bribery laws, government would literally grind to a halt. That is why “a proposal to trade one public act for another, a form of logrolling, is fundamentally unlike the swap of an official act for a private payment.” United States v. Blagojevich, 794 F.3d 729, 734 (7th Cir. 2015).

Remember: Judge Ho ruled that the publicity around the case did not violate local rules, and Adams never even claimed selective prosecution. This is Bove saying he knows better and Judge Ho has no say in the matter.

Having thus claimed that Trump’s own declaration that prosecutions against him were unfair can, in turn, taint entirely different prosecutions, his defense attorney then tries to flip his own alleged unethical conduct. Both in the introduction and in a long follow-up section (together making up about 8 pages of 18), Bove spins Danielle Sassoon and Hagan Scotten’s refusal to do something they viewed to be unethical as itself misconduct.

He does so in two ways. First, and most alarmingly, he suggests that resigning rather than taking an action they deemed unethical amounted to misconduct. Consider the logic of these two paragraphs (Bragg v. Jordan is the Second Circuit opinion holding that Mark Pomerantz had to respond to a Jim Jordan subpoena, sustaining Bove’s paranoia and Trump’s conspiracy theories about him):

The decisions by U.S. Attorney-2 and AUSA-1 to resign, rather than carry out their obligations under the Department’s chain of command, are not a basis to question the Motion. Each U.S. Attorney’s authority is derivate of the Executive Power that the President has delegated to the Attorney General. See 28 U.S.C. §§ 503, 509, 515. So too is the residual power of AUSAs, who are removable by the Attorney General. See 28 U.S.C. § 542. The Attorney General explained on February 5, 2025 that “it undermines the constitutional order and deprives the President of the benefit of his lawyers” when the Department’s attorneys “refuse to advance good faith arguments . . . .”3 SDNY’s prosecution team and Executive Staff did just that, preferring “political theatre” [sic] over their obligations to the Constitution and the public. Bragg v. Jordan, 669 F. Supp. 3d 257, 275 (S.D.N.Y. 2023).

SDNY has taken a markedly different tack in other cases by conceding that the office is bound by the Department’s senior leadership. In Blaszczak, SDNY felt “constrained” to “confess error at the direction of the Solicitor General’s Office” and to ask the Second Circuit to “set aside” trial convictions on several fraud counts. ECF No. 453 at 8, No. 18-2811 (2d Cir. Apr. 2, 2021); see also id. at 2 (noting that SDNY was “constrained to follow” the Department’s position); id. at 12 (“[T]he Government is constrained to concede that the § 641 object of each conspiracy was legally invalid. . . .”). In Paracha, an AUSA told the court that, because the dismissal motion had been “approved at the highest levels of the Department of Justice,” “w[e] do not have authority to make any changes to that document.” ECF No. 197 at 7 (emphasis added), No. 03 Cr. 1197 (S.D.N.Y. Dec. 20, 2019). Here, too, the SDNY prosecution team lacked authority to countermand a decision authorized by the Attorney General. Their misconduct is not a basis to extend this litigation, much less deny the Motion. [my emphasis]

3 https://www.justice.gov/ag/media/1388521/dl?inline.

In this passage, Bove presents what is the proper ethical decision — to end a relationship with a client if they ask you to do something you cannot ethically do — as instead misconduct (and he calls it misconduct even though, as he says elsewhere, Sassoon and Scotten are “the subjects of an ongoing investigation at the Department,” making it clear, on the same day the head of Office of Professional Responsibility was sacked, that he has prejudged the affair).

He does so while invoking the memo Pam Bondi issued last month, demanding that all lawyers of the Department be willing to “vigorously defend[] presidential policies and actions against legal challenges on behalf of the United States.” The consequence Bondi lays out for failing to zealously (a word repeated four times) defend Trump’s views is discipline or termination.

It is therefore the policy of the Department of Justice that any attorney who because of their personal political views or judgments declines to sign a brief or appear in court, refuses to advance good-faith arguments on behalf of the Administration, or otherwise delays or impedes the Department’s mission will be subject to discipline and potentially termination, consistent with applicable law.

But that’s not what happened here: Sassoon and Scotten resigned. (Indeed, Bove formally treated Sassoon’s offer, made to AG Bondi, to resign as such, rather than firing her while she remained an employee, which he could have done).

In other words, Bove is robbing Sassoon and Scotten of the ability to resign to avoid an unethical act. He’s saying the mere act of doing so — the act of making the ethically correct decision as a lawyer — amounts to misconduct.

And from there, he document dumps a bunch of communications Sassoon, Scotten, and some other AUSAs on the case sent, a veritable Twitter Files dump in a legal filing, clearly misrepresenting the context of at least some of them. (I’ve put the references to all eight Exhibits below.)

For example, Bove quotes from a text exchange three days after the election in which someone asks the very conservative Hagan Scotten if he’s going to go after a judgeship now that a Republican won. Scotten replies, “Got to convict Adams before I can think about anything else.” Bove quotes this three times!! But it appears to say precisely the opposite of what Bove implies — he uses it to slam Scotten (along with Sassoon) as “aggressive and careerist.” But instead it shows that Scotten was focused on what he was doing; he wasn’t rushing from what Bove claims is a dogshit prosecution to find a lifetime promotion. Plus, Bove claims that Scotten’s text, “illustrates why [Scotten] was later interested in using public filings to send messages to President Trump,” which makes no sense at all; it was already clear by the election that Trump was sucking up to Adams. If Scotten wanted to suck up to Trump, he would have ditched the prosecution ASAP, possibly even (as Bove himself did) rush to represent Trump in two criminal cases for attacking the country, in hopes of political gain.

Similarly, Bove treats a draft of the letter Sassoon ultimately sent to Pam Bondi on February 12 as a big gotcha, pretending that there’s no difference between “having the authority” to dismiss charges with “having a valid basis to do so.”

Four of the documents Bove cites (Exhibit B, Exhibit C, Exhibit G, and Exhibit H) discuss the drafting of this court filing, which was in turn a response to this inflammatory filing from Adams’ attorneys. The comments all seem to react to the headache Damian Williams had caused by promoting himself and writing an oped opposing corruption — though Adams’ letter make ridiculous claims that Williams was trying to get into the Mayoral race with just months to spare. Adams’ letter effectively says that Williams’ anti-corruption stance as US Attorney, one that targeted both overt Democratic donor Sam Bankman-Fried and Robert Menendez, was partisan. None of the comments supports Adams’ point — that there was some impropriety with the prosecution or prejudice for Adams before a jury. Nor do they conflict with Judge Ho’s opinion on Damian Williams’ op-ed, which is that it was a stretch to suggest it targeted Adams at all and certainly didn’t violate local rules.

Although Mayor Adams does not request relief under Local Rule 23.1, the Court notes that, after carefully reviewing Mr. Williams’s op-ed, the op-ed does not contain any statements that run afoul of the Rule’s prohibitions. In the op-ed, Mr. Williams provides hyperlinks to several prosecutions brought during his tenure as U.S. Attorney, including those of federal and state elected officials, but none concern Mayor Adams. In fact, the majority of the statements in the oped that Mayor Adams claims are problematic concern New York State rather than New York City politics. For example, Mayor Adams highlights Mr. Williams’s statements that “[t]he ability to raise obscene sums of money for a campaign is precisely the wrong bottleneck to elected office,” and that “[i]t reeks of pay-to-play corruption and is offensive to most New Yorkers . . . ” Jan. 18 Letter at 2 (quoting Williams’s op-ed). But those sentences are found in a paragraph lamenting the ability of candidates “to raise money from individuals or entities with business before the state,” opining that “[t]he state’s new matching funds program is woefully inadequate,” and arguing in favor of “a truly transformative public financing system for state elections. . . ” Id. (emphases added). They do not appear to be directed at New York City politics generally or at this case specifically.

There is one sentence in the op-ed stating that “[t]he public reporting alone paints a picture” that “America’s most vital city is being led with a broken ethical compass,” id. at 1, which could plausibly be read to be a reference to Mayor Adams (among others). This particular statement, however, “do[es] not cross the line drawn by [Local] Rule 23.1 in the sense that [it] do[es] not, by [itself], constitute opinions as to the Defendant[’s] guilt, and [is] not otherwise the type of statement[] proscribed by the rule.” United States v. Smith, 985 F. Supp. 2d 506, 539 (S.D.N.Y. 2013) (citing Local Rule 23.1(d)). Nor does the statement “go[] beyond the public record.”

There’s even a clear concern not to dictate anything to the incoming Main Justice team nor to piss off Trump, precisely the kind of deference Bove is demanding.

Plus, Bove omitted something from Sassoon’s letter to Bondi. Williams had a minimal role in the case.

As Mr. Bove’s memo acknowledges, and as he stated in our meeting of January 31, 2025, the Department has no concerns about the conduct or integrity of the line prosecutors who investigated and charged this case, and it does not question the merits of the case itself. Still, it bears emphasis that I have only known the line prosecutors on this case to act with integrity and in the pursuit of justice, and nothing I have learned since becoming U.S. Attorney has demonstrated otherwise. If anything, I have learned that Mr. Williams’s role in the investigation and oversight of this case was even more minimal than I had assumed. The investigation began before Mr. Williams took office, he did not manage the day-to-day investigation, and the charges in this case were recommended or approved by four experienced career prosecutors, the Chiefs of the SDNY Public Corruption Unit, and career prosecutors at the Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department. Mr. Williams’s decision to ratify their recommendations does not taint the charging decision

Emil Bove went fishing in the prosecutors personal emails (the other two AUSAs on the team were put on paid leave Friday, ensuring they lost access to these communications before Bove filed this), hoping to find corroboration for his false claims about politicization, and came up short. So instead, he simply made up they made Sassoon and Scotten look like careerists, when nothing he submitted supports that at all.

Twitter Files. An attempt to smear two prosecutors for making an ethical decision, precisely the basis of several ethical complaints raised against Bove himself.

Understand, too, Bove is playing a transparent game. Publishing these communications is a privacy violation, little different than the release of the Strzok and Page texts which DOJ subsequently determined was unlawful. Bove as much as concedes the point in his request asking to seal the exhibits.

In the Response, the Department sought to strike an appropriate balance between the public’s right of access, and the privacy interests of the attorneys at issue, by anonymizing the participants to communications. The participants are the subjects of an ongoing investigation at the Department.

[snip]

Even to the extent inferences regarding the identities of certain participants could be drawn based on connections to public reporting, that is not the case for each of the individual participants.

Of course, filing something under seal provides cause for the press to demand to have it unsealed under precisely the same “public right of access.” It won’t be sealed for long. And the only mystery about the identities of AUSAs 2, 3, and 4 is which is which member of the now-suspended prosecution team.

None of this helps Bove’s case. None of this disproves there was a quid pro quo. None of this presents any evidence that Sassoon or Scotten had any question about the ethics of their decision.

All it does is confirm that when Bove says he’s fighting weaponization, he means he’s going to go after anyone who gets in his way of weaponizing DOJ.

Exhibit A: Part of a package of communications Danielle Sassoon attached to an email; Bove claims that all are related to her resignation (it’s not clear they are)

On February 12, 2025, the recently-resigned Acting U.S. Attorney (U.S. Attorney-2) sent herself a draft letter stating that she was “personally disappointed in [her] predecessor’s self-serving actions after his departure. . . .” Ex. A,

[snip]

Attorney-2 sent an email attaching draft materials relating to her anticipated resignation. Ex. A. One of the documents was named “Adams PR,” i.e., press release, which suggests that she was already planning to publicize her resignation. Ex. A, Attachment 1. A another document, styled as a letter to the Attorney General, included the assertion that U.S. Attorney-2 “was personally disappointed in my predecessor’s self-serving actions after his departure, including the creation of a personal website.” Ex. A, Attachment 3. The draft letter also noted, in highlighted text, that “the Attorney General has the authority to order the dismissal of pending charges.” Id. On the day after sending the drafts, U.S. Attorney-2 emailed a letter to the Attorney General that omitted this language and claimed falsely: “The Government Does Not Have a Valid Basis To Seek Dismissal.”

Exhibit B: A discussion about how to respond to Eric Adams’ complaints about Damien Williams’ public comments

prior to making the public claim that only a “coward” or “fool” would sign the Motion, a recently-resigned AUSA from the SDNY prosecution team (AUSA-1) wrote the following regarding the letter that SDNY filed with the Court on January 22, 2025: “[U.S. Attorney-1] obviously has political ambitions, and I think suggesting we doubt that just costs us credibility.” Ex. B at 2

[snip]

AUSA-1 also wrote that it was “pretty plausible” to him that U.S. Attorney-1 “had a political motive in bringing this case.” Id.

[snip]

AUSA-1 pushed back. “I know that none of us were motivated by [U.S. Attorney-1’s] political aspirations, but I don’t think any of us know for sure what motivated [U.S. Attorney-1].” Id. AUSA-1 added the following comments in the draft of the letter:

  • “[T]he point to me is just to separate ourselves from [U.S. Attorney-1].”
  • “To me the point about the statements not naming EA feels a little too lawyerly—almost a technicality in this context since [U.S. Attorney-1] was obviously referring to EA [in the op-ed].”
  • “I don’t want to ask anyone to reject the theory that [U.S. Attorney-1] had a political motive in bringing this case. Seems pretty plausible to me.”
  • “I don’t want to say anything that picks a fight with EA’s accusation of political ambitions against [U.S. Attorney-1]: [U.S. Attorney-1] obviously has political ambitions, and I think suggesting we doubt that just costs us credibility.” Ex. B.

Exhibit C: Another discussion about how to respond to Eric Adams’ complaints about Damien Williams’ public comments

AUSA-1 explained that he hoped to “distance” the SDNY prosecution team from U.S. Attorney-1, “enough that [Judge] Ho and [President] Trump will know we don’t approve of what he did, but not so much that we magnify the scandal.”

[snip]

On January 19, 2025, AUSA-1 circulated a draft of the letter SDNY ultimately filed on January 22, 2025, in which the prosecutors argued—wrongly—that Mayor Adams’ “criticism of the article and the fact of its publication are beside the point.” ECF No. 102. In the email attaching the draft of the letter, AUSA-1 explained, “[b]asically, I tried to . . . distance us from [U.S. Attorney-1] enough that [Judge] Ho and [President] Trump will know we don’t approve of what he did, but not so much that we magnify the scandal.” Ex. C. In response to the draft, AUSA-3 argued, “I think we want to create distance between those prosecutors and the [] US Attorney.” Id. Another AUSA on the SDNY prosecution team (AUSA-4) added, “I agree that we should create some space from [U.S. Attorney-1], but I also think we should avoid anything that looks like us fighting with [U.S. Attorney-1] (which would be counterproductive).”

As the SDNY prosecution team continued to debate the substance of the draft letter, AUSA4 suggested that the prosecutors should argue that Mayor Adams was “wrong about his claim that our prosecution is motivated by [U.S. Attorney-1’s] political interests.” Ex. C.

Exhibit D: A November 8 text in which Scotten said he wasn’t going to pursue a judgeship right away

Just days after the 2024 election, in response to a text message asking if it was “time” for AUSA-1 to “take a seat on the bench,” AUSA-1 responded: “Got to convict Adams before I can think about anything else.”

[snip]

On November 8, 2024, AUSA-1 received a message with the following question: “You think it’s time to take a seat on the bench? Lol.” Ex. D. AUSA-1’s response included, “Got to convict Adams before I can think about anything else.”

[snip]

It is thus apparent from the context that, just as AUSA-1 hoped to convict Mayor Adams as the last notch in his belt before he took a “seat on the bench,” Ex. D,

Exhibit E: A July 17, 2024 discussion about trial strategy. 

At least one of the prosecutors was as aggressive and careerist as U.S. Attorney-1. For example, on July 18, 2024, AUSA-1 exchanged messages with another AUSA on the SDNY prosecution team (AUSA-2) about efforts to “exclude” a “defense witness” in this case. Ex. E. AUSA-1 remarked that an “invocation is better” than “[l]etting him come in and refuse cross.”

Exhibit F: A September 5, 2024 comment from one of the other AUSAs about how they portrayed the influence relationship

On September 5, 2024, another AUSA on the SDNY prosecution team (AUSA-3) acknowledged in a text message to AUSA-1 that “we did a lot of gymnastics around the influence point” in the Indictment, and argued that “maybe making him the one exploiting the corrupt relationship works better.” Ex. F

Exhibit G: A January 21 response to a draft of the filing

Later on January 21, AUSA-1 circulated a revised version of the draft with comment bubbles that included:

  • With respect to the “beside the point” sentence that was ultimately included in the letter, AUSA-1 noted that U.S. Attorney-2 “suggested this sentence, which makes the point less oblique—her objection to the prior version—while in my view still preserving our effort to distance ourselves from the article.”
  • AUSA-1 also noted: “I think we have a sufficiently strong ending without the prior ending (any US attorney would signed) which [U.S. Attorney-2] and others felt might be read as an attempt to hem in the new crew at main justice before they had a chance to weigh in on the case.”

Exhibit H: Another message about the January 21 filing

In a separate message, AUSA-1 asserted that he preferred a strategy that “buys us more credibility by first making clear we’re not defending the [U.S. Attorney-1] article before then going on the attack.” Ex. H

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Attention Deficit and Defiance Division of Labor: There’s Stuff Happening Where You’re Not Looking

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Last week, I wrote a post about the five ways Trump is sabotaging America. Those included:

  • The original Project 2025 plan, an Orbanist plot to turn the US into an elected authoritarian government
  • DOGE [sic], which is often mistaken for Project 2025, but which is far more reckless and destructive and as such has created far more backlash than Project 2025 might otherwise have
  • Trump’s useful idiots, like the HHS Secretary who is barely responding to a Measles outbreak
  • The personalization of DOJ, protecting not only Trump, but also his favored criminals
  • Trump’s capitulation to Russia

As I’ve been puzzling through the, in my opinion, catastrophic distraction of Democratic in-fighting over how to respond to the SOTU, I came to realize one source of the general frustration. A lot of people still don’t understand there’s a natural division of labor in who should fight fascists how, one which is similar to those five areas of sabotage. As a result, there’s a demand that the national Democratic Party (appear to) take the lead on everything, a demand that invites those complaining to outsource their own agency completely, as if they simply hire people to do their politics for them every two or four years.

The demand that Hakeem Jeffries take the lead on issues that really aren’t central to his job breeds passivity and frustration and distracts from stuff being done by others better positioned to do so.

The national Dems are not the best suited for some of this, partly because civil society has more freedom and standing to sue, partly because within the Democratic party, local parties (and future candidates) should take the lead, and partly because polarization is going to be a big barrier to effective mobilization elsewhere. If a Black or Jewish Democrat from New York pushes an issue, those we need to mobilize will be far less likely to respond because their very identities have become defined in opposition to urban America (and all the euphemisms that entails). Moreover, the Democratic Party’s job is to shepherd legislation and win elections, and the fight against fascism is both broader than and more urgent than elections 20 months away.

I want to use this post to lay out what I mean by that, and also as a way to catalog some of what has been done, but also some areas where more needs to be done by precisely the kind of people who spent a week screaming at Democrats.

DOGE [sic]

I make a distinction here between combatting DOGE and other policy considerations. That’s true because — as has been true from the very start, civil society and Democratic Attorneys General and people who’ve been fired are better situated to fight DOGE in the courts, because they can get standing. On the legal front, there has been mixed success, with Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger giving up his termination challenge (but not before helping to save thousands of jobs and creating a precedent that reinforced other legal decisions) after an adverse ruling in the DC Circuit, but with others — most importantly two lawsuits representing USAID providers — surviving the first review from SCOTUS.

Tracking these lawsuits is as overwhelming for people as tracking the actual legal investigations into Trump was, with the result (I suspect) that people don’t see them. The good, the bad, and the promising — it’s all a blur. Plus, legal challenges are slow.

But we’re learning more and more from these lawsuits already, which is having a snowball effect, just a bit of which appears in this post (on this page, I’m tracking lawsuit declarations I find particularly interesting).

The most interesting developments this week may be several different lawsuits challenging DOGE on an Appointments Clause theory, basically that Elon is exercising the kind of authority that would require Senate confirmation.

New Mexico

Does 1-26

Japanse American Citizens

Because DOGE has been so disorganized, DOJ’s lawyers are being fed garbage to, in turn, feed courts in good faith. And then, over and over, Trump ends up saying things that debunk what the lawyers have been fed to say. Judges are beginning to get fed up, and are granting plaintiffs more discovery. Anna Bower has been tracking this Calvinball relentlessly.

The other civil society success — perhaps the biggest ones so far — are the calls, town halls, and protests that outside groups like Indivisible and Tesla Takedown have organized. These have significantly increased the discomfort of Republicans. While, thus far, that has led only to some pathetic meetings where they ask Elon to stop fucking everything up, the recent focus on the VA and Social Security may raise their discomfort further.

One thing that could be better organized, locally, would be to magnify the stories of those affected by DOGE cuts. As I said last week, rather than turning government workers into villains, DOGE had made the importance of government visible. And the people being arbitrarily and cruelly fired are the daughters and sons of communities that have a distorted understanding of government. This story-telling, done by word of mouth and local press, likely is better served if it has no overt tie to the Democratic party, because otherwise polarization may undercut the lessons of the firings. But it is the kind of thing that can be done in letters to the editor in local newspapers.

Journalists continue to track DOGE’s bullshit claims of savings (I’m attempting to track such debunkings here). Where we need to get better — and this is something people should do on calls to their members of Congress — is to emphasize the way Republicans have ceded the Federal government to Elon’s DOGE boys even though their claims of savings are fraudulent (to say nothing of the kind of past associations, such as ties to sketchy Russian NGOs, that would disqualify them in any half-serious background check). Think about ways to mock Republicans for being so stupid they keep falling for Elon’s bullshit claims, even as he confesses he keeps misplacing Ebola prevention and similar things.

Entitlements and Funding Government

DC Democrats have to do several things in the days — and it is just days — ahead. First, they have to optimize the outcome of a continuing resolution, either by withholding votes and making Republicans own a shutdown or by joining in a continuing resolution that limits Trump’s ability to ignore Congress’ appropriations (or better yet, adds weight to the legal challenges) going forward.

Republicans are attempting to get a year-long continuing resolution on their own. If they do, it’ll be a first, but could well be the source of contention going forward.

The other thing Democrats need to do is either save Medicaid (and Social Security) or make Republicans own any cuts too, as well as the tax cuts for people like Elon Musk. This provides the opportunity to sow dissension within the Republican party. Charles Gaba has calculations of how many people rely on Medicaid, by district, which can be useful when calling Members.

House Republicans only managed to pass a budget through a gimmick: by ordering House Energy and Commerce to come up with $880 billion in cuts, but without mentioning what those cuts will obviously be: Medicaid. But the Congressional Budget Office this week called that out, holding that the only way they can fulfill the terms of that budget is with the cuts they’ve tried to hide.

The math is impossible. And because it is impossible, Republicans will have a very hard time not taking each other out (or creating useful defections). Meanwhile, they’ll be doing that while justifying tax cuts for the richest man in the world.

Thus far, Trump’s threats have kept Republicans unified. But that may well break down in days ahead (and if it doesn’t, Democrats have to be prepared to make Republicans own the consequences).

DOJ

From the start, I’ve thought two things might lead the corrupt incompetence at DOJ to blow up on itself (on top of the aforementioned good faith lawyers being stuck telling fictions to courts). First, unless key lawyers were willing to tell really outrageous lies in court, reality would debunk many of the conspiracy theories that have been fueling right wing fever dreams for years. And second, their own conflicts would begin to blow up in their faces.

This week, Kash Patel had to quietly debunk a conspiracy theory that George Papadopoulos has been spinning for years, that a female Special Agent who was part of an effort to learn of his ties to Russia was a (sexual) honey pot.

Kash, now the boss of the Agent, had to defend her for simply doing her job.

More spectacularly, Pam Bondi bolloxed an effort to politicize the Jeffrey Epstein files, in part because she stupidly thought the White House wouldn’t worry about such releases, in part because she (unknowingly, apparently) released stuff that was already public, and in part because she created dissension among the propagandist ranks.

When more than a dozen MAGA-aligned activists and social media influencers gathered at the White House last week, they had no idea they were about to be handed binders titled “Epstein Files: Phase 1”– and neither did senior White House officials who organized the event, according to multiple sources familiar with the event.

Attorney General Pam Bondi and her team did not inform White House officials in advance that she planned to distribute the binders, which contained almost no new information regarding convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein — and now the move has ruffled feathers among those closest to President Donald Trump, including his senior White House staff, sources tell ABC News.

The move faced widespread criticism, not only from Democrats but also from some of the president’s most loyal supporters.

White House staff moved quickly to try and contain the fallout, privately reaching out to influencers who were critical of Bondi and the move online, according to sources.

Update, March 9: More on the way MAGAts are turning on Bondi.

There are a hundred ways reality — as documented in files to which Kash and Bondi now have unfettered access — conflicts with the conspiracy beliefs of these people. Unless they get better at managing expectations of the mob, we should expect similar embarrassing concessions in days ahead, concessions that piss off the most committed MAGAts and make them distrust their own.

More interesting are developments in the corruption of Emil Bove and Ed Martin.

Three entities asked for scrutiny of Bove for the way he coerced lawyers to dismiss the Eric Adams case when serving as Acting Deputy Attorney General (now that Todd Blanche has been confirmed on a party line vote, Bove becomes PADAG, basically the guy running DOJ day to day).  A group of ethics experts have asked Judge Dale Ho to consider Bove’s actions as he decides how to resolve that case. Jamie Raskin and Jasmine Crockett wrote Pam Bondi with a series of questions, including whether Bove destroyed evidence (the notes of a January 31 meeting). And Senate Judiciary Dems asked the NY Bar to conduct a misconduct inquiry into Bove. (At least one NGO already filed a bar complaint.)

Then, later in the week, Senate Judiciary Dems filed a bar complaint against Acting DC US Attorney Ed Martin for representing January 6 defendants at the same time as approving the dismissal of their cases. That, too, follows a previous bar complaint (filed in Missouri) for Martin’s conflicts. But (in addition to some of Martin’s other wildly partisan actions) it adds a bit: that Martin allegedly had private conversations with pro se January 6 defendant William Pope, who is still trying to get files he’s sure must exist; this is another conspiracy theory that may blow up in wildly interesting ways, now that Martin has access to all these files.

What I noticed the Court in ECF No. 391 was a completely true and factual statement regarding U.S. Attorney Ed Martin’s telling me that the files I now have are no longer considered sensitive for me to possess. However, since a dubious representative of the government, AUSA Jennifer Leigh Blackwell, is now claiming the opposite of what I truthfully reported to the Court in ECF No. 391 (while she is signing under Mr. Martin’s name), this is essentially a government attack on my integrity. Because AUSA Blackwell has attacked me and because the entirety of her filing (ECF No. 392) is so at odds with President Trump’s directive and the current policy of Department of Justice, I suspect she filed her own rogue and unhinged ranting rather than consulting the official position of the government and her boss, Ed Martin.

This is the kind of complaint that could be written on a near-daily basis about Martin. He recently wrote Georgetown Law imagining he could dictate what a private Catholic university teaches, which elicited a superb response. It’s the kind of thing that lefty pundits should be focused on instead of screaming at each other. It is far more urgent to make Ed Martin’s shenanigans an anvil around Pam Bondi’s DOJ than it is to fight about the stupidest way to distract from Trump imploding.

Plus, that’s not the only trouble Martin has caused.

In the early days of Trump’s attack on DEI, Trump’s flunkies adopted two claims from Elon: That the Biden Administration had misstepped when it appropriated $20 billion in funds to green lenders. And that New York City had spent $80 million on luxury hotels to house migrants.

I’ve already written about the former case: how Bove and Martin forced Denise Cheung out at DC USAO because she found a Project Veritas video insufficient evidence to obtain criminal process clawing back funds. Martin kept trying, in the kind of judge shopping that can really piss off judges. Meanwhile, Mark Zaid, who represents the guy in the PV video, says that his client had nothing to do with the disbursements that EPA has attempted to clawed back. Lee Zeldin is trying to get EPA’s Acting Inspector General to find him an excuse for all this now, which seems rather late given that funds have already been frozen. (Senate Dems also sent Zeldin a letter debunking his claims last month.)

Meanwhile, even as Judge Jennifer Rearden this week denied New York City’s bid to get the $80 million back while the two sides fight about it [docket], one of the people Kristi Noem fired and accused of acting unlawfully, Mary Comans, has sued.

That same day Defendant DHS publicly issued a press release falsely stating that Ms. Comans had been fired “for circumventing leadership to unilaterally make egregious payments for luxury NYC hotels for migrants.” The release also noted that “[u]nder President Trump and Secretary Noem’s leadership, DHS will not sit idly and allow deep state activists to undermine the will and safety of the American people.” Because of the issuance of the press release and other steps undertaken by the Defendants, Ms. Comans’ actions were widely, publicly and falsely condemned as “illegal” and “criminal” by rightwing influencers, to include Elon Musk, on various social media platforms and news outlets, such as shown below:

In a declaration Comans submitted on February 26 in the Does 1-26 suit, Mary Comans debunked much of what DHS has publicly claimed about the clawback, which means Comans’ lawsuit is likely to surface these issues. I had noticed this myself, but in between her healthy obsession about the lies the Administration tells about Elon’s role on DOGE, Anna Bower wrote it up here. Comans is also represented by Mark Zaid; you can support his work helping fired government workers tell the truth about what happened here.

Yesterday, Marisa Kabas reported that the top lawyer at FEMA was forced out, possibly because he refused to sign a declaration retconning this clawback.

Joshua Stanton had served as Acting Chief Counsel at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for less than one week when he was placed on administrative leave Wednesday and reportedly escorted out of the building. Why?

According to people at FEMA privy to the details of Stanton’s dismissal—which was first reported by me via Bluesky Wednesday afternoon—Stanton was asked sometime this week to write a memo stating that the mid-February seizure of $80 million from the city of New York meant for migrant shelters had legal justification; this was despite the fact that it almost certainly did not. The money that was taken back was lawfully obligated by FEMA pursuant to congressionally allocated funds. Stanton reportedly refused to write such a memo, The Handbasket has learned, and then he was put on leave. It’s not clear at this point if the refusal to write the memo is the reason he was placed on leave.

In other words, between the public ousters and and the problematic legal claims, Trump’s flunkies may soon find themselves unable to defend past false claims they made in ways that could blow up in spectacular fashion (as I’ve suggested, the same is true for Pete Marocco, who just got enjoined in an awesome new lawsuit, but I’ll come back to that).

Corruption

There’s one area that has always been difficult to grab a hold of: Trump’s corruption. There has always been so much that it’s hard to focus on any one bit. That’s been even more true now that Pam Bondi has made it clear she’ll never prosecute Trump for bribery. And it has been matched by Elon.

I’m going to catalog just some of the coverage from recent weeks.

First, Wired reported that in addition to all the known kickbacks Trump got before he became President (from tech executives and media outlets), he continues to engage in pay-to-play with a price tag of $5 million for a face-to-face meeting.

Business leaders can secure a one-on-one meeting with the president at Mar-a-Lago for $5 million, according to sources with direct knowledge of the meetings. At a so-called candlelight dinner held as recently as this past Saturday, prospective Mar-a-Lago guests were asked to spend $1 million to reserve a seat, according to an invitation obtained by WIRED.

[snip]

It’s unclear where the money is going and what it will be used for, but one source with direct knowledge of the dinners said “it’s all going to the library,” as in the presidential library that will ostensibly be built once Trump leaves office. MAGA Inc spent over $450 million to elect Trump in 2024, though Trump is not legally permitted to run for a third presidential term in 2028.

Also this week, Public Citizen started tracking what it calls “corporate clemency” — all the corporations whose legal troubles have been dismissed in bulk or specifically.

Now, just over one month into Trump’s second term, it’s clear that the permissive approach to corporate crime and misconduct is returning with a vengeance.

Whole categories of enforcement have come to a screeching halt, including:

  • All Consumer Financial Protection Bureau cases, seven of which the Trump administration has already moved to dismiss,
  • Justice Department cases brought by the Civil Rights and Environment and Natural Resource divisions, Investigations and cases under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and
  • Equal Employment Opportunity Commission cases defending transgender and gender non-conforming workers from workplace abuse and discrimination, six of which the administration has already moved to dismiss, and
  • An increasing number of Securities and Exchange Commission cases against cryptocurrency corporations, two of which have been paused and four of which the administration has moved to dismiss.

Meanwhile Forbes’ Zach Everson has been pulling at some strings on a Nasdaq-listed firm with suspect trading just before Don Jr and Eric Trump were named as advisors. He first laid out the trading pattern.

Between Feb. 12 and Dec. 29, 2024, trading in Dominari Holdings—a Nasdaq-listed firm that specializes in wealth management, investment banking, sales and trading, asset management and capital investment—averaged 11,500 shares a day, never exceeding 71,000 shares, with a price range of $1.10 to $3.20.

On Dec. 30, trading shot up to 358,000 shares, kicking off a surge that saw daily volume average 1.2 million shares a day through Feb. 10, 2025—when it skyrocketed to 23.7 million shares—as the stock price climbed from $0.83 to $6.50.

On Feb. 11, an hour before markets opened, Dominari Holdings announced that Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump had joined its advisory board and acquired an undisclosed amount of shares in the company, sending the stock to a 52-week high of $11.33.

The price peaked at $13.58 two days later but has since fallen, closing at $6.74 on Tuesday.

Then Everson showed how little evidence there is that the board existed before Trump’s sons joined it.

[B]etween June 10, 2021, when the company was named AIkido Pharma, and Feb. 12, 2025, the day after the Trumps’ involvement was announced, Dominari Holdings did not submit a filing to the SEC on that mentioned an advisory board or board of advisors, except for references in the chief operating officer’s bio stating he had been a member for three months in 2022.

An online search failed to provide evidence of the advisory board’s prior existence: it is not mentioned on any website—including Dominari Holdings’ own—prior to Feb. 11, in a search on Google.

Dominari Holdings also did not file its advisory board agreement with the SEC until Feb. 12, a day after announcing the Trumps’ membership.

This feels not dissimilar to some of the shenanigans relating to the funding of Truth Social (while several of his associates were criminally prosecuted, one is attempting to get an SEC action against him thrown out) or Trump’s Meme Coin, below.

Then, even as Trump has rolled out a crypto strategic reserve (one that many crypto experts hate and one that failed to rally the market), there have been several developments that show how he intends to permit corruption (his own, and others’) via cryptocurrency.

As I keep noting, the SEC, for example, has paused its suit against World Liberty Financial investor Justin Sun, anticipating a settlement. As Judd Legum describes, this follows the Chinese-linked businessman’s multi-million “investment” in Trump’s crypto currency.

In March 2023, the SEC charged Sun and three of his companies, accusing him of marketing unregistered securities and “fraudulently manipulating the secondary market” for a crypto token. The SEC accused Sun of wash trading, which involves buying and selling a token quickly to fraudulently manufacture artificial interest.

[snip]

Sun’s purchase put millions in Trump’s pocket. WLF was entitled to “$30 million of initial net protocol revenue” in a reserve “to cover operating expenses, indemnities, and obligations.” After the reserve was met, a company owned by Trump would receive “75% of the net protocol revenues.” Sun’s purchase covered the entire reserve. As of December 1, this amounted to $18 million for Trump — 75% of the revenues of all other tokens sold at the time. Sun also joined WLF as an advisor. While the purchase benefited Trump, WLF tokens are essentially worthless for Sun, as they are non-transferable and locked indefinitely.

Nevertheless, Sun has since invested another $45 million in WLF, bringing his total investment to $75 million. This means Sun’s purchases have sent more than $50 million to Trump, Bloomberg reported. Sun has also continued to shower Trump with praise. On January 22, Sun posted on X, “if I have made any money in cryptocurrency, all credit goes to President Trump.”

And, as Chris Murphy laid out, he used his Doge Coin to bilk his rubes, again.

Both of these are ways for foreigners to launder cash to Trump. Now that the bribery is happening in plain sight, we need to hammer home the implicatioms of that: If you can’t explain why Trump betrayed America and all her alliances, you cannot rule out old-fashioned bribery, not least given the impossibly lucrative deals Russia first dangled to get Trump’s interest.

And then there’s Musk, who happens to be included in Kirill Dmitriev’s current dangles before Trump.

Dmitriev has called for the Trump administration and Russia to start “building a better future for humanity,” and to “focus on investment, economic growth, AI breakthroughs,” and long-term joint scientific projects like “Mars exploration,” even posting a highly produced computer graphic, on Elon Musk’s X social media platform, showing an imagined joint US-Russia-Saudi mission to Mars, on board what appears to be a Space X rocket.

With Musk, it’s a two-edged sword. There are the legal investigations that stand to be dismissed, as two of the items on Public Citizen’s tracker have been.

And Elon Musk, the CEO of Neuralink, SpaceX, Tesla, X (formerly Twitter), and xAI, which started the Trump administration collectively facing 17 federal investigations.

  • Neuralink faces a USDA investigation into alleged misconduct related to the treatment of test monkeys and an SEC investigation alleging unspecified misconduct.
  • SpaceX has been in the process of negotiating a resolution with the EPA over repeated pollution discharges in Texas, an FAA lawsuit alleging multiple safety violations involving rocket launches in Florida, and an NLRB complaint alleging the company illegally fired workers who criticized Musk. The Trump administration dismissed a DOJ civil rights lawsuit against SpaceX alleging discrimination against asylees and refugees in hiring.
  • Tesla faces a criminal fraud investigation by the DOJ over exaggerated claims about the “full self-driving” capability of vehicles’ “Autopilot” mode, a related SEC investigation into whether exaggerated claims about “full self-driving” vehicles misled investors, a joint investigation by the DOJ and SEC into Tesla’s plans to construct a private residence for Musk, an EEOC investigation into alleged racial discrimination and workplace retaliation at a Tesla factory in California, four NHTSA investigations into vehicle problems, and seven open NLRB cases alleging unfair labor practices and covering up to 140,474 employees. An OSHA investigation into a worker’s death at a Tesla factory in Texas was closed in January, though no announcement as to whether a citation was issued has been disclosed.
  • X (formerly Twitter) faces an SEC lawsuit against Musk alleging misconduct related to the CEO’s $44 billion takeover of the company and an NLRB case alleging unfair labor practices.
  • xAI faces an EPA investigation into air pollution concerns related to its “Colossus” supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee. [my emphasis]

Musk’s conflicts are something that NYT has also tracked well.

Congressman Greg Casar has been pushing to get details of the death of the Tesla worker, Victor Joe Gomez Sr., released, with a fair amount of coverage in the Texas press.

But even as Casar is having to fight for details that should be readily available, and even as Musk’s private businesses continue to experience spectacular failures, even as Elon cuts off Ukraine, Trump’s government is sneaking deals to Starlink on the side, both in the form of FAA funds and rural broadband.

The degree to which Trump is selling out government, a story fundamental to the story of DOGE, is being covered, though (with the exception of Musk’s conflicts) often by less mainstream outlets: Wired and Forbes and Bloomberg and Judd Legum and American Prospect (NPR got the exclusive on the Public Citizen report).

This is undoubtedly an area where Gerald Connolly needs to pick up the slack from where Jamie Raskin left off with his move to House Judiciary. Or perhaps Casar, newly elected Progressive Caucus Chair and a Member of DOGE on Oversight, can take the lead.

But this is an area where a story in plain sight needs to be tied back to the destruction of government by the same corrupt people.

Trump is destroying government. But he is getting paid handsomely at the same time. At one level or another, Trump is destroying America because he is getting paid to do so. The better we can convey that, the greater likelihood that some of the rubes who got ripped off on the Doge Coin will come to understand they’ve been betrayed.

Russia

Any pushback on Trump’s capitulation to Russia has been distracted by everything else, starting with Trump’s equivocating trade war with our closest trading partners.

Though ironically, the line from Elissa Slotkin, hailing Ronald Reagan, to which many objected was a longer play on Trump’s attempt to compare himself with Reagan, a comment on Trump’s capitulation.

President Trump loves to promise “peace through strength.” That’s actually a line he stole from Ronald Reagan. But let me tell you, after the spectacle that just took place in the Oval Office last week, Reagan must be rolling over in his grave. We all want an end to the war in Ukraine, but Reagan understood that true strength required America to combine our military and economic might with moral clarity.

And that scene in the Oval Office wasn’t just a bad episode of reality TV. It summed up Trump’s whole approach to the world. He believes in cozying up to dictators like Vladimir Putin and kicking our friends, like Canada, in the teeth. He sees American leadership as merely a series of real estate transactions.

As a Cold War kid, I’m thankful it was Reagan and not Trump in office in the 1980s. Trump would have lost us the Cold War.

But while Americans are distracted by Trump’s erratic trade wargaming and the Democrats’ own infighting, the rest of the world is stepping up, most famously in this speech from center-right French politician Claude Malhuret.

There is dissension in Europe: While Giorgia Meloni is joining other European countries, she refuses to be led by France.

I’ve heard of non-public discussions among American national security types and members of Congress. And even Lindsey Graham, who shamelessly betrayed Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the ambush in the Oval Office, is pushing for Trump to demand something from Russia, too.

Thus far, the response to Trump’s capitulation to Russia has been muted. But it is also a topic that unites strange bedfellows, which showed up in the town halls last week.

Trump and his Russian handlers believed this would be easy. Thus far, it doesn’t look it’ll work out that way.

Attention

This post links almost 100 links (thanks, in part, to the linking ethics of Public Citizen and Everson). That’s a testament to the flood of information out there, much of it promising, about efforts to fight back against fascism. That flood is a response to Trump’s own flood. The two together have the means to overwhelm.

I won’t defend everything Jeffries said (or was portrayed as saying, by outlets whose bread and butter lies in stoking dissension among Democrats) this week. But much of what he said and did appear to be guided by a view on attention that is, in my opinion, quite right: Trump always camouflages what he does, including some fundamental weaknesses, with a flood the zone strategy.

Congressman Jeffries said Trump’s many actions to date, including mass firings of federal workers, freezing federal funds approved by Congress, and steps to eliminate critical agencies, are part of a larger strategy to “flood the zone” and distract from actions that Jeffries and other Democrats consistently say will devastate millions of Americans.

“[It’s] designed to create the appearance of inevitability [and] the notion that Donald Trump is unstoppable–he ain’t unstoppable,” said Jeffries, who noted, “Not a single bill connected to Trump’s Project 2025 agenda has passed the House because it’s unified Democratic opposition.” He continued, “But we’re supposed to believe it’s all inevitable…He’s invincible…Show me the evidence.”

This is a war for attention. Trump’s success at that war is the primary reason he won the election — and he was helped then, as now, by the fact that the primary counter-flood Democrats cared to mount was to attack each other.

Similarly, no matter what you think about Slotkin’s response (which was in any case not beset by weaknesses of presentation virtually all of these are) she also said something important. Rather than doom scroll on Bluesky, pick an issue, and start building from the bottom up.

Three, organize. Pick just one issue you’re passionate about — and engage. And doom scrolling doesn’t count. Join a group that cares about your issue, and act. And if you can’t find one, start one.

Some of the most important movements in our history have come from the bottom up.

You don’t have to, nor should you, wait for DC to lead the movement you want. Pick a corner of it and take action.

Leadership

I end with this: We’re seeing that happen around the country, as evidenced by three stories from recent days.

There’s the testimony of Meirav Solomon’s in yesterday’s sanctuary city hearing. Solomon challenged the notion that you shut down antisemitism by policing campuses. Indeed, she focused instead on Trump’s cuts to Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. She pointed to the antisemitism of, “the President’s close advisors [who] raise their arms in fascist salutes.”

We must be honest about the most urgent threat to the Jewish community. It is not student protestors but the bloody legacy of Pittsburgh and Poway, Charlottesville and the Capitol Riot.

There’s how a community responded when the school board of a predominantly white community north of Pittsburgh voted against a young adult book about the Tulsa riots, Angel of Greenwood. The community came together to bring its author, Randi Pink, to town to speak to both students and the community more generally.

After the school board voted against adding Pink’s book to the Pine-Richland School District’s ninth-grade curriculum, the community decided it was time to act.

Macmillan, the publisher of “Angel of Greenwood,” sent Pine-Richland students 100 copies of the book to distribute to the community. Pink also traveled from her small town outside of Birmingham, Alabama, to come to Richland to meet with the community that had so fiercely supported her work.

“The supporters in the community were relentless in making sure I got there. Some people put in $5, $10, even $600. I waived my fee, but the community said, ‘Absolutely not. We’re going to pay you.’ I’m a single mother, so I had to bring my babies with me,” she said. “They said, ‘we’re going to pay for all your way.’

“They galvanized around me. I support them very much for that.”

[snip]

Students and parents raised nearly $6,000 for Pink to come to Pennsylvania, where the author held two talks — one for students of the school district to ask questions and the other was open to all community members.

[snip]

“If more of us are brave enough to step into communities and say, ‘You know what? Let’s just talk. I think we will get a whole lot further like that in all aspects of society.”

There’s Zooey Zephyr, the Montana legislator whose speech in support of drag shows turned the tide against anti-trans votes, as told by Erin Reed.

Something remarkable happened in Montana today. As has become routine, anti-trans bills were up for debate—the state has spent more than half of its legislative days this session pushing such bills through committees and the House floor, with Republicans largely voting in lockstep. But something changed.

A week ago, transgender Representative Zooey Zephyr delivered a powerful speech against a bill that would create a separate indecent exposure law for transgender people. Since then, momentum on the House floor slowed. Today, two of the most extreme bills targeting the transgender community came up for a vote. Transgender Representatives Zooey Zephyr and SJ Howell gave impassioned speeches—this time, they broke through. In a stunning turn, 29 Republicans defected, killing both bills. One Republican even took the floor to deliver a scathing rebuke of the bill’s sponsor.

You reclaim America not in DC, but in talks on campuses, in Montana, and Pittsburgh.

That is happening. You just need to know where to look.

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NOAA: The Biggest Little Agency in America

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What We are Quietly Losing in All the Tumult

Last week the ghouls of DOGE came to gut NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) by firing all the probationary employees, because they were the easiest to fire. It was terrible, but it won’t be their last visit.

I wanted to take a moment to focus on this small and amazing agency because in all the chaotic headlines, outrageous speeches, and feral conduct, it’s easy to miss how consequential the Trumpist destruction of NOAA will be, if no one can stop it. Americans, and to a degree the whole world, depend on the nerdy, devoted folks at NOAA to keep the fish biting, the crops abundant, the land peaceful, and their homes and businesses safe and dry.

I’ve often thought of them as some of the wonderful unsung heroes of the federal government. I learned about NOAA in college. We worked with their oceanography data, pulled down from a satellite to a 486 computer into our little marine science lab in 1993. All their data, then as now, was freely available to anyone in the world. Scientists, students, and even enthusiasts still dig into their archives all the time, and the people at NOAA often look for ways to make their data more useful to anyone who wants it. It has made life easier on this planet in uncountable little ways we’ll never know about.

I don’t want to focus on the most famous parts of NOAA, the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center, not because they’re not important. They are incredibly important: key to saving lives and property, and keeping people informed during emergencies. But these are the two parts of NOAA you most likely already know about. The National Weather Service is the best forecaster and weather analysis agency on this little blue marble we call home, and we see its work every time we look at local news and weather. NWS data populates the various apps on our phones, sends out warnings, and appears on our local news stations.

You also probably know about the National Hurricane Center. That’s the website and associated services that we turn to in hurricane season, to watch and wait to see the fates of the gulf states and the Eastern seaboard every year. It is the high drama of global weather. It attracts the news, storm chasers and media audiences.

Hurricane season, unlike tornadoes, storms, or the long slow violence of climate change, has a ready-for-TV narrative. The danger forms over the sea and creeps nearer and nearer to where people live, and no one is ever quite sure how it will turn out until the danger hits land. This part of weather forecasting even has its own mediagenic hero squad — the hurricane hunters who fly through the eye and eye wall of hurricanes in beefy planes, letting NOAA gather data that can’t be gathered any other way.

You probably know that NOAA has weather satellites. NOAA operates 18 satellites in total. Some track American and global weather, but they also track fires, desertification, drought, heat, tree cover, and more values besides — across the whole world.

But there’s so many more parts you may not know.

In the US, NOAA sent up around 76,000 weather balloons a year equipped with radiosondes, a instrument that gathers and transmits data for NWS upper air network, they’re creating a long term archive of weather, also gathering data that can’t be gathered with cameras in space. They’re even keeping track of cosmic rays as part of the radiosonde telemetry. In theory, that means the first signs of a cosmic event like a supernova could reach earth via NOAA first. Either way, their data is invaluable for many other federal agencies, as well as the public, and private businesses. But with the cuts that have already happened, not as many of those balloons are going up.

NOAA has always worked hand in glove with their more famous cousin, NASA. Though NOAA looks inward more than outward to space, as NASA does. Between the two of them, they run most of the USA’s non-military satellite and sensor systems, gathering data — but also making it public.

But in many ways, NOAA has more to do than NASA, or even many other more famous parts of the federal government.

So Much More Than A Weather Forecast

NOAA’s job is to keep you alive. We get this when it’s hurricanes, tornadoes, flash floods — that kind of thing. But they help the global system in so many more ways that are less obvious. NOAA’s satellite data plays an important role in precision agriculture, where farmers use satellite data and weather information to time and place their crops for the best possible yield. It’s good for the farmers, but also it’s good for the global food system, Data for farmers makes agriculture predictable and efficient, keeping prices low and cupboards stocked around the world. In a globalized food system, that means less political unrest, less war, and more healthy children.

NOAA is the agency that monitors and studies El Niño, more precisely known at ENSO, which is a climate pattern in the equatorial Pacific ocean that affects much of global weather. This information is used all over the world to plan for crops, water allocation, typhoons, hurricanes and more. They study the AMOC,( Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation). This part of the global water circulation is of particular concern right now. If it fails (due to climate change) the Eastern Seaboard could drown and much of Europe could freeze. We don’t know how likely that is or what we could do about it, but NOAA is working the problem.

The NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) division of NOAA (pronounced “nymphs”) uses both ship and satellite surveys to monitor and protect fisheries, to keep them healthy and commercially viable. This is a global task, because fish don’t really care about your country’s EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone) or other applicable human laws. NMFS tell people to stop fishing sometimes, and tell them where to fish at other times, using surveys, satellite data and other fisheries studies. This is about making sure that we can feed ourselves, and that the fish will be there next year, too. Fisheries management isn’t just a resource management task — it’s peace-building.

Fish and seafood account for 6.2% of the world’s protein consumption, and it’s often all the majority of protein in poor coastal communities. When fisheries are stressed or even collapse, conflict inevitably follows. Like increasing crop yields, protecting fisheries makes the world a little more peaceful. NOAA even monitors the Mississippi’s levels and behavior, safeguarding the cheapest and easiest trade route to the majority of the country. (the Mississippi is maintained by the Army Corp of Engineers, but this relationship between the agencies is just one of the many ways American infrastructure reaches out and finds the hand of NOAA there to help.)

NOAA is studying microplastics in whale guts, how to save coral reefs (and therefore also prevent another kind of fisheries collapse), saving sea turtles, and oyster bed restoration that could help preserve food and infrastructure on both of our coasts.  They generate heat maps to help people survive the growing threat of dangerous heat events. They monitor the oceans to help enforce the Marine Mammal Protection Act, protecting cetaceans (along with other marine mammals) from habitat destruction and human interference.

Even if you didn’t like whales, (and go get a therapist if that’s true, because who hates a whale?) they are a keystone species, and without them a lot of fisheries around the world would collapse. Whale poop is the great fertilizer of the global ocean. We know that, in part, because of NOAA research.

All of this, plus educational programs, ecological science, all your weather prediction, hurricane monitoring, and tornado warnings, for .11% of the federal budget. It’s one of the wonders of the data world. But the cost isn’t why DOGE and the Trumpists will want to destroy NOAA. There’s very little waste, fraud, and abuse here. There’s very few things that could even be mistaken for waste, fraud and abuse, even if you squinted as hard as you could.

What NOAA has is a truth the GOP doesn’t want anyone to see. NOAA is one of the foremost research agencies in the field of Climate Change. They collect much of the vital data, but also tell the story of anthropogenic climate change, well, and deeply, with receipts.

Here is NOAA’s mortal sin: their message is comprehensive, clear, and backed up with many, many studies. NOAA is easy to access for anyone in the world. This little slice of the federal government is telling on our crimes against nature, and the GOP doesn’t like that.

Without miraculous intervention, NOAA may be doomed in the coming weeks and months. I hope, and expect, that the people at NOAA are archiving its vast trove of potentially civilization-preserving records they’ve collected over the decades, to keep it from being destroyed by this insane GOP. I also hope companies and other governments will scoop up these people and get them back to their work — the work of preserving our comfortable Holocene civilizations on Planet Earth.

Science isn’t Transactional, and Data Doesn’t Make Deals.

Climate Change doesn’t care about the GOP’s political goals. This agency may end up dying for Trump’s insane vision of how the world works- and the damage is already arriving. There simply is no room in the Republican version of the world for forces beyond their control. But at this point, climate chaos is baked into the world as we have made it. Not all the might of the United States can win this fight with facts.

They have already fired the probationary workers, and anyone else who was legally vulnerable. The weather forecast part of NOAA’s mission is already being damaged. The Trump regime will be back to enact a political murder, trying to stop a global climate crisis by killing the messenger. But more fucking around has never made for less finding out, a fact that Trump will be demonstrating to us for years to come.

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Trump’s Article I Management

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There have been a few stories in the wake of last week’s effective town halls about Trump’s efforts to reach out to increasingly uncomfortable Republicans.

First, HuffPo got a number of Republicans to express concern about Trump’s latest trade war with its closest trading partners. While “Most Republicans in Congress, however, either said Trump’s tariffs were a good idea or offered only muted criticism,” Chuck Grassley and House Ag Committee Chair Glenn Thompson expressed confidence farmers would be protected somehow.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) suggested he would be seeking an exemption for his state, which is a leading producer of corn, soybeans and pork in the United States. Farmers in Iowa and other states rely heavily on Canadian potash, a key fertilizer ingredient, for their crops.

“Potash coming from Canada would be 25% higher,” Grassley said. “I assume I’m going to hear from farmers to contact the secretary of commerce to try to get a waiver.”

[snip]

Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.), chair of the House Agriculture Committee, said he believed Canada and Mexico had already stepped up border security. Canada had announced a $1 billion border security plan that included new helicopters, while Mexico said it would deploy 10,000 national guardsmen.

“I’m not sure what additional, like — the 25% tariffs of Canada — they’ve really stepped up. So has Mexico, actually, on the border. But I’m not a part of those negotiations, so I don’t know exactly what the president is trying to extract additionally,” Thompson told HuffPost.

The farm sector exports a lot of produce and is uniquely vulnerable in a trade war. When Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese imports during his first term, and the Chinese government retaliated with tariffs on U.S. exports in kind, the Trump administration bailed out agriculture producers with nearly $30 billion worth of direct payments.

Thompson said if there’s another protracted trade war, the government would once again help out farmers.

“I’m hoping that we won’t find ourselves in a situation of sustained retaliatory tariffs on our farmers. If we are, we’ll be prepared to deal with that.” he said.

Aside from one lawsuit seeking to force the government to restore access to climate information, I know of no lawsuits representing the many farmers whom Trump’s freeze on Inflation Reduction Act spending has harmed, though many risk bankruptcy because approved spending has not been reimbursed. These comments suggest that farmers imagine they’ll be made whole via other means, political favors.

There’ve already been signs that Trump has placated Republicans whose own constituents were targeted by his rash cuts. For example, it didn’t take long for elimination of Indian Heath Services that would have disproportionately hit Alaska, Oklahoma, and South Dakota to be reversed. By offering cuts and waivers, Trump uses preferential treatment for Republicans to sustain support for actions that harm the entire country.

Yesterday, Trump took a similar approach with DOGE, sending Elon Musk to meet with Republican Senators and House members (but not Democrats) to placate them on DOGE cuts. The reports from the Senate meeting reveal how meek key, purportedly powerful, Senators were in the meeting with Musk, begging that he adopt a more considered approach.

“Every day’s another surprise,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said of the daily bombshells from Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

“It would be better to allow Cabinet secretaries to carefully review their departments and then make surgical, strategic decisions on what programs and people should be cut and then come back to Congress for approval,” she said.

Collins argued a methodical approach to reforming government would be better than what she called Musk’s “sledgehammer approach.”

A second GOP senator said colleagues raised concerns about Musk’s leadership of DOGE and shared stories about how funding freezes and firings have impacted constituents.

“They were presenting some of the compelling stories and some of them shared about terminations at VA hospitals and how it impacted constituents and how there was no answer” from Musk’s team, the senator said.

“Another question was, ‘Who do we bring it to when we have these issues?’” the source added.

One of the Republican senators digging for answers is Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chair Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), who told The Hill he’s trying to find out whether the firing of 2,400 probationary VA employees would impact services for veterans.

“We’re asking that question,” he said. “We want to know [what] positions [are affected]. We’ve been reassured that it doesn’t affect direct care, but we’re looking for more information.

[snip]

“If I get confirmed as the head of an agency, a Cabinet-level position, [and] I’ve got somebody else that is pretending — or that is acting as my boss, that’s a real problem,” [Thom Tillis] added. “At the end of the day, you’ve got to have all those employees thinking that you’re looking out for the agencies and their best interests.”

Tillis said that if Trump’s Cabinet officials “want to be viewed as the heads of these agencies,” they need to balance Musk’s recommendations to cut staff with their missions to provide services and advance U.S. interests.

“They need to say, ‘This is all good stuff, but now it has to go into the context of everything else I’m doing to run this agency, not just efficiencies.’ Because you’ve still got to keep the lights on, you’ve still got to provide acceptable service levels for the people that you’re tasked with serving,” he said.

Other reports describe suggestions, started by Rand Paul, to codify all DOGE’s cuts in a recission package.

“I love what Elon is doing. I love the cutting of the waste. I love finding all the crazy crap that we’re spending overseas. But to make it real, to make it go beyond the moment of the day, it needs to come back,” the Kentucky Republican said.

Musk huddled behind closed doors with House Republicans on Wednesday evening and spelled out DOGE’s efforts to uncover wasteful spending, an initiative that many Republicans applauded.

But others emerged with a more skeptical view.

“When you have a very small group with a broad set of powers, able to inflict dramatic change on institutions without a lot of knowledge, that means the process of cleaning up afterwards is going to be extensive,” said Representative Frank Lucas of Oklahoma.

Senate Republicans said Musk, a top adviser to Trump, was “elated” by Paul’s suggestion that the White House request congressional approval to rescind spending through a legislative process that would circumvent the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster.

“He was, like, so happy,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee.

“What we’ve got to do as Republicans is capture their work product, put it in a bill and vote on it. So, the White House, I’m urging them to come up with a rescission package,” the South Carolina Republican added.

None of this is surprising: That Trump is placating Republicans with doubts about his destructive attack on the US with direct outreach. Indeed, we’ve seen hints that it has been going on this entire time.

For now, it’s simply confirmation that even the most powerful Republicans, like Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, are asking for no more than this, meekly suggesting that maybe Cabinet Members should be allowed to act like Cabinet Members. And also confirmation that more members of Congress are willing to share, under their own name.

Thus far, Trump is making a sustained attack on the United States and Republican Members of Congress are still easily bought off with tailored exemptions rather than policies that serve the common good. That may change, but thus far, Article I remains solidly and easily co-opted.

Update: I should have included this story, which focuses more in House members, including this wisdom from House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole:

“With all due respect to Mr. Musk, he doesn’t have a vote up here. … [Give] courtesy to the members. They’re the ones that have to go home and defend these decisions, not you. So why don’t you give them a heads-up,” Rep. Tom Cole (Oklahoma) said Tuesday before the meeting. “You are certainly complicating the lives of individual members, and you might be making some mistakes and hurting some innocent individuals in the process.”

[snip]

Cole, who as chair of the House Appropriations Committee is responsible for funding the government, said that while he believes DOGE has “uncovered some amazing things,” he has observed that some staffers “clearly don’t know what [they’re] talking about” based on some fiscal decisions he has seen them make.

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Sammy Alito Says Trump Doesn’t Have to Pay Lockheed’s Bills

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After a delay of a week, SCOTUS has finally issued an order denying the government’s attempt to turn its own contempt into an appeal of a Temporary Restraining Order.

The language denying the stay (which could have been released last week) is circumspect.

On February 13, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia entered a temporary restraining order enjoining the Government from enforcing directives pausing disbursements of foreign development assistance funds. The present application does not challenge the Government’s obligation to follow that order. On February 25, the District Court ordered the Government to issue payments for a portion of the paused disbursements—those owed for work already completed before the issuance of the District Court’s temporary restraining order—by 11:59 p.m. on February 26. Several hours before that deadline, the Government filed this application to vacate the District Court’s February 25 order and requested an immediate administrative stay. THE CHIEF JUSTICE entered an administrative stay shortly before the 11:59 p.m. deadline and subsequently referred the application to the Court. The application is denied. Given that the deadline in the challenged order has now passed, and in light of the ongoing preliminary injunction proceedings, the District Court should clarify what obligations the Government must fulfill to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order, with due regard for the feasibility of any compliance timelines. The order heretofore entered by THE CHIEF JUSTICE is vacated

But not Sammy Alito’s dissent, joined by Kavanaugh, Thomas, and Gorsuch.

He accepts the government’s misrepresentation of the posture of the case, not to mention the government’s conceit that the injury to the government — an inability to recover uncontested past due claims — is greater than shutting down companies forever (which may happen regardless). He even misrepresents that these are contractors and grant recipients providing services ordered by Congress, not some children who won an award.

Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars? The answer to that question should be an emphatic “No,” but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned.

In capsule form, this is what happened. Respondents are a group of American businesses and nonprofits that receive foreign-assistance funds from the State Department and the U. S. Agency for International Development. They brought suit and claimed that the current administration’s temporary pause of foreign-assistance payments is unlawful. On February 13, 2025, the District Court issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) requiring the Government to halt its funding pause. It based that decision on a finding that respondents are likely to succeed in showing that the Government violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). After issuing the TRO, the District Judge grew frustrated with the pace at which funds were being disbursed, and on February 25, he issued a second order requiring the Government to pay out approximately $2 billion. The judge brushed aside the Government’s argument that sovereign immunity barred this enforcement order, and he took two steps that, unless corrected, would prevent any higher court from reviewing and possibly stopping the payments. First, he labeled the order as a non-appealable TRO, and second, he demanded that the money be paid within 36 hours.

The word “contempt” does not show up in Sammy’s opinion at all.

I mean, sure, there is plenty of contempt, directed at Amir Ali (perhaps not coincidentally the first Muslim and Arab American DC District Judge). But no discussion about the government having contemptuously blown off a court order.

Probably, John Roberts at least would be sympathetic with giving USAID the two weeks they claimed to need to make payments that would have been made in hours before the DOGE boys started breaking things. But he’s not yet ready to create a new precedent sanctioning government contempt.

Update: I did a little annotation of Sammy A’s key deceit, treating plaintiffs as recipients of “foreign assistance payments” rather than contractors who provided a service to the government.

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Judge Dale Ho Had Emil Bove Authenticate His Letter to Danielle Sassoon

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A bunch of legal and governmental ethics experts, as well as Norm Eisen’s Democracy Defenders Fund, have filed an amicus motion that could (though is unlikely) to affect Judge Dale Ho’s forthcoming consideration of whether to dismiss the case against Eric Adams.

The motion asks Judge Ho to ask Paul Clement, in the latter’s role as an amicus, to consider whether Emil Bove violated professional ethics in trying to dismiss this case.

Amici submit that the inquiry should include whether Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove violated the Rules of Professional Responsibility and applicable Department of Justice guidelines in his conduct of this matter.

[snip]

First, to direct Mr. Clement to conduct a factual inquiry into whether Mr. Bove violated any of the Rules of Professional Conduct or Department of Justice prosecutorial policies or standards; and

Second, to hold an evidentiary hearing to determine whether, in fact, Mr. Bove violated any of the Rules of Professional Conduct or Department of Justice prosecutorial policies or standards.6

6 Pursuant to Canon 3(B)(6) of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, this Court has the discretion to impose a remedy – beyond denial of the Motion to Dismiss – if it determines that Mr. Bove violated any of the Rules of Professional Conduct. The Canon provides that “[a] judge should take appropriate action upon receipt of reliable information indicating the likelihood that . . . a lawyer violated applicable rules of professional conduct.” (Emphasis added.)

They include a list of rules that Bove might have violated.

RPC 5.1(b)(2). This Rule requires that Mr. Bove, as a supervising lawyer in the Department of Justice, ensures that the lawyers he supervises comply with the Rules of Professional Conduct, including Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Danielle Sassoon, and lawyers in the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section, whom Mr. Bove directed to sign the Motion;

RPC 1.11(f)(3). This Rule prohibits a lawyer who is a public official from accepting an offer of anything of value in exchange for influencing official action. If, in fact, Mr. Bove accepted an offer from Mayor Adams as a quid pro quo in the form of cooperating in the enforcement of the Administration’s immigration policies, he may have violated this ethical duty;

RPC 3.3(a)(1). This Rule prohibits Mr. Bove from knowingly making a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal. If the reasons given by Mr. Bove in support of his Motion and his statement that there was no quid pro quo are false, he may have violated this ethical duty; and

RPC 8.4(d). This Rule prohibits a lawyer from engaging in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice. If Mr. Bove’s justifications for the Motion are pretextual and an abuse of his prosecutorial power, granting the Motion may be prejudicial to the administration of justice.

The most compelling theory substantiating abuse was the way Bove serially threatened attorneys with investigation and firing if they did not sign onto his motion to dismiss the case, along with the investigations he initiated against those who refused.

If either or both of the lawyers who signed the Motion were pressured into doing so, as has been reported, this would irrevocably taint the Motion. By signing the Motion, under Rule 3.3(a)(1), Mr. Bove represented to this Court that the Motion did not contain a false statement of fact or law. There is a substantial basis here to inquire whether Mr. Bove made representations knowing at the time that they were false. The Court should not be placed in the position of granting a Motion lacking in honesty and integrity.

[snip]

When the prosecutors on the team prosecuting Mayor Adams expressed concerns about the legal and ethical propriety of the dismissal, Mr. Bove responded with a campaign of retaliation — placing them on administrative leave and initiating investigations. Bove Letter at 1. These actions are inconsistent with Mr. Bove’s duty to seek justice.5

[snip]

Punishment of career prosecutors for adhering to their oaths and ethical obligations, if proven, would certainly constitute conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice.

The amicus also notes that, particularly in the face of Bove’s claim that DOJ attempted to interfere in an election by indicting Mayor Adams nine months before the Democratic primary, his efforts to dismiss the indictment months before the primary may have been intended to influence an election.

By arguing to the Court that the prosecution should be dismissed because it is interfering with Mayor Adams’s ability to run for re-election, Mr. Bove has raised the specter that dismissal is being sought with the purpose of affecting the upcoming June 24 primary election—now just a few months away—in which Mayor Adams is a candidate. Hearing Transcript at 26. It is also apparent that dismissal would give Mayor Adams an electoral advantage he otherwise would not have. In sharp contrast, Ms. Sassoon has explained that the decision to bring the indictment in September 2024 was made nine months before the June 2025 Democratic Mayoral Primary and more than a year before the November 2025 Mayoral Election and “complied in every respect with longstanding Department policy regarding election year sensitivities and the applicable Justice Manual provisions.” Sassoon Letter at 4

Now, I’m skeptical that this request will lead to a fulsome evidentiary hearing about Bove’s conduct.

But by putting all this on the record, including the threats to prosecutors, it might provide Ho a tool to do something else he laid the basis to do.

The lawyers included the transcript of the hearing with their motion. And there’s a part of it that was far more subtle than what made into reports of the hearing.

Virtually every report of the hearing described that the question of whether Ho should rely on amici came up. Most focused on Bove’s attack on Carey Dunne and Mark Pomerantz, and his request that Ho ignore that amicus.

I do object to consideration of the second amicus at Dkt. 128 purported to be filed on behalf of a series of former U.S. Attorneys. And, again, acknowledging the Court has broad discretion about if, how, and when to invite amicus participation, a brief authored by Carey Dunne and Mark Pomerantz, who are both central to the investigation at the New York District Attorney’s Office of President Trump, it just comes from a place of such bias and lack of impartiality, that that’s not a friend of the Court’s submission. That’s a group of people claiming that — I think the words in the brief are there should be — I think the word “roving” might have even been used, a roving factual inquiry into the situation.

That’s just partisan noise. That’s not an amicus brief actually trying to help your Honor with the issues that are before you. So I submit that the Court should not accept the amicus at Dkt. 128.

But before that — the first time Judge Ho raised the amicus briefs — he did so after questioning Alex Spiro about the letter he sent to Bove on February 3, which Spiro himself docketed. After Spiro gave a representation of why he wrote that letter, Judge Ho turned to Bove and asked him about the February 10 letter he sent Danielle Sassoon, which was before him because it was attached to the Pomerantz amicus.

This first discussion was not about whether Bove opposed the amicus itself. It was, like the preceding discussion about why Spiro wrote the February 3 letter, whether the February 10 memo he sent Sassoon was authentic.

Mr. Bove, I believe this is a memorandum dated February 10, 2025, regarding the Justice Department’s decision to dismiss the case, and that is titled “Dismissal Without Prejudice of Prosecution of Mayor Adams.” Is that right?

MR. BOVE: Yes, Judge.

THE COURT: And you’re familiar with this memo?

MR. BOVE: Yes.

THE COURT: Are you the author of the memo?

MR. BOVE: Yeah. Those are my initials.

THE COURT: Okay. And this is authentic? It was submitted in connection with an amicus brief. I want to confirm that.

MR. BOVE: This is the memorandum I sent to Ms. Sassoon on that date. I do have a procedural objection to the amicus brief we’re talking about, but I want to be responsive first to the Court’s question.

THE COURT: Okay. I mean, I haven’t made any kind of ruling on the amicus brief.

MR. BOVE: I would like to be heard on that point.

THE COURT: I do want to address your views about whether or not the Court should consider certain things, including the amicus brief. But this memo, Mr. Bove, did this represent the official views of the Justice Department as of this date?

MR. BOVE: I mean, this is the authentic document that I sent to Danielle Sassoon.

THE COURT: Okay. And when I consider the government’s motion to dismiss, is it appropriate for me to consider what’s in this memo?

MR. BOVE: No.

THE COURT: Okay. Explain that to me.

MR. BOVE: The record here is the motion that I made. The only question — basically, if you start with the Rinaldi footnote 15, the Supreme Court case, you look at the more recent Second Circuit cases, Blaszczak, HSBC, the only two questions are is there some concern about harassment. Your Honor has addressed that conclusively today.

And then, second, is there a question about whether the motion is so clearly contrary to the public interest that the Court should not grant it.

[snip]

Considering documents outside the record I don’t think is part of that discretion. Even if your Honor considers this, it’s entirely consistent with everything that I’ve said. [my emphasis]

Later, Judge Ho got Spiro to back off his opposition to amici generally (Spiro had raised concerns that, “Any person that comes before the Court could have political motivations”) to state that he did not take a position on the non-Pomerantz memo.

THE COURT: Just so I understand it, what I heard from the government, and, Mr. Bove, correct me if I’m wrong, is that you object to the brief, the second of the two amicus briefs that was filed, the former U.S. Attorneys one, but not to the common cause one. Whereas, Mr. Spiro, you object to both?

MR. SPIRO: We take no position on whether the pending letter motion is part of the record. If it ends there.

THE COURT: I’m sorry. Do you object to the Court considering — granting either of the motions? I shouldn’t put it in terms of the Court. Do you object to either of the motions for amicus submissions? I just want to make sure my record is clear so I understand what I’m doing when I’m ruling.

MR. SPIRO: I don’t take a position on the first letter motion.

THE COURT: Okay. Thank you.

MR. SPIRO: I don’t take a position on it. Any further involvement, I rest on the record I just made.

You’ll recall that two of the questions Ho asked Paul Clement to address were whether he should consider other materials beyond the Rule(48) motion itself.

2) Whether, and to what extent, a court may consider materials other than the Rule 48(a) motion itself;

3) Under what circumstances, if any, additional procedural steps and/or further inquiry would be appropriate before resolving a Rule 48(a) motion;

Now, it’s unclear whether Ho will consider the amicus itself; it is dated Friday (Ho’s deadline for additional amici) but not docketed until yesterday, so he could ignore it on that basis alone. But it does provide a theory by which these letters come in based on Bove’s own conduct.

But he may not need it.

He was clearly focused on something else: Alex Spiro’s letter from February 3, seemingly mapping immigration assistance that Adams would provide if the case were dismissed, and Bove’s letter to Sassoon claiming (among other things) that the investigation by that point was an example of weaponization.

Of note, Judge Ho did not say anything when Bove claimed that his judgement that the case was politicized overrode Ho’s own opinion from January that it wasn’t.

The first is just a straightforward exercise of prosecutorial discretion guided by President Trump’s Executive Order 14147 relating to weaponization of the criminal justice process as well as guidance issued by the Attorney General on the day she was sworn in, February 5, 2025.

And basically what is set forth here is my conclusion that this case, as a matter of prosecutorial discretion, should not proceed because it reflects, at minimum, appearances of impropriety that give cause for concern about abuse of the criminal justice process. And I believe it actually goes further than that and it is an abuse of the criminal justice process.

That matter, which, again, in an exercise of prosecutorial discretion, is, I think, as your Honor alluded to earlier, virtually unreviewable in this courtroom, especially where guided by an Executive Order and direct guidance from the Attorney General.

This claim is legally noxious, because it suggests that Bove can override an opinion from Judge Ho (though Bove never acknowledged that Ho had made that ruling). But Ho didn’t point out that Bove’s opinion basically attempted to overrule Ho’s own earlier opinion.

He did, however, react a bit when Spiro used the leaked Sassoon letter to reiterate his earlier argument about leaks.

MR. SPIRO: Well, I don’t want to digress. We didn’t have a hearing about it. But the reality is, the letter that leaked, the letter that I think we can both agree, sir, the letter that leaked with the back and forth between the Department of Justice did have prejudicial and false information about the mayor in it. There was a letter that leaked, that we can I hope both agree, couldn’t have been leaked, since it was internal to the Department of Justice, from any third outside party or bogeyman.

THE COURT: I’m sorry. You’re not referring to stuff that was the subject of motions practice earlier?

MR. SPIRO: No, I’m talking about now.

THE COURT: Okay.

MR. SPIRO: Yes, your Honor.

THE COURT: I got confused. I apologize. Go ahead.

MR. SPIRO: Not at all. But I’m just saying, I think the Court has to think about that. And the Court can keep thinking about, and the Court can always revisit its beliefs. Earlier in the case when I said things like, doesn’t this seem a little off, and doesn’t this seem a little politically motivated, and doesn’t it seem there are a lot of leaks going on. The Court can look at the cavalier nature with which the prosecutors put things in those letters that went back and forth when the Department of Justice was discussing this matter.

It remains the case that the most likely outcome of this is that Judge Ho dismisses the case against Adams with prejudice, depriving DOJ of any leverage over the Mayor.

But unnoticed by most of the coverage, Ho laid the foundation to rely on exchanges that happened before everything blew up on February 12.

Update: Relatedly, Jamie Raskin and Jasmine Crockett sent Pam Bondi a request for information on the Adams case. Their key hook is the possibility that Bove might have destroyed the notes of the January 31 meeting he confiscated.

All handwritten or electronic notes taken during the January 31, 2025, meeting between Department prosecutors and Mayor Adams’ legal team. If any notes have been destroyed, please provide the names of individuals who destroyed the notes, as well as the dates, manner, and reasons for such destruction.

The request is imperfect in some ways. For example, it doesn’t include Bill Burck and Eric Trump or Trump Organization in the list of conversations; Burck has an apparent conflict by representing both Trump Org and Adams. Similarly, it doesn’t ask for communications from Chad Mizelle, who was clearly in this loop as well.

But it is the kind of thing that–if there were real scrutiny of Bove’s ethical problems–could become a problem with DOJ.

Update: Fixed the first sentence, I hope.

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Pete Marocco Keeps Trying to Prevent Bill Cassidy from Learning the Truth about USAID

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There’s been an underlying tension throughout the five week DOGE effort to suffocate USAID (and with it, millions of people around the world).

After Trump halted foreign assistance, Republicans spoke up, often quietly; but John Cornyn did so publicly in a hearing, Jerry Moran did so as well (in part to support Kansas Ag markets), and Bill Cassidy did so on Xitter, demanding that lifesaving programs that Republicans have long supported be restarted.

Over and over again, Rubio and others insisted that they had reversed course and restarted life-saving programs.

But both in court filings and anonymous leaks, people who have previously implemented USAID’s work (virtually all have been put on leave or ousted) disputed that the programs had been restarted.

That led to this intemperate comment from Rubio, in which he claimed that if humanitarian programs had not been restarted, it was because their organizations themselves were incompetent.

“Right now, there is no USAID humanitarian assistance happening,” a current USAID official in the humanitarian division said. “There are waivers put in place by Secretary Rubio for emergency food assistance and a number of other sectors, but they are a fraud and a sham and intended to give the illusion of continuity, which is untrue.”

The official also slammed the waiver as unclear and largely unactionable because staff has been furloughed, as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency seized control of the agency.

“There is no staff left anymore to actually process waiver requests or to move money or to make awards or to do anything,” that official added. “We’ve ceased to exist.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday pushed back on nongovernmental organizations saying aid programs remained paused despite the waiver.

“I issued a blanket waiver that said if this is lifesaving programs, OK — if it’s providing food or medicine or anything that is saving lives and is immediate and urgent, you’re not included in the freeze,” he said. “I don’t know how much more clear we can be than that.

“And I would say if some organization is receiving funds from the United States and does not know how to apply a waiver, then I have real questions about the competence of that organization, or I wonder whether they’re deliberately sabotaging it for purposes of making a political point,” Rubio added.

Since then, USAID has twice silenced people continuing to debunk Rubio’s claim to have restored humanitarian care.

On February 13, USAID released a memo purporting to correct a “false narrative,” “clarifying that Global Health (GH) programming under the lifesaving humanitarian waiver has continued uninterrupted and was never paused” — effectively an order to adhere to the lie that Marco Rubio’s order had actually restored care.

Then, on Friday, USAID retaliated against the truth once again.

After the Acting Assistant Administrator for Global Health, Nicholas Enrich, issued a memo describing that such aide has never been restored, he was placed on paid leave.

The memo itself presents a detailed timeline of the various ways that aide was stalled and identifies a large number of specific documents where he memorialized each step of the process (the NYT, in its story on Enrich’s suspension, describes obtaining “a series of memos,” and I assume about five other outlets did too; it detailed and released a different memo cataloging likely impacts).

It details specific ways DOGE interfered with the release of lifesaving funds by restricting access to the financial systems needed to process waivers.

From the start, the Programs Group alerted Agency leadership that the lack of access to funds for implementing partners was a critical impediment to the ability to implement the waiver, as access to USAID financial systems (GLAAS and Phoenix) had been completely turned off by DOGE, per Bob Kingman and Daniel Gaush from Department of State ICASS Service Center, preventing the flow of any funds to implementing partners who were approved to implement LHA activities.

It describes how Christian nationalist Pete Marocco personally intervened to ensure that the Ebola relief Elon Musk claimed had been restored could not be restored if doing so involved the World Health Organization.

On February 18th, A-AA Enrich shared an action memo with Mark Lloyd recommending the utilization of an existing agreement with the WHO to utilize previously obligated funds to access a critical stockpile of PPE and lab supplies to support the Uganda Ebola outbreak response. While the activities would normally be covered in the regular process for the lifesaving humanitarian assistance waiver, this memo was drafted for approval from State/F Director Pete Marocco, given that the implementing partner of the agreement is WHO, the subject of a separate Executive Order. Mark Lloyd cleared the memo on Feb. 19th and it was sent forward for COS Borkert clearance and DFA Pete Marocco signature. COS Borkert specified that DFA Marocco would not sign the memo and would not agree to utilizing the agreement with WHO to access the PPE stockpile, and instead ordered A-AA Enrich to “pick up the PPE and deliver it to the necessary people and organizations in the region to respond to ongoing infectious disease outbreaks” without utilizing the agreement with WHO. DFA Marocco immediately responded to Borkert’s email, threatening to the jobs of GH staff if an alternate plan was not carried out immediately, directing political appointees Borkert, Lloyd and Meisburger to “take all necessary personnel actions in the event this is not completed in the next 12 hours.”

It continues the explanation of what happened with Ebola: six days later, political appointees specifically deprioritized getting Ebola funding (and that for other “neglected tropical diseases”) restarted.

On February 24, in an effort to move forward approvals and payments, the GH leadership team (A-AA Enrich and DAA Coles) walked through each waiver request with political leadership (Mark Lloyd and Tim Meisburger) in an effort to move forward approvals and payments. Political leadership provided guidance instructing GH to narrow the focus of its requests and to deprioritize activities related to neglected tropical diseases, Mpox, polio, Ebola, and any monitoring and surveillance activities, as those would not be approved.

Then, when State shut down virtually all foreign aide last week, they shut down (inadvertently, they claimed later) Ebola programs along with everything else.

Additionally, on February 26th, over 5,000 USAID awards were terminated globally; GH was not notified of this action before it happened. The terminated awards included almost all of the awards that were needed to implement lifesaving activities. A-AA Enrich informed COS Borkert, SBO Jackson, and AtAs Lloyd and Meisburger immediately of the grave impacts on lifesaving activities related to malaria, tuberculosis, and ebola. In an email following the February 26th terminations, DCOS Borkert indicated that the awards that were terminated should not have been, and had been terminated in error: “Please hold on these life saving programs and let us review in the morning. There is an acknowledgement some may have been sent out in error and we have the ability to rescind. We need to identify what those are.” [my emphasis]

The memo even details the genesis of the earlier, February 13 memo:

On February 13th, A-AA Enrich and Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator (SDAA) Julie Wallace were told by DCOS Borkert that there had been a false narrative spread in the media that GH had been told to pause on approving activities under the LHA waiver. A-AA Enrich stated that the Agency FO had in fact told GH to pause on further approvals, and reminded him of the previous day’s email. DCOS Borkert as well as other senior advisors, including AtA Tim Meisburger and Senior FO Advisor Laken Rapier shouted at A-AA Enrich that there had never been a pause, and instructed him to immediately draft another Info Memo to correct the “false narrative in the media that there had ever been a pause.”

On February 13th, GH circulated the memo from AtA Mark Lloyd “performing the duties of Assistant Administrator, Global Health” which among other things, reiterated GH’s approach to approval of waivers per the earlier February 4th memo.

While agency leadership previously told GH to only include requests for 30 days (articulated in the February 4th memo), GH was subsequently asked to shift to the original 90 days as articulated in the original waiver language. This was updated in the February 13th memo. [my emphasis]

As a whole, it provides this summary of who is responsible for preventing lifesaving programs from being sustained: political leadership and DOGE.

USAID’s failure to implement lifesaving humanitarian assistance under the waiver is the result of political leadership at USAID, the Department of State, and DOGE, who have created and continue to create intentional and/or unintentional obstacles that have wholly prevented implementation. These actions include the refusal to pay for assistance activities conducted or goods and services rendered, the blockage and restriction of access to USAID’s payment systems followed by the creation of new and ineffective processes for payments, the ever-changing guidance as to what qualifies as “lifesaving” and whose approval is needed in making that decision, and most recently, the sweeping terminations of the most critical implementing mechanisms necessary for providing lifesaving services. These actions individually and in combination have resulted in the U.S. Government’s failure to implement critical lifesaving activities. This will no doubt result in preventable death, destabilization, and threats to national security on a massive scale. This memo serves to document the LHA waiver process and challenges encountered by the Bureau for Global Health to date, excluding PEPFAR.

In other words, Nicholas Enrich documented everything that had happened in spite of Rubio’s public order, and he was ousted.

While it’s not surprising, it’s not entirely clear whether there’s a specific reason he was ousted. That is, it’s not clear to me which facts people like Pete Marocco are trying to suppress:

  • The specific actions taken by DOGE to thwart Rubio’s order.
  • Marocco’s own specific complicity with decisions that will lead to the deaths of millions.
  • The sheer amount of advance warning that political leadership got
  • Rubio’s possible lack of involvement in things that Marocco has told courts he was personally involved in, which I wrote up here

But I can’t help but notice that Rubio responded to demands from Republican Senators that life-saving programs be restarted. And State has spent a good deal of time since then trying to hide the ways that people at USAID and State — people like Marocco and DOGE — directly undermined all efforts to do what Rubio assured Republican Senators was being done.

Are they trying to hide that people reporting to Rubio have directly undermined his order, the real insubordination that Marocco has blamed on USAID staffers? Or are they trying to hide that Rubio’s order was always a lie?

Whichever it is, Senators who were placated by Rubio’s past public claims are now on notice. They were lying to you. And while they were lying to you, food and medicine was spoiling and people were dying.

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Russia Russia Russia

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In a piece describing how, after Trump attempted to publicly humiliate Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talks on normalizing relations with Russia (negotiated by Kirill Dmitriev, of Mueller Report fame) will accelerate…

There is also renewed optimism in Moscow that, with President Zelensky at odds with President Trump and his team, difficult negotiations to end the war in Ukraine will now take a back seat to a raft of potentially lucrative US-Russia economic deals already being tabled behind closed doors.

[snip]

Already the Kremlin’s key economic envoy to the talks, Kirill Dmitriev, has told CNN that cooperation with the US could “include energy” deals of some kind, but no details have been announced.

Separately, the Financial Times is reporting that there have been efforts to involve US investors in the restarting Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Europe, which Germany halted at the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Dmitriev has called for the Trump administration and Russia to start “building a better future for humanity,” and to “focus on investment, economic growth, AI breakthroughs,” and long-term joint scientific projects like “Mars exploration,” even posting a highly produced computer graphic, on Elon Musk’s X social media platform, showing an imagined joint US-Russia-Saudi mission to Mars, on board what appears to be a Space X rocket.

CNN described literal “bewilder[ment]” about why Trump would sell out America’s allies.

[W]hy the US president would choose the Kremlin over America’s traditional partners remains the subject of intense speculation.

Much of it, like the frequent suggestion that Trump is somehow a Kremlin agent, or beholden to Putin, is without evidence.

Perhaps the right-wing US ideological fantasy that Russia is a natural US ally in a future confrontation with China, and can be broken away from its most important backer, is motivating Washington’s dramatic geopolitical shift.

But for many bewildered observers, both explanations for Trump’s extraordinary pivot to the Kremlin seem equally misplaced. [my emphasis]

CNN asserted there’s no evidence to back the claim that Trump is “beholden to Putin” in spite of the fact that Russia helped Trump win in 2016, after which Dmitriev reached out and discussed a bunch of investments — investments which would require ending sanctions — as a way to improve relations. CNN asserted there’s no evidence to back the claim that Trump is “beholden to Putin” in spite of the fact that Russia attempted to help Trump win in 2020 at least by sending disinformation framing Joe Biden and his kid via Russian agent Andrii Derkach to Trump’s personal lawyer. CNN asserted there’s no evidence to back the claim that Trump is “beholden to Putin” in spite of the fact that Derkach made similar efforts in 2024, and a bunch of Russian malign influence efforts (possibly including bomb threats that forced the evacuation of Democratic precincts) similarly aimed to help Trump and others who would “oppose aid to Ukraine.”

CNN asserted there’s no evidence to back the claim that Trump is “beholden to Putin” in spite of the fact that a key Putin advisor, Nikolay Patrushev, said this in November:

In his future policies, including those on the Russian track US President-elect Donald Trump will rely on the commitments to the forces that brought him to power, rather than on election pledges, Russian presidential aide Nikolay Patrushev told the daily Kommersant in an interview.

“The election campaign is over,” Patrushev noted. “To achieve success in the election, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. As a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them.”

He agreed that Trump, when he was still a candidate, “made many statements critical of the destructive foreign and domestic policies pursued by the current administration.”

“But very often election pledges in the United States can iverge [sic] from subsequent actions,” he recalled.

As people puzzle through this bewilderment, as people puzzle through why Trump appointed people who undermined the Russian investigation to lead the FBI, the boilerplate about what Robert Mueller discovered about Russia’s 2016 efforts to help Trump remains wildly inadequate, as in this recent version in a story on Don Bongino’s propaganda about the investigation.

Mueller’s inquiry found repeated contacts between Russia-linked entities and Trump campaign advisers, but didn’t establish a conspiracy between the two.

Mueller didn’t establish a conspiracy between Trump and Russia. But such boilerplate always leaves out that his key aides lied about the true nature of those contacts, which is a big reason why we wouldn’t know if there had been one.

In the Mueller investigation, Trump’s campaign manager, foreign policy advisor, National Security Adviser, personal lawyer, and rat-fucker were all adjudged to have lied about the true nature of Trump’s ties to Russia from the first campaign.

Let’s unpack that even further.

  • Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, confessed to lying to hide the direct contact he had during the campaign with Dmitry Peskov’s office in pursuit of an impossibly lucrative Trump Tower deal, a deal that would have required lifting sanctions to complete. Cohen confessed to lying to cover up his conversations with Trump about that impossibly lucrative Trump Tower deal. His confession meant that when Trump disclaimed pursuing business deals with Russia — in the same July 27, 2016 press conference where he asked Russia to hack Hillary some more and said he might bless Russia’s seizure of Crimea — Trump lied to cover up that dangle for an impossibly lucrative Trump Tower deal.
  • Trump’s foreign policy advisor, George Papadopoulos (who was overtly involved in Derkach’s efforts last year), confessed to lying about the timing and circumstances of learning that Russia had thousands of Hillary’s emails and planned to release them to hurt her campaign. He lied about the other Russians that Joseph Mifsud introduced to Papadopoulos. After he pled guilty, Papadopoulos remembered and then unremembered telling his boss on the campaign, Sam Clovis, about the emails. He also claimed to forget what his own notes describing a proposed meeting in September 2016 with Putin’s team pertained to (notes that also mentioned Egypt and involved Walid Phares, whom investigators suspected of having a role in any $10 million payment Egypt made to Trump).
  • A jury found Trump’s rat-fucker, Roger Stone, guilty of lying to cover up the nature and source of his advance notice of the Russian hack-and-leak campaign. Over the course of the investigation, the FBI found evidence Stone knew of several of the Russian personas before they went public. There’s good reason to believe that Stone got advance knowledge, in mid-August 2016, of the substance of select emails from the later John Podesta leak. When prosecutors indicted Stone, they were very keen to obtain a notebook containing notes he took of all his conversations with Trump during the 2016 campaign. Stone stayed out of jail by repeatedly claiming prosecutors offered leniency to get knowledge of those contacts.
  • Don Jr. refused to testify before a grand jury, an appearance that presumably would have included questions about his understanding of the June 9 meeting at which Aras Agalarov offered dirt on Hillary in exchange for sanctions relief.
  • Amy Berman Jackson ruled that Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, reneged on his plea agreement, in part, by lying about his August 2, 2016 meeting with Konstantin Kilimnik, at which three topics were discussed: The campaign’s strategy to win swing states, how Manafort could get paid millions, and a plan to carve up Ukraine. In 2021, Treasury stated as fact that Kilimnik. was a “known Russian Intelligence Services agent” who had “provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy” during 2016. The report went on to explain that, “Kilimnik sought to promote the narrative that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” a narrative Trump keeps pushing.
  • Trump’s National Security Adviser, Mike Flynn, confessed, twice, to lying about his efforts to undercut Barack Obama’s policy, including efforts to sanction Russia in response to the 2016 attack. There’s a good deal of evidence — including Flynn’s assurances to Sergey Kislyak that the “Boss is aware” — that Trump was involved in those efforts.

All of the people who lied to cover up the true nature of Trump’s Russian contacts in 2016, save Michael Cohen, were pardoned.

So was one other person — someone else who probably lied about the nature of Trump’s Russian contacts in 2017.

In the section describing his declination decisions, Mueller explained that there were three other people who probably lied, but whom he wasn’t charging.

We also considered three other individuals interviewed–[redacted]–but do not address them here because they are involved in aspects of ongoing investigations or active prosecutions to which their statements to this Office may be relevant.

The report itself and the 302s of Steve Bannon’s testimony, which evolved over the course of four interviews to more closely approximate the evidence, suggests Bannon could be one of those three (after all, Bannon, Trump’s other campaign manager, was a key witness at the Stone trial).

Not least because the report describes a pretty big discrepancy between Bannon’s testimony and Erik Prince’s regarding conversations the latter had with Kirill Dmitriev, now starring in negotiations about Russia. And both men played dumb about where the texts they exchanged in that period disappeared to.

Prince said that he met Bannon at Bannon’s home after returning to the United States in mid-January and briefed him about several topics, including his meeting with Dmitriev.1086 Prince told the Office that he explained to Bannon that Dmitriev was the head of a Russian sovereign wealth fund and was interested in improving relations between the United States and Russia.1087 Prince had on his cellphone a screenshot of Dmitriev’s Wikipedia page dated January 16, 2017, and Prince told the Office that he likely showed that image to Bannon.1088 Prince also believed he provided Bannon with Dmitriev’s contact information.1089 According to Prince, Bannon instructed Prince not to follow up with Dmitriev, and Prince had the impression that the issue was not a priority for Bannon.1090 Prince related that Bannon did not appear angry, just relatively uninterested.1091

Bannon, by contrast, told the Office that he never discussed with Prince anything regarding Dmitriev, RDIF, or any meetings with Russian individuals or people associated with Putin.1092 Bannon also stated that had Prince mentioned such a meeting, Bannon would have remembered it, and Bannon would have objected to such a meeting having taken place.1093

The conflicting accounts provided by Bannon and Prince could not be independently clarified by reviewing their communications, because neither one was able to produce any of the messages they exchanged in the time period surrounding the Seychelles meeting. Prince’s phone contained no text messages prior to March 2017, though provider records indicate that he and Bannon exchanged dozens of messages.1094 Prince denied deleting any messages but claimed he did not know why there were no messages on his device before March 2017.1095 Bannon’s devices similarly contained no messages in the relevant time period, and Bannon also stated he did not know why messages did not appear on his device.1096 Bannon told the Office that, during both the months before and after the Seychelles meeting, he regularly used his personal Blackberry and personal email for work-related communications (including those with Prince), and he took no steps to preserve these work communications.1097

The lies Trump’s top aides told to hide aspects of the 2016 Russian effort — his campaign manager, foreign policy advisor, National Security Adviser, personal lawyer, and rat-fucker — along with gaps left by both Jr and Bannon’s testimony (note, Bannon’s testimony  also conflicts with Mike Flynn’s regarding whether he was privy to Flynn’s effort to undermine sanctions) trace out clear outlines of a quid pro quo: a serial agreement to reward Russia by acceding to carve up Ukraine and an agreement to lift sanctions, in exchange for help getting elected.

And here we are, eight years later, utterly bewildered why Trump might be in such a rush to deliver up Ukraine to Russia and lift sanctions to pursue business deals, precisely the quo outlined by the lies told years ago.

Really? How is anyone bewildered about this?

On November 11, one of Putin’s closest allies complained about how, “election pledges in the United States can [d]iverge from subsequent actions.” Patrushev warned that, this time, Trump will “be obliged to fulfill” his “corresponding obligations.”

And what we are seeing in real time, in plain sight, protected by an Attorney General who has promised to investigate neither the campaign assistance nor the bribery, is Trump picking up precisely where things left off in 2017.

Starting with the very same offers Dmitriev was offering eight years ago.

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Five Ways Trump Is Sabotaging the United States

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Yesterday, arguably for (at least) the second time, Trump declared fealty to Vladimir Putin.

As I contemplated the awful but in no way surprising developments (here’s a good podcast, featuring Marc Polymeropoulos, Doug Lute, and Rosa Brooks), I thought about the various ways Trump is sabotaging the United States, based on apparently different motivations.

But we only assume those motivations are different because we (or much of the legacy press, anyway) accept the claimed motivation Trump offers. When you look at all of them together, you simply can’t rule out they’re all part of the same effort to capitulate to Putin.

Project 2025

There’s a consensus that Trump is following the plan mapped out in Project 2025. This Politico report, from early February, laid out how Executive Orders Trump had signed implemented plans to attack diversity and LGBTQ protections, attack migrants, and protect disinformation. It focuses on fossil fuel plans that have mostly defunded renewable energy without raising fossil fuel exploitation (in part because it was already so high under Biden).

Even if that were the only thing going on or if that were really what was going on, it would raise real questions about foreign influence. Last year, Casey Michel mapped out how Viktor Orbán used the Heritage Foundation as a beachhead for his influence peddling in the US (which I discussed in this post on Trump’s attempt to distance himself from Project 2025).

While much attention has understandably focused on Heritage’s so-called “Project 2025,” which provides a roadmap for Trump to seize as much power as he can, such a shift has extended to foreign policy. This has been seen most especially in Heritage leading the effort to gut funding for Ukraine. But it’s also evident in the way Heritage has endeavored to anchor its relations with Orbán, making Budapest once more America’s preferred partner in Europe—regardless of the cost.

Much of that shift is downstream from Heritage’s leadership, overseen by Kevin Roberts. Appointed as Heritage’s president in 2021, Roberts immediately began remaking Heritage’s priorities with a distinctly pro-Orbán bent—and began opening up Heritage as a vehicle for Hungarian influence in the U.S.

Part of that involved things like last week’s confab, one of many meetings between Roberts and Orbán. (After one 2022 sit-down, Roberts—who, among other things, has said he doesn’t think Joe Biden won the 2020 election—posted that it was an “honor” to meet with Orbán, praising his “movement that fights for Truth, for tradition, for families.”) But the relationship is structural as well: Heritage finalized what they refer to as a ‘landmark’ cooperation agreement with the Danube Institute, a Hungarian think tank that appears to exist only to praise Orbán’s government.*

The Budapest-based Danube Institute is largely unknown in the U.S., but it has transformed in recent years into one of the premier mouthpieces for propagating Orbánist policies. While it is technically independent, it is, as Jacob Heilbrunn notes in his new book on the American right’s infatuation with dictators, located “next to the prime minister’s building and funded by Orbán’s Fidesz party.” Indeed, the Hungarian think tank is overseen by a foundation directly bankrolled by the Hungarian state—meaning that the Danube Institute is, for all intents and purposes, a state-funded front for pushing pro-Orbán rhetoric.

A spokesperson for the Heritage Foundation told The New Republic that their arrangements with the Danube Institute is “restricted to carrying out educational research and analysis, as well as related events—none of which involved any financial commitment from either party” and that “at no point did Heritage receive funds from or pass funds to the Danube Institute, the Hungarian government, or the prime minister’s office.”

The Danube Institute claims it is dedicated to “advocat[ing] conservative and national values and thinking,” which almost always ends up with the institute praising Orbán’s pronouncements. It has become, according to Hungarian journalists at Atlatszo, “one of the main tools of the Orbán government’s ideological expansion abroad”—and one of the “main vehicles” to “building a political network in the United States.

Christopher Rufo, the propagandist behind the demonization of trans people, has ties to the Danube Institute.

So even if this was just about implementing Project 2025, that would best be described as replacing American democracy with Orbanist authoritarianism — adopting the model from a key Putin puppet.

DOGE infiltration and destruction of US government

There have been a slew of stories about how DOGE provided cover for Russ Vought and Stephen Miller to implement Project 2025. Wired, for example, described how Stephen and his wife Katie, who is formally on the DOGE team, serve as gatekeepers to Elon and use Elon to carry out their dirty work.

Meanwhile, Stephen Miller has, along with Project 2025 coauthor and Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, became one of Musk’s closest allies in the administration, The New York Times reported earlier this month. WIRED has learned that the relationship is far closer, and more complicated, than has been previously known publicly.

In many ways, Musk’s targeting of federal agencies is perfectly in sync with the aims of Miller, who has championed DOGE’s work internally and even helped in making a lot of it possible. (In public, Miller has equated federal workers with “radical left Communists” and “criminal cartels.”) Still, sources tell WIRED that Trumpworld is more comfortable with Musk taking the heat for the recent federal cuts rather than the less famous—and, in their view, far less telegenic—Miller.

Yet through their actions so far, the Millers and Musk have developed a MAGA version of the Pet Shop Boys adage from the song “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)”: You’ve got the brawn / I’ve got the brains. Stephen Miller’s knowledge of the federal apparatus, Katie Miller’s contacts on Capitol Hill, and the couple’s good standing among Trump loyalists, coupled with Musk’s relentless ambition and effectively infinite resources, made the scale of the DOGE government takeover possible. Musk is not the independent actor he’s often portrayed as and taken to be, in other words, but is rather carrying out actions essentially in concert with the man to whom the president has delegated much of the day-to-day work of governance.

“Stephen is kind of the prime minister,” one of three Republicans close to Trump and familiar with the situation tells WIRED. Another Republican familiar with the dynamic also used the term “PM” to describe Miller, short for prime minister. The implication is that Miller is carrying out the daily work of governance while Trump serves as head of state, focusing on the fun parts of being president.

But DOGE is going beyond the scope of Project 2025, and in ways that directly harm the United States.

Take the Project 2025 recommendations on USAID, the first target of DOGE. DOGE adopted the general theme of the Project 2025 chapter — that USAID had been used to implement a lot of radical plans. But the virtual elimination of USAID implemented last week goes well beyond Project 2025’s recommended reversal to 2019’s budget of $39.3 billion.

Project 2025 hailed Trump’s use of USAID to push for religious protection for Christians which — as I showed —  got shut down early along with everything else.

It promoted international religious freedom as a pillar of the agency’s work and built up an unprecedented genocide-response infrastructure.

It specifically called for greater reliance on local NGOs — and pointed to PEPFAR as a model.

Streamlining Procurement and Localizing the Partner Base. USAID is a grantmaking and contracting agency that disburses billions of dollars of federal funding in developing countries through implementing partners, such as U.N. agencies, international NGOs, for-profit companies, and local nongovernmental entities. In rare instances, such as in Jordan and Ukraine, the agency provides direct budget support to finance the operations of host-country governments. USAID far more often counts on expensive and ine!ective large contracts and grants to carry out its programs. It justifies these practices based on speed and a lower administrative burden on its institutional capacity.

[snip]

The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has shown that localization at scale is possible within a short time span. Over the four years of the Trump Administration, the multibillion-dollar program increased the amount of funding disbursed to local entities from about 25 percent to nearly 70 percent with positive overall results. This model should be replicated across all of USAID.

But as declarations in various lawsuits repeat over and over, these local partners are not getting paid, and it’s destroying the credibility of the US (and rule of law).

11. Currently my mission has more than $30 million in unpaid invoices for 2 months of implementing partners’ work, with half of those past Prompt Payment Act due date (30 days) and incurring interest every day. If one were to extrapolate the numbers across all of the missions and USAID/Washington, given that annual USAID appropriation is $40 billion, the total dollar amount of unpaid invoices would certainly surpass $1billion at the most conservative estimate.

[snip]

13. Arbitrary withholding of due payments to U.S. and non-U.S. based partners does grave damage to the reputation and reliability of the U.S. government both domestically and internationally. USAID is a USG Agency which signed the contracts and grants in line with the Code of Federal Regulations and other statutes; USG refusal to pay for the past performed work and non-compliance with the TRO can shatter Americans’ certainty in the rule of law.

Rather than empowering local partners and capabilities, the quick decimation has devastated them — and left Americans still located overseas exposed to backlash.

USAID is just the most substantiated example of the sheer waste DOGE is creating. We’re seeing similarly stupid decisions in the firings of critical personnel (some of whom get hired back), but also the elimination of long-term maintenance or safety programs that will cost far more when those protections are gone.

Project 2025 envisioned stripping civil service protections and politicizing the bureaucracy. But with DOGE cuts, it’s not clear the bureaucracy can be rebuilt, even assuming the Heritage hires knew what they were doing. Meanwhile, the method of those cuts is more likely to elicit a backlash from judges, potentially even from the Supreme Court justices whom right wingers were counting on to bless all this.

And all that’s before you contemplate the possibility that Elon’s DOGE boys are doing something else with the data they’re accessing, or — intentionally or not — setting up backdoors via which adversaries can do so themselves.

Assume you were a true believer in Project 2025 (and not far greater authoritarianism). DOGE puts all that at risk, because by breaking so much so early, it is eliciting backlash and collapse of the economy.

The installation of useful idiots

It’s not just Elon who is making a mess. So are the other unqualified useful idiots Trump has installed — people like Pete Hegseth (who has fired three senior women officers after assuring Joni Ernst he wouldn’t target women) and Tulsi Gabbard (who parroted the same Russian propaganda she partly disavowed to get confirmed yesterday) and RFK Jr (who reneged on his promise not to cut off vaccine programs) and Kash Patel (who reneged on his promise to appoint a career FBI Agent as his Deputy).

These people are doing precisely the affirmative damage to the US that Democrats warned they would do — most obviously in RFK’s initial dismissal of the measles outbreak spreading from Texas to other states. And they’re doing it after years of parroting Russian propaganda.

The personalization of DOJ

We expected DOJ to be politicized in a second Trump term. I was even cynical enough to imagine that he would pardon all the January 6ers. The denialism about both Russia and January 6 were baked right into Project 2025.

  • The Federal Bureau of Investigation, knowing that claims of collusion with Russia were false,5 collaborated with Democratic operatives to inject the story into the 2016 election through strategic media leaks, falsified Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant applications, and lied to Congress.6
  • Personnel within the FBI engaged in a campaign to convince social media companies and the media generally that the story about the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop was the result of a Russian misinformation campaign—while the FBI had possession of the laptop the entire time and could have clarified the authenticity of the source.

[snip]

  • The FBI engaged in a domestic influence operation to pressure social media companies to report more “foreign influence” than the FBI was actually seeing and stop the dissemination of and censor true information directly related to the 2020 presidential election.11

But the personalization of DOJ, along with Pam Bondi’s orders to stop chasing foreign influence operations, does something more.

It effectively makes foreign bribery — as well as the kind of kickbacks we saw in advance of Trump’s inauguration — legal.

As I noted here, the SEC, for example, has paused its suit against Justin Sun. As Judd Legum describes, this follows the Chinese-linked businessman’s multi-million “investment” in Trump’s crypto currency.

In March 2023, the SEC charged Sun and three of his companies, accusing him of marketing unregistered securities and “fraudulently manipulating the secondary market” for a crypto token. The SEC accused Sun of wash trading, which involves buying and selling a token quickly to fraudulently manufacture artificial interest.

[snip]

Sun’s purchase put millions in Trump’s pocket. WLF was entitled to “$30 million of initial net protocol revenue” in a reserve “to cover operating expenses, indemnities, and obligations.” After the reserve was met, a company owned by Trump would receive “75% of the net protocol revenues.” Sun’s purchase covered the entire reserve. As of December 1, this amounted to $18 million for Trump — 75% of the revenues of all other tokens sold at the time. Sun also joined WLF as an advisor. While the purchase benefited Trump, WLF tokens are essentially worthless for Sun, as they are non-transferable and locked indefinitely.

Nevertheless, Sun has since invested another $45 million in WLF, bringing his total investment to $75 million. This means Sun’s purchases have sent more than $50 million to Trump, Bloomberg reported. Sun has also continued to shower Trump with praise. On January 22, Sun posted on X, “if I have made any money in cryptocurrency, all credit goes to President Trump.”

Once you’ve installed lawyers who publicly represent they are Trump’s lawyers, once you’ve ensured that no one friendly to Trump will be prosecuted for bribery, then Ukraine was bound to lose any negotiation with Russia. Russia has been dangling bribes in front of Trump for years and now they’ll be free to deliver in plain sight.

And Trump has never placed his own self interest behind the interests of the United States.

The capitulation to Russia

Keep all that in mind as you consider Trump’s abject capitulation yesterday.

Keep in mind that even before yesterday’s ambush of Zelenskyy, Pete Hegseth ordered Cyber Command to stand down any targeting of Russia.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week ordered U.S. Cyber Command to stand down from all planning against Russia, including offensive digital actions, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Hegseth gave the instruction to Cyber Command chief Gen. Timothy Haugh, who then informed the organization’s outgoing director of operations, Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Ryan Heritage, of the new guidance, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

The order does not apply to the National Security Agency, which Haugh also leads, or its signals intelligence work targeting Russia, the sources said.

CISA, too, has taken its focus off of Russia, something that risk grave damage to private companies as well as the government.

Liesyl Franz, deputy assistant secretary for international cybersecurity at the state department, said in a speech last week before a United Nations working group on cybersecurity that the US was concerned by threats perpetrated by some states but only named China and Iran, with no mention of Russia in her remarks. Franz also did not mention the Russia-based LockBit ransomware group, which the US has previously said is the most prolific ransomware group in the world and has been called out in UN forums in the past. The treasury last year said LockBit operates on a ransomeware-as-service model, in which the group licenses its ransomware software to criminals in exchange for a portion of the paid ransoms.

In contrast to Franz’s statement, representatives for US allies in the European Union and the UK focused their remarks on the threat posed by Moscow, with the UK pointing out that Russia was using offensive and malicious cyber-attacks against Ukraine alongside its illegal invasion.

“It’s incomprehensible to give a speech about threats in cyberspace and not mention Russia and it’s delusional to think this will turn Russia and the FSB [the Russian security agency] into our friends,” said James Lewis, a veteran cyber expert formerly of the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington. “They hate the US and are still mad about losing the cold war. Pretending otherwise won’t change this.”

The US policy change has also been established behind closed doors.

A recent memo at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) set out new priorities for the agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security and monitors cyber threats against US critical infrastructure. The new directive set out priorities that included China and protecting local systems. It did not mention Russia.

A person familiar with the matter who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity said analysts at the agency were verbally informed that they were not to follow or report on Russian threats, even though this had previously been a main focus for the agency.

The person said work that was being done on something “Russia-related” was in effect “nixed”.

And, again, this happened before the ambush yesterday.

Eight years ago, as Mueller’s prosecutors started to focus on Roger Stone’s possible implication in a hacking conspiracy with Russia, Trump declared that he was going to partner with Putin; Russia and the US would jointly guard things like elections.

Now, Trump has chosen to unilaterally disarm.

Yesterday, Roger Sollenberger unpacked the Gitub of one of Elon’s boys, Jordan Wick.

 

In addition to his AI start-up, AccelerateX (which Wired wrote about), Wick has been fiddling with:

  • Tracking government employees by union status
  • Downloading Xitter DMs
  • Identifying open source data on submarine cables, ports, and mineral deposits

Sure, the utility of some of that — tracking union status — maps right onto the Project 2025 plans DOGE is purportedly implementing, even if that, plus the DM download, raise grave concerns about privacy.

But the submarine cables too?

Even as Donald Trump has made his fealty to Putin clear, even as his Director of National Intelligence parrots Russian disinformation (protected now by the FBI), Elon Musk has been vacuuming up all the data of all the government. And every claim that he’s been modernizing networks or searching for fraud have fallen apart.

At this point, we simply cannot rule out deliberate wholesale sabotage.

Update: Thought I’d repost what I wrote in December in response to Kimberly Strassel complaining about Trump’s useful idiot picks.

But I don’t doubt that the rat-fucker wing of Trump’s advisory team believes that Bobby and Tulsi do accomplish something. The question is whether some really smart politicos believe it’ll be a good thing to kill children and give dictators America’s secrets and let the richest men in the world destroy America’s banking system and the dollar exchange — whether they believe this will win lasting approval from America’s great disaffected masses. It might well! It certainly will expand the pool of disaffected Americans, and with it, increase the market for a strong man to respond to it all.

Or whether there’s some reason Trump is tempting Republican Senators to defy his plans to do great damage to the United States. Perhaps he intends to dare them to start defying him in bulk.

Or perhaps the rat-fucker wing of Trump’s entourage simply has an unknown reason they want to destroy America. Maybe Trump has other election debts — debts he’d get in more trouble for ignoring — that make him amenable to dropping policy bomb after policy bomb on America’s children.

But that’s sort of the point. You’ve got Kimberly Strassel up in arms because Trump is going to the mat for a conspiracist with a Democratic name who’ll get children killed. But it’s more likely to do with the policy bombs that RFK will help Trump drop than the specific conversations that led Bobby Jr to drop out of the race.

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