A New Round Of Unlawful Purges Hits FBI

INSIDE: Brian Driscoll ... John Cornyn ... Brandon Russell

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

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The Retribution: FBI Edition

President Trump continues to decimate the senior ranks of the FBI with the unlawful firings of career agents, all of whom hold non-political career positions with civil service protections.

The ongoing purge of FBI personnel follows Trump’s repeated promises, made over years, to retaliate against the investigators who pursued criminal charges against him for his first-term misconduct. But the purges have expanded beyond those investigators to include officials who have refused to do the White House’s bidding in conducting the purges.

Among the latest casualties is former acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll, who stood up to the Justice Department early in Trump’s second term as it tried, among other thing, to obtain the names of agents who had investigated Trump. To put a finer point on it, the Trump administration is forcing out the man it plucked from relative obscurity to serve as acting director until Kash Patel could be confirmed by the Senate (although it should be noted that the White House had originally intended to name Driscoll acting deputy director but mistakenly swapped his name with Robert Kissane’s and never corrected the error).

“I understand that you may have a lot of questions regarding why, for which I have no answers,” Driscoll said in a message to colleagues reported by the AP. “No cause has been articulated at this time.”

Other officials reportedly fired, effective as soon as today, included:

• Steven Jensen, an assistant director whom Patel put in charge of the Washington field office in April;

• Spencer Evans, who had already been demoted from his position running the Las Vegas field office;

• Walter Giardina, a former Marine who worked on Trump-related investigations, including the contempt of Congress case against Peter Navarro; and

• Christopher Meyer, who had worked on Trump investigations.

“None of the men appeared eligible to retire,” according to the NYT, which reported that Giardina’s wife died of cancer last month.

Using and Abusing the FBI

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said the FBI had agreed to his request to help track down Democratic state legislators who fled Texas to deny Republican lawmakers a quorum in their mid-decade redistricting scheme. The FBI has no obvious legal authority to track down state legislators who have committed no crimes, let alone force them to return from Illinois to Texas.

Florida Joins GOP Redistricting-palooza

Florida Republicans have begun the process of a mid-decade redistricting of their own as President Trump and the GOP go all out to preserve their narrow House majority.

Trump’s Sows Confusion With Census Post

President Trump’s social media post yesterday morning declaring that he was ordering a new census with a citizenship question included set off a day of confusion. Was Trump ordering a new unprecedented mid-decade census or was he re-upping his past failed bid to add a citizenship question, this time for the next census in 2030?

A day later, it’s still not clear.

The best reporting, like NPR’s, explicitly noted the confusion and that the administration was not responsive to efforts to clear it up:

The press office for the White House did not respond to NPR’s requests for comment.

In a statement, the Commerce Department said: “The Census Bureau will immediately adopt modern technology tools for use in the Census to better understand our robust Census data. We will accurately analyze the data to reflect the number of legal residents in the United States.”

The worst reporting danced around the uncertainty posed by an erratic president with itchy thumbs and his own social media platform.

Trump’s Birthright Citizenship EO Blocked Again

Since the Roberts Court used the birthright citizenship case to rewrite the law on universal injunctions, three different federal courts have used the class action workaround to block President Trump’s executive order nationwide, the WaPo notes:

The upshot is that the president is facing injunctions from more lower courts than he was before the Supreme Court’s ruling, and federal judges have demonstrated, at least for now, that they maintain significant authority to slow down the implementation of the administration’s most consequential policies.

The big test, of course, is still to come: Will appeals courts and ultimately the Supreme Court uphold the nationwide class action certifications? Stay tuned.

Only at TPM

TPM’s Josh Kovensky: HHS Has Revived a Failed Program to Scrape Americans’ Data and Track Autism, Senate Suggests

Good Read

Wired: “A string of previously undisclosed break-ins at Tennessee National Guard armories last fall marks the latest in a growing series of security breaches at military facilities across the United States, raising fresh concerns about the vulnerability of US armories to theft and intrusion. … At least some of the break-ins seem to point to potential insider help.”

Neo-Nazi Gets 20 Years for Power Grid Plot

Brandon Russell, a founding member of the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division, was sentenced Thursday to the maximum possible of 20 years for his conviction plotting to attack Baltimore’s electrical grid, part of a rise in accelerationist extremism.

Sign of the Times

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