Career DOJers Resign Over Handling of Fatal ICE Shooting
INSIDE: Harmeet Dhillon ... Pam Bondi ... Jeanine Pirro
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Programming Note:
Join me for the first Morning Memo Live event on Jan. 29 in Washington, D.C. Find details and tickets here.
Civil Rights Division Sidelined
A least four top career officials in the criminal section of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division have resigned in protest over the department’s handling of the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon decided not to investigate the shooting even though law enforcement shootings are the bread-and-butter work of that unit.
“The departures — including that of the chief of the section, as well as the principal deputy chief, deputy chief and acting deputy chief — represent the most significant mass resignation at the Justice Department since February,” MS Now reports. They reportedly had concerns about other Trump DOJ decisions too.
DOJ insisted that the officials in question had already decided to take early retirement before the ICE shooting.
RED ALERT
The DOJ resignations come as the NYT reports that the federal probe in the fatal ICE shooting is looking into Renee Good’s possible ties to activist groups protesting Trump’s mass deportation policies, opening a Pandora’s box of First Amendment concerns:
The decision by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department to scrutinize Ms. Good’s activities and her potential connections to local activists is in line with the White House’s strategy of deflecting blame for the shooting away from federal law enforcement and toward opponents they have described as domestic terrorists, often without providing evidence.
Justice Department officials under Mr. Trump have long maintained that investigating and punishing protesters who organized efforts to physically obstruct or disrupt immigration enforcement is a legitimate subject of federal inquiries. But casting a broad net over the activist community in Minneapolis, former department officials and critics of the administration said, raises the specter that forms of political protest traditionally protected by the First Amendment could be criminalized.
Minneapolis Mass Deportation Watch
Charges in Fatal ICE Shooting Unlikely: “It seems increasingly unlikely that the agent who fired three times at the unarmed woman, Renee Nicole Good, will face criminal charges, although that could change as investigators collect new evidence,” the NYT reports, citing people familiar with the situation.
Surging More Officers to MN: DHS is sending 1,000 more Customs and Border Patrol officers to Minnesota, joining 2,000 federal agents already in the blue state for the mass deportation operation.
Minnesota Sues: The state of Minnesota filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration seeking to end the surge of federal agents into the state for the mass deportation operation.
U.S. Citizens Detained: Immigrations enforcement agents detained two employees of a Minnesota-based Target while they were on the job in company stores, even though both were U.S. citizens.
Kavanaugh Stops: “On Monday, an NPR reporter witnessed multiple instances where immigration agents drove around Minneapolis and questioned people about their immigration status. Some took place in the parking lots of big box stores,” NPR reported.
Quote of the Day
“You’ve turned Montessori school teachers and stay-at-home moms into Timothy McVeigh in the minds of these agents, so of course their first reaction is to shoot.”—Christopher Parente, an attorney for a Chicago woman shot by CBP, commenting on the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Good
Trump DOJ Watch
Pam Bondi: President Trump has repeatedly complained in private that Attorney General Pam Bondi is weak and ineffective in using the Justice Department to exact retribution against his political foes, the WSJ reports. But rather than being run-of-the-mill palace intrigue, the complaints are themselves part of Trump’s intense pressure campaign to force the DOJ to do his bidding, according to the newspaper.
Jack Smith: The former special counsel will testify publicly on Jan. 22 before the House Judiciary Committee, Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) announced.
Robert K. McBride: The first assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia was abruptly fired after only about two months on the job. McBride, who had been a federal prosecutor earlier in his career, was lured out of private practice to backstop interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan as she pursued the Trump-ordered prosecutions of James Comey and Letitia James. Halligan was subsequently ruled invalidly appointed but has refused to step down, drawing the ire of federal judges. McBride was reportedly fired after “several disagreements with Halligan, including over how to proceed with the Comey case after the indictment against him was dismissed,” the WaPo reported.
Was Jeanine Pirro Freelancing in Powell Case?
A strange twist in the use of the weaponized Trump DOJ against Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell that strains the imagination: “Jeanine Pirro didn’t seek sign-off from her bosses at the Justice Department before subpoenaing the Federal Reserve,” Bloomberg reports.
Both President Trump and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte denied any involvement in the Federal Reserve subpoenas, but you could be forgiven for not taking those denials at face value. Still, the Bloomberg report suggests that Pirro may have been freelancing, though given the president’s open animosity toward Powell, it may be more likely that she thought she was currying favor with the White House by issuing the subpoenas.
If the Bloomberg report isn’t enough evidence for you, Pirro posted a strange defense of the subpoenas on X only 20 minutes before the Bloomberg story was first published:
The notion that this was just a friendly request for information and that the target of the subpoena is overreacting by referencing potential future indictments is comically disingenuous of Pirro.
Powell Blowback
Widespread opposition rose up to Trump’s attempt to neuter the Fed:
Former Fed chairs issued a joint statement calling it an “unprecedented attempt to use prosecutorial attacks to undermine” the Fed’s independence.
Central bankers worldwide issued a joint statement in support of Powell’s independence.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK): “After speaking with Chair Powell this morning, it’s clear the administration’s investigation is nothing more than an attempt at coercion. If the Department of Justice believes an investigation into Chair Powell is warranted based on project cost overruns—which are not unusual—then Congress needs to investigate the Department of Justice.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told President Trump in a call late Sunday that the federal investigation into the Federal Reserve chair “made a mess.” Another Trump adviser called the blowback from the investigation a “huge cluster.”
Trump Admin Stymies Judge in AEA Case
In a remarkable new filing late last night, the Trump administration told U.S. District Judge James Boasberg to, in essence, pound sand in the original Alien Enemies Act case.
Boasberg had ordered the Trump administration to come up with a proposal for how to provide due process after the fact to the Venezuelan men deported to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act. Boasberg had offered examples of what the government might propose, like remote hearings from Venezuela, where the men were ultimately repatriated, or allowing the men to return to the United States for court proceedings.
After asking for and being granted an extension, the Trump administration refused to make any proposals to Boasberg, instead re-litigating his initial order and claiming that its own operation to remove President Maduro and his wife from the country now made it impossible to conduct remote hearings or negotiations for the men to come to the United States.
“In my considered judgment as the Nation’s chief diplomat, I assess that introducing the matter of the disposition of the 137 class members into these discussions at this time would risk material damage to U.S. foreign policy interests in Venezuela. This assessment holds true whether the proposal is to transport class members to a U.S. jurisdiction or to arrange remote hearings from Venezuela,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a new sworn declaration filed in the case.
Word of the Day: ‘Perfidy’
NYT:
The Pentagon used a secret aircraft painted to look like a civilian plane in its first attack on a boat that the Trump administration said was smuggling drugs, killing 11 people last September, according to officials briefed on the matter. The aircraft also carried its munitions inside the fuselage, rather than visibly under its wings, they said.
The nonmilitary appearance is significant, according to legal specialists, because the administration has argued its lethal boat attacks are lawful — not murders — because President Trump “determined” the United States is in an armed conflict with drug cartels.
But the laws of armed conflict prohibit combatants from feigning civilian status to fool adversaries into dropping their guard, then attacking and killing them. That is a war crime called “perfidy.”
The subtext to this important report (separately confirmed by the WaPo) is that the Trump administration keeps trying to avoid being consistently subject to any one legal regimen for its boat strikes. It insists that the boat strikes are not murder because they’re not law enforcement operations but rather part of an armed conflict with non-state actors; and yet it is not abiding by the rules of armed conflict either.
BREAKING: Synagogue Had ‘Jewish Ties’
We may not be dealing with the sharpest knife in the drawer here.
The man charged with arson for setting fire to a synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi, allegedly confessed to the weekend attack, saying he was driven by the synagogue’s “Jewish ties.” The 19 year old was arrested at the hospital, where he was recovering from burns suffered during the attack, after being turned in by his father.
Related: In the aftermath of the attach, Anya Kamenetz reflects on the experience of southern Jews.
Trump Turbocharges Climate Change
Lisa Friedman: “In recent days his administration has slammed the door on every possible avenue of global cooperation on the environment. At the same time, it is sending the message that it wants the world to be awash in fossil fuels sold by America, no matter the consequences.”
Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.
Just a reminder that the GOP has been highly intolerant of dissent since the 1960s so Trump turning dissent into a capital crime is a much smaller leap than one might think.
Great to see that the Big Media defenders of democracy and truth tellers and stuff are reporting this as the huge scandal is, right, they’re not???
Ah, Mississippi, a state with even lower rates of educational competence than mine, Tennessee 😵💫