Greg Bovino Under Criminal Investigation in Minneapolis
INSIDE: Mary Moriarty ... Pete Hegseth ... Kash Patel
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Transparency and Accountability
CBP commander Gregory Bovino is under criminal investigation in Minneapolis for his conduct during Operation Metro Surge, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced in a Monday press conference.
Specifically, Moriarty is looking into Bovino’s deployment of a chemical irritant in a local park on Jan. 21, which was captured on video:
Bovino’s conduct in Mueller Park is one of 17 incidents that Moriarty says her office is now investigating. The only other incident under investigation that she identified with any specificity was the immigration enforcement operation conducted at Minneapolis Roosevelt High School on Jan. 7, the same day Renee Good was shot to death by a federal agent. Bovino was also present at the high school incident, where chemical irritants were deployed:
The purpose of the Moriarty press conference was to announce the creation of an online portal for members of the public to submit photographic and video evidence of potentially illegal conduct by federal agents. The Transparency and Accountability Project will be staffed by county prosecutors and a civilian investigator, Moriarty said.
At the press conference, Moriarty said that the Trump administration continues to refuse to cooperate with the state investigations into the federal shootings of Good, Alex Pretti, and Julio Sosa-Celis. Moriarty previously sent formal demand letters to federal agencies for evidence in those three shootings. The administration did not respond by last month’s deadline for evidence in the Good shooting. The deadline for it to respond in the other two shootings is today. Moriarty is considering suing the administration if it does not cooperate.
Third Time Is the Charm?
For the third time, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb of Washington, D.C., swatted back an effort by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to restrict the access of members of Congress to ICE detention facilities. The latest ruling came after Noem tried to implement workarounds to Cobb’s earlier rulings.
Two-Time Losers
The law firms that capitulated to President Trump’s executive orders lost again yesterday when the Trump administration withdrew its appeals in the four cases it lost against targeted law firms who stood up and challenged the authoritarian move. Trump went 0-4 in the law firm cases, and the Trump DOJ finally retreated before another expected setback in the consolidated appeal.
It’s not all good news though: Big Law continues to pull back on pro bono work and shy away from cases likely to antagonize the Trump White House, legal experts say.
Quote of the Day
“This episode will be remembered as demonstrating the difference between institutions that had the ethical courage to uphold the Constitution and fight bullying and then won, and those that compromised their ethics and gained nothing. Let’s hope that media companies, universities, and other organizations pay heed.”—Vanita Gupta, associate attorney general in the Biden administration, on Trump targeting law firms
SCOTUS Besmirches Itself Yet Again
In two emergency dockets rulings released simultaneously last evening, the Supreme Court intervened on the “conservative-coded side” in a New York redistricting case and a California transgender youth case, as Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck put it:
We’re long past the point at which there are neutral legal principles that can be deployed to persuasively reconcile all of the Court’s behavior on emergency applications. The Court is intervening because it (thinks it) can, and because, for whatever reason, it doesn’t want to wait—in these cases, anyway—for the ordinary processes that would bring these issues to the Court in due course. … [I]t makes the Court at least look like what so many regularly accuse it of being: a font of partisan political power, and not much more.
Down the Memory Hole!
Under pressure from Republican state attorneys general, the Federal Judicial Center deleted a chapter on climate science from the online version of its nearly 1,700-page Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence for federal judges, prompting an outcry from scientists involved in preparing the manual.
Latest from the Middle East …
The death toll in Iran rose to more than 780 people, according to the Iranian Red Crescent
The first six U.S. troop deaths were concentrated in a poorly fortified triple-wide trailer in Kuwait being used as a tactical operations center when it was hit by a kamikaze Iranian drone, officials tell CBS News. This account seems to contradict the claim by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who called the drone a “squirter,” that the facility was fortified.
The United States closed its embassies in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, the latter of which was struck in an Iranian counterattack.
The State Department recommended that Americans evacuate from the following Middle Eastern countries:
A Two-Front War?
Israel is seizing on the U.S. attack on Iran to advance deeper into southern Lebanon.
Christian Nationalism in the Armed Forces
Since the start of the Iran campaign, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has been inundated with complaints from service members about commanders casting the mission in the stark and bloody imagery of a Christian evangelical Armageddon hastening the End Times, Jonathan Larsen reports.
Patel Ousted Agents Specializing in Iran
MSNow’s Carol Leonnig: “When FBI Director Kash Patel fired a dozen FBI agents and staff last week for their role in the classified documents investigation of Donald Trump, he targeted an elite counter espionage unit that investigates threats from foreign adversaries and specializes in Iran, according to more than a half dozen sources with knowledge of the firings.”
Pardoned Capital Rioter Charged Again
A pardoned Jan. 6 rioter has been charged with making threatening statements to one of the officers he faced off with at the U.S. Capitol … during a fifth-anniversary event earlier this year where the charged threats were caught on video.
Whitewashing History
There’s nothing quite as Orwellian as middle managers at the U.S. Park Service trying to appease President Trump by finding every possible display, exhibit, and sign that contains language the White House might find objectionable. And yet … some of it is hilarious?
The WaPo, which reviewed the internal government database containing the submissions by park managers, caught the humor, some of it surely intended:
The tone and content of the materials described and submitted to Interior by park managers vary widely, reflecting a mix of careful attempts to obey administration orders, confusion about what might violate them and, at times, apparent skepticism about the entire endeavor.
Staff members identified a brochure at Cape Hatteras National Seashore, in North Carolina, for “possible disparaging of a prominent American” because it mentions that aviator and onetime Smithsonian Institution secretary Samuel Langley failed to achieve flight. A park staffer at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Arizona asks for clarification about whether displays on California condors’ return from the brink of extinction disparage hunters “or tell a success ??”
Bravo ??
Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.
Re: Bovino under investigation...easy out: he'll claim "immunity" under the Supremacy Clause, end of story.
I'll tell you what is wrong about that environmental note: No species has EVER been to the brink of extinction in these glorious United States, from sea to shining sea! Anyone who says so is a nattering nabob of negativism!