Stephen Miller Has ‘Central Role’ Probing Liberal Groups

INSIDE: Letitia James ... Zia Faruqui ... Paul Ingrassia

(Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

Criminalizing Political Opposition in America

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller is “playing a central role” in the Trump administration’s lawless investigation of liberal groups and their finances, White House officials told Reuters:

Miller is taking a “hands-on” role in investigating the funding of nonprofits and educational institutions and is sharing recommendations from Attorney General Pam Bondi and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent with Trump and other top advisers, the first White House official said.

The official said Miller is Trump’s chief adviser on the issue and is receiving regular updates from the joint terrorism task force – a coalition of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies tasked with investigating terrorism.

As TPM’s Josh Kovensky reported earlier this week, the threat of baseless federal investigations under the spurious umbrella of “domestic terrorism” is already having an effect on advocacy groups exercising their First Amendment rights.

Stephen Miller’s Hit List

The White House provided Reuters with a list of “liberal groups, donors or fundraising organizations that it said helped finance or plan protests where the violent incidents occurred”:

• George Soros’ Open Society Foundations

• ActBlue

• Indivisible

• Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights

• IfNotNow

• Jewish Voice for Peace

One White House official “stressed that the organizations were not necessarily potential targets,” Reuters reported.

President Trump has previously targeted Soros and Reid Hoffman by name.

Bonkers Antifa Meeting at the White House

As part of targeting political opposition groups for investigation, the Trump White House held an anti-antifa themed meeting this week that really was bonkers, as the Independent captures well: “Trump just hosted an ‘Antifa roundtable’ at the White House. It was so much worse than you’re imagining”

Trump Gets His Letitia James Indictment

The lawless indictment of Letitia James was so highly anticipated that the event itself seemed anticlimactic, which is one of the challenges of our time.

After the president threatens the target for years, campaigns for re-election on exacting retribution against the target, orders an indictment of the target, ousts a prosecutor for not following orders, and installs his supine personal lawyer as prosecutor, then there’s an air of inevitability about the subsequent indictment.

But as Garrett Graff noted this week before the James indictment, that is the problem: “The fact that it’s possible to predict the next target — presidential rantings indicate that it could be John Bolton, Letitia James or Adam Schiff — shows how corrupted this usually independent process has become.”

Magistrate Judge Rejects End-Run Indictment

A remarkable ruling by Magistrate Zia Faruqui in D.C. rejected a Trump DOJ effort to do an end-run around a federal grand jury that had already declined to issue an indictment in an assault and weapons case.

Faruqui had called out DOJ attorneys immediately when they went to a D.C. Superior Court grand jury, secured an indictment there, and then tried to present it in federal court, but he ordered briefing before issuing a ruling. In the meantime, DOJ ran to Chief Judge James Boasberg and asked him to overrule Faruqui, but Boasberg declined to intervene prior to the briefing and an actual ruling from Faruqui.

Faruqui ruled Thursday, and it was a doozy:

Between the year 2005 and today, over 5,000 indictments were returned in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Last week, the government attempted—for the first time ever—to return an indictment from a D.C. Superior Court grand jury after a federal grand jury previously refused to indict. This unprecedented workaround to the normal federal grand jury process immediately raised serious questions about the legality of the government’s conduct.

From there, Faruqui conducted his legal analysis, but not without dropping a few pointed barbs at the Trump DOJ:

The unprecedented number of recent federal grand jury rejections—a trend that appears to be spreading as most recently seen in Chicago—reflects that federal grand juries want more than the government is offering.

Faruqui — who has been at the leading edge of scrutinizing Trump DOJ conduct, including overcharging criminal cases in D.C. federal court — wasn’t done yet:

Under their view, the government could take all federal indictments to D.C. Superior Court without any limitations. That outcome is something to be especially vigilant against given the recent struggles of the government to bend federal grand juries to the government’s will.

Faruqui’s conclusion was withering (emphasis his):

This litigation and the delay caused by it could have been avoided if the government had simply gone to one of the other federal grand juries. That escape hatch remains open today. At any time, the government can short circuit this dispute by taking their federal charge before a federal grand jury. The question then is why are they now afraid to do so?

DOJ is likely to appeal to Boasberg again. Stay tuned.

A Mixed Bag From Courts on National Guard Deployments

Federal courts offered conflicting signals Thursday over whether they will rein in Trump’s National Guard deployments to blue states:

• Oregon: 9th Circuit judges reviewing Trump’s Portland deployment “enthusiastically support his ability to deploy military anywhere at any time,” TPM’s Kate Riga reports.

• Illinois: U.S. District Judge April M. Perry issued a temporary restraining order blocking Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in the Chicago area.

Quote of the Day

“Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration.” –Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, the chairman of the National Governors Association

Only The Best People

Not skeevy at all, via Politico:

In late July, Paul Ingrassia, the White House liaison for the Department of Homeland Security, arrived at a Ritz-Carlton in Orlando with a lower-ranking female colleague and others from their department. When the group reached the front desk, the woman learned she didn’t have a hotel room.

Ingrassia then informed her that she would be staying with him, according to five administration officials familiar with the episode. Eventually the woman discovered that Ingrassia had arranged ahead of time to have her hotel room canceled so she would have to stay with him, three of those officials said.

Ingrassia’s attorney confirmed the two shared a room but denied that any last-minute change was made to the hotel reservation or that any “inappropriate behavior” took place.

Making Sense of the Israel-Gaza Deal

Aaron David Miller is as astute and reliable a Middle East observer as we have, and his interview this week in the New Yorker on how and why a ceasefire deal finally came together is the best expert analysis I’ve seen.

‘Starving Children Screaming for Food’

I feel some measure of remorse for not mentioning every damn day the unfolding disaster of Trump’s lawless foreign aid cuts. Just a couple of examples from this week:

• AP: Starving children screaming for food as US aid cuts unleash devastation and death across Myanma

• WaPo: U.S. aid cuts are being felt across Africa. Here’s where.

Help Us Celebrate TPM’s 25th Anniversary!

Unbelievably, TPM turns 25 next month.

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