Blanche Overpromises and Underdelivers
The mother of all “investigate the investigators” retributions in south Florida suffered another major blow with the resignation of Kurt Olsen as its top prosecutor.
Olsen’s departure marks the third top prosecutor in a row to leave the probe — though Olsen’s departure seems markedly different.
A career prosecutor, Maria Medetis Long, left under duress in April, concerned that the case lacked evidence to proceed.
Then Joseph diGenova — a Trump true believer — resigned under pressure earlier this month for not seeking indictments fast enough for Main Justice and the White House.
Olsen, who took over after diGenova left, is even more of a true believer. He had worked on bogus election fraud cases while on the Trump II White House staff and had no prior prosecution experience before being assigned to the “grand conspiracy” case.
And now he’s gone. Not just from the investigation, but from DOJ entirely.
Olsen was also reportedly under pressure to produce indictments quickly, but he seems to have been undone by unspecified “issues with his security clearance” — a guffaw-worthy irony considering classified documents are at the center of the retributive investigation.
Olsen’s supposed probe — predicated on the nonsense notion that Trump was the victim of a Deep State plot to deprive him of his civil rights — is especially focused on the indictment of Trump in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, so problems with his security clearance is a plot twist too implausible for a screenplay. Olsen’s resignation comes after FBI agents who investigated the Mar-a-Lago case were subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury overseen by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon — a development which spilled out into the open just last week.
This may turn out to be an important side plot: Olsen was working in the White House for most of the past two years and then led a deeply politicized investigation without precedent while having some sort of issue with his security clearance. It’s a pattern we’ve seen across both Trump presidencies: administration figures with trouble securing security clearances. It’s not clear if we’ll ever know the scope and scale of the issue Olsen had or the risk, if any, that he presented.
Where does that leave the “investigate the investigators” probe that is trying to sweep up Trump foes from John Brennan to James Comey to Jack Smith and puts at risk every other investigator and prosecutor involved in the Trump prosecutions?
It’s super unclear because there’s no real precedent for this kind of probe or this kind of DOJ flailing or this kind of White House pressure to produce specific results in a case regardless of the facts or the law.
At one level, Attorney General Todd Blanche has shown a tendency to overpromise and underdeliver to President Trump on this case. It seems to have led, at least in part, to the firing of Pam Bondi as attorney general. It was among the cases that Blanche pushed forward while auditioning as acting attorney general. He’s shuffled the deck twice now as attorney general, presumably as a way to buy himself more time with an impatient and impulsive president.
In other Trump II cases, we’ve seen political appointees at Main Justice jump into the breach and handles cases directly themselves. Perhaps that’s the next step here. But at some point, Blanche is going to run out of people to point the finger at for not pursuing this case zealously enough — and Trump may point the finger at him.
Kash Patel’s Minder Resigns
FBI co-deputy director Andrew Bailey — the former Missouri attorney general who was brought in to form an unprecedented triumvirate leadership structure at the bureau, with the possibility dangled of him succeeding Director Kash Patel — has stepped down.
The official reason for Bailey’s departure: to spend more time with his family.
The actual reason? There are conflicting reports, as they say. Or perhaps better to call them multiple contributing factors:
My personal fave, via CBS News (emphasis mine): “Patel consistently kept Bailey at arm’s length and cut him out of meetings the deputy FBI director should attend because Bailey was constantly flagging things that were unconstitutional.”
Another factor, via MS NOW, which the FBI quickly denied publicly: Bailey was “annoyed” by the recent demotions of two senior counterterrorism agents in the FBI Washington field office over dissatisfaction with their handling of harassing phone calls made to Katie Miller, the wife of White House official Stephen Miller.
The mundane D.C. reason: Bailey was frustrated at not being named FBI director as Patel flailed in the role.
Take your pick. All of the above might be the smartest bet.
Trump DOJ Watch
Retribution Alert: Former Special Counsel Jack Smith is set to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee today — his third time testifying to Congress in the past year — as part of Republican lawmakers’ attempt to set a perjury trap for him. They’ve already referred him to the Trump DOJ for criminal prosecution once, as they try to rewrite the history of Trump’s own criminality.
Should I Stay or Should I Go? The New Yorker has a well-balanced piece that genuinely grapples with the tough choices and real tradeoffs between remaining at the Trump DOJ or resigning in protest. “The D.O.J. left me,” Samantha Trepel, a former prosecutor in the Civil Rights Division, said. “I didn’t leave the D.O.J.”
For Your Radar …
For those keeping close track of the major legal cases still slowly making their way through the courts …
Alien Enemies Act: The full D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is hearing oral arguments this morning on whether U.S. District Judge James Boasberg can proceed with a contempt of court inquiry into the Trump administration’s violation of his orders to stop deportation flights and turn planes around. This full court is involved after a three-judge panel of the court blocked Boasberg from proceeding.
Abrego Garcia: At the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, the Trump administration filed its appeal brief overnight in Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s habeas case (which is distinct from his case to bring back from El Salvador and his criminal case).
Trump IRS lawsuit: At the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, the Trump DOJ filed its appeal brief challenging the imposition of sanctions in the collusive lawsuit by President Trump against the IRS that produced the “anti-weaponization” slush fund and IRS immunity for Trump.
SCOTUS Gets Trans Care in Prisons Case
The Trump DOJ has asked the Supreme Court to pause while on appeal a lower court order that blocked a new Bureau of Prisons policy ending the provision of gender-affirming care in federal prisons.
Trump Behind Govt’s Pro-Trump Ads
CNN: “President Trump has personally driven the controversial, taxpayer-funded video ads promoting himself and his administration’s policies, including helping select the imagery and videos used, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.”
Mass Deportation Watch
“ICE is now detaining more immigrants than ever before,” The Guardian reports.
The ICE agent who shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston in July has been identified by the Texas Tribune.
The Department of Homeland Security rejected a request from the NFL to take down a mashup video of highlights of Hall of Fame safety Brian Dawkins’ career that it posted in support of its mass deportation operation. Neither the league, Dawkins, nor the Philadelphia Eagles (for whom he played from 1996-2008) gave permission for the use of the video clips or of his name and likeness.
Quote of the Day
“These last two years have been just a cesspool of coercion. I’m not prepared to say that I know that there’s illegal activity here that will result in the revocation of contracts, but I do know that there’s all kinds of dirty conflicts of interest here.”—Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), in line to chair the House Intelligence Committee if Democrats win in November, firing a warning shot to intel industry contractors
UK Suspects Released
The five British nationals arrested on suspicion of terrorism, near a Royal Air Force Base used by the U.S. Air Force for operations against Iran, were released on bail.
Makes Me Want to Weep
A WaPo visualization of President Trump’s unilateral, personalist, ahistorical, and aesthetically gross remaking of monumental D.C.
News? Tips? Feedback? Please let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.
Sigh…
For every defeat imposed on Trump he has numerous successes. Like the continuing ICE horrors, the Iran war insanity, the election fuckery because the pathological POS can’t accept the idea of rejection and so on and so forth.
As for the Trump Vindication Fandango in Florida, no competent prosecutors are needed because it’s all about abusing enemies or “enemies” as the case may be. If there was any merit involved, yeah, sure, the resigning lead prosecutors would be a problem.
Tips:
Winning a battle isn’t the same as winning a war.
The opposition to the domestic radical right wing aka Republicans and their special interests has no end date so the fighting can’t stop.
If Republican power isn’t being reduced if not ended for good or close to it, any given victory doesn’t matter.
Life’s too short for BS…
Re: the Alien Enemies Act...The DOJ, speaking for and with trump's overt encouragement, is saying "I am the law", and this is the crux of the matter. The lower courts have almost been unanimous in scuppering that posture, but there has been enough succor supplied by the Scotus majority's use of the "shadow docket" to stay several of those important lower-court decisions to further embolden the DOJ scofflaws to keep pushing trump's patently unconstitutional executive orders.
Good on Judge Boasberg for persevering, at no little cost to a well-earned reputation as a just and well-versed district judge.