Fridays with Nicole Sandler
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Some of the Ways Trump’s Immigrant Invader Damaged America in Just Two Weeks
I think one effect of Trump’s attempt to wow journalists with the appearance of action is to hide how many major fuck-ups and failed promises Trump has had in his first two weeks (like the serial confession that Trump and Stephen Miller lied to voters about how many criminal aliens there are and Trump’s equivocations about multiple of the tariffs he will set).
But one locus of many of the worst failures comes from this unelected immigrant.
Among the things that African immigrant Elon Musk has done in the last few weeks was:
Forced FAA’s head, Michael Whitaker, out days before a fatal crash. As the Verge explained, Elon took Whitaker out because he deigned to regulate Musk’s companies.
But Musk’s efforts to get Whitaker were well known even before Trump’s victory in November. He has complained many times about the FAA, lashing out in September after the agency levied a $633,000 fine for launching missions with unapproved changes. (Musk is worth over $400 billion, making him the richest man in the world.)
The FAA has also fined Starlink, after the SpaceX subsidiary failed to submit safety data before launching satellites in 2022. In a House hearing, Whitaker explained that the FAA’s civil penalties were “the only tool we have to get compliance on safety matters.”
On X, Musk complained that the FAA was “harassing SpaceX about nonsense that doesn’t affect safety while giving a free pass to Boeing even after NASA concluded that their spacecraft was not safe enough to bring back the astronauts.” He also claimed that humans would never land on Mars without “radical reform at the FAA.” In September, he wrote “he needs to resign” about Whitaker.
Elon also pushed out the guy who manages America’s checkbook, David Lebryk, in whom a lot of the confidence of investors and businessmen is invested.
The highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department is departing after a clash with allies of billionaire Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks.
David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades, announced his retirement Friday in an email to colleagues obtained by The Washington Post. President Donald Trump named Lebryk as acting secretary upon taking office last week. Lebryk had a dispute with Musk’s surrogates over access to the payment system the U.S. government uses to disburse trillions of dollars every year, the people said. The exact nature of the disagreement was not immediately clear, they said.
Officials affiliated with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” have been asking since after the election for access to the system, the people said — requests that were reiterated more recently, including after Trump’s inauguration.
[snip]
Typically only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. Run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the sensitive systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses and more nationwide. Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people across the country rely on the systems, which are responsible for distributing Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.
Musk’s flunkies, including one 18-year old with only a high school diploma, have also been installed in the Office of Personnel Management [corrected] — the government’s HR department.
Sources within the federal government tell WIRED that the highest ranks of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)—essentially the human resources function for the entire federal government—are now controlled by people with connections to Musk and to the tech industry. Among them is a person who, according to an online résumé, was set to start college last fall.
Scott Kupor, a managing partner at the powerful investment firm Andreessen Horowitz, stands as Trump’s nominee to run the OPM. But already in place, according to sources, are a variety of people who seem ready to carry out Musk’s mission of cutting staff and disrupting the government.
Amanda Scales is, as has been reported, the new chief of staff at the OPM. She formerly worked in talent for xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, according to her LinkedIn. Before that, she was part of the talent and operations team at Human Capital, a venture firm with investments in the defense tech startup Anduril and the political betting platform Kalshi; before that, she worked for years at Uber. Her placement in this key role, experts believe, seems part of a broader pattern of the traditionally apolitical OPM being converted to use as a political tool.
Sources say that Riccardo Biasini, formerly an engineer at Tesla and most recently director of operations for the Las Vegas Loop at the Boring Company, Musk’s tunnel-building operation, is also at the OPM as a senior adviser to the director. (Steve Davis, the CEO of the Boring Company, is rumored to be advising Musk on cuts to be made via DOGE and was integral in Musk’s gutting of Twitter, now X, after his takeover of the company in 2022.)
According to the same sources, other people at the top of the new OPM food chain include two people with apparent software engineering backgrounds, whom WIRED is not naming because of their ages.
One thing they’ve done is set up a government-wide email function.
Last week, many federal workers received test emails from the email address [email protected]. In a lawsuit filed last night, plaintiffs allege that a new email list started by the Trump administration may be compromising the data of federal employees.
In their attempts to set up agency- and government-wide emails, Elon’s unelected bureaucrats seem to have taken security filters off at least NOAA’s email system, resulting in noxious spam being sent.
After setting up the government-wide email, someone sent out an email similar to the one Elon sent out when he gutted Xitter, attempting to fool government workers into accepting something misleadingly labeled a buy-out, one not authorized by statute or appropriation.
In a separate email sent on Tuesday entitled “Fork in the Road,” most federal workers were effectively offered an eight-month severance package to leave their jobs, simply by sending [email protected] a message with the word “Resign” in the subject line between now and February 6. Military personnel, postal workers, and national-security and immigration officials are not eligible.
The executive branch has no authority from Congress to offer a mass buyout to federal workers. In fact, the OPM website clearly states that the limit for incentive packages for voluntary resignations is $25,000, far less than eight months’ pay for the average federal worker. Some employees can’t even be offered that.
The way OPM purports to get around this is by defining this as “deferred resignation.” The resignation of the federal worker would be set at September 30, and they will retain full pay and benefits until then and be exempt from return-to-office requirements that are part of one of the Trump executive orders. (This is also a way to not unlawfully reduce salary outlays in federal appropriations for the current fiscal year.) “I understand my employing agency will likely make adjustments in response to my resignation including moving, eliminating, consolidating, reassigning my position and tasks, reducing my official duties, and/or placing me on paid administrative leave until my resignation date,” reads the sample resignation letter. In this sense it is just a future setting of an end date of employment, though the strong implication is that those employees will have nothing to do for the next eight months.
[snip]
This was an Elon Musk operation, through and through. In fact, the “Fork in the Road” email had the same title as one that Elon Musk sent to Twitter when he took over there, informing workers to be “extremely hardcore” or take the resignation offer. The Twitter emails even included the same ask of workers to reply with their decision.
All this access — and almost certainly, some shitty AI — is where the big lie Karoline Leavitt told in her first presser came from.
MS. LEAVITT: There was notice. It was the executive order that the president signed.
There’s also a freeze on hiring, as you know; a regulatory freeze; and there’s also a freeze on foreign aid. And this is a — again, incredibly important to ensure that this administration is taking into consideration how hard the American people are working. And their tax dollars actually matter to this administration.
You know, just during this pause, DOGE and OMB have actually found that there was $37 million that was about to go out the door to the World Health Organization, which is an organization, as you all know, that President Trump, with the swipe of his pen in that executive order, is — no longer wants the United States to be a part of. So, that wouldn’t be in line with the president’s agenda.
DOGE and OMB also found that there was about to be 50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza. That is a preposterous waste of taxpayer money.
Jesse Watters picked up Leavitt’s lie, which in turn led Trump to parrott Watters’ expanded version of it.
It’s possible flunkies installed by African immigrant Elon Musk mistook Africa for the Middle East (of which only Jordan gets contraceptives), because Africa receives condoms from the US (as part of the important PEPFAR anti-AIDS program that even Republican Senators were demanding be resumed when it got shut down).
And this is just what we already know! While it hasn’t been confirmed, I’d bet a good deal of money that Elon’s flunkies were behind shutting down the Medicaid portals early in the week, something that affected health care for people throughout the country.
It has been spectacular failure after failure.
And many of them were directly caused by the immigrant demanding that we get rid of unelected bureaucrats taking democracy away.
How Senate Judiciary Committee Dems Fucked Up the Kash Patel Nomination Hearing
I have always said I think it likely Kash Patel will be confirmed. But that shouldn’t have made yesterday’s confirmation hearing pointless. Democrats did that on their own, though a combination of inadequate preparation and absence of leadership.
Dems tried to demonstrate Kash’s manifest lack of fitness for the job in three ways:
- Pointing to all the attacks on law enforcement he made on random podcasts
- Probing his role in disseminating the January 6 choir
- Dancing around his invocation of the Fifth in the Jack Smith investigation
Pointing to all the attacks on law enforcement he made on random podcasts
Kash dealt with the first line of attack — his incendiary comments on social media — by claiming that his comments were taken out of context.
The only time such claims made any sense, when he tried to spin his complaints about the January 6 response, should have led to detailed follow-up of all the ways his testimony conflicts with every other witness on January 6. Kash even, yesterday, doubled the number of National Guard he claims Trump authorized, a claim that is debunked by the testimony of multiple pro-Trump witnesses. And even if his claims were true (he blames and blamed Ryan McCarthy for the delay in Guard response on January 6) means that his own leadership was faulty. At the very least, committee Democrats should have asked whether he was implicated in Barry Loudermilk’s insinuation that the failure to deploy the Guard was contemptuous.
Similarly, when Kash disclaimed remembering far right podcast host Stew Peters and Dick Durbin noted that Kash had appeared on the show eight times, Durbin should have followed up and asked what kind of compromise such promiscuity could cause an FBI Director.
Probing his role in disseminating the January 6 choir
There were many questions about Kash’s role in promoting the January 6 choir — but in spite of a conflict with Adam Schiff over the meaning of “we,” no one ever got Kash explain who did do the rest (though Adam Schiff did state that Kash had done no due diligence before pushing the video).
This matters, because some of Kash’s buddies (including conspiracy theorist Julie Kelly) routinely make false claims about rioters, and finding the source of Kash’s false claims is important to his warped reality going forward.
But the entire thrust of these questions was hampered by the point I made here and here: they relied on a superficial understanding, based off press releases rather than court dockets, of who these people were.
Schiff asked Kash if he promoted a video showing assailants attacking FBI agents, would it make him unfit to be Director. Why not, then, focus directly on the gun that Barton Shively grabbed when probation officers showed up, precisely the kind of thing that has gotten FBI agents killed in recent years.
And if you want to persuade — or at least, embarrass — your Republican colleagues, why not make it clear that the violent rioters under discussion didn’t just attack cops, but they threatened to drag people like Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham through the streets? Kash didn’t just promote people who attacked cops, he promoted people who wanted to attack members of the Committee.
Dancing around his invocation of the Fifth in the Jack Smith investigation
It’s on Kash’s invocation of the Fifth that I’m most upset, because Democrats may have forfeited the opportunity to make this a scandal going forward.
It started strongly enough. Cory Booker first raised it, and got Kash to claim he wanted his grand jury testimony released, after which Booker tried — but failed — to get Kash to elaborate on his testimony. Later, Schiff returned to the question and asked whether he supported getting both his grand jury transcripts and any mention of him in Volume Two, which led to what were probably Kash’s angriest looks of the hearing.
But after that, in the second round, a number of senators returned to the issue, mangling the grand jury standard by falsely saying that if Kash consents to the release of the transcript it can be released, and focusing primarily on the transcript and not the report (the latter of which made his eyes bug out when Schiff raised it).
This is the kind of thing you need to coordinate! This is the kind of thing where the actual grand jury rules matter! This is the kind of thing where the McGann precedent matters!
And this is the kind of thing that demanded a coordinated set of yes or no questions about Kash’s testimony, because yesterday’s hearing was the one opportunity Dems will ever have to force him to answer question about what he told the grand jury.
All the more so because, it appears, Dems haven’t done what they should have to make an issue of the report (I first described the import of it to this confirmation on January 13).
On Wednesday — literally the day before the hearing — Dems wrote a letter to Acting Attorney General James McHenry asking for the report. While the letter referenced Dick Durbin asking Pam Bondi about it buried on page 41 of her Questions for the Record, that question did not tie the request to the need to advise and consent on confirmations. Tuesday’s letter nevertheless pointed to that question to claim that Aileen Cannon should have known about it.
On January 23, 2025, the Committee issued a “Notice of Committee Nomination Hearing” for Mr. Patel, which is now scheduled for January 30, 2025. The Ranking Member of the Committee submitted on January 16, 2025, Questions for the Record (QFR) to Attorney General nominee Pamela Jo Bondi following her confirmation hearing, requesting that she commit to making Volume Two of the Special Counsel’s report available immediately for review to the Senate Judiciary Committee Chair, Ranking Member, or their designees.2
This formal request preceded an order issued several days later by a judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida that enjoined the Department from releasing or otherwise making available a redacted version of Volume Two of the Special Counsel’s report to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. In the order, the judge erroneously stated that “[t]here is no record of an official request by members of Congress for in camera review of Volume II as proposed by the Department in this case,” despite the prior request which her order omits. The judge also concludes wrongly that the Department “identified no pending legislation on the subject or any legislative activity that could be aided, even indirectly, by dissemination of Volume II to the four specified members whom the Department believes should review Volume II now,” notwithstanding the Committee’s ongoing consideration of Mr. Patel and others’ nominations.3
2 Senate Judiciary Committee, Questions for the Record the Honorable Pamela Jo Bondi Nominee to be Attorney General of the United States, (Jan. 16, 2025), https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2025-01-15_- _qfr_responses_-_bondi.pdf
3 United States v. Trump, No. 9:23-cr-80101, (S.D. Fla. Jan. 21, 2025) ECF No. 714 at 7; In addition, on January 13, 2025, Senator Dick Durbin, Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the other Democratic members of the Committee submitted a letter to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland “recogniz[ing[ the current injunction against the release of Special Counsel Smith’s report and related materials and reserv[ing] its right to request production of the report and relevant records at an appropriate future date.” Senate Judiciary Committee Letter Requesting Preservation of DOJ documents (Jan. 13, 2025), https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Letter%20to%20DOJ%20on%20Records%20Preservation.pdf
This falls short of informing Cannon, however, and submitting an urgent request for the report in conjunction with this confirmation the day before the hearing is rather late, particularly since Grassley might try to push through the confirmation before the stated due date for the report, February 10 (which is still before Cannon’s injunction runs out).
Given Kash’s glare, I’m pretty confident that the report will suggest Kash prevaricated before the grand jury. I even suspect we’ll eventually get some semblance of the report (I also think DOJ’s efforts to fire everyone who might have a copy, on Friday, before they moved to dismiss the case against Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, on Monday, while a transparent attempt to prevent its release, may be inadequate to that effort).
I think that if the report comes out, it will become clear that the delay in releasing it served primarily to preserve Kash’s nomination chances. I think that it’s likely not to happen before he is confirmed, but I think if that happens after Kash’s confirmation, it can be made a key demonstration of the corruption inherent to Trump’s DOJ.
But Democrats have not done the things they needed to do to to make that a scandal.
Trump’s DOJ is involved in a cover-up as we speak, a cover-up designed to hide how the aspiring FBI Director was complicit in Trump’s efforts to retain classified documents in his insecure basement. But Democrats have not done what they need to do to impose a cost for that cover-up.
Kash disclaims the purge in process
Cory Booker was perhaps the bright spot of the day. In addition to first raising Kash’s role in the documents investigation, he got Kash to disclaim knowledge of a purge in process, in which at least six senior FBI agents were pushed out, during the hearing.
This is another thing that may be turned into a scandal going forward.
Compile this video
As this post makes clear, most of these Senators are quite proud of their testy confrontations with Kash. They’ve sent them out individually.
It’s not too late to make use of them. Democrats can and should put together three videos focused on each of these topics. Intersperse Kash’s claim to stand by cops with video of those he celebrated attacking them. Intersperse Kash’s disavowal of the Neo-Nazis he has been sidling up to with what he said on their shows. And make a video of all the times Kash claimed to want to release his testimony with a focus on the effort to cover it up.
Kash Patel is almost certainly going to be confirmed. And he will almost certainly be a catastrophic appointee. So Dems need to do far more than they did yesterday to impose a cost going forward on his pick — one that, especially, will make it easier to demonstrate the corruption of his installation.
Mark Zuckerberg Agrees to Turn Meta [Back] into a Pogrom Machine
According to WSJ, Meta has agreed to pay $25 million to lose the frivolous lawsuit Trump launched after Facebook exercised its prerogative under the First Amendment not to platform Trump’s insurrection anymore in 2021.
Meta Platforms has agreed to pay roughly $25 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit that President Trump brought against the company and its CEO after the social-media platform suspended his accounts following the attack on the U.S. Capitol that year, according to people familiar with the agreement.
Of that, $22 million will go toward a fund for Trump’s presidential library, with the rest going to legal fees and the other plaintiffs who signed on to the case. Meta won’t admit wrongdoing, the people said. Trump signed the settlement agreement Wednesday in the Oval Office.
A Meta spokesman confirmed the settlement.
[snip]
Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts were suspended in 2021 because of posts he made around Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob stormed the Capitol building. In the days leading up to the attack and on Jan. 6, he repeatedly used the platforms to make false claims that he won the 2020 election and alleged widespread election fraud that was denied by the administration’s top election-security experts and attorneys.
Zuckerberg, at the time, said the risks of the president’s using the social-media platforms during that period “are simply too great” and then paused the president’s accounts for two weeks. The pause was subsequently lengthened.
Most people — including Elizabeth Warren, in the WSJ story — are focusing on how this is effectively a bribe, a $22 million donation (on top of the earlier $1 million one) trading for regulatory favors. It is. Trump continues to engage in unprecedented corruption in plain sight.
But it is more than that. The concession of the settlement implies that Facebook should not have banned Trump for using their platform to incite an insurrection, though it admits no wrong-doing.
I have repeatedly argued that if Twitter, along with Facebook, had not shut down Trump’s account after January 6, there was a good chance that Joe Biden would never have been inaugurated.
Mark Zuckerberg’s capitulation makes it far less likely Meta will do the same thing — take action against Trump’s account to prevent him from stoking ongoing violence — again. It makes it virtually certain that Meta will not police inciteful content involving Trump without buy-in from the top, from Zuck.
And that, along with Meta’s earlier capitulations to Stephen Miller to rejigger its algorithms to allow transphobic and other dehumanizing speech — which experts predicted would lead to the kind of violence Facebook fostered in Myanmar — means that when Trump next uses these platforms to incite violence, he’s far less likely to be shut down.
Heck, John Roberts has even provided guidelines to Trump on how to ensure such incitement will be an official act and therefore immune from any future prosecution. Trump simply needs to involve his top aides — someone like Stephen Miller — in crafting a post, and Trump will be able to say that John Roberts told him that Trump never goes to prison for it.
Stephen Miller has, for some time, been laser focused on re-weaponizing social media. He is suspected to be the one who pitched Musk on bringing “the boss himself, if you’re up for that!” back onto Xitter.
Then, last summer, Miller attempted to intervene in Trump’s document case when Jack Smith asked Aileen Cannon to prevent Trump from falsely claiming the FBI tried to assassinate him because it issued routine use of force guidelines for the search of Mar-a-Lago. Miller argued that Trump’s false claims on social media about the FBI — earlier ones of which had already led to a violent attack on the FBI — were not incitement and constituted important speech for the election.
The only possible constitutional exception to free speech the government has identified is incitement. But it cannot rely on that exception to justify infringing President Trump’s rights. President Trump has not engaged in speech that “prepare[s] a group for violent action [or] steel[s] it to such action.” Brandenburg, 395 U.S. at 448. It cannot be said that by merely criticizing—or, even as some may argue, mischaracterizing—the government’s actions and intentions in executing a search warrant at his residence, President Trump is advocating for violence or lawlessness, let alone inciting imminent action. The government’s own exhibits prove the point. See generally ECF Nos. 592-1, 592-2. 592-3, 592-5. The government presents no evidence that President Trump advocated a violent attack or other lawless action against the Department of Justice, the FBI, President Biden, this Court, any witness, or any other person. Much less has the government proved a call to arms or any request, demand, instruction, or implication that supporters should violate any law.
And all this is happening after Trump pulled the security detail from several people — most notably Anthony Fauci and Mark Milley — who’ve long been targeted, the latter by Iranian terrorists as well as Trump’s people. Indeed, one of the attacks Smith focused on in his successful DC bid for a gag was Trump’s attack suggesting Milley should be executed.
This is not just about eliciting a bribe for regulatory favors. It is not just about winning an argument about actions taken four years ago to halt an insurrection in process.
The entire lawsuit is about an ongoing chilling effect. And Zuck’s capitulation is a capitulation to that chill, a soft commitment that the next time Trump uses social media to launch his mob against vulnerable targets like trans people or legal Haitian immigrants, against co-equal branches of government in Congress or the courts, or against his select targets like Milley, Meta will do nothing to slow the mob.
For years, Stephen Miller has been perfecting the use of social media to sow fascism. And he just cowed one of the richest men in the world to make it a more effective tool for fascism.
A Summary of Kash Patel’s Disqualifications to Lead FBI
I expect Kash Patel will be confirmed; I even expect that Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee will be utterly feckless in Kash’s confirmation hearing tomorrow.
Nevertheless I wanted to summarize his disqualifications.
Kash got where he is by substituting the Steele dossier for the real Russian investigation, which was instrumental in Trump’s success at minimizing the damage of one after another Trump associate lying about what really happened in 2016.
Kash gets a lot of credit for the Nunes Memo, with many right wingers claiming that the Horowitz Report vindicated it.
It didn’t. As I showed, both the Nunes Memo and the Schiff Memo got things right and got things wrong; mostly they just spoke past each other, which was fundamentally based on that substitution of the Steele dossier for the real Russian investigation.
Nevertheless, one of Kash’s lasting gripes (against Robert Hur) has to do with efforts to limit how much Kash was releasing at the time.
Kash did more than that as a House staffer, though. He continued to chase his conspiracy theories as Congress turned to criminalizing Hillary Clinton. He’s actually the staffer who asked the question that set up Michael Sussmann for a failed prosecution years later. He set up what would later become the Durham investigation — a four year effort to criminalize being victimized by a hostile nation-state.
And then, after Durham filed a wildly misleading court filing misrepresenting the discovery by some Georgia Tech researchers that someone was using a YotaPhone inside the Executive Office of the Presidency during the Obama term, Kash sent out a letter outright lying about the claims.
The whole thing is riddled with lies, but ultimately it amounts to a conflation of the Obama-era discovery with the discovery of the ties between a marketing server, Alfa Bank, and a Spectrum Health server. Kash’s letter was the final step before Trump jumped on the lies and called for Sussmann’s execution. Kash is a key cog in the way Trump has elicited threats against others.
Kash also paid a lot of former FBI agents who were disgruntled about having to investigate Trump supporters.
And when news of the discovery that boxes of documents that Trump had returned had classified documents in them, Kash invented a claim that Trump had declassified all those documents.
At least one Jack Smith witness — someone with the potty mouth of Eric Herschmann — disputes any claim there was a standing order to declassify documents. That witness described someone “unhinged” and “crazy” who first got access to the White House through the Member of Congress he worked for, who started the “declassified everything” claim when it first started appearing in the media, which is when Kash Patel made the claim.
Jack Smith described what happened next. When investigators subpoenaed Kash to test his claims that Trump had this standing order, Kash tried to delay compliance indefinitely by hiring a lawyer already busy defending a January 6 seditionist. When the aspiring FBI Director did first testify, Kash pled the Fifth repeatedly.
On Monday, September 19, 2022, the FBI personally served witness Kashyap “Kash” Patel with a grand jury subpoena, commanding him to appear on September 29, 2022. Prior to engaging with counsel, Patel contacted government counsel on Friday, September 23, 2022, to request a two-week extension. The government agreed to that extension and set his appearance for October 13, 2022. Thereafter, [Stan] Woodward contacted government counsel on September 27, 2022, explaining that he had just begun a lengthy jury trial–United States v. Rhodes et a., No. 22-cr-15 (D.D.C.)–but that Patel had retained him. On September 30, 2022, Woodward request an addition indefinite extension of Patel’s grand jury appearance until some point after the Rhodes trial concluded. (Ultimately, the verdict in the trial was not returned until November 29, 2022, approximately six weeks after Patel’s already-postponed appearance date of October 13, 2022.) The government was unwilling to consent to the indefinite extension that Woodward sought. Woodward, for his part, declined various alternatives offered by the government, including scheduling Patel’s grand jury appearance for Friday afternoons, when the Rhodes trial was not sitting, and a voluntary interview by prosecutors and agents over a weekend.
On October 7, 2022, Patel (through Woodward) filed a motion to quash his grand jury appearance, arguing that requiring Patel to appeal pursuant to the grand jury’s subpoena would violate his constitutional rights by depriving him of his counsel of choice, i.e., Woodward, who was occupied with a jury trial elsewhere in the courthouse. The Court denied the motion to quash on October 11, 2022, see In re Grand Jury No. 22-03 Subpoena 63-13, No. 22-gj-41, Minute Order (Oct. 11, 2022), and required Patel to appear as scheduled on October 13. See id. (“Mr Patel requests a delay of some unspecified time period in his testimony because his counsel, Stanley Woodward, will be engaged in the United States v. Rhodes trial, Case No. 22-cr-15, scheduled to last several weeks, with no promises as to when his counsel will still have time available. Mr. Patel retained Mr. Woodward on the attorney’s first day of jury selection in Rhodes when such circumstance made fully apparent that counsel would be unavailable during Mr. Patel’s scheduled grand jury testimony. In addition, the government has already demonstrated flexibility in meeting Patel’s scheduling needs . . . . Testifying before a grand jury is not a game of find-or-seek-a-better-time or catch-me-if-you-can, and a witness cannot indefinitely delay a proceeding based on his counsel’s convenience. . . .”).
Patel appeared before the grand jury on October 13, 2022, where he repeatedly declined to answer questions on the basis of the rights afforded to him by the Fifth Amendment. Thereafter, the government moved to compel Patel’s testimony. The Court granted the government’s motion to compel, contingent on the government offering statutory immunity. [my emphasis]
Aileen Cannon has buried any description of what Kash said when compelled to testify. This nomination should be held until any discussion of Patel in the Jack Smith report is released (but thus far Dick Durbin has shown no interest in doing so; DOJ just dropped their appeal).
But it should never be passed, because Kash is a menace. In his repeated efforts to falsely claim that January 6 defendants were treated any worse than any other mostly-violent pretrial detainees during the COVID period, he suggested that the people detained for assaulting cops were being mistreated.
As I have shown (and Bulwark did before me) Kash’s cheerleading for January 6 defendants amounts to arguing that someone accused of assaulting cops who grabs a gun when his probation officers show up should not then be jailed, nor should someone who directly threatened members of Congress, called on a mob to grab their weapons, and then assaulted cops.
Kash Patel will do and say anything to protect Trump and his flunkies — up to and including risking the safety of members of Congress.
Such a person would not serve as Director of FBI. He would serve as a means to turn government against Trump’s adversaries.
Judge AliKhan Didn’t Halt Trump’s Funding Freeze Alone, Democracy Forward Did Too
Update: As Marisa Kabas and others have reported, OMB has rescinded the memo. Those involved here won this round.
Yesterday, just minutes after Trump’s freeze on a great deal of federal funding was about to go into effect, Judge Loren AliKhan ordered a temporary stay of Trump’s order — through Monday at 5PM — to consider a request for an emergency Temporary Restraining Order submitted in a challenge to the order. Here’s Judge AliKhan’s order halting Trump’s effort to steal money Congress ordered him to spend.
The Court orders an administrative stay through 5PM on February 3rd to maintain the status quo and allow for full consideration of Plaintiffs’ request for a temporary restraining order.
Here’s the CourtListener docket.
Because there’s a great deal of doomerism, because a lot of people spent yesterday wailing, “Why doesn’t anyone do anything,” I think it crucially important to lay out who did what, so people can understand the agency involved.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are, as described in the complaint, are:
National Council of Nonprofits (“NCN”) is the largest network of nonprofit organizations in North America, with more than 30,000 organizational members. National Council of Nonprofits (“NCN”) supports nonprofits in advancing their missions by identifying emerging trends, sharing proven practices, and promoting solutions that benefit charitable nonprofits and the communities they serve. (Here’s a flyer they did Monday on the impact of Trump’s Executive Orders and here is their core values page.) To the extent that journalists are giving credit (they’re not, except to Judge AliKhan), NCN will be the named plaintiff.
American Public Health Association (“APHA”) is a nonpartisan, non-profit organization that champions the health of all people and all communities; strengthens the profession of public health; shares the latest research and information; promotes best practices; and advocates for public health issues and policies grounded in scientific research. APHA represents more than 23,000 individual members, who reside in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, and also has 52 state and regional affiliates. APHA is the only organization that combines a 150-year perspective, a broad-based member community, and the ability to influence federal policy to improve the public’s health. (Here’s their about page.)
Main Street Alliance (“MSA”) is a national network of small businesses, which represents approximately 30,000 small businesses across the United States. MSA helps small business owners realize their full potential as leaders for a just future that prioritizes good jobs, equity, and community through organizing, research, and policy advocacy on behalf of small businesses. MSA also seeks to amplify the voices of its small business membership by sharing their experiences with the aim of creating an economy where all small business owners have an equal opportunity to succeed. MSA’s small business members compete for and receive various forms of what is broadly defined as “federal financial assistance,” including funding in the form of grants, loans, and loan guarantees. Members also benefit directly from other recipients of federal financial assistance being able to purchase goods and services from them as a result of federal programs. (Here’s their about page.)
SAGE is a New York nonprofit corporation. SAGE is dedicated to improving the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender adults.
Note, I’ve lifted this language directly from the complaint, which emphasizes that this battle pits an organization that tries to help non-profits work effectively and another that supports public health professionals, along with a number of small businesses. There’s an LGBTQ group in there, which (along with some services provided by the APHA) supports a First Amendment challenge to the way the OMB member specifically targeted “transgenderism.”
The Memo purports to pause all disbursements through federal financial assistance programs pending a “review” to determine whether they are “consistent with the President’s policies” as expressed in several executive orders, such as one announcing that “[f]ederal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology.” The Memo further indicates that the review should identify recipients of federal funding that “advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies.”
But even the lawsuit also focuses main street stuff, like keeping small businesses afloat. This group of plaintiffs were presumably chosen to represent both interests that matter to right wingers, but also interests that have a specific complaint based on the way OMB wrote its memo (particularly its focus on Trans people).
Importantly, these groups have legal standing (because they get federal grants); members of Congress do not, which is one of several reasons why civil society is leading this fight. Here’s how the complaint describes NCN’s injuries arising from the halt in funding.
Many of NCN’s members rely on federal grants and financial assistance to serve their missions, from supporting research and services to those with cancer and other serious diseases, to assisting people in escaping domestic violence, to providing mental health care and suicide hotlines. Federal grants and financial assistance are the lifeblood of operations and programs for many of these nonprofits, and even a short pause in funding—which, for many NCN members, is already in the pipeline—could deprive people and communities of their life-saving services. Nonprofits often make budget decisions two to five years in advance, and they make business decisions based on expected cash inflow just as any for-profit enterprise would: making staffing decisions, setting organizational priorities, providing essential services and programs, and identifying and working towards fundraising goals. They rely on federal funds to fund entire programs, including salaries. Halting this funding would lead to pauses of important community programs, food and safety assistance, and lifesaving research, among other things: even a short pause could be devastating, decimating organizations, costing lives, and leaving neighbors without the services they need.
Finally, the real agency here: The suit was filed by Democracy Forward, which is in the business of litigating on issues like this. Here’s their client list. In other words, this is a lawsuit brought by a legal organization that found plaintiffs who’ll well represent the harm that cutting of federal funding will do to America, and do so in ways that personify what this attack is about.
Democracy Forward is part of a group, Democracy 2025, formed last year to challenge Trump’s assault on democracy.
So the plaintiffs are here because they have standing and because they’ll be able to tell compelling stories about the injury they’ve suffered. Democracy Forward will be doing the heavy lifting of fighting this legally.
One reason I’m making this point is to emphasize the import of civil society, including groups that have been preparing for these legal challenges for months. As I and others have pointed out, the battle over fascism often centers on the battle over pre-existing networks of civil society, networks that often are not themselves political.
And sustain or build your networks. Not just your political networks, the folks with whom you’ve worked to try to elect Kamala Harris or restore reproductive rights. But your other networks, too. Sometimes, after fascists break political networks, it’s the choirs or the knitting clubs where civic discourse can regrow.
The very first thing authoritarians try to break are the networks of civil society, because isolated people are easier to terrify. So make sure yours are as strong as they can be before the wrecking crew comes.
Here, civil society stood up, asserted its membership in a society linking small businesses in rural communities to aging LGBTQ people, and succeeded, for now, in pausing Trump’s attack on parts of civil society that Russ Vought and Acting OMB Director Matthew Vaeth are attacking.
In those moments you’re feeling particularly helpless, you might focus your energy on shoring up the strength of civil society within your own local community, even if it’s no more than the knitting club.
It is likely auspicious that Judge AliKhan — a recent Biden appointee who worked for years as an Attorney for District of Columbia — was randomly assigned to the case. But all she has done, so far, is preserve the status quo. The NGOs, from the service providers to the lawyers, are the people who scrambled to prevent the implementation of the order last night at 5PM.
One more point about agency. The lawsuit cites to the copy of the memo published by WaPo in its story on the halt. But as WaPo credited, it was not the first to report on the memo; independent journalist Marisa Kabas first posted it on Bluesky.
Things are definitely dire. But there are people — from journalists to NGOs to lawyers — who are doing their jobs to push back against Trump’s authoritarian attack. And it’s important to see that NGO networks are one of the most important bulwarks against such authoritarian attacks.
Confirming Kash Patel Will Get Senators “Drug through the Streets”
When Kash Patel boosted the J6 Choir claiming the video of those housed in DC Jail in March 2023 was proof of a two-tier system of justice, he was suggesting that someone who brought a crowbar — which he called a “weapon” — to the Capitol while promising to drag members of Congress through the streets, then assaulted cops protecting Congress, should not be detained while awaiting trial for assaulting cops.
That’s the significance of Ryan Nichols’ inclusion in the footnote Jack Smith put in his report, listing the identities of some of the J6 Choir members Trump had endorsed.
Nichols was in jail because of the threats he posed to members of Congress.
I’m hearing that Pence just caved. I’m hearing reports that Pence caved. I’m telling you if Pence caved, we’re gonna drag motherfuckers through the streets. You fucking politicians are going to get fucking drug through the streets. Because we’re not going to have our fucking shit stolen. We’re not going to have our election or our country stolen. If we find out you politicians voted for it, we’re going to drag your fucking ass through the streets. Because it’s the second fucking revolution and we’re fucking done. I’m telling you right now, Ryan Nichols said it. If you voted for fucking treason, we’re going to drag your fucking ass through the streets. So let us find out, let the patriots find out that you fucking treasoned this country. We’re gonna drag your fucking ass through the street. You think we’re here for no reason? You think we patriots are here for no reason? You think we came just to fucking watch you run over us? No. You want to take it from us, motherfucker we’ll take it back from you.
And even then, he didn’t remain in prison for the period before he pled guilty.
Nichols challenged his treatment in the DC jail, complaining about the seizure of his discovery and claiming that his incarceration was exacerbating his known PTSD diagnosis. He was further involved in an altercation in September 2022, after which he was segregated, then moved to another facility. He had repeated diagnosis issues with his health care. So in November 2022, Judge Thomas Hogan released Nichols from custody, and he remained out until he pled guilty on November 7, 2023.
But ultimately, Reagan appointee Royce Lamberth sentenced Nichols to what would have been three more years in prison — a total of 63 months and (because Nichols refused to cooperate with Probation on his finances) a record $200,000 fine, one the pardon will presumably wipe away entirely.
Nichols blamed his untreated PTSD for his actions. But Nichols’ sentencing memo revealed a 2019 arrest for assault causing bodily harm that resulted in diversion, one that belies his defense attorney claim he had never been violent before January 6. And prosecutors’ sentencing memo raised all the conspiracy claims Nichols made — many of the same claims that Kash Patel has made about him and others — raising some question about his remorse for his actions.
In addition, although Nichols “agreed with the conduct described in the Statement of Offense” in his presentence interview, PSR ¶ 50, in a post circulated after the plea hearing, members of Nichols’ defense team refers to him as a “political prisoner.” Exhibit J (Substack blog post authored by defense team law clerk present at counsel table for the plea hearing titled “Ryan Nichols: Political Prisoner Of His Own Country”); see also Exhibit K (GiveSendGo page titled “Free My Patriot Prisoner” with messages attributed to Nichols, his wife, and his father prior to the defendant’s plea). Even prior to Nichols entering his plea, his attorney was tweeting statements that directly contradicted the statement of offense in this case. See Exhibit M (October 30, 2023, twitter post from Nichols’ lead counsel).12 These statements threaten “public trust in the rule of law and the criminal justice system [, which] is paramount in the context of January 6 cases.” United States v. Nester, 22-cr-183 (TSC), ECF No. 113 at 6 (internal citation omitted). While the government does not attribute counsel’s statements to the defendant himself (nor does it base its recommendation on such bombastic rhetoric), this Court must appropriately assess whether the defendant has independently accepted responsibility for his criminal conduct. Pleading guilty is not simply the same as accepting the consequences and showcasing remorse under these trying and unique circumstances.
12 The government also notes that, in the months leading up to his plea, Nichols was claiming in public court filings that, in effect, “shadowy teams of plainclothes government agents orchestrated the attack [on the Capitol], leaving a far larger number of innocent Americans to take the fall.” ECF 266 (Order Denying Defendant’s Motion for Disclosure) at 13; see also ECF 244 (Motion for Disclosure), 245 (Supp. Motion for Disclosure), and ECF 251 (Reply to Government’s Opposition to Motion for Disclosure)
The sentence Judge Lamberth imposed in May 2022, 63 months, was about 75% of the government ask of 83 months. While Nichols had a lot of heartfelt things to say about his actions, Judge Lamberth noted that Jan6ers had repeatedly reneged on their statements of remorse, which the recent statements laid out in the government sentencing motion addressed.
Importantly, Nichols himself noted that the solitary confinement to which he was subjected was a COVID protocol, not anything specifically targeting Jan6ers.
I spent months in solitary confinement for 23 to 32-plus hours at a time due to COVID protocols, only allowed out for one hour to shower or make a phone call just to be locked in that 10-by-7-foot cell for another 23 to 32-plus hours at a time. Mental torture is an understatement. I heard grown men screaming and crying out for their mothers, me included. Many nights, I cried myself to sleep. With no court dates, no discovery, and no ending in sight, I felt hopeless and my mental health spiraled out of control. Eventually, I decided that, maybe, I needed to seek professional help. I put in a mental health request, and two weeks later I was back on Zoloft. Though this certainly helped control my mind and get my emotional imbalance in alignment, the solitary confinement was still overwhelming.
And he expressed empathy with the incarceration of people of color.
Your Honor, I know, after almost two-and-a-half years of incarceration, how terrible jail and prison is. The entire atmosphere is violent, dark, and unforgiving. For the majority of my life, I’ve heard, but never been able to empathize with, people of color when they testified to the harsh environment and treatment within the jail and the prison system. Make no mistake, I am now a witness to their testimony. Being in jail and prison is a living hell of eternal separation from the light. Sometimes it feels like not even God himself can penetrate those walls.
Nichols’ PTSD and other maladies did make incarceration onerous. The DC jail treated him just as shitty as it treats everyone else. And he was released because of it.
But that’s not a proof of a two-tier system of justice. That’s proof that America’s prisons suck, and that Jan6ers had more success in using that to get released than others.
Ultimately, though, Patel is claiming that one can get in your truck with guns in the back, drive to DC, threaten to drag people like Lindsey Graham and Chuck Grassley through the streets because they certified Joe Biden’s win, spray cops with toxic chemicals, and then call on the mob to grab more weapons to break into the Capitol, and not be assigned to pre-trial detention. That’s what Nichols did: He directly threatened Senators, both Republicans and Democrats. The notion that Nichols was improperly detained suggests one can assault cops after threatening the members of Congress they’re protecting with impunity.
And that’s what the aspiring FBI Director has said: that people can threaten to assault the very people who are rushing to confirm him with impunity.
After Yesterday’s DOJ Purge, Pam Bondi Cannot Fulfill Promises Made at Her Confirmation Hearing
Among the many things that happened in the ongoing DOJ purge was the reassignment of DOJ’s top career official, Brad Weinsheimer, to Trump’s sanctuary cities task force.
The department’s most senior career official, a well-respected department employee responsible for some of the most sensitive cases, was reassigned to a much less powerful post.
Were that official, Bradley Weinsheimer, to remain as the associate deputy attorney general, he would have handled critical questions about possible recusals — a thorny issue for a department that will soon be run by a number of Mr. Trump’s former lawyers.
[snip]
Like many of the other officials who have received transfer emails, Mr. Weinsheimer has been given the option of moving to the department’s sanctuary cities task force — an offer seen by some in the same situation as an effort to force them into quitting.
Mr. Weinsheimer, a respected veteran of the department for three decades, played a critical role under multiple administrations, often acting as a critical arbiter of ethical issues or interactions that required a neutral referee.
He was appointed to his current role on an interim basis by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in July 2018 during Mr. Trump’s first term, a move that was made permanent by one of his successors, William P. Barr.
Mr. Weinsheimer also served four years in the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which investigates complaints about prosecutors. An email to his government account was not immediately returned.
I’ve written about the key role Weinsheimer has played here.
In response to a question from Dick Durbin about her lobbying for Qatar (which she did not disclose as a potential conflict to the committee),
If there are any conflicts with anyone I represented in private practice, I would consult with the career ethics officials within the department and make the appropriate decision.
When Durbin asked if she would face a conflict with private prison contractor GEO, Bondi again said she would “consult with the career ethics officials within the Department of Justice and make the appropriate decision.”
But now the DOJ purge has made that impossible. Weinsheimer will be stuck prosecuting Chicago officials somewhere, and someone hand selected will take his spot.
In Bondi’s case, it won’t matter. She is, at least, qualified for the job, unlike so many of Trump’s other nominees.
But a key promise she made in her confirmation hearing just became meaningless.
Update: Fixed my typo to state correctly that it will be impossible for Bondi to keep her promise.
Every DOJ Beat Journalist Fails to Mention a Dozen Judges Approved of 1512 Charge for January 6
CNN didn’t mention it.
WSJ didn’t mention it. (Update: they now have.)
WaPo didn’t mention it (though it did break the news that Ed Martin says he’ll be appointed DC USAO). (Update: They’ve now added it.)
NBC didn’t mention it in a piece focusing on the firing of Trump investigators.
None of these outlets — among others — mentioned that every single DC District Judge approved the use of 18 USC 1512(c)(2) for January 6, and only Carl Nichols required that it include an evidentiary component (the stance ultimately adopted by SCOTUS).
- Dabney Friedrich, December 10, 2021, Sandlin*
- Amit Mehta, December 20, 2021, Caldwell*
- James Boasberg, December 21, 2021, Mostofsky
- Tim Kelly, December 28, 2021, Nordean; May 9, 2022, Hughes (by minute order), rejecting Miller
- Randolph Moss, December 28, 2021, Montgomery
- Beryl Howell, January 21, 2022, DeCarlo
- John Bates, February 1, 2022, McHugh; May 2, 2022 [on reconsideration]
- Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, February 9, 2022, Grider
- Richard Leon (by minute order), February 24, 2022, Costianes; May 26, 2022, Fitzsimons (post-Miller)
- Christopher Cooper, February 25, 2022, Robertson
- Rudolph Contreras, announced March 8, released March 14, Andries
- Paul Friedman, March 19, Puma
- Thomas Hogan, March 30, Sargent (opinion forthcoming)
- Trevor McFadden, May 6, Hale-Cusanelli
- Royce Lamberth, May 25, Bingert
None of these outlets mentioned DC Circuit approved the application.
None mentioned that when SCOTUS required an evidentiary component, they left open the possibility that the fake elector certificates would justify the application.
DOJ just launched an investigation into prosecutors who applied a law in a way approved by over a dozen judges, at least four of them Trump appointees.
Update: On Xitter, an influential propagandist, Julie Kelly, wondered who first applied the 18 USC 1512(c)(2) statute, claiming that Matthew Graves, who is Black, was too stupid to have done so.
I guess she didn’t consider basic rules of physics, which say that a guy confirmed in October 2021 could not have made the decision to charge (just as one example) Proud Boys Nicholas Ochs and DeCarlo with 1512 on February 4, 2021.
Update: 18 USC 1512(c)(2) was charged at least as early as January 11, 2021, with Jacob Chansley. Ed Martin is going to have to investigate Donald Trump! (Or at the very least, Michael Sherwin. He does not want to investigate Michael Sherwin, trust me on this.)
Stephen Miller Confesses that Trump Lied about Immigrants
After getting caught boasting last week because ICE was detaining the same number of people as Joe Biden’s Administration, the Administration has now imposed quotas — demanding that ICE arrest up to 1,500 migrants a day, which WaPo may have been the first to report.
Johnny Maga, a far right propagandist who never tires of looking like a stupid idiot, reported that with great excitement. Quotas!!!
Not so Stephen Miller. He got pissy that WaPo described, in both the subhed and in paragraph after paragraph of the report, that this will lead ICE to arrest non-criminals. Here’s how WaPo described the problem.
The orders significantly increase the chance that officers will engage in more indiscriminate enforcement tactics or face accusations of civil rights violations as they strain to meet quotas, according to current and former ICE officials.
[snip]
Neither ICE nor Homan responded to requests for comment. After an earlier version of this article was published, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an email that, “your story is false,” but did not reply when asked for specifics.
[snip]
But Paul Hunker, a former ICE chief counsel in Dallas, said arresting serious offenders takes time, staff and planning — more time than quotas might allow.
“Quotas will incentivize ICE officers to arrest the easiest people to arrest, rather than the people that are dangerous noncitizens,” said Hunker, who, as the agency’s chief counsel in Dallas, oversaw offices in North Texas and Oklahoma from 2003 through January 2024.
Fox, in its story lifting the WaPo story (with attribution but not a link), instead provided paragraph after paragraph providing excuses.
As CATO reported recently, this is what happened last time: Trump focused so much on asylum seekers, he left criminal aliens to roam free.
Candidate Trump’s “mass deportation” agenda will make the country less safe in two significant ways. First, it would remove a population that is less likely to commit crimes, ultimately making America’s neighborhoods less safe. For instance, Cato’s research has shown that both legal and illegal immigrants are nearly half as likely to commit crimes for which they are incarcerated in the United States. With unique data from Texas, we have found that immigrants—both legal and illegal—are less likely to commit homicides. Numerous studies have also found that immigration is linked to lower crime rates, homicide rates, and drug-related deaths.
The second problem with mass deportation is just as significant: it would shift focus away from the removal of immigrants who do commit crimes. Noncitizens who commit serious crimes should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and deported. Whatever amount the government spends on immigration enforcement, it should spend on detaining and removing this small minority of individuals. Donald Trump claims that he did that, but the facts tell a different story regarding his record on migrant criminals:
- On his fourth day in office, Trump signed an executive order rescinding Obama-era policies that prioritized the detention and removal of serious public safety threats;
- Within a few months, his administration was secretly separating families, using prosecutorial resources to jail migrant parents and focusing resources on visa overstays, not serious criminals;
- During the height of family separation, Trump deprioritized prosecuting migrants with criminal histories to instead spend resources on separating families;
- While Trump poured resources into detaining asylum seekers, he also released nearly 58,184 noncitizens with criminal records, including 8,620 violent criminals and 306 murderers;
- ICE ended up (re)arresting nearly 11,000 noncitizens who entered under Trump and were convicted of non-immigration crimes, including rape and murder; and
- Trump’s policies incentivized migrant criminals to enter, triggering a threefold increase in the number of convicted criminals attempting to cross the border illegally.
Miller predictably is already trying to spin the civil violation of illegal entry into a crime, to say nothing of paying Social Security that you’ll never get in return as a tax crime.
Which is what two experts told Axios would happen: Miller would have to falsely claim a larger pool of migrants are criminals because he falsely told stupid Trump voters there were more criminal aliens during the election.
What they’re saying: “There are not millions of people with criminal records to deport,” Nicole Hallett, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago, tells Axios.
- Trump “keeps trying to bullsh-t with the public that there are all these particularly serious so-called criminals. There aren’t enough of those people to exist to be 1 million,” Karen Tumlin, director of the immigrant legal advocacy group Justice Action Center, tells Axios.
- Both Hallett and Tumlin expect Trump to begin calling all undocumented immigrants “criminals” in order to say millions of criminals could be deported.
Remember, during the election Trump and Miller falsely claimed there were over 400,000 criminal aliens wandering around, when that stat primarily counts the number of people who are already safely housed in US prisons.
Former President Donald Trump is wildly distorting new statistics on immigration and crime to attack Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump falsely claimed Friday and Saturday that the statistics are specifically about criminal offenders who entered the US during the Biden-Harris administration; in reality, the figures are about offenders who entered the US over multiple decades, including during the Trump administration. And Trump falsely claimed that the statistics are specifically about people who are now living freely in the US; the figures actually include people who are currently in jails and prisons serving criminal sentences.
“Kamala should immediately cancel her News Conference because it was just revealed that 13,000 convicted murderers entered our Country during her three and a half year period as Border Czar,” Trump wrote in one post on Friday, the day Harris visited the southern border in Arizona. Harris “allowed almost 14,000 MURDERERS to freely and openly roam our Country,” Trump wrote in another Friday post. They “roam free to KILL AGAIN,” he wrote, escalating his rhetoric, on Saturday.
Facts First: Trump’s claims are false in two big ways. First, the statistics he was referring to are not specifically about people who entered the country during the Biden-Harris administration. Rather, those statistics are about noncitizens who entered the country under any administration, including Trump’s; were convicted of a crime at some point, usually in the US after their arrival; and are now living in the US while being listed on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “non-detained docket” — where some have been listed for years, including while Trump was president, because their country of citizenship won’t let the US deport them back there. Second, that ICE “non-detained” list includes people who are still serving jail and prison sentences for their crimes; they are on the list because they are not being held in immigration detention in particular.
The new statistics, released by ICE in a letter to a Republican congressman this week, said there were 425,431 total convicted criminals on the non-detained docket as of July 21, 2024, including 13,099 people with homicide convictions.
Trump lied to his rubes, with the able assistance of his chief racism advisor. And now he’s struggling to assure his supporters he’ll deliver the eye-popping numbers he promised.
Which is why I’m laughing so hard at Johnny Maga.
Because even if Trump meets these quotas — quotas which will end up focusing on the law-abiding migrants rather than the dangerous people Miller has been wailing about — he’ll only deport 547,500 people this year, nowhere close to the mass deportations he sold his rubes.
You all lied. You lied and lied and lied to make voters afraid.
And already on day 8, you’re spinning wildly rather than simply admitting you cynically lied to gin up fear to get Trump elected.
Update: Greg Sargent discussed this at length in his podcast today.