Trump Fired the People Who Could Dispute His False Claims about Ukraine Aid

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emptywheel
Barely one month after firing two of the men responsible for overseeing the money the United States has provided Ukraine to stave off Russia, Trump is launched false claims about that spending.
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DOGE Is Xitter Files for Government

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emptywheel
Until someone confesses differently, we need to treat Elon Musk's role in DOGE as exclusively one of propaganda, spinning false tales of corruption from decontextualized files Musk doesn't understand.
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Emil Bove Throwing Gold Bars Off the Titanic

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emptywheel
After eight years of Republican insistence that one should never predicate an investigation solely on oppo research, and less than two weeks after SDNY closed a criminal investigation into Project Veritas based on suspicion they committed crimes in pursuit of political hit jobs, DOJ was pressuring prosecutors to open an investigation relying primarily on a Project Veritas video.
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JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference: A Speech by Gaslight

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Quinn Norton
How Vance unsettled the Europeans While Musk was ripping through the US government like a 10 tonne toddler on cocaine, Vice President JD Vance was dispatched to the Munich Security Conference last week to tell Europeans how to run their democracies.…
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Ball of Thread, Ball of Kash

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emptywheel
Kash Patel serves as the alpha and omega of the grievance narrative Trump used to train Republicans to hate rule of law.
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Dale Ho Asks for Signed Consent from Eric Adams; Alex Spiro and Bill Burck Don't Provide It

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emptywheel
Like me, Judge Dale Ho is really curious why Emil Bove claimed to have written consent to dismiss Eric Adams' prosecution without prejudice, but did not submit it to the docket.
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Why Elon Musk Can't Run DOGE [sic] Anymore

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emptywheel
When a bunch of Democratic Attorneys General latched onto a legal theory to hold Elon Musk accountable for dismantling the Federal government, the White House decided that Musk doesn't actually run DOGE.
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John Barrasso Declares Programs Protecting Christian Minorities and Combatting Migration "Wrong"

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emptywheel
Because John Barrasso has unquestionably parrotted already discredited propaganda, he unwittingly went on Fox News and cheered the shutdown of programs protecting Christian minorities around the world and combatting migration to the US at its source.
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DOGE2025 Is Getting the Catastrophic De-Ba'athification They Demanded

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emptywheel
Elon Musk's DOGE boys and Project 2025 bureaucrats are discovering precisely what Paul Bremer learned two decades ago: When you deliberately destroy bureaucracy, you also destroy the ability to rebuild bureaucracy.
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Emil Bove's Missing Documents

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emptywheel
There are a number of documents Judge Dale Ho might demand that Emil Bove submit to the docket before dismissing the case against Eric Adams, including the notes from a January 31 meeting that Bove confiscated. Remarkably, though, Bove didn't even submit the most obvious: Adams' consent to dismissal without prejudice, which Bove negotiated without the involvement of SDNY.
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Aggressive Defense Of The Rule Of Law

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Ed Walker
Fighting Trump's assault on the rule of law means losing the gentility complex
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Fridays with Nicole Sandler

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emptywheel
Listen on Spotify (transcripts available) Listen on Apple (transcripts available)
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As the Thursday Night Massacre Turns into Friday Morning

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emptywheel
Hagen Scotten is the latest DOJ attorney who has put principle over Emil Bove's political errand.
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Did Pam Bondi Bury the Election Day Bomb Threats?

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emptywheel
With twin efforts taken in recent weeks -- the closure of FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force and the sidelining of the people at CISA who protected the 2024 election -- we may never get an explanation about who called in bomb threats to disrupt election day in November.
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What We Talk About When We Talk About AI (Part one)

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Quinn Norton
A Normal Person's Explainer on What Generative AI is and Does Part 1 - In the Beginning was the Chatbot "Are you comfortably seated? Yes, well, let's begin." *Clears throat theatrically* "Our experience, in natural theology, can never furnish…
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Trump Fired Inspectors General Who Identified $183.5 Billion in Waste, Fraud, and Abuse

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emptywheel
The lawsuit by eight of the Inspectors General Trump fired on his fourth day on the job -- who claim they've identified $183.5 billion in potential waste, fraud, and abuse during their tenure as IGs -- will contrast their proven efforts with DOGE's feigned interest in doing the same.
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Thomas Krause Says Trump Had to Close USAID because of Trump's Poor COVID Management

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emptywheel
In a court filing, DOGE lead at Treasury, Thomas Krause, attempted to justify his existence by citing a bunch of GAO reports. One of them substantiated how many improper payments were made in programs Donald Trump set up in response to COVID.
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Marko Elez "Resigned" the Day His Write Access to Payment Systems Was Discovered

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emptywheel
Because Marko Elez resigned the same day WSJ asked Treasury about racist social media comments, it has been assumed that that was why he quit. But that's just based on correlation, not any proof of causation. So we can't rule out that he quit because Treasury discovered he had more access than they intended to give him.
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