Pam Bondi Admits She Must Fire Kash Patel and Dan Bongino

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Even before Trump was inaugurated, I had great fun boosting expectations that Trump would release the Jeffrey Epstein files.

I didn’t do so because I believed there would be a massive Epstein release (partly because some of the conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein are not true and partly because what is true is that Trump is among the powerful men who are implicated). I didn’t do so because I believed any files would ever come out.

I did so because beliefs about Epstein are non-falsifiable. I did so because even if there were no damning materials tying Trump to Epstein, the President would still never be able to satisfy the expectations of his mob.

I did so because the promise (from Kash Patel, long before he was confirmed, and then from Pam Bondi) and expectation that Trump would release the files was an expectation that Trump’s supporters should expect to have fulfilled — after all he ordered DOJ to do just that, with the JFK, RFK, and MLK files.

But there’s no chance their expectations can ever been fulfilled. It was a way, I knew, where Trump was going to disappoint some of his most rabid fans.

Trump promised to release the secret files the continued secrecy of which have fueled decades of conspiracy theories, so why wouldn’t he release files about pedophilia, the legitimate concern that has fueled the Trump-supporting QAnoners?

I fueled such expectations on Xitter because if the demand to see the Epstein files ever took hold, Bondi would be stuck.

Then Bondi made things worse when she told Fox News that Epstein’s client file was on her desk for review. She made things worse when she orchestrated the re-release of the already-released files to a select group of right wing propagandists, all packaged up to look special, a spectacle that stoked divisions among MAGAts but also raised concerns that she was covering stuff up. She made things still worse when — responding to James Comer’s role in making things worse, when he claimed the Epstein files had been disappeared — she said there were tens of thousands of videos involving Epstein.

Kash Patel, who promised to release the files, and Dan Bongino, who begged his readers never to let go of this scandal? They fed the fever too with their years of spreading conspiracy theories about the Epstein files. And when FBI’s conspiracy theorists in chief tried to reverse course a month ago, it only further fueled suspicions.

Then Elon joined the fun, accusing Trump of being in the Epstein files as part of his tantrum against Trump (but then deleting that file). As someone who was also close to Ghislaine Maxwell, Elon might know!

Dan Goldman joined in, expressing, ” grave concern about what appears to be a concerted effort by you to delay and even prevent the release of the Jeffrey Epstein Files.,” and asking whether Trump’s identity was being redacted from any of the files. Robert Garcia and Stephen Lynch joined in, writing Pam Bondi a letter, asking Bondi to formally answer whether the Epstein files are being withheld — as Elon Musk alleged — because Trump is in them, and further asking (among other questions) whether Trump had a role in the delay of their release.

Bondi’s stonewalling, after both she and Kash promised everything would come quickly, was becoming the story.

So yesterday, DOJ and FBI released (or rather, made available to Axios without yet, apparently, releasing it via normal channels) a two-page unsigned notice (which may be on letterhead created for the purpose).

It included two main, credible conclusions:

  • Much of the material that FBI has depicts victims and any release of that material would retraumatize the victims.
  • FBI concluded (and Trump’s flunkies agree) that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. DOJ released two files (one unaltered, one enhanced, both with titles that do not even mention Epstein) showing that no one entered his cell the night he killed himself.

But there’s also a short, broader conclusion that is less credible.

This systematic review revealed no incriminating “client list.” There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.

Emphasis on credible?

Of course there’s a client list; one version of it was already released. There are also the names shared by victims of the men who abused them. And while there may be no evidence in the FBI files that Epstein did blackmail Trump or anyone else, he had blackmail material on them. There’s certainly credible reason to believe that information is one of the reasons he was allowed to persist so long; it was useful for other powerful people, possibly even spooks in one or another country. That FBI didn’t uncover evidence confirming that others were involved in trafficking young people is dramatically different from saying that there’s no damning information implicating Epstein’s Johns.

But let’s assume for the moment that these conclusions are impeccable (and as I said, the decision not to release videos showing victims and the conclusion about the suicide are sound), that means that the people who’ve been claiming to have inside knowledge who promised to release the files — starting with FBI Director Kash Patel and FBI Deputy Direct Dan Bongino — are braying conspiracy theorists would cannot be trusted in any position of authority.

If it’s true that all this was a conspiracy theory, Kash and Bongino must leave the FBI, because they’ve just confessed they will endorse any kind of conspiracy theory to spin up Trump’s rubes. Pam Bondi must call for their resignations immediately, and while she’s at it, she should leave herself, because her original stunt release created the very expectations that she’s now trying to squelch.

They all promised to fulfill conspiracy theories and are now claiming they were lying about their certainty there was some there there.

Honestly, they’d be doing themselves a favor by doing so. But that won’t happen, and because these conspiracy theories are non-falsifiable, this attempt to make the entire promised reveal will go away will simply fuel further conspiracy theories. Indeed, it already is.

Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, and Pam Bondi have now confirmed they are raging conspiracy theorists. And yet even that will not be enough to tamp down further conspiracy theories.

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How Trump Plans to Dodge Accountability Again

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Like many insecure white men, Donald J. Trump is a master at dodging all personal accountability for his own actions. There are the serial bankruptcies, sure. He has blamed “his predecessors” for things that happened between 2017 and 2021 (indeed, Scott Bessent just blamed Democrats for blowing out the deficit in 2020). But the real measure of his mastery at dodging accountability is how, through a combination of denial and distraction, Trump never paid a price for the excess deaths and delayed recovery from Hurricane Maria in 2018.

 

 

A similar catastrophe in Hurricane Katrina response probably did more to sink George W. Bush’s legacy than the Iraq War.

But Trump managed to simply deprive Puerto Rico of disaster support and still flip heavily Puerto Rican districts in last year’s election.

Understanding and preempting Trump’s attempts to dodge accountability for his failed policies may be crucial to reversing his authoritarian power grab. After all, already his policies have killed thousands overseas and endangered business, big and small. But the scale of catastrophe he will exacerbate or even cause, whether in economic crash or pandemic or terrorism or cybersecurity failures or things less obvious, could do grave lasting damage to the US. We can say that with great confidence now, but that only matters if we can hold him accountable for all the foreseeable catastrophes his policies will cause.

If he is held accountable, we might generate broad opposition to him, even among some MAGAts; if he scapegoats others, catastrophe will only provide a way to consolidate power.

Which is why the panicked response to the Texas flood that devastated a girl’s summer camp matters.

It’s not yet clear how the vacancies Trump demanded exacerbated flood response, but key positions, including those that might have warned of the flood, are vacant.

The National Weather Service’s San Angelo office, which is responsible for some of the areas hit hardest by Friday’s flooding, was missing a senior hydrologist, staff forecaster and meteorologist in charge, according to Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization, the union that represents Weather Service workers.

The Weather Service’s nearby San Antonio office, which covers other areas hit by the floods, also had significant vacancies, including a warning coordination meteorologist and science officer, Mr. Fahy said. Staff members in those positions are meant to work with local emergency managers to plan for floods, including when and how to warn local residents and help them evacuate.

That office’s warning coordination meteorologist left on April 30, after taking the early retirement package the Trump administration used to reduce the number of federal employees, according to a person with knowledge of his departure.

Some of the openings may predate the current Trump administration. But at both offices, the vacancy rate is roughly double what it was when Mr. Trump returned to the White House in January, according to Mr. Fahy.

John Sokich, who until January was director of congressional affairs for the National Weather Service, said those unfilled positions made it harder to coordinate with local officials because each Weather Service office works as a team. “Reduced staffing puts that in jeopardy,” he said.

Both Speaker Mike and — more controversially — the White House have suggested prayer is the only available recourse. “May God wrap his loving arms around all those in Texas,” because Trump stripped Texas of emergency response services before a climate disaster rolled through.

Scott Bessent (fresh off blaming Democrats for blowing up the deficit while Trump was in charge) lashed out at Larry Summers for tying the Big Ugly bill to response failures in Texas, declaring that holding a white man like himself accountable is “toxic” and “cruel.”

He has turned a human tragedy into a political cudgel. Such remarks are feckless and deeply offensive.

Professor Summers should immediately issue a public apology for his toxic language.

I hope the nonprofit and for-profit institutions with which he is affiliated will join me in this call.

If he is unwilling or unable to acknowledge the cruelty of his remarks, they should consider Harvard’s example and make his unacceptable rhetoric grounds for dismissal.

Trump himself, when asked whether his assault on FEMA had a role in delayed warnings in Texas, both claimed that this was unforeseeable but also deferred discussion of FEMA because “they’re busy working” (and, of course, Trump instantly made an emergency declaration whereas he has delayed for even larger tragedies in states that oppose him).

I got a bit of criticism on social media for suggesting we need a tag for Trump disasters — Trump Murder Flood, Trump Murder Hack, Trump Murder Disease — so as to make it harder for him to dodge accountability (and to demonstrate their commonality in policy failures). Plus, there’s the larger question of accountability for refusing to combat or prepare for climate change, the real culprit in Texas.

But amid tepid insider analysis about whether Democrats can hang the Big Ugly bill on right wingers in the mid-terms, if we make it that far, the accountability for the impacts of Trump’s policy failures is a far more important issue.

Trump’s policies have and will get people killed. Will we find a way to hold him accountable.

This time?

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Seeing Language as a Tool of Authoritarianism

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I’m going to write a series of posts about things we need to do to fight fascism. They’re part of the same conversation that LOLGOP and I have started to have on video.

Start with this, which is fairly obvious but needs to be said: The right and the left use language as a tool differently. Understanding that is, in my opinion, a crucial step for understanding the asymmetry in the polarization of society and attempting to more effectively combat authoritarianism.

In short, liberals and journalists treat language as transparent, whereas right wingers treat language as utilitarian.

By transparent, I mean that liberals and journalists believe language serves as a way to describe and understand reality. This is, after all, built into the definition of small-l liberalism: that one can understand and describe the world, and using that understanding, engage in rational debates about how best to live in it. One can iteratively test descriptions of the world and policy prescriptions and improve our relationship with the world and each others.

Politicians who accept they live in a liberal (small-l) system are adhering to a system where people with competing visions describe, transparently, what they see in reality or believe it to be, and persuade others that that vision of reality is a better description of reality than their opponent, and that if that vision of reality is true, then it counsels certain actions or policies. This is the cornerstone of a successful legislative body: the shared belief that debate and discussion can result in rational persuasion and through that good policy solutions.

Transparent language is an idea at the heart of democracy.

Our current conception of journalism (which most people, including or perhaps especially journalists, forget arose out of a particular conception of politics, technology, and economy) builds from this. A society professionalizes journalism and pays for it because of a belief that that feedback role — the provision of information more accurate and accessible than rumor or diatribe — helps sustain an orderly society. Once upon a time we believed that the mere act of disclosing corruption and scandal played a pivotal role in defeating it, and certainly some journalists still aspire to do that.

By contrast, right wingers approach language differently. For right wingers (a term I’ve adopted, because “in reality,” the MAGAt right is a departure from a Republican tradition that bought into assumptions about rationality and reality), language is instead a means to impose power, to impose a desired order on society. They are not trying to persuade you that living in an authoritarian hellhole will be better than living in a democracy. They are trying to bring about that helhole by disrupting debate, by policing language, by breaking the tie between language and reality. Utterances are valued not for the fidelity with which they describe the world. Rather, they are valued for the degree to which they help to attain a certain end state in which they accrue more power.

Obviously, this exists on a continuum. There are circumstances, perhaps with their family, perhaps when making backroom deals, where right wingers will use language transparently (though for Trump, even those situations involve motivated language). Liberals and journalists realize that you can use language in certain ways to make its use more effective, a concession that language is never entirely transparent.

But if you don’t adhere to that vision at all — if you believe language is always about accruing power — then not only is the effort to debate about reality futile, but language can be used to disrupt and replace rational discussion, which is one reason right wingers have systematically attacked moderation and disinformation scholarship, to make it harder to disrupt the process of accruing power by disrupting the transparency of language.

This is why the battle over pronouns has been so pitched. For right wingers, gender is a means of structuring society, of enforcing order, of reverting back to a prior hierarchy. Of course, gender is a construct, and particularly for non-binary people, the demand that a person adhere to their sex is a form of control, a denial of the reality of their identity. For some years, liberals tried as a matter of courtesy to use pronouns that a person used for themselves. To enforce a rigid order, right wingers understood they needed to destroy this practice as a means to superpose the power of fixed categories over the complexity of gender.

This dynamic underlies what I keep harping on about Trump’s Truth Social posts. Journalists, whose profession is premised on language being transparent, therefore treat these posts as a collection of words that in some way helps them get to a reality about Trump. Journalists really seem to believe that what Trump says is in some way a reflection of his feelings or his understanding of reality — and, to be fair, he has often fired people via tweet, literally changing reality with that tweet. For Trump, however, every single Truth Social post is an act of power, an act of commanding attention, of renewing polarization in society based on the relationship (either blind affirmation or opposition) one has with that Truth Social post, and often of exploiting the journalistic fetish for words to get them to serve as a vehicle for mindless repetition, which journalists’ entire professionalization otherwise would fight.

This extends even to punditry. Certainly, lefty pundits are focused on describing a motivated vision of reality. Their job is to be persuasive, if not always honest. But right wing pundits more often use their words and appearances as a means to impose an order. That is, they wouldn’t so much attempt to use an appearance to make a persuasive argument, true or not; rather, they would use it to repeat certain language, often doing violence to reality in the process.

This plays out in the interactions I call “Cotton Swabs,” where a news host asks right wingers whether they agree or disagree with some outrageous thing Trump says. Some still try to claim they didn’t see it. But in recent years, right wingers in good standing instead used such questions to disrupt the premise of the question — to speak over the journalist, to repeat key buzzwords, to perform loyalty to Trump’s tribe. Not only didn’t such questions shame a politician into breaking from Trump, but they instead served as opportunities to discredit such questions altogether. Journalists were willingly serving as props in a power play.

But this dynamic also extends to how the left and the right use social media, because left and right imagine using social media for different purposes. One thing that drives the feckless left wing habit of non-stop criticism for Democrats (many of whom are indeed feckless) is a belief that you effect change by persuading someone, and once you persuade someone, they will in turn persuade someone. Even as lefty pundits fill lefty discursive space with repeated efforts to alter the speech and behavior of elected pols (thereby creating the repetition the right uses so well), the right wing exploitation of the discursive environment goes uncontested, with the effect that right wing repetition and ordering language holds sway. Or in opposition, democrats might share their own feelings, honestly describing the emotions that Trump’s abuses elicit. By contrast, right wingers might respond to feeling similar or similarly strong emotions by instead asserting power of the language of the person who elicited the emotion. Democrats describe what ideally should happen. Right wingers ensure every utterance furthers an effort to implement their preferred end state.

I’m not, here, suggesting that lefties abandon their faith in the ability to describe a reality. For now, I’m suggesting lefties (and, even more so, journalists) need to be aware of the ways in which their speech makes them easy props for a power play.

When you speak on social media, are you saying or are you doing?

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No Kings Day Reflections from an American-Irish in the Home of Her Ancestors

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I took off this week to come to Gaeltacht — one of the small areas on this wee island in which locals still use Irish on a daily basis — to try to learn more Gaeilge.

It’s a curious place to spend the Fourth of July.

When I decided to come here it meant little more to me than a place I could immerse myself, sort of, for a week. The blurbs said little more than that the school offered both language classes and cultural classes — things like harp playing and weaving and folklore. But being here, it has the feel of one of the Jesuit retreat centers at which my late mother guided retreats: in a stunningly beautiful remote location, where you can hear and often cannot escape from the wind and — on the occasional clear day — see the stars, and a whole rhythm to the day to facilitate a kind of contemplation.

It is a place people come to contemplate Irishness or perhaps to use Irishness as a means to contemplate.

A storyteller who performed the other day spoke about the rhythm of it all: the rhythm of the language, of the music, of the verse, of the dance, of the weaving.

It’s a place where people — Irish people, people who identify as Irish, and people who take meaning from Irishness — come to preserve and participate in those traditions that sustained Irishness during colonization. Both because of that “Saving Civilization” bit (one of Ireland’s founding saints lived here for a bit and, as is true of many places on the coast, there’s an island nearby with an old ruined monastery) and because of the recurring Irish effort to build a nation out of the oral tradition that refused to be stamped out by the British, Irishness serves as a celebrated from-ness, to people far and near, even if (and if we’re honest, partly because) Ireland went through a lot of death and misery to get there.

And so it is here in this beautiful place of from-ness that I look west and contemplate a celebration of the Colonies’ break from the same empire from which Ireland would, eventually, free itself too, free itself in significant part by building on that oral tradition. As cities cancel the celebration of defying Kings because a white man who wants to disappear all the diverse from-ness that Made America Great has started disappearing actual people, I am thinking about how this from-ness in which I’m immersed (sort of), is what my ancestors and those of millions others brought to America to make up an identity called Irish-American. That process of bringing a from-ness to (or, for Native Americans, sustaining it in) America has been replicated in thousands of ways. The part of America that is Great is the one that weaves all that diverse from-ness together into one tapestry.

As you wonder whether there is anything to celebrate, as you reflect on how Trump views the list of injuries and usurpations in the Declaration as an aspiration, not an admonition, consider the ways in which your own from-ness and those of everyone around you is both that thing that Stephen Miller is trying to kill, both figuratively and literally. But also something that can provide a rhythm to sustain you.

That’s what he wants to suffocate: The very tapestry that Makes America Great.

Is America a nation that weaves together or one that, like the British attempted but failed, stamps out?

This is a political battle. But even more it is a cultural one.

No Kings.

Note: I’m going to be really busy for the next two days so won’t be in comments. I’ll check in tomorrow night. 

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“Egregious Behavior:” Alina Habba Confesses She Must Prosecute Donald Trump

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Note: I’m obviously failing my effort to get off this website for a week. I haven’t left yet!! But hopefully I can wean myself off this thing for a week starting … now.

Twice yesterday, Alina Habba made claims about prosecutorial priorities that mandate she charge her boss, Donald Trump.

First, she RTed the NJ USAO announcement of charges against someone who threatened several judges.

The charges seem real, involving phoned threats to cut off judges’ fingers or shoot them, though the accused perpetrator left the country (possibly to India) in 2018, and there’s no announcement of an extradition request. Plus, Ricky Patel — the same guy who ginned up the arrest of Ras Baraka after Baraka obeyed Patel’s request to leave a property onto which he had been invited — is involved, which makes it suspect.

In both the Tweet and the press release, Alina Habba, who represented Donald Trump when he routinely attacked judges in that case and others, presumably Tweeting some of those threats from his property in New Jersey, whose attacks led to phoned-in threats to Judge Juan Merchan and his staffers, talked about how heinous it is threaten judges.

“The conduct alleged in the Indictment is as heinous as it is troubling: threats to a federal judge, two state superior court judges, an elected official, and a private New Jersey resident. The conduct is not just reckless — it is a direct attack on our justice system. Targeting those who uphold the rule of law is an attack on every community they serve. This egregious behavior is unacceptable. And, as the charges make clear, no matter where you are, we will find you and hold you responsible.”

Excuse me? If you believe this, Alina, you charge Donald Trump for what you call heinous behavior.

Maybe even consider whether you need to turn yourself in for some of your attacks on the judge?

But Habba wasn’t done.

After that, Habba RTed Kash Patel’s announcement of charges for a man in Florida who allegedly — and I emphasize allegedly — threatened Habba.

Kash claimed this was an instance of a “copycat” threat using “86,” a clear reference to Jim Comey’s Tweeting something he saw on a beach.

A dangerous copycat, fueled by reckless rhetoric from former officials, threatened those protecting our country. Political violence has no place here. Proud of our @FBITampa and thankful to our Florida partners for acting fast to deliver justice.

The indictment in question charges a guy named Salvatore Russotto with two counts — threatening an official and assault (18 USC 111) — for four kinds of statements:

  • Calling Alina Habba the C-word, repeatedly
  • Hoping she dies a painful death (but not threatening to cause that himself)
  • Saying “86” her
  • Calling for “death penalty for all traitors”

Kash already charged someone else for using the 86-term, though in that case, the threats were much more graphic and personalized.

But this? Hoping someone dies? Calling someone the C-word?

The only real threat is calling for the death penalty for traitors. Remember Trump’s threats against Liz Cheney? Against Peter Strzok?

How about the time when current FBI Director and then private citizen Kash Patel told a lie about something in a John Durham filing, which led Trump to claim that Michael Sussmann should be put to death?

Trump calls his adversaries traitors all the time, and he has repeatedly called for them to be killed. Speaking of copycat, so did hundreds of the Jan6ers Trump pardoned after they stormed the halls of Congress calling to “Hang Mike Pence.” Those people weren’t charged with assault for that, but then I guess DOJ could now charge them?

And again, some of these threats Trump made undoubtedly were issued from New Jersey, and many of them were less than five years ago.

Of course, Kash’s decision to charge someone for the kind of threat he has facilitated is about Comey, not rule of law, perhaps an attempt to make nothing into something. Kash wants to claim that this is a copycat, but that Jack Posobiec’s even more viral use of the very same term against Joe Biden, also fewer than five years ago, was not.

If I were the lawyer of the guy in Florida, I would raise all this in a selective prosecution bid. As I also would if I represented the Alabama woman charged with bringing home classified documents (also a seemingly legitimate case) after a search the likes of which Kash called “unlawful” when such a search targeted Mar-a-Lago.

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Fridays with Nicole Sandler, Going, Going, Gone Fishing Edition

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Note: As I mentioned at the end of this … I’m going to be out of pocket next week. My goal is to do something I have not done for a decade: to take a week off posting.

Listen on spotify (transcripts available)

Listen on Apple (transcripts available)

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How the Newslettification of News Reifies Trump’s Power Rather than Exposing His Lies

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Increasingly (possibly as an outgrowth of their willingness to serve as data mules for his Truth Social tweets), news outlets treat Donald Trump’s mere act of saying something as news.

There’s an interesting example in the NYT that shows how doing so wildly distorts the workings of what democracy America has left.

On the front page of the NYT digital page there’s a package of stories about the reconciliation bill, which Trump wants to push through by July 4, in part, to keep Stephen Miller’s dragnet running. The top “story” in that package bears the headline, “Trump rallies for signature policy bill as GOP rushes to save it; President Trump’s domestic policy bill faced another hurdle after the Senate parliamentarian said several of its major provisions could not be included.”

If you click on that story, it’s not a dedicated news story. Instead, it’s just the top newsletter page, with stubs for stories on the reconciliation bill, Iran strikes, and deportation. Nevertheless, that page itself also bears the headline, “Trump rallies for his policy bill as GOP works to save it.”

If you click though the reconciliation bill stub, it takes you to this story, in which the Parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough — not Trump — is the primary actor.

It’s not until the fifth paragraph of the story that we get the promised “news” about Trump rallying for the bill — and the only newsworthy part of that 73-word passage is that Trump either misstated or lied about what was in the bill.

President Trump worked to rally support for the legislation on Thursday at an event at the White House, praising the “hundreds of things here” to like about the bill.

“It’s so good,” he said, though one item he trumpeted, eliminating taxes on Social Security, was not actually in the bill.

When a reporter shouted out a question about whether Congress could pass the bill by July 4, Mr. Trump replied: “We hope so.”

You could make an entire news story about this: that Trump promised to eliminate taxes on Social Security, but it’s not in the Big Ugly he’s pushing through to codify the things that really matter to him. Instead, Trump will take food from children and medical care from working people so he can pay off the billionaires who got him reelected (something else that’s not in the story). Trump made a promise, and rather than keeping it, he is falsely claiming he’s keeping it.

NYT didn’t do that (though it did publish a story about Republicans who rely on the benefits right wingers are trying to kill), but they did cast him as the lead character in the one event in town where he’s a side player, what might be the only substantive legislation passed this year, if right wingers even can pass it, which is not yet clear (Jake Sherman says John Thune doesn’t have the votes to pass it, yet).

Incidentally, the only mention of a Democrat in the story comes from Bobby Kogan, who provided a price tag for the things right wingers had stuffed into a bill that broke the rules for reconciliation.

If Republicans are forced to remove all the provisions Ms. MacDonough has ruled against, it would eliminate more than $500 billion of the bill’s intended spending cuts, according to a rough analysis by Bobby Kogan, a former Democratic Senate Budget Committee staff member and White House budget official who is now the senior director of federal budget policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress.

What doesn’t make any of these stories is that the Parliamentarian’s serial rejection of one after another policy in the Big Ugly came as a result of a lot of work from Democratic staffers who successfully argued that the provisions were extraneous to the bill (see the sections on the Byrd Rule in this post for an explanation of what that means).

Ron Wyden is one of the few people who made this point: he and his staff had to work to make this happen.

This is what Democrats in the Senate have been working on (even giving little-noticed press conferences) during a period when many wailed they were doing nothing: trying, at a minimum, to remove the gratuitously bad things right wingers are trying to jam through on this bill. Among the things Democrats did via Byrd Rule challenges are:

  • Preserving CFPB and Public Company Oversight Board
  • Kept some Food Stamp funding and benefits
  • Limited a rule trying to prevent states from regulating AI
  • Eliminated an attack on the judiciary’s ability to enforce contempt
  • Prevented DOJ from punishing sanctuary cities
  • Thwarted Mike Lee’s bid to sell off public lands
  • Combatted several attacks on renewable energy and defeated an effort to exempt offshore oil drilling from the NEPA process
  • Preserved civil service protections for Federal employees
  • Defeated an effort to attack unions
  • Killed a plan to get rid of USPS’ electric vehicles
  • Protected some ObamaCare provisions
  • Exempted existing student loan borrowers from an effort to restrict access
  • Defeated a bunch of attacks on Medicaid
  • Protected Medicaid funding for gender-affirming care
  • Eliminated vouchers for religious schools
  • Killed a tax exemption written just for Hillsdale College
  • Defeated an effort to decriminalize gun silencers

It’s not yet clear what will happen with the Big Ugly. Some House members are calling on Thune to fire the Parliamentarian, or to ignore her. There is a workaround that would blow up the filibuster.

For now, at least, Thune keeps insisting he won’t ignore MacDonough’s rulings (though as Politico notes, that could change if Trump demands it).

At the very least, the success in getting things excluded under the Byrd Rule has made a shitty bill less shitty. It has also created a delay, and any delay creates the outside possibility that the press will start to cover this bill as it should be, an effort to steal from the poor to pay off Trump’s debt to Elon Musk, and with the coverage spook enough Republicans to kill the bill in current form. As Cogan notes, these eliminated cuts also create a bigger financial hole in the bill, one of a few issues that risks killing it altogether.

Yes, the press is covering the drama created because Republicans may not have the votes. Yes, it’s likely Republicans will cave, again, once Trump directly threatens them.

But until that happens, Trump is not the story here.

If you want to tell a story about Trump, make it about the lies he and other right wingers are telling to try to reverse the overwhelming opposition to this bill. Absent that, treat Article I as if they still exist.

Update: Both David Dayen and I were once too optimistic that the Big Ugly wouldn’t get done in the House. But he lays out here, with Whitney Curry Wimbish, why these Byrd Rule rulings could doom the bill.

REPUBLICANS HAVE A BUNCH OF OPTIONS for dealing with this, but all of them have either been ruled out, would make the bill seemingly unpassable, or would need more time than they want to take.

First, Republicans can “cure” the Byrd rule problems by coming up with other language and negotiating with the parliamentarian to insert them back into the bill. The Senate Banking Committee already did this with new language on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Previously the committee completely zeroed out funding for the CFPB by setting an existing “cap” on how much the Federal Reserve can transfer to the agency at 0 percent of total Fed funds. That was thrown out by the parliamentarian. Now, in the new text, the committee has changed that to 6.5 percent.

Senators are reportedly trying to go back with new provider tax language as well.

Republicans would also likely try to squeeze more blood from cuts that have already been allowed to stay, Sanders said. “The big thing hanging over them is specifically the instruction to cut Medicaid,” she said. “Exactly where this could come out of, I feel like they’d probably try to get deeper savings from existing Medicaid savings that are allowed to stay in, which might end up making them more harmful.”

The problem here is that all new text would have to go back to the parliamentarian for more haggling. The parliamentarian did approve a change that would add state cost-sharing (along a slower timeline) to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, but as a Hill source explained, the process for the full bill could take weeks, and with each passing day, the bill gets less popular. That is why the White House wants the bill done by July 4. That would be next to impossible under a constant rewrite scenario.

[snip]

The Senate appears eager to just stick a bill in the House’s lap and dare them to vote it down. But that assumes they can get a bill over to the House at all. The buildup of parliamentarian rulings really does threaten the outcome.

One huge problem for Republicans is the debt limit, where something needs to be done to raise the nation’s borrowing cap by as early as August. There is a $5 trillion debt limit increase in the Senate version of the bill. If the impasse on the bill continues, Congress may have to split that out and pass a standalone version, which would almost certainly need Democratic support, where Democrats could dictate terms.

Under the timeline needed to pass the megabill by July 4, votes would need to begin today. There’s almost no chance of that happening. A press officer for Thune did not respond to an email request for information to say whether the Senate is operating under a new timeline.

You don’t want to say that a bill cutting taxes and spending simply cannot pass a Republican Congress. It doesn’t make much sense to say that. But that threat has grown much more real by the day.

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Judge Stringer Bell: Emil Bove Confirms Erez Reuveni’s Allegation that He Tried to Avoid Paper Trails

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Emil Bove presented the appearance of a calm collected guy in his confirmation hearing. And Republicans made especially clear they intend to push through Donald Trump’s defense attorney to be Donald Trump’s Circuit Court Judge in New Jersey, where Trump owns a property implicated in one case Bove defended him on.

For much of the hearing, Bove dodged questions successfully, claiming at times he couldn’t answer because something he did at DOJ was not public, claiming at other times that discussing things that are political — like who won the 2020 election!! — would violate the Judicial Canon.

But at the end, Adam Schiff cornered him. Schiff asked whether he said the “fuck you” comment reported in the Erez Reuveni allegation (which Todd Blanche denied happened).

Bove responded that he could not recall (just as he could not recall how many Jan6 prosecutors he had fired or how many Jan6 criminals had been pardoned). But he didn’t deny he said it. “I certainly emphasized the importance of the upcoming operation.”

Schiff asked that the Committee get the notes of that meeting.

Then Schiff turned to Danielle Sassoon’s allegations about Bove’s demand for a quid pro quo for Eric Adams.

Schiff: Let me ask about notes from another meeting which you’re contesting here, and that is the meeting over the decision to dismiss the case — the corruption case — in New York against the Mayor of New York.According to Ms. Sassoon, the US Attorney at the time, during the meeting with Adams’ attorneys, where, she described, um, Adams’ attorneys repeatedly what amounted to a quid pro quo, that you admonished one of the lawyers in the room to stop taking notes. Is that true?

Bove: I don’t believe I instructed that attorney to stop taking notes. I did remark on the fact that he was taking extensive notes. Yes.

Schiff: Why did it concern you that he was taking notes of the meeting?

Bove: Because at that point of the meeting, we were discussing who was responsible for media leaks and I was making the point that only prosecutors had created an extensive record that could support detailed leaks.

Schiff: And you were concerned, were you, that information about this, this, potential quid pro quo might become public? Was that the concern?

Bove: I’ve explained that there was no quid pro quo.

Schiff; Will you provide the notes of that meeting, which you, according to the US Attorney, instructed be collected a the end of the meeting?

Bove: I think a member of my staff may have given that instruction outside my presence. And I defer to the Committee and the Executive Branch on records requests and how they should be handled.

Pam Bondi had, by that point, joined Todd Blanche in overseeing the confirmation hearing for their hatchet man. So Schiff asked that the Committee (Ashley Moody was in the chair) request Bondi and Blanche to make those notes available.

Moody refused.

So Bove dodged that moment, sort of.

But in doing so, Bove confirmed something more substantive from the Reuveni complaint.

Reuveni describes that on March 29, as he was struggling to communicate the scope of an injunction to DHS in the DVD case (the one SCOTUS ruled on Monday), he was affirmatively instructed to stop putting guidance into writing.

Separately, Mr. Reuveni contacted Ensign by phone, who informed him that the head of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations had been given “verbal” notice of the injunction, but again, no written guidance had been disseminated to the agency. Sometime after this call, during the mid-to-late afternoon, Ensign informed Mr. Reuveni by phone that it would be advisable to stop sending emails with many recipients, including Percival, concerning the injunction compliance guidance.41

[snip]

Thereafter, Mr. Reuveni spoke twice with Ensign on the phone between approximately 11:00 a.m. and noon, during which time Ensign told Mr. Reuveni that “leadership” had concluded and directed that no injunction compliance guidance would be issued. Ensign also again told Mr. Reuveni that he should no longer contact DHS asking about guidance.42 Mr. Reuveni informed Ensign that plaintiffs’ counsel had notified OIL attorneys that their class member clients were being or had been prepared for removal, and without further information this appeared to be a violation ofthe injunction. Ensign made comments to the effect that he agreed with Mr. Reuveni, acknowledged the decisions were not ideal and would make it harder to win cases, and stated that he was not a decision maker in these circumstances.

41 The Department ofJustice’s implementation ofrestrictions on communications may be in violation of 5 U.S.C. 2302(b)(13).

42 The Department ofJustice’s implementation ofrestrictions on communications may be in violation of 5 U.S.C. 2302(b)(13). [my emphasis]

Two days later, he got the same instruction, this time explicitly on Bove’s orders.

On April 1, Mr. Reuveni was again told to stop asking questions. Mr. Reuveni received phone call from Acting AAG Roth in which Roth relayed that Bove was very unhappy that Mr. Reuveni had contacted counsel at various agencies to ascertain whether DOJ had violated court order Roth conveyed that Mr. Reuveni should stop emailing agency counsel on the matter to instead communicate by phone only where possible.46 Mr. Reuveni understood this instruction to be based on leadership’s aim to avoid generating written material subject to disclosure through FOIA.

46 The Department of Justice’s implementation of restrictions on communications may be in violation of 5 U.S.C. 2302 b 13). [my emphasis]

The same thing happened on following days in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case: He was specifically asked to stop putting things  — most notably, his questions about whether there was any basis for claims that KAG had ties to MS-13 — in writing.

DOJ leadership never did. Instead, on several occasions on April 2 and 3 through both phone calls and email, Mr. Reuveni was directed by McHenry, through Roth and Ensign, to cease making requests of DHS and DOS, to stop asking for facts supporting any possible defense ofthe case, that no “asks” of El Salvador of any sort should be made, and to rest on threshold jurisdictional arguments at the hearing.48

48 The Department ofJustice’s implementation ofrestrictions on communications may be in violation of 5 U.S.C. 2302(b)(13).

This refusal to send out an order about an injunction is also how DOJ dealt with the first injunctions on the attacks on law firms.

Sure: Absent the paper trail being in the hands of the Committee, Bove claims not to remember any of this.

But he confirmed something consistent with Reuveni’s complaint.

He doesn’t like paper trails of his criminal conspiracies.

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DOJ’s Past Lies Continue to Backfire

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A lifetime ago in the history of Stephen Miller’s dragnet (that is, Monday) I contemplated writing a post on how Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes’ opinion — finding that DOJ was not entitled even to a hearing at which to argue in favor of detaining Kilmar Abrego Garcia pre-trial. but even if they were, that argument would fail — might influence his lawsuit in Maryland.

I got distracted with other things.

And now, it’ll be a dramatically different post.  A bunch of things have happened in the interim, including:

  • SCOTUS wrote an unfathomable order that got Trump’s DOJ off the hook for blowing off a District Court order by, instead, permitting Miller to deport migrants to slavery and torture (read Steve Vladeck for more)
  • NYT published a story about a complaint Erez Reuveni submitted to DOJ Inspector General, alleging (in part) that, at a meeting about what to do in the face of an at-that-point-hypothetical order not to deport planeloads of migrants based on an Alien Enemies Act declaration, Emil Bove said “D.O.J. would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such order”
  • Deputy Attorney General and sometime Trump defense attorney Todd Blanche went on a rant on Xitter, claiming newsworthy journalism (implicating him in alleged grave ethical violations) should not be “tolerated”

As it is, there are two key details from Holmes’ opinion that may have resonance both in KAG’s criminal case and the lawsuit.

Barbara Holmes: Is that your final answer?

She begins her opinion by noting that KAG is accused of human smuggling, not human trafficking.

To be clear, the offenses of which Abrego is charged are human smuggling, not human trafficking. Although “smuggling” and “trafficking” were sometimes used interchangeably during the detention hearing, there is a distinct difference between the two under the law. They are not transposable. According to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) Policy Manual:

Federal law distinguishes between the crimes of human smuggling and human trafficking. Trafficking is a crime committed against a person regardless of the person’s immigration status or the crossing of a transnational border, while smuggling is a crime committed against a country’s immigration laws and involves the willful movement of a person across a country’s border.

A person may voluntarily consent to be smuggled. In contrast, an act of trafficking must involve both a particular means, such as the use of force, fraud, or coercion, and a particular purpose, such as subjection to involuntary servitude or a commercial sex act.

USCIS POLICY MANUAL, Difference Between Trafficking and Smuggling, Vol. 3, Pt. B, Ch. 2, § B.7, https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-3-part-b-chapter-2. The Cornerstone Report,7 a quarterly bulletin highlighting key issues related to investigations by ICE Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”), also explains the difference between human trafficking and human smuggling:

Human trafficking and human smuggling are often confused. The two crimes are very different and it is critical to understand the difference between the two.

Human trafficking involves exploiting men, women, or children for the purposes of forced labor or commercial sexual exploitation.

Human smuggling involves the provision of a service—typically, transportation or fraudulent documents—to an individual who voluntarily seeks to gain illegal entry into a foreign country.

The Cornerstone Report, Human Trafficking vs Human Smuggling, Vol. XIII, No. 1, Summer 2017, p.1. As the report states: “Smuggling is transportation-based. Trafficking is exploitation-based.” Id. “These are not interchangeable terms.” Id. [emphasis original]

The distinction matters for a key issue in the opinion, that even if there were minors present in a van KAG drove, that doesn’t necessarily make them victims of the crime.

Nevertheless, Holmes only returns to the issue of trafficking once more in her opinion, when pointing out that if the government had evidence of human trafficking, she hopes that DOJ would charge it.

The Court supposes – or at least hopes – that if children are victimized as part of their undocumented entry into this country, the government would pursue appropriate human trafficking charges against the human traffickers.

She makes a similar aside in her discussion of MS-13. KAG’s alleged gang membership is not charged. The only reason it was pertinent to a detention decision is in how it might substantiate a risk of obstruction. As Holmes laid out, the evidence that KAG actually was a member of MS-13 was weak hearsay.

The government’s evidence that Abrego is a member of MS-13 consists of general statements, all double hearsay, from two cooperating witnesses: the second male cooperator and N.V. Those statements are, however, directly inconsistent with statements by the first cooperator.

[snip]

Contrary to the statements of the second cooperator and NV, the first male cooperator told Special Agent Joseph that, in ten years of acquaintance with Abrego, there were no signs or markings, including tattoos, indicating that Abrego is an MS-13 member. This statement specifically repudiates any outward indicia that Abrego belongs to MS-13, in stark contrast to the non-specific second cooperator’s and N.V.’s feelings that Abrego may belong to MS-13. Given these conflicting statements, the government’s evidence of Abrego’s alleged gang membership is simply insufficient.

But even if KAG were a member of MS-13, that would only be relevant to the detention determination if he were trying to intimidate people because of that gang membership. And the vague allegations don’t get there, she says at the end of that passage.

Here, the government’s evidence of hearsay testimony of a cooperating witness’s general feeling of intimidation without any description of specific language used or actions taken by Abrego is not enough to establish by a preponderance that Abrego poses a serious risk of obstructing justice within the meaning of § 3142(f)(2)(B). 25

25 Given the volume of resources committed to the government’s investigation of Abrego since April 2025, according to Special Agent Joseph, the Court supposes that if timely, more specific, concrete evidence exists of Abrego’s alleged MS-13 gang membership or a consistent pattern of intentional conduct designed to threaten or intimidate specific individuals, the government would have offered that evidence at the detention hearing.

Which elicits a similar footnote as she made regarding trafficking: “If you had evidence of these things that might implicate the detention determination,” she seems to be saying about both trafficking and KAG’s alleged MS-13 membership, “you surely would mention it.”

As noted, those asides did have a role in the opinion (if not as big a one as the page-long discussion about the smuggling/trafficking distinction would seem to suggest).

But they’re important for another reason.

Holmes is basically noting that the government presented no evidence of two claims that top Administration officials, including Trump himself along with Pam Bondi, made repeatedly. The government didn’t share the doctored photo claiming KAG’s knuckles came coded for MS-13. The government presented no evidence that KAG was the threat Pam Bondi claimed he was.

Accumulating evidence about Trump and his top aides lying about KAG

The discrepancy between what the government said publicly and what they actually charged will presumably be the subject of a selective prosecution motion, as well as a slew of other efforts to preserve KAG’s right to a fair trial.

But the disjunct between what top Trump officials said publicly and what they’re willing to say in response to KAG’s lawsuit are a central prong of his motion for discovery sanctions in the lawsuit, which argues that the government is simply not cooperating with his ability to discover what happened regarding his detention. An exhibit, described as “a non-exhaustive list” of the public things that government officials said about KAG, quotes 21 allegations that KAG engaged in human trafficking and 60 claiming he was MS-13. As one example, it cites this screed from Stephen Miller in a press conference on May 1, at least a week after the grand jury already started investigating KAG.

There has been even more evidence that has been made public about [Abrego Garcia’s] violient [sic], repeated threats and assaults against his spouse, someone who had repeated documented human trafficking and human smuggling offenses, somebody that has extensively documented membership in MS-13, a terrorist organization, and of course someone [who] had MS-13 tattooed on his knuckles. This is a person who is a clear and present danger to the safety of the American people and it is a sad reflection on the state of our media and many of the outlets represented in this room that you incessantly try to shill for this MS-13 terrorist.

The filing compares public officials’ refusal to cooperate in discovery, their bogus privilege invocations, and depositions designed to obfuscate with this NY story (included as an exhibit as well), which describes emailed conversations about what to do with KAG that should be subject to the discovery order.

They use the article — for example — to argue that one of the people who did sit for a deposition, DHS Acting General Counsel Joseph Mazzara, “may have given untruthful testimony.”

More recently, credible press reports suggest that Mazzara—DHS’s Acting General Counsel—may have given untruthful testimony. At the deposition, Mazzara was asked whether he knew by April 12 [redacted]. He ultimately answered: [redacted] ECF No. 129-9 Tr. 76:9–13. When pressed about whether anyone at DHS [redacted] Mazzara claimed he had [redacted] Id. Tr. 155:10–7. According to the New York Times, however, Mazzara “told his colleagues that [DHS Secretary] Kristi Noem . . . had taken steps to seek Mr. Abrego Garcia’s segregation from other inmates, including members of Barrio 18.” See Ex. C. The report cites specific emails from Mazzara on or around March 28 in which he noted, “We’re also trying to keep him where he is.” Id. On March 30, James Percival, another custodian from whom Plaintiffs have received no documents,12 admitted that Abrego Garcia’s removal was “an administrative error,” but added: “(Not that we should say [so] publicly).” Id.

Another heavily redacted passage suggests that, based on how and when he was charged, DOJ lied about what Pam Bondi knew when.

The filing also compares what Noem and Bondi testified to Congress versus what the timeline of the criminal investigation shows actually happened.

That NYT article describes several conversations, involving but not limited to Erez Reuveni, about ways to fix the error of deporting KAG without endangering the deportation of the 200 other men that day. Reuveni was actually trying to mitigate the risk that the KAG case would endanger the larger argument about the Alien Enemies Act; as described, at least, he was trying to protect the decision to send 200 people to torture under the AEA.

As Mr. Reuveni pointed out to the group, the case potentially “jeopardizes many far more important initiatives of the current administration.” If the government fought and lost, it could have legal repercussions, not least of which for the nearly 140 Venezuelans who were sent to the same facility under the authority of a rarely used wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

That was where things stood two weeks ago, when KAG’s lawyers were asking for sanctions because of the secrets DOJ is hiding.

Reuveni ties DOJ’s actions with White House lies

Yesterday — the day before Emil Bove’s confirmation hearing to become a Circuit Court Judge — Reuveni submitted a whistleblower declaration to DOJ’s Inspector General, the Acting Special Counsel (who happens to be Trade Rep Jamieson Greer), and the leaders of House and Senate Judiciary Committees, which NYT was the first to report. As part of the complaint, Reuveni claims the public explanation Todd Blanche gave for why he was put on leave — because he was not zealously advocating for his client — is not the real reason. He says he was fired because he refused to implement commands to ignore court orders.

Since April 2025 it has been widely reported that according to DOJ sources Mr. Reuveni was put on administrative leave by DOJ for allegations offailure to follow directive from his superiors failure to zealously advocate on behalf of the United States and for arguing against Homeland Security and the State Department” when he truthfully represented to the court that Mr. Abrego Garcia’s removal was in error.² These statements by Attorney General Pamela Bondi and her deputy Todd Blanche are false and misleading Indeed it has since been reported that prior to the April hearing Senior Counselor to the Secretary of Homeland Security and Trump appointee James Percival conceded that Mr. Abrego Garcia’s removal was an administrative error (Not that we should say publicly.)

Nevertheless White House officials have publicly disparaged Mr. Reuveni to justify their refusal to comply with the Constitution and with court orders.4 White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller falsely stated, “The only mistake that was made is lawyer put an incorrect line in legal filing,” and labeled Mr. Reuveni “saboteur, a Democrat.” 5 Referring to Mr. Reuveni, President Trump stated, “Well the lawyer that said it was mistake was here long time was not appointed by us—should not have said that should not have said that.”6

He cites more than the quote that Emil Bove said that they might have to tell courts “fuck you.” Reuveni claimed he defied three illegal orders:

  • Trump’s DOJ blew off Judge James Boasberg’s injunction on deporting people under the Alien Enemies Act
  • After Judge Brian Murphy issued a nationwide TRO on deportations without notice to involve a Convention Against Torture challenge, Reuveni was repeatedly admonished for trying to implement that injunction, in writing
  • After correctly saying on April 4 that DOJ made a mistake when they deported KAG, Reuveni repeatedly objected and ultimately refused to sign an appellate brief claiming KAG was a terrorist (based on the MS-13 claim)

Reuveni’s description of the third illegal order describes how Drew Ensign responded when press headlines misrepresented Reuveni’s mere adoption of ICE’s admission that KAG was deported in error. Ensign scolded Reuveni twice, the second time, in response to a prompt from the White House.

A few minutes after the hearing, Mr. Reuveni went from the courtroom to the U.S. Attorney’s office space in the court building. The press had been present at the hearing, and bythe time he was leaving the courtroom, Mr. Reuveni had already received multiple text messages sharing news headlines about his statements to the court. Mr. Reuveni also received an email from Ensign directing Mr. Reuveni to call him, which Mr. Reuveni did. On that call, Ensign asked Mr. Reuveni – for the first time – why Mr. Reuveni had not argued that Mr. Abrego Garcia was a terrorist and that therefore his withholding ofremoval order was invalid. Mr. Reuveni told Ensign words to the effect of, “I understand you’ve seen the headlines, but read the transcript, I did not say the things the headlines say that I said.”

Ensign asked Mr. Reuveni why he did not argue that Mr. Abrego Garcia was a member of a terrorist organization or that being a member of such organization meant Mr. Abrego Garcia’s protection from removal to El Salvador was nullified. Mr. Reuveni told Ensign he did not make those arguments because: 1 ) those were not arguments in the government’s briefs, which Ensign had reviewed; 2) there was no evidence in the record to support the arguments; and 3) the laws governing withholding of removal do not support a theory that declaring someone a member of a terrorist organization retroactively nullifies a grant of withholding relief. Ensign had little reaction but called again a few minutes later asking similar questions and informing Mr. Reuveni that these inquiries were prompted by the White House. Mr. Reuveni again repeated the same concerns he had on the first call. [my emphasis]

Reuveni describes his repeated objections to an appeal claiming that KAG was MS-13 and therefore a terrorist. Hours after he refused to claim he was, Blanche put him on administrative leave.

Flentje told Mr. Reuveni that he should sign the brief, and that he had signed up for the responsibility to do so when he accepted the Deputy position. Mr. Reuveni responded, “I didn’t sign up to lie. ” Ultimately, someone else signed that brief, making arguments contrary to law, which was filed at 1:41 a.m. on April 5.

Less than seven hours later, Mr. Reuveni was placed on administrative leave for alleged “failure to follow a directive from your superiors; failure to zealously advocate on behalf ofthe United States; and engaging in conduct prejudicial to your client.” The letter signed by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche placing Mr. Reuveni on administrative leave was leaked to the press and reported that same day.51

Erez Reuveni claims that he was placed on leave (and ultimately fired) because he refused to lie and say there was evidence that KAG was an MS-13 member and therefore a terrorist.

Todd Blanche confesses he was in the thick of it all

The press focus on Reuveni’s complaint has been, justifiably given his confirmation schedule, on Emil Bove. Todd Blanche’s name appears just five times in the complaint, three times in association with a letter to him, the other two for his public claims about why Reuveni was fired. And Blanche’s name doesn’t appear at all in the appendix of public false claims top Trump officials have made about KAG.

But immediately after the NYT published its story, Blanche implicated himself personally, claiming to be at the meeting about the CECOT deportations and declaring taht public reporting of something newsworthy, “should not be tolerated.”

The New York Times article describes falsehoods purportedly made by a disgruntled former employee and then leaked to the press in violation of ethical obligations. The claims about Department of Justice leadership and the Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General are utterly false which is likely why the author gave the Department of Justice 15 minutes this morning to respond (they wrote that we did not “immediately respond with a comment”) before releasing this garbage. Note that [1] not a single individual except the disgruntled former employee agrees with the statements cavalierly printed by this purported news outlet. [2] I was at the meeting described in the article and at no time did anyone suggest a court order should not be followed. This is disgusting journalism. Planting a false hit piece the day before a confirmation hearing is something we have come to expect from the media, but it does not mean it should be tolerated.

Blanche’s claim that he was at that meeting conflicts with Reuveni’s; the whistleblower claims Bove was the senior DOJ official present.

That same day, following news reports that the President intended to sign a presidential proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), Mr. Reuveni was summoned to a meeting by Deputy Assistant Attorney General (DAAG) of OIL, Drew Ensign. At the meeting were Principal Assistant Deputy Attorney General (PADAG) Emil Bove, Counselor to the Deputy Attorney General James McHenry, Associate Deputy Attorney General (ADAG) Paul Perkins, DAAG Ensign, Acting Director for OIL and Mr. Reuveni’s direct supervisor, August Flentje, and other OIL attorneys. [my emphasis]

That said, there’s a logical problem with Blanche’s claim. He clearly claims to have checked the story of the people who were in the meeting, marked with a [1] above. And then claims he was at the meeting, marked with a [2]. Those are the claims of a guy who has manufactured a cover story. Which — in light of the phone traffic documented by Reuveni that responded to his own emails — looks pretty suspect.

Remember: One of the very first public things Todd Blanche did as DAG was to launch a witch hunt into NYT’s source debunking Trump’s claims in the Alien Enemies Act. Then, when Pam Bondi reversed the media protections put into place by Merrick Garland, she cited that story as well. The seniormost officials at DOJ are using the Department to hunt down evidence of their own complicity in human rights violations. And Blanche’s intemperate response to Reuveni’s allegations looks to be more of the same.

It’s different with criminal prosecutions

Sadly, I don’t think the Reuveni allegations will have much impact on the Bove nomination. Right wingers in the Senate are all too happy to sanction Trump’s unprecedented corruption, as their confirmation of Blanche himself (to say nothing of Kash Patel) makes clear. I doubt that will change with Bove.

But it’s different for criminal defendants. By virtue of being criminally charged, rather than just suing for release, KAG can make a claim to need all of the conflicting stories about how top DOJ officials relayed demands and repeated false claims from people like Stephen Miller.

Perhaps that explains DOJ’s purported concern that if KAG is released pretrial, DHS might just deport him.

Nevertheless, a release of the Defendant into ICE custody poses potentially irreparable problems for the prosecution in this case and, therefore, for the public at large whose interests the Government serves. Should this Court not order a stay, and the Defendant is moved to ICE custody and deported from the United States, the prosecution would lose the meaningful opportunity to try its case. This would be irreparable harm to the public. How fast the Defendant could or would be deported remains to be seen. In candor with the Court, such a potential deportation of the Defendant would not be instantaneous. How fast such proceedings could move are difficult to predict. Yet, these immigration proceedings exist as real, potential, substantial and irreparable harm to the United States.

DOJ has made its problems so much worse by refusing to do the right thing with KAG and the CECOT deportees.

And because they’ve charged KAG, that may actually finally backfire.

Update: In the DVD case (the one in which SCOTUS ruled on Monday), plaintiffs are asking to file a surreply describing Reuveni’s allegations.

Just yesterday, a former high-level official with the Department of Justice’s Office of Immigration Litigation filed a protected whistleblower claim alleging that in this very case, highlevel Department of Justice officials conspired to violate the district court’s temporary restraining order (TRO). The disclosure describes, in painstaking detail, efforts to feign ambiguity in an unambiguous order, failing to disseminate the fact and terms of the injunction, and purposefully failing to respond to Plaintiffs’ inquiries. See Protected Whistleblower Disclosure of Erez Reuveni Regarding Violation of Laws, Rules & Regulations, Abuse of Authority, and Substantial and Specific Danger to Health and Safety at the Department of Justice at 16-21, https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25982155/file-5344.pdf.1

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John Thune’s Flopsweat about Funding Stephen Miller’s Gulag

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Amid all the warmongering last week, there was an interesting head fake in the Senate.

On Tuesday, JD Vance went to a Senate lunch (rather than the Situation Room meeting on Iran) at which he told them the deadline for passing was the August recess — starting August 4.

On Wednesday, Susie Wiles went for a very short visit to the Senate to order them to get the whole thing done by July 4.

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles is encouraging Congress to get the “big, beautiful bill” to President Donald Trump’s desk by July 4.

Wiles told GOP senators at a closed-door lunch that the Independence Day deadline still holds as far as Trump is concerned, according to a person granted anonymity to describe the private meeting.

I started to write a long post (piggybacking on this one) about how the various timelines — the legal responses to Trump’s abuses and the economic impact of his disastrous policy choices — might make it harder to codify key parts of his abuses in law with the Big Ugly reconciliation bill. I was going to lay out how recent developments (this was so long ago I surmised that Trump’s Iran warmongering might cause him some political headaches and now … here we are, Trump talking regime change in the wake of an inconclusive illegal strike) might exacerbate the way his legislative agenda might be Overtaken By Events.

That post got Overtaken By Events.

The punch line of my original post was going to be an argument that Wiles was pushing the Senate to hurry up not because impending financial doom might make passing the Big Ugly harder, nor because the debt ceiling is approaching.

Rather, Kristi Noem is burning through cash.

President Trump’s immigration crackdown is burning through cash so quickly that the agency charged with arresting, detaining and removing unauthorized immigrants could run out of money next month.

Why it matters: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is already $1 billionover budget by one estimate, with more than three months left in the fiscal year. That’s alarmed lawmakers in both parties — and raised the possibility of Trump clawing funds from agencies to feed ICE.

  • Lawmakers say ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is at risk of violating U.S. law if it continues to spend at its current pace.
  • That’s added urgency to calls for Congress to pass Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which could direct an extra $75 billion or so to ICE over the next five years.
  • It’s also led some lawmakers to accuse DHS and ICE of wasting money. “Trump’s DHS is spending like drunken sailors,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the DHS appropriations subcommittee.

Zoom in: ICE’s funding crisis is being fueled by Trump’s team demanding that agents arrest 3,000 immigrants a day — an unprecedented pace ICE is still trying to reach.

This creates the possibility for a slew of legal challenges to Stephen Miller’s dragnet, both from those targeted in it challenging the legality of spending money to target them in the first place, but also from opponents who can start suing Trump for breaking the law by spending money that was not appropriated.

The dragnet is at somewhat-imminent risk of becoming an illegal use of funds.

And that comes as a few Republicans — most loudly, Rand Paul, who was bypassed as Chair for the Senate language on homeland security funding — start raising questions about why we need to blow so much money if Miller has already shut down the border.

Sen. Rand Paul is a frequent thorn in GOP leadership’s side. But his recent break over border security funding in President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” has top Republicans pushing the bounds of institutional norms to rein him in.

Senior Republicans have sidelined the Kentucky Republican, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, in their talks with the White House over policies under the panel’s purview.

Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told POLITICO he has taken over as the lead negotiator around how to shepherd through tens of billions of dollars for border wall construction and related infrastructure in the GOP megabill. Meanwhile, a Senate Republican aide said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) — who heads the relevant Homeland Security subcommittee — will be the point person for negotiating the bill’s government affairs provisions.

With every other committee chair helping manage negotiations for their panels’ portions of the massive tax and spending package, cutting Paul out is unprecedented. But Paul proposed funding border security at a fraction of what the administration requested and the House passed in its bill.

I’ve long been tracking conflict among Republicans over the financial parts of the Big Ugly. But even as Trump’s polling turns south on Miller’s gulag, the huge funding package for it is creating some headaches for the must-pass reconciliation bill.

In an op-ed in Fox News today (accompanied by live Fox News pressure), John Thune gives up the game.

He argues that Republicans have to get the bill done by July 4 — Susie Wiles’ deadline, not JD’s. And his argument focuses primarily on the immigration funding (but also Golden Dome, which Mark Kelly recently exposed as an impossible boondoggle).

In large part, this bill is the culmination of President Trump’s campaign promises and the promises that Republican senators have made to our voters. Chief among them is keeping the American people safe through strong border security and a military strong enough to deter threats and conflicts around the world before they begin.

President Trump has achieved remarkable success in ending the Biden border crisis and removing the criminal illegal aliens that President Biden let walk into our country – but it hasn’t been cheap, and the administration has told us that resources are running out. This bill will fully fund the border wall and President Trump’s successful policies for the entirety of his presidency, removing any possibility that Democrats will hold those resources hostage to try to increase other government spending.

This same principle also applies to defense funding. Recent conflicts around the world should make clear the need to have a modern and lethal fighting force that can keep the American people safe. This means smart, generational investments like President Trump’s Golden Dome for America to defend against advanced drones, missiles, and hypersonics, as well as prioritizing building new ships and unmanned vehicles.

A nation cannot prosper unless it is secure, and with our borders and defense capabilities bolstered, the next key pillar of this bill is creating prosperity in America.

[snip]

Senators have worked to develop this bill for well over a year now. Now it is time to act. Border resources are drying up. National security needs have never been more apparent. And with each passing day, we move closer to reaching both our nation’s debt limit and the largest-ever tax increase on the American people.

Senators return to Washington today and we will remain here until this bill is passed. We know that Democrats will fearmonger and misrepresent our efforts, and we expect them to drag this debate long into the night with unrelated issues. However, I am confident we will get this bill across the finish line. [my emphasis]

It may not be just the burn rate of Noem’s spending spree.

That is, Noem is blowing through cash and the result of it is horrible images of American citizens being assaulted by masked goons. Noem is blowing through cash and businessmen in all sorts of industries are discovering that their businesses will suffer. Noem is blowing through cash and everyone is talking about how terrible the consequences of Miller’s demand for 3,000 bodies a day is.

Noem is blowing through cash and the issue of immigration is becoming a liability, not Trump’s biggest advantage.

And so Thune will attempt to do Susie Wiles’ bidding to get the dragnet funded before it’s too late.

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