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Attention Deficit and Defiance Division of Labor: There’s Stuff Happening Where You’re Not Looking
Last week, I wrote a post about the five ways Trump is sabotaging America. Those included:
- The original Project 2025 plan, an Orbanist plot to turn the US into an elected authoritarian government
- DOGE [sic], which is often mistaken for Project 2025, but which is far more reckless and destructive and as such has created far more backlash than Project 2025 might otherwise have
- Trump’s useful idiots, like the HHS Secretary who is barely responding to a Measles outbreak
- The personalization of DOJ, protecting not only Trump, but also his favored criminals
- Trump’s capitulation to Russia
As I’ve been puzzling through the, in my opinion, catastrophic distraction of Democratic in-fighting over how to respond to the SOTU, I came to realize one source of the general frustration. A lot of people still don’t understand there’s a natural division of labor in who should fight fascists how, one which is similar to those five areas of sabotage. As a result, there’s a demand that the national Democratic Party (appear to) take the lead on everything, a demand that invites those complaining to outsource their own agency completely, as if they simply hire people to do their politics for them every two or four years.
The demand that Hakeem Jeffries take the lead on issues that really aren’t central to his job breeds passivity and frustration and distracts from stuff being done by others better positioned to do so.
The national Dems are not the best suited for some of this, partly because civil society has more freedom and standing to sue, partly because within the Democratic party, local parties (and future candidates) should take the lead, and partly because polarization is going to be a big barrier to effective mobilization elsewhere. If a Black or Jewish Democrat from New York pushes an issue, those we need to mobilize will be far less likely to respond because their very identities have become defined in opposition to urban America (and all the euphemisms that entails). Moreover, the Democratic Party’s job is to shepherd legislation and win elections, and the fight against fascism is both broader than and more urgent than elections 20 months away.
I want to use this post to lay out what I mean by that, and also as a way to catalog some of what has been done, but also some areas where more needs to be done by precisely the kind of people who spent a week screaming at Democrats.
DOGE [sic]
I make a distinction here between combatting DOGE and other policy considerations. That’s true because — as has been true from the very start, civil society and Democratic Attorneys General and people who’ve been fired are better situated to fight DOGE in the courts, because they can get standing. On the legal front, there has been mixed success, with Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger giving up his termination challenge (but not before helping to save thousands of jobs and creating a precedent that reinforced other legal decisions) after an adverse ruling in the DC Circuit, but with others — most importantly two lawsuits representing USAID providers — surviving the first review from SCOTUS.
Tracking these lawsuits is as overwhelming for people as tracking the actual legal investigations into Trump was, with the result (I suspect) that people don’t see them. The good, the bad, and the promising — it’s all a blur. Plus, legal challenges are slow.
But we’re learning more and more from these lawsuits already, which is having a snowball effect, just a bit of which appears in this post (on this page, I’m tracking lawsuit declarations I find particularly interesting).
The most interesting developments this week may be several different lawsuits challenging DOGE on an Appointments Clause theory, basically that Elon is exercising the kind of authority that would require Senate confirmation.
Because DOGE has been so disorganized, DOJ’s lawyers are being fed garbage to, in turn, feed courts in good faith. And then, over and over, Trump ends up saying things that debunk what the lawyers have been fed to say. Judges are beginning to get fed up, and are granting plaintiffs more discovery. Anna Bower has been tracking this Calvinball relentlessly.
The other civil society success — perhaps the biggest ones so far — are the calls, town halls, and protests that outside groups like Indivisible and Tesla Takedown have organized. These have significantly increased the discomfort of Republicans. While, thus far, that has led only to some pathetic meetings where they ask Elon to stop fucking everything up, the recent focus on the VA and Social Security may raise their discomfort further.
One thing that could be better organized, locally, would be to magnify the stories of those affected by DOGE cuts. As I said last week, rather than turning government workers into villains, DOGE had made the importance of government visible. And the people being arbitrarily and cruelly fired are the daughters and sons of communities that have a distorted understanding of government. This story-telling, done by word of mouth and local press, likely is better served if it has no overt tie to the Democratic party, because otherwise polarization may undercut the lessons of the firings. But it is the kind of thing that can be done in letters to the editor in local newspapers.
Journalists continue to track DOGE’s bullshit claims of savings (I’m attempting to track such debunkings here). Where we need to get better — and this is something people should do on calls to their members of Congress — is to emphasize the way Republicans have ceded the Federal government to Elon’s DOGE boys even though their claims of savings are fraudulent (to say nothing of the kind of past associations, such as ties to sketchy Russian NGOs, that would disqualify them in any half-serious background check). Think about ways to mock Republicans for being so stupid they keep falling for Elon’s bullshit claims, even as he confesses he keeps misplacing Ebola prevention and similar things.
Entitlements and Funding Government
DC Democrats have to do several things in the days — and it is just days — ahead. First, they have to optimize the outcome of a continuing resolution, either by withholding votes and making Republicans own a shutdown or by joining in a continuing resolution that limits Trump’s ability to ignore Congress’ appropriations (or better yet, adds weight to the legal challenges) going forward.
Republicans are attempting to get a year-long continuing resolution on their own. If they do, it’ll be a first, but could well be the source of contention going forward.
The other thing Democrats need to do is either save Medicaid (and Social Security) or make Republicans own any cuts too, as well as the tax cuts for people like Elon Musk. This provides the opportunity to sow dissension within the Republican party. Charles Gaba has calculations of how many people rely on Medicaid, by district, which can be useful when calling Members.
House Republicans only managed to pass a budget through a gimmick: by ordering House Energy and Commerce to come up with $880 billion in cuts, but without mentioning what those cuts will obviously be: Medicaid. But the Congressional Budget Office this week called that out, holding that the only way they can fulfill the terms of that budget is with the cuts they’ve tried to hide.
The math is impossible. And because it is impossible, Republicans will have a very hard time not taking each other out (or creating useful defections). Meanwhile, they’ll be doing that while justifying tax cuts for the richest man in the world.
Thus far, Trump’s threats have kept Republicans unified. But that may well break down in days ahead (and if it doesn’t, Democrats have to be prepared to make Republicans own the consequences).
DOJ
From the start, I’ve thought two things might lead the corrupt incompetence at DOJ to blow up on itself (on top of the aforementioned good faith lawyers being stuck telling fictions to courts). First, unless key lawyers were willing to tell really outrageous lies in court, reality would debunk many of the conspiracy theories that have been fueling right wing fever dreams for years. And second, their own conflicts would begin to blow up in their faces.
This week, Kash Patel had to quietly debunk a conspiracy theory that George Papadopoulos has been spinning for years, that a female Special Agent who was part of an effort to learn of his ties to Russia was a (sexual) honey pot.
Kash, now the boss of the Agent, had to defend her for simply doing her job.
More spectacularly, Pam Bondi bolloxed an effort to politicize the Jeffrey Epstein files, in part because she stupidly thought the White House wouldn’t worry about such releases, in part because she (unknowingly, apparently) released stuff that was already public, and in part because she created dissension among the propagandist ranks.
When more than a dozen MAGA-aligned activists and social media influencers gathered at the White House last week, they had no idea they were about to be handed binders titled “Epstein Files: Phase 1”– and neither did senior White House officials who organized the event, according to multiple sources familiar with the event.
Attorney General Pam Bondi and her team did not inform White House officials in advance that she planned to distribute the binders, which contained almost no new information regarding convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein — and now the move has ruffled feathers among those closest to President Donald Trump, including his senior White House staff, sources tell ABC News.
The move faced widespread criticism, not only from Democrats but also from some of the president’s most loyal supporters.
White House staff moved quickly to try and contain the fallout, privately reaching out to influencers who were critical of Bondi and the move online, according to sources.
Update, March 9: More on the way MAGAts are turning on Bondi.
There are a hundred ways reality — as documented in files to which Kash and Bondi now have unfettered access — conflicts with the conspiracy beliefs of these people. Unless they get better at managing expectations of the mob, we should expect similar embarrassing concessions in days ahead, concessions that piss off the most committed MAGAts and make them distrust their own.
More interesting are developments in the corruption of Emil Bove and Ed Martin.
Three entities asked for scrutiny of Bove for the way he coerced lawyers to dismiss the Eric Adams case when serving as Acting Deputy Attorney General (now that Todd Blanche has been confirmed on a party line vote, Bove becomes PADAG, basically the guy running DOJ day to day). A group of ethics experts have asked Judge Dale Ho to consider Bove’s actions as he decides how to resolve that case. Jamie Raskin and Jasmine Crockett wrote Pam Bondi with a series of questions, including whether Bove destroyed evidence (the notes of a January 31 meeting). And Senate Judiciary Dems asked the NY Bar to conduct a misconduct inquiry into Bove. (At least one NGO already filed a bar complaint.)
Then, later in the week, Senate Judiciary Dems filed a bar complaint against Acting DC US Attorney Ed Martin for representing January 6 defendants at the same time as approving the dismissal of their cases. That, too, follows a previous bar complaint (filed in Missouri) for Martin’s conflicts. But (in addition to some of Martin’s other wildly partisan actions) it adds a bit: that Martin allegedly had private conversations with pro se January 6 defendant William Pope, who is still trying to get files he’s sure must exist; this is another conspiracy theory that may blow up in wildly interesting ways, now that Martin has access to all these files.
What I noticed the Court in ECF No. 391 was a completely true and factual statement regarding U.S. Attorney Ed Martin’s telling me that the files I now have are no longer considered sensitive for me to possess. However, since a dubious representative of the government, AUSA Jennifer Leigh Blackwell, is now claiming the opposite of what I truthfully reported to the Court in ECF No. 391 (while she is signing under Mr. Martin’s name), this is essentially a government attack on my integrity. Because AUSA Blackwell has attacked me and because the entirety of her filing (ECF No. 392) is so at odds with President Trump’s directive and the current policy of Department of Justice, I suspect she filed her own rogue and unhinged ranting rather than consulting the official position of the government and her boss, Ed Martin.
This is the kind of complaint that could be written on a near-daily basis about Martin. He recently wrote Georgetown Law imagining he could dictate what a private Catholic university teaches, which elicited a superb response. It’s the kind of thing that lefty pundits should be focused on instead of screaming at each other. It is far more urgent to make Ed Martin’s shenanigans an anvil around Pam Bondi’s DOJ than it is to fight about the stupidest way to distract from Trump imploding.
Plus, that’s not the only trouble Martin has caused.
In the early days of Trump’s attack on DEI, Trump’s flunkies adopted two claims from Elon: That the Biden Administration had misstepped when it appropriated $20 billion in funds to green lenders. And that New York City had spent $80 million on luxury hotels to house migrants.
I’ve already written about the former case: how Bove and Martin forced Denise Cheung out at DC USAO because she found a Project Veritas video insufficient evidence to obtain criminal process clawing back funds. Martin kept trying, in the kind of judge shopping that can really piss off judges. Meanwhile, Mark Zaid, who represents the guy in the PV video, says that his client had nothing to do with the disbursements that EPA has attempted to clawed back. Lee Zeldin is trying to get EPA’s Acting Inspector General to find him an excuse for all this now, which seems rather late given that funds have already been frozen. (Senate Dems also sent Zeldin a letter debunking his claims last month.)
Meanwhile, even as Judge Jennifer Rearden this week denied New York City’s bid to get the $80 million back while the two sides fight about it [docket], one of the people Kristi Noem fired and accused of acting unlawfully, Mary Comans, has sued.
That same day Defendant DHS publicly issued a press release falsely stating that Ms. Comans had been fired “for circumventing leadership to unilaterally make egregious payments for luxury NYC hotels for migrants.” The release also noted that “[u]nder President Trump and Secretary Noem’s leadership, DHS will not sit idly and allow deep state activists to undermine the will and safety of the American people.” Because of the issuance of the press release and other steps undertaken by the Defendants, Ms. Comans’ actions were widely, publicly and falsely condemned as “illegal” and “criminal” by rightwing influencers, to include Elon Musk, on various social media platforms and news outlets, such as shown below:
In a declaration Comans submitted on February 26 in the Does 1-26 suit, Mary Comans debunked much of what DHS has publicly claimed about the clawback, which means Comans’ lawsuit is likely to surface these issues. I had noticed this myself, but in between her healthy obsession about the lies the Administration tells about Elon’s role on DOGE, Anna Bower wrote it up here. Comans is also represented by Mark Zaid; you can support his work helping fired government workers tell the truth about what happened here.
Yesterday, Marisa Kabas reported that the top lawyer at FEMA was forced out, possibly because he refused to sign a declaration retconning this clawback.
Joshua Stanton had served as Acting Chief Counsel at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for less than one week when he was placed on administrative leave Wednesday and reportedly escorted out of the building. Why?
According to people at FEMA privy to the details of Stanton’s dismissal—which was first reported by me via Bluesky Wednesday afternoon—Stanton was asked sometime this week to write a memo stating that the mid-February seizure of $80 million from the city of New York meant for migrant shelters had legal justification; this was despite the fact that it almost certainly did not. The money that was taken back was lawfully obligated by FEMA pursuant to congressionally allocated funds. Stanton reportedly refused to write such a memo, The Handbasket has learned, and then he was put on leave. It’s not clear at this point if the refusal to write the memo is the reason he was placed on leave.
In other words, between the public ousters and and the problematic legal claims, Trump’s flunkies may soon find themselves unable to defend past false claims they made in ways that could blow up in spectacular fashion (as I’ve suggested, the same is true for Pete Marocco, who just got enjoined in an awesome new lawsuit, but I’ll come back to that).
Corruption
There’s one area that has always been difficult to grab a hold of: Trump’s corruption. There has always been so much that it’s hard to focus on any one bit. That’s been even more true now that Pam Bondi has made it clear she’ll never prosecute Trump for bribery. And it has been matched by Elon.
I’m going to catalog just some of the coverage from recent weeks.
First, Wired reported that in addition to all the known kickbacks Trump got before he became President (from tech executives and media outlets), he continues to engage in pay-to-play with a price tag of $5 million for a face-to-face meeting.
Business leaders can secure a one-on-one meeting with the president at Mar-a-Lago for $5 million, according to sources with direct knowledge of the meetings. At a so-called candlelight dinner held as recently as this past Saturday, prospective Mar-a-Lago guests were asked to spend $1 million to reserve a seat, according to an invitation obtained by WIRED.
[snip]
It’s unclear where the money is going and what it will be used for, but one source with direct knowledge of the dinners said “it’s all going to the library,” as in the presidential library that will ostensibly be built once Trump leaves office. MAGA Inc spent over $450 million to elect Trump in 2024, though Trump is not legally permitted to run for a third presidential term in 2028.
Also this week, Public Citizen started tracking what it calls “corporate clemency” — all the corporations whose legal troubles have been dismissed in bulk or specifically.
Now, just over one month into Trump’s second term, it’s clear that the permissive approach to corporate crime and misconduct is returning with a vengeance.
Whole categories of enforcement have come to a screeching halt, including:
- All Consumer Financial Protection Bureau cases, seven of which the Trump administration has already moved to dismiss,
- Justice Department cases brought by the Civil Rights and Environment and Natural Resource divisions, Investigations and cases under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and
- Equal Employment Opportunity Commission cases defending transgender and gender non-conforming workers from workplace abuse and discrimination, six of which the administration has already moved to dismiss, and
- An increasing number of Securities and Exchange Commission cases against cryptocurrency corporations, two of which have been paused and four of which the administration has moved to dismiss.
Meanwhile Forbes’ Zach Everson has been pulling at some strings on a Nasdaq-listed firm with suspect trading just before Don Jr and Eric Trump were named as advisors. He first laid out the trading pattern.
Between Feb. 12 and Dec. 29, 2024, trading in Dominari Holdings—a Nasdaq-listed firm that specializes in wealth management, investment banking, sales and trading, asset management and capital investment—averaged 11,500 shares a day, never exceeding 71,000 shares, with a price range of $1.10 to $3.20.
On Dec. 30, trading shot up to 358,000 shares, kicking off a surge that saw daily volume average 1.2 million shares a day through Feb. 10, 2025—when it skyrocketed to 23.7 million shares—as the stock price climbed from $0.83 to $6.50.
On Feb. 11, an hour before markets opened, Dominari Holdings announced that Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump had joined its advisory board and acquired an undisclosed amount of shares in the company, sending the stock to a 52-week high of $11.33.
The price peaked at $13.58 two days later but has since fallen, closing at $6.74 on Tuesday.
Then Everson showed how little evidence there is that the board existed before Trump’s sons joined it.
[B]etween June 10, 2021, when the company was named AIkido Pharma, and Feb. 12, 2025, the day after the Trumps’ involvement was announced, Dominari Holdings did not submit a filing to the SEC on that mentioned an advisory board or board of advisors, except for references in the chief operating officer’s bio stating he had been a member for three months in 2022.
An online search failed to provide evidence of the advisory board’s prior existence: it is not mentioned on any website—including Dominari Holdings’ own—prior to Feb. 11, in a search on Google.
Dominari Holdings also did not file its advisory board agreement with the SEC until Feb. 12, a day after announcing the Trumps’ membership.
This feels not dissimilar to some of the shenanigans relating to the funding of Truth Social (while several of his associates were criminally prosecuted, one is attempting to get an SEC action against him thrown out) or Trump’s Meme Coin, below.
Then, even as Trump has rolled out a crypto strategic reserve (one that many crypto experts hate and one that failed to rally the market), there have been several developments that show how he intends to permit corruption (his own, and others’) via cryptocurrency.
As I keep noting, the SEC, for example, has paused its suit against World Liberty Financial investor Justin Sun, anticipating a settlement. As Judd Legum describes, this follows the Chinese-linked businessman’s multi-million “investment” in Trump’s crypto currency.
In March 2023, the SEC charged Sun and three of his companies, accusing him of marketing unregistered securities and “fraudulently manipulating the secondary market” for a crypto token. The SEC accused Sun of wash trading, which involves buying and selling a token quickly to fraudulently manufacture artificial interest.
[snip]
Sun’s purchase put millions in Trump’s pocket. WLF was entitled to “$30 million of initial net protocol revenue” in a reserve “to cover operating expenses, indemnities, and obligations.” After the reserve was met, a company owned by Trump would receive “75% of the net protocol revenues.” Sun’s purchase covered the entire reserve. As of December 1, this amounted to $18 million for Trump — 75% of the revenues of all other tokens sold at the time. Sun also joined WLF as an advisor. While the purchase benefited Trump, WLF tokens are essentially worthless for Sun, as they are non-transferable and locked indefinitely.
Nevertheless, Sun has since invested another $45 million in WLF, bringing his total investment to $75 million. This means Sun’s purchases have sent more than $50 million to Trump, Bloomberg reported. Sun has also continued to shower Trump with praise. On January 22, Sun posted on X, “if I have made any money in cryptocurrency, all credit goes to President Trump.”
And, as Chris Murphy laid out, he used his Doge Coin to bilk his rubes, again.
Both of these are ways for foreigners to launder cash to Trump. Now that the bribery is happening in plain sight, we need to hammer home the implicatioms of that: If you can’t explain why Trump betrayed America and all her alliances, you cannot rule out old-fashioned bribery, not least given the impossibly lucrative deals Russia first dangled to get Trump’s interest.
And then there’s Musk, who happens to be included in Kirill Dmitriev’s current dangles before Trump.
Dmitriev has called for the Trump administration and Russia to start “building a better future for humanity,” and to “focus on investment, economic growth, AI breakthroughs,” and long-term joint scientific projects like “Mars exploration,” even posting a highly produced computer graphic, on Elon Musk’s X social media platform, showing an imagined joint US-Russia-Saudi mission to Mars, on board what appears to be a Space X rocket.
With Musk, it’s a two-edged sword. There are the legal investigations that stand to be dismissed, as two of the items on Public Citizen’s tracker have been.
And Elon Musk, the CEO of Neuralink, SpaceX, Tesla, X (formerly Twitter), and xAI, which started the Trump administration collectively facing 17 federal investigations.
- Neuralink faces a USDA investigation into alleged misconduct related to the treatment of test monkeys and an SEC investigation alleging unspecified misconduct.
- SpaceX has been in the process of negotiating a resolution with the EPA over repeated pollution discharges in Texas, an FAA lawsuit alleging multiple safety violations involving rocket launches in Florida, and an NLRB complaint alleging the company illegally fired workers who criticized Musk. The Trump administration dismissed a DOJ civil rights lawsuit against SpaceX alleging discrimination against asylees and refugees in hiring.
- Tesla faces a criminal fraud investigation by the DOJ over exaggerated claims about the “full self-driving” capability of vehicles’ “Autopilot” mode, a related SEC investigation into whether exaggerated claims about “full self-driving” vehicles misled investors, a joint investigation by the DOJ and SEC into Tesla’s plans to construct a private residence for Musk, an EEOC investigation into alleged racial discrimination and workplace retaliation at a Tesla factory in California, four NHTSA investigations into vehicle problems, and seven open NLRB cases alleging unfair labor practices and covering up to 140,474 employees. An OSHA investigation into a worker’s death at a Tesla factory in Texas was closed in January, though no announcement as to whether a citation was issued has been disclosed.
- X (formerly Twitter) faces an SEC lawsuit against Musk alleging misconduct related to the CEO’s $44 billion takeover of the company and an NLRB case alleging unfair labor practices.
- xAI faces an EPA investigation into air pollution concerns related to its “Colossus” supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee. [my emphasis]
Musk’s conflicts are something that NYT has also tracked well.
Congressman Greg Casar has been pushing to get details of the death of the Tesla worker, Victor Joe Gomez Sr., released, with a fair amount of coverage in the Texas press.
But even as Casar is having to fight for details that should be readily available, and even as Musk’s private businesses continue to experience spectacular failures, even as Elon cuts off Ukraine, Trump’s government is sneaking deals to Starlink on the side, both in the form of FAA funds and rural broadband.
The degree to which Trump is selling out government, a story fundamental to the story of DOGE, is being covered, though (with the exception of Musk’s conflicts) often by less mainstream outlets: Wired and Forbes and Bloomberg and Judd Legum and American Prospect (NPR got the exclusive on the Public Citizen report).
This is undoubtedly an area where Gerald Connolly needs to pick up the slack from where Jamie Raskin left off with his move to House Judiciary. Or perhaps Casar, newly elected Progressive Caucus Chair and a Member of DOGE on Oversight, can take the lead.
But this is an area where a story in plain sight needs to be tied back to the destruction of government by the same corrupt people.
Trump is destroying government. But he is getting paid handsomely at the same time. At one level or another, Trump is destroying America because he is getting paid to do so. The better we can convey that, the greater likelihood that some of the rubes who got ripped off on the Doge Coin will come to understand they’ve been betrayed.
Russia
Any pushback on Trump’s capitulation to Russia has been distracted by everything else, starting with Trump’s equivocating trade war with our closest trading partners.
Though ironically, the line from Elissa Slotkin, hailing Ronald Reagan, to which many objected was a longer play on Trump’s attempt to compare himself with Reagan, a comment on Trump’s capitulation.
President Trump loves to promise “peace through strength.” That’s actually a line he stole from Ronald Reagan. But let me tell you, after the spectacle that just took place in the Oval Office last week, Reagan must be rolling over in his grave. We all want an end to the war in Ukraine, but Reagan understood that true strength required America to combine our military and economic might with moral clarity.
And that scene in the Oval Office wasn’t just a bad episode of reality TV. It summed up Trump’s whole approach to the world. He believes in cozying up to dictators like Vladimir Putin and kicking our friends, like Canada, in the teeth. He sees American leadership as merely a series of real estate transactions.
As a Cold War kid, I’m thankful it was Reagan and not Trump in office in the 1980s. Trump would have lost us the Cold War.
But while Americans are distracted by Trump’s erratic trade wargaming and the Democrats’ own infighting, the rest of the world is stepping up, most famously in this speech from center-right French politician Claude Malhuret.
There is dissension in Europe: While Giorgia Meloni is joining other European countries, she refuses to be led by France.
I’ve heard of non-public discussions among American national security types and members of Congress. And even Lindsey Graham, who shamelessly betrayed Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the ambush in the Oval Office, is pushing for Trump to demand something from Russia, too.
Thus far, the response to Trump’s capitulation to Russia has been muted. But it is also a topic that unites strange bedfellows, which showed up in the town halls last week.
Trump and his Russian handlers believed this would be easy. Thus far, it doesn’t look it’ll work out that way.
Attention
This post links almost 100 links (thanks, in part, to the linking ethics of Public Citizen and Everson). That’s a testament to the flood of information out there, much of it promising, about efforts to fight back against fascism. That flood is a response to Trump’s own flood. The two together have the means to overwhelm.
I won’t defend everything Jeffries said (or was portrayed as saying, by outlets whose bread and butter lies in stoking dissension among Democrats) this week. But much of what he said and did appear to be guided by a view on attention that is, in my opinion, quite right: Trump always camouflages what he does, including some fundamental weaknesses, with a flood the zone strategy.
Congressman Jeffries said Trump’s many actions to date, including mass firings of federal workers, freezing federal funds approved by Congress, and steps to eliminate critical agencies, are part of a larger strategy to “flood the zone” and distract from actions that Jeffries and other Democrats consistently say will devastate millions of Americans.
“[It’s] designed to create the appearance of inevitability [and] the notion that Donald Trump is unstoppable–he ain’t unstoppable,” said Jeffries, who noted, “Not a single bill connected to Trump’s Project 2025 agenda has passed the House because it’s unified Democratic opposition.” He continued, “But we’re supposed to believe it’s all inevitable…He’s invincible…Show me the evidence.”
This is a war for attention. Trump’s success at that war is the primary reason he won the election — and he was helped then, as now, by the fact that the primary counter-flood Democrats cared to mount was to attack each other.
Similarly, no matter what you think about Slotkin’s response (which was in any case not beset by weaknesses of presentation virtually all of these are) she also said something important. Rather than doom scroll on Bluesky, pick an issue, and start building from the bottom up.
Three, organize. Pick just one issue you’re passionate about — and engage. And doom scrolling doesn’t count. Join a group that cares about your issue, and act. And if you can’t find one, start one.
Some of the most important movements in our history have come from the bottom up.
You don’t have to, nor should you, wait for DC to lead the movement you want. Pick a corner of it and take action.
Leadership
I end with this: We’re seeing that happen around the country, as evidenced by three stories from recent days.
There’s the testimony of Meirav Solomon’s in yesterday’s sanctuary city hearing. Solomon challenged the notion that you shut down antisemitism by policing campuses. Indeed, she focused instead on Trump’s cuts to Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. She pointed to the antisemitism of, “the President’s close advisors [who] raise their arms in fascist salutes.”
We must be honest about the most urgent threat to the Jewish community. It is not student protestors but the bloody legacy of Pittsburgh and Poway, Charlottesville and the Capitol Riot.
There’s how a community responded when the school board of a predominantly white community north of Pittsburgh voted against a young adult book about the Tulsa riots, Angel of Greenwood. The community came together to bring its author, Randi Pink, to town to speak to both students and the community more generally.
After the school board voted against adding Pink’s book to the Pine-Richland School District’s ninth-grade curriculum, the community decided it was time to act.
Macmillan, the publisher of “Angel of Greenwood,” sent Pine-Richland students 100 copies of the book to distribute to the community. Pink also traveled from her small town outside of Birmingham, Alabama, to come to Richland to meet with the community that had so fiercely supported her work.
“The supporters in the community were relentless in making sure I got there. Some people put in $5, $10, even $600. I waived my fee, but the community said, ‘Absolutely not. We’re going to pay you.’ I’m a single mother, so I had to bring my babies with me,” she said. “They said, ‘we’re going to pay for all your way.’
“They galvanized around me. I support them very much for that.”
[snip]
Students and parents raised nearly $6,000 for Pink to come to Pennsylvania, where the author held two talks — one for students of the school district to ask questions and the other was open to all community members.
[snip]
“If more of us are brave enough to step into communities and say, ‘You know what? Let’s just talk. I think we will get a whole lot further like that in all aspects of society.”
There’s Zooey Zephyr, the Montana legislator whose speech in support of drag shows turned the tide against anti-trans votes, as told by Erin Reed.
Something remarkable happened in Montana today. As has become routine, anti-trans bills were up for debate—the state has spent more than half of its legislative days this session pushing such bills through committees and the House floor, with Republicans largely voting in lockstep. But something changed.
A week ago, transgender Representative Zooey Zephyr delivered a powerful speech against a bill that would create a separate indecent exposure law for transgender people. Since then, momentum on the House floor slowed. Today, two of the most extreme bills targeting the transgender community came up for a vote. Transgender Representatives Zooey Zephyr and SJ Howell gave impassioned speeches—this time, they broke through. In a stunning turn, 29 Republicans defected, killing both bills. One Republican even took the floor to deliver a scathing rebuke of the bill’s sponsor.
You reclaim America not in DC, but in talks on campuses, in Montana, and Pittsburgh.
That is happening. You just need to know where to look.
Pam Bondi Covers Up Foreign Influence Peddling and Lying to the FBI
Before you watch this superb CPAC performance by the woman paid to enforce the law in the United States, peek ahead to this spoiler.
Eric Adams’ lawyers — Alex Spiro (the lawyer the Mayor shares with Elon Musk) and Bill Burck (the lawyer the Mayor shares with Trump Organization) — sent Judge Ho a letter celebrating the kind of improper out-of-court public statements they were wailing about in December.
We are writing to alert the Court to recent out-of-court statements by Attorney General Pam Bondi and her chief of staff that constitute admissions of a party opponent under the Federal Rules of Evidence. Fed. R. Evid. 801(d)(2). The Attorney General described the indictment in this case as “incredibly weak,” and said that the charges against the Mayor were so weak she doubted prosecutors could secure a guilty verdict. “That,” she said, “is the weaponization of government.” Her statements followed similar statements by her chief of staff on Wednesday, February 19, 2025. See, e.g., Chad Mizelle, @ChadMizelle47, X (Feb. 19, 2025 12:42 PM), https://x.com/chadmizelle47/status/1892268416267911251?s=46 (“The case against Mayor Adams was just one in a long history of past DOJ actions that represent grave errors of judgement.”); id. (“Dismissing the prosecution was absolutely the right call.”). The Acting Deputy Attorney General has similarly recognized that this “case turns on factual and legal theories that are, at best, extremely aggressive.” Dkt. 125-2 at 7.
When Damien Williams posted a website barely mentioning Adams, Spiro deemed it a dangerous attempt to influence a legal outcome. But when AG Bondi went to a raging conference featuring Nazi salutes to give this error-riddled screed, Spiro and Burck proclaimed it federal evidence.
And perhaps Quinn Emanuel’s prominence makes them sluggish. But they posted this more than two hours after Judge Ho issued his order appointing Paul Clement as amicus, seemingly mooting this kind of stunt lawyering.
With that in mind, I give you a woman who claims to want to take on drug cartels but seems scared to take the A train uptown:
Ted Cruz: So, so Pam, the media are going crazy about New York Mayor Eric Adams and the charges that were dismissed against him.
Pam Bondi: So glad you brought that up.
Ted Cruz: Um, tell us what the story is, what happened there, and why were the charges dismissed?
Pam Bondi: Sure. And Emil, who has done an incredible job, he worked on this case, he looked at this case.
It was an incredibly weak case filed to make deportation harder. That’s why they did it. They took one of the biggest mayors in the country off the playing field in order to protect their sanctuary city. This case, it was so incredibly weak. It was about increases in airline tickets, uh, upgrades in airline tickets in his official capacity without getting into all the details of, of the fact, I don’t even think it could survive a verdict.
Excuse me. Incredibly weak case. That is the weaponization of government. That’s lawfare. When you’re filing, that’s lawfare. When you’re filing cases like that to keep someone who criticized Joe Biden who said — they took away his security clearance — So he could not get the details, so he could not help enforce the deportation efforts in New York.
And, you know, these people are going after him. Ride a subway in New York. It’s not safe. Violent crime is at an all time high, and that’s what they’re doing? So it’s not about weaponization, it’s about ending their weaponization of the government and fighting violent crime and enabling cities like New York and mayors like Eric Adams to enforce Donald Trump’s immigration policies. [emphasis mine]
So much garbage here.
No, Teddy Cancun. The charges have not yet been dismissed — that’s not how this works.
No, Pam, violent crime is not at an all-time high–under Joe Biden violent crime went down. Murders, at least, are down in NYC. Subway crime was already down — and then it came down further after congestion pricing went into effect, something your boss is trying to reverse, something your Department will have to litigate in court and on which you have now demonstrated bias.
How the hell does the Attorney General [pretend not to] know this?
I have requested comment about Ms. Bondi’s misrepresentations from DOJ.
But it’s Bondi’s misrepresentation of the crimes charged against Adams — and the charges that Emil Bove’s intervention staved off — that facilitates corruption.
Whereas her Chief of Staff, Chad Mizelle (in misleading screed also shared by Spiro and Burck) dismissed the four counts of the indictment that pertain to straw and illegal foreign donations by claiming they were just the campaign donations of a successful politician:
But all successful politicians, no matter the party, receive campaign contributions.
Bondi simply found a different way to hide the allegations that that Mayor Adams has been on the take from Türkiye.
She claimed that, “It was about increases in airline tickets, uh, upgrades in airline tickets in his official capacity.” Whereas Mizelle claimed this was only about campaign contributions (even the foreign ones of which he treated as legal), Pam Bondi claimed it was only about airplane upgrades.
The indictment debunks the Attorney General’s claim that this was just about official travel. Just one of Adams’ Turkish trips was treated as an official trip would have been, with full transparency.
10. In 2015, ERIC ADAMS, the defendant, took two official trips to Turkey. His first trip, in August 2015, was arranged by the Turkish Consulate General in New York City (the “Tm-kish Consulate”) and paid for in part by the Turkish Consulate and in pa1t by a for-profit educational conglomerate based in Istanbul (the “Turkish University”). The second trip, in December 2015, was airnnged by the Turkish Official and a Turkish entrepreneur (the “Promoter”) whose business includes organizing events to introduce Turkish corporations and businesspeople to politicians, celebrities, and others whose influence may benefit the corporations and businesspeople, For both trips, ADAMS received free business class tickets on the Turkish Airline. Unlike ADAMS ‘s subsequent travel with the Turkish Airline, ADAMS reported his 2015 travel to Turkey on financial disclosure forms filed with the New York City Conflict of Interest Board (the “COIB”), as he was required to do annually at all times relevant to this Indictment.
As the indictment alleges, for his other trips facilitated by Türkiye, at times routed awkwardly through Istanbul so he could avail of these benefits, Adams hid the benefits.
ADAMS did not disclose the travel benefits he had obtained in annual financial disclosures he was required to file as a New York City employee. Sometimes, ADAMS agreed to pay a nominal fee to create the appearance of having paid for travel that was in fact heavily discounted. Other times, ADAMS created and instructed others to create fake paper trails, falsely suggesting that he had paid, 0r planned to pay, for travel benefits that were actually free. And ADAMS deleted messages with others involved in his misconduct, including, in one instance, assuring a co-conspirator in writing that he “always” deleted her messages.
But contrary to the Attorney General’s misrepresentation, this is not just about airplane upgrades (or luxury hotels in Türkiye).
The indictment describes how Adams repeatedly laundered Turkish donations through straw donors in the US. Both Bondi and Mizelle keep suggesting to their audience that … none of this matters, none of this — charged as foreign donations exceeding $25,000 in both 2021 and 2023 — compromises New York City governance and US security.
b. On June 14, 2018, the Turkish Official exchanged messages with the Adams Staffer, asking “how much can companies donate?” 1 The Adams Staffer explained that only individuals could donate to the 2021 Campaign.
c. On June 22, 2018, ADAMS attended a fundraiser for the 2021 Campaign. The Airline Manager, among others, organized and attended the event. Following the event, the Turkish Official messaged the Adams Staffer, asking for the “list of the participants of the June 22 meeting,” The Adams Staffer then sent the Turkish Official ”The list for 6/22/18,” which included the names of various persons who donated to the 2021 Campaign in the preceding days or who donated in the following days, raising in excess of $15,000.
d. A promotional flyer for the June 22, 2018 fundraiser listed as one of the fundraiser’s hosts a friend of the Airline Manager who owned an airport transportation business (“Businessman-2”), In a series of messages exchanged with the Adams Staffer, Businessman-2 stated that he had facilitated a straw donation through an associate, Records from the CFB show that the associate ultimately donated $3,000 in his own name and described himself as unemployed.
[snip]
20. ERIC ADAMS, the defendant, also sought to arrange for his campaigns to receive unlawful contributions from Turkish nationals, which would be routed through U.S.-based straw donors.
a. On June 22, 2018-the same day as the fundraising event just describedthe Adams Staffer and the Promoter discussed by text message a possible trip by ADAMS to Turkey. The Promoter stated, in part, “Fund Raising in Turkey is not legal, but I think I can raise money for your campaign off the record.” The Adams Staffer inquired, “How will [ADAMS] declare that money here?” The Promoter responded, “He won’t declare it … Or … We’ll make the donation through an American citizen in the U.S …. A Turk … I’ll give cash to him in Turkey … Or I’ll send it to an American … He will make a donation to you.” The Adams Staffer replied, “I think he wouldn’t get involved in such games. They might cause a big stink later on,” but “I’ll ask anyways.” The Adams Staffer then asked, “how much do you think would come from you? $?” The Promoter responded, ”Max $100K.” The Adams Staffer wrote, “100K? Do you have a chance to transfer that here? … We can’t do it while Eric is in Turkey,” to which the Promoter replied, ”Let’s think.” After this conversation, the Adams Staffer asked ADAMS whether the Adams Staffer should pursue the unlawful foreign contributions offered by the Promoter, and contrary to the Adams Staffer’s expectations, ADAMS directed that the Adams Staffer pursue the Promoter’s illegal scheme.
b. In November 2018, Businessman-1-the wealthy Turkish national who owned the Turkish University, a for-profit educational conglomerate in Turkey, and whom ADAMS met there in 2015-visited New York City. ADAMS and the Adams Staffer met with Businessman-1 at Brooklyn Borough Hall. At the close of the meeting, Businessman-1 offered to contribute funds to the 2021 Campaign. Although ADAMS knew that Businessman-1 was a Turkish national who could not lawfully contribute to U.S. elections, ADAMS directed the Adams Staffer to obtain the illegal contributions offered by Businessman-1. Following up on this directive, ADAMS wrote to the Adams Staffer that Businessman-1 “is ready to help. I don’t want his willing to help be waisted [sic].” As ADAMS directed, the Adams Staffer maintained contact with Businessman-1 through intermediaries, culminating in ADAMS accepting straw donations of Businessman-1’s money, discussed below.
[snip]
b. On July 11, 2021, the Adams Staffer asked the Promoter how much would be donated, explaining in a message that she needed to “tell [ADAMS] a net number.” When the Promoter estimated between $35,000 and $50,000, the Adams Staffer replied that the Promoter earlier “had mentioned 200K.” When the Promoter explained that the requisite number of straw donors could not be gathered, the Adams Staffer offered to help with that aspect of the scheme. The Promoter responded, ”Hnnnm then great,” and when the Adams Staffer then wrote “From what I gathered you’ll distribute the money,” the Promoter responded “Yes.” The Adams Staffer later told ADAMS that the estimated total amount of the foreign donations would be $45,000.
c. In August 2021, the Promoter, the Adams Staffer, and the president of the Turkish University’s American campus (the “University President”) exchanged messages and voice notes explicitly discussing the plan to funnel Businessman-1 ‘s contribution to the 2021 Campaign through the Turkish University’s U.S.-based employees. The Promoter assured the Adams Staffer that those employees are “[U.S.] citizens and green card holders.” The Adams Staffer told ADAMS about the plan to funnel Businessman-1 ‘s contribution through U.S.-based straw donors, and ADAMS approved the plan, knowing that Businessman-1 was a Turkish citizen.
[snip]
b. The Adams Fundraiser suggested that the true foreign donors make their contributions through straw donors considerably in advance of the event at which ADAMS would meet the true foreign donors, so that the event did not appear connected to the contributions. As the Adams Staffer explained to the Adams Fundraiser in a text message regarding the planned attendees, “Mayor knows most of them from turkey[.] The People who has business here as well.” The Adams Staffer and the Promoter agreed to execute this plan, which ADAMS approved.
c. The Adams Fundraiser, the Promoter, and the Adams Staffer scheduled an event for September 20, 2023 in a private room at a Manhattan hotel. To conceal the event’s true purpose, the Promoter provided a PowerPoint presentation billing the event as a dinner hosted by “International Sustainability Leaders” with the subject “Sustainable Destinations” and an attendance price of $5,000. The event was not publicized or listed on ADAMS’s public calendar. The Adams Fundraiser entered the event on ADAMS’s private calendar as a “Fundraiser for Eric Adams 2025,” with the host listed as the Promoter, a goal of”25k,” and the note “Total Submitted before the event: $22,800.”
d. Prior to the scheduled fundraiser, the Promoter collected payments of $5,000 or more from attendees, many of whom were foreign nationals. The Promoter then used a portion of the attendees’ payments to make straw donations to the 2025 Campaign, by sending cash from the foreign national donors to the Adams Staffer. The Adams Staffer then distributed $2,100 in cash to at least three straw donors who each made an online $2,100 contribution to the 2025 Campaign
In other words, to sustain her claims of weaponization before the braying mob, the Attorney General of the United States completely dismisses the import of public officials secretly being on the take of foreign powers.
And all that’s before the efforts to lie to the FBI and destroy evidence with which SDNY was poised to charge the Mayor, before Emil Bove intervened just in time, a planned indictment about which Bondi had personal notice.
As you know, our office is prepared to seek a superseding indictment from a new grand jury under my leadership. We have proposed a superseding indictment that would add an obstruction conspiracy count based on evidence that Adams destroyed and instructed others to destroy evidence and provide false information to the FBI, and that would add further factual allegations regarding his participation in a fraudulent straw donor scheme.
In her first big public appearance, in her public effort to substantiate her claims of weaponization, Pam Bondi lied. She lied about threats to America. She lied about foreign influence peddling. She lied to cover up lies to the FBI. She even lied — or perhaps simply confessed a white non-resident’s terror — about the New York Subway.
In her first big public appearance, Pam Bondi lied to cover up the true nature of allegations charged against a corrupt Democrat.
Chad Mizelle’s Appearance of Impropriety
Something funny happened before the hearing in the Emil Bove’s motion to dismiss Eric Adams’ case today (after a long exchange, Judge Dale Ho did not rule on the motion itself).
Pam Bondi’s Chief of Staff Chad Mizelle posted a very long thread on Xitter falsely pretending that this case was only about the single bribery charge against Adams. He focused closely on the way John Roberts’ court has rolled back bribery statutes.
For too long the DOJ has lost its way.
Prosecutorial misconduct and political agendas will no longer be tolerated.
The case against Mayor Adams was just one in a long history of past DOJ actions that represent grave errors of judgement.
This DOJ is going back to basics.
Prosecuting the mayor of America’s largest city raises unique concerns.
I want to focus on one aspect: The legal theories underpinning SDNY’s case and the particularly expansive reading of public corruption law adopted by the prosecutors in this action.
To win a bribery conviction against a public official, DOJ must show some official act in exchange for benefits — a quid pro quo. What is the official act alleged in this indictment?
Well, the main event took place before Adams was even Mayor.
In September 2021, when Adams was a candidate for office, [1] a person associated with the Turkish government allegedly asked Adams to help ensure the swift opening of a new Turkish consulate in NY in advance of a visit from Turkey’s leader.
So here is a key question: How do these facts as alleged in the indictment stack up against the case law? Let’s start with a history lesson.
EVERY TIME DOJ has pursued expansive theories of public corruption, the Department has been rebuked by the Supreme Court. Put simply, DOJ’s track record of public corruption cases at the Supreme Court is abysmal.
In 2024, DOJ lost 6-3 in Snyder v. US, where SCOTUS overturned the conviction of an Indiana mayor who was convicted of federal bribery in connection with supposedly illegal gratuities. The Court rejected DOJ’s theory that accepting gratuities constituted quid pro quo bribery.
The year before, in 2023, DOJ unanimously lost two cases in the Supreme Court—both brought by prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
In Ciminelli v. United States, The Supreme Court unanimously tossed the wire fraud conviction in connection with former Governor Andrew Cuomo’s “Buffalo Billion” initiative, calling DOJ’s theory of criminal liability “invalid.”
And in Percoco v. United States, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the government’s theory about when private citizens can be liable for honest-services fraud in a case involving Governor Cuomo’s former executive secretary.
By the way, both Ciminelli and Percoco were decided on the same day, May 11, 2023. What a stunning rebuke to the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York — Losing 18-0 in a single day.
Then there is Kelly v. United States from 2020, unanimously overturning the conviction of New Jersey officials involved in the so-called “Bridgegate” matter by, again, faulting the government for defining federal fraud too broadly.
Before then, SCOTUS unanimously repudiated the United States’ prosecution of Gov. Bob McDonnell in 2016, again faulting DOJ’s expansive theories of bribery. SCOTUS in Skilling v. United States in 2010 similarly rejected DOJ’s theory of honest-services fraud as overly broad.
And finally, when DOJ prosecuted Senator Ted Stevens for failing to report gifts, DOJ ended up having to dismiss the indictment even after obtaining a conviction, because prosecutors egregiously failed to disclose material evidence to the defense.
Clearly, this history and case law underscores the legal risks associated with prosecuting Mayor Adams. DOJ could win a bribery conviction against a public official only by showing some official act in exchange for benefits.
The alleged official act in the indictment, however, took place before Adams was mayor. And one of the main benefits that the Mayor allegedly received was campaign contributions. [2] But all successful politicians, no matter the party, receive campaign contributions.
In the Adams case, SDNY was rolling the dice. And given the DOJ’s abysmal history of losing at the Supreme Court, the odds were against the DOJ. Even the district judge said at a recent hearing that there was “some force” to Adams’s challenges to the gov’ts central legal theory.
The government must tread particularly carefully before classifying contributions a crime given the First Amendment implications of such a theory.
Additionally, the amount of resources it takes to bring a prosecution like this is incredible — thousands and thousands of man hours. Those resources could better be used arresting violent criminals to keep New York safe or prosecuting gang and cartel members.
Given the history, DOJ had to decide—among other issues—whether to keep going down a road that the Supreme Court has viewed with skepticism on numerous occasions. Dismissing the prosecution was absolutely the right call. END.
• • •
Mizelle is not wrong, at all, about the Roberts’ court’s disinterest in public corruption. They are, at least some of them, aficionados of it!
But along the way, Mizelle addressed only the bribery charge — the sole charge that Adams’ lawyers moved to dismiss.
Even there, Mizelle was playing loose with the record. The quote (from Judge Ho’s opinion rejecting the challenge) that Adams’ argument has “some force” only applies to one of two theories of bribery adopted by SDNY.
Mayor Adams takes particular issue with the Government’s first theory, arguing that— even leaving aside Snyder—being “influenced in connection with the City of New York’s regulation of the Turkish House” is simply too general or vague to constitute the requisite quo for bribery under § 666. Def. Reply Br. at 6–7; see also Def. Br. at 11. He contends that the words “business,” “transaction,” and “series of transactions” in § 666 refer to “specific and concrete governmental actions, not abstract or general objectives.” Def. Br. at 10. He further argues that to the extent the word “business” could be read broadly, it should not be—because that would render the terms “transaction” and “series of transactions” superfluous. Id. Adams seeks, in effect, to imbue the quo element of § 666 with a degree of specificity that, even if not identical to McDonnell’s “official act,” embodies a “core requirement [that] would be the same: . . . a specific and formal exercise of governmental power.” Def. Br. at 10.
Mayor Adams’s arguments on this point have some force.
Judge Ho didn’t say the same about the theory that Adams paid off Türkiye’s favors by helping them get into their new consulate.
Separately, regardless of whether the “regulation” of the Turkish House is specific enough to form the requisite quo at the indictment stage, there is no real dispute that the issuance of a TCO is a specific and formal exercise of governmental power
Furthermore, Mizelle claimed at [1] that Adams was just a candidate. While Adams was not yet Mayor (though he had won the Democratic primary) he was Borough President when he sent some texts to get the FDNY to approve the building. As Judge Ho noted in his opinion, whether Adams used his authority as Borough President to deliver a quo to Türkiye was a matter for a jury to decide.
Mayor Adams makes a separate but related argument that, even if formal authority is unnecessary, a pressure theory still requires that a defendant “us[e] his official position to exert pressure on another official.” McDonnell, 579 U.S. at 574 (emphasis added). Adams contends that the Indictment fails to allege that any pressure he exerted on the FDNY stemmed from his official position as Brooklyn Borough President. See Def. Br. at 19. Rather, he argues, “the government is effectively claiming that Adams used his potential future position as Mayor to exert pressure on officials.” Id.
But the Indictment alleges that, “as Brooklyn Borough President, [Adams] met with members of the FDNY from time to time,” Ind. ¶ 38a, and the Government argues that it will prove at trial that it was Adams’s position as Brooklyn Borough President that “[got] him in the room, as it were, with the fire commissioner” in order to exert pressure regarding the TCO. Tr. at 33; see also id. at 34 (arguing that the jury could conclude that “the defendant was using his official position as Brooklyn Borough president to let him reach out [to] the fire commissioner on city business with the mayor, that’s what got him a room”). Ultimately, whether or not Adams used his official position as Brooklyn Borough President to exert pressure on the FDNY is a factual question for a jury to resolve.
So even on the bribery count, Mizelle was playing loose with the record.
But then he dismissed the other allegations in the indictment — which, again, Adams’ lawyers didn’t challenge as a matter of law — which include wire fraud, soliciting straw donors, and accepting illegal campaign contributions from foreigners, as mere campaign donations.
Pam Bondi’s Chief of Staff treated gifts from foreign powers as if they’re totally legal.
Noted.
That far, anyway, Chad Mizelle’s little screed looked thoroughly dishonest. But I didn’t doubt his — and by extension, DOJ’s — opposition to the enforcement of bribery statutes.
But at 2:37 ET, shortly after I was reading the rant Mizelle posted at 12:42, I was alerted to this development: an information setting up a one count guilty plea by former DC official Dana McDaniel, in a scheme that is almost certainly related the charges filed against former DC Council Member Trayon White last September. The information was signed by Acting DC US Attorney Ed Martin, one of Pam Bondi’s trusted operatives.
Pam Bondi’s DOJ doesn’t have a categorical opposition to bribery charges, it turns out.
Only bribery charges against those from whom they want something in exchange.
Did Pam Bondi Bury the Election Day Bomb Threats?
The other day, Pete Hegseth capitulated to Vladimir Putin, dealing away Ukraine’s future and leverage, making Neville Chamberlain look not only stronger, but better dressed, by comparison.
He tried to walk back his capitulation the next day.
Everything is on the table in his conversations with Vladimir Putin and Zelenskyy. What he decides to allow or not allow is at the purview of the leader of the free world of President Trump. So I’m not going to stand at this podium and declare what President Trump will do or won’t do, what will be in or what will be out, what concessions will be made or what concessions are not made.
Remember, in response to questions from Tammy Duckworth, Hegseth confessed he had never been part of international negotiations. In his first day and second days learning on the job, he failed every rule of negotiation.
I may return to Pete Hegseth’s predictable failures.
For now, though, I want to note all the things put in place before Trump seemingly turned on a dime, effectively demoting his Ukraine negotiator Keith Kellogg in favor of Marco Rubio, John Ratcliffe, Mike Waltz, and Steve Witkoff (who has been liaising with people like Mohammed bin Salman and — reportedly, Kirill Dmitriev from Mueller Report fame) and taking a much more pro-Russian stance in this negotiation.
Between Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, they have protected precisely the kind of interference and corruption with which Russia kicked off Trump’s political career ten years ago. These moves have been covered already (see this post from Casey Michel and this from Cyberscoop). But I want to look at the kinds of DOJ and CISA actions against which Trump’s team may be reacting, not least because this pivot from Trump did not happen until they were all in place.
Non-prosecution of FCPA: Start with the decision to first limit (in Bondi’s adoption) and then pause (in Trump’s adoption, in a later Executive Order) prosecution of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a law that prohibits businesses with a presence in the United States from engaging in bribery. Bondi actually put this provision in a memo otherwise eliminating approval requirements for investigations and prosecutions targeting trafficking, and with regards to FCPA, simply made using FCPA against traffickers the priority.
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The Criminal Division’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Unit shall prioritize investigations related to foreign bribery that facilitates the criminal operations of Cartels and TCOs, and shift focus away from investigations and cases that do not involve such a connection. Examples of such cases include bribery of foreign officials to facilitate human smuggling and the trafficking of narcotics and firearms.
Trump, on the other had, halted its use for six months and then maybe another six months.
Most coverage of this move noted its use, under Trump, to penalize Goldman Sachs for bribing Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign wealth fund, an investigation the aftermath of which sucked in Trump associate Elliott Broidy before Trump pardoned him. But it might be better to consider how such bribery statutes limit transnational investment companies like Trump’s own and Jared Kushner’s. That is, Trump’s intervention in FCPA might be personal to Trump.
Elimination of KleptoCapture Task Force: In the same memo, buried under a shift of focus for Money Laundering cases to traffickers and away from Trump’s buddies, Bondi also included this language about the KleptoCapture program that has been a key prong of Joe Biden and Merrick Garland’s response to the Ukraine invasion.
Money Laundering and Asset Forfeiture. The Criminal Division’s Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section shall prioritize investigations, prosecutions, and asset forfeiture actions that target activities of Cartels and TCOs.
Task Force KleptoCapture, the Department’s Kleptocracy Team, and the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, shall be disbanded. Attorneys assigned to those initiatives shall return to their prior posts, and resources currently devoted to those efforts shall be committed to the total elimination of Cartels and TCOs.
It’s not yet clear whether this means DOJ will start giving yachts back to the sanctioned Russian oligarchs that Biden seized them from.
But what this does imply is that the sanctioned oligarchs who had invested in property and other facilities in the US — people like Oleg Deripaska and Andrii Derkach, both of whom were identified to have ties to Russian influence operations in election years — might be free to invest in the US again.
Shift away from FARA: Buried in Section IV of a different memo innocuously titled “General policy regarding charging, plea negotiations, and sentencing,” are two paragraphs describing changes in the National Security Division’s focus.
Shifting Resources in the National Security Division. To free resources to address more pressing priorities, and end risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion, the Foreign Influence Task Force shall be disbanded. Recourse to criminal charges under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and 18 U.S.C. § 951 shall be limited to instances of alleged conduct similar to more traditional espionage by foreign government actors. With respect to FARA and § 951, the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, including the FARA Unit, shall focus on civil enforcement, regulatory initiatives, and public guidance.
The National Security Division’s Corporate Enforcement Unit is also disbanded. Personnel assigned to the Unit shall return to their previous posts.
Let’s take them in reverse order. The FARA statement basically says that only people akin to spies will be charged criminally with it; everyone else will be subject to the same civil sanctions DOJ used before the Paul Manafort case. That of course means Manafort’s ongoing work is in the clear (a point that Ken Vogel makes in a column hilariously titled, “Moves by Trump and Bondi Raise Hopes of Those Accused of Foreign Corruption“). It also makes things far easier for Pam Bondi’s former colleagues at Ballard Partners, the most powerful foreign influence peddlers under the first and undoubtedly the second Trump term. This will save Bondi’s friends a whole lot of money in compliance worries.
But here’s the problem with this move: Most of the people DOJ has charged with criminal FARA in recent years were being handled by foreign spies. FARA, as it was used under Mueller and since, was a way to neutralize people for being in the pay of foreign spies without having to prove — or having to declassify evidence to show — that they were themselves spies. It was a way to disable spying, even or especially if people receiving foreign money didn’t know they were being handled by spies.
But Bondi just said she won’t use that tool.
Elimination of FITF: I might have written this post weeks ago, except I keep staring at Bondi’s claim that the Foreign Influence Task Force (the website for which has been taken down) led to “abuses of prosecutorial discretion.” Now, Bondi often parrots the stupidest bullshit that Jim Jordan has floated (which includes a lot of false claims made by Matt Taibbi), and this may be an example — because FITF would not lead to prosecution of a US person, as I tried to lay out in this table (which first appeared in this post).
What the FITF did was to identify attempts by foreigners to clandestinely influence Americans (not just during elections). It played a key role in funneling intelligence to the private sector, especially social media companies. While the government has charged foreigners involved in such operations (such as the Iranians who hacked Trump’s campaign), Americans would almost always be victims.
Based on that assumption, I can only imagine Bondi’s reference to “abuses of prosecutorial discretion” pertains to one of three possible prosecutions:
- The prosecution of Douglass Mackey for duping Hillary Clinton voters into “texting” their vote rather than voting in person, a prosecution that in later years might have arisen out of election protection efforts (the second row in this table) put in place in the wake of 2016.
- A warning about the Andrii Derkach influence operation in 2020, which was managed by FITF, and which led the FBI to shut down some informants sharing information on Hunter Biden. Importantly, the entire right wing believes that a FITF staffer, Laura Dehmlow, should have breached the confidentiality of a non-public investigation in 2020 and told Facebook that the hard drive shared with New York Post derived from a Hunter Biden laptop in the FBI’s possession was “real” (notwithstanding that the FBI had not, and still has not, done the most basic things to test if it was packaged up). So it’s possible that Bondi believes, like Jim Jordan does, that the outcome of the Hunter Biden investigation would have been different if they could have relied more on the laptop.
- The Tenet operation, in which the RT funded right wing propagandists Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, and Benny Johnson. The operation was exposed with an indictment of foreigners shortly before the pre-election halt to such actions, but not even Canadian Lauren Chen has been charged, much less the right wing bros. That indictment, for money laundering and FARA, might not be viable under Bondi’s new restrictions on other prosecutorial focus.
But there are a whole bunch of things you throw out with that bathwater. If the FITF is disbanded, then social media companies might not have discovered that Iran was adopting the identities of the Proud Boys to suppress turnout among people of color. There’s the ongoing Doppelganger effort to create counterfeit versions of real US and European media outlets to spread disinformation — such as an attack on USAID that Elon Musk spread just days ago.
Or there’s the multiple influence operations that Jack Posobiec has been party to, starting with PizzaGate (the weaponization of the Podesta emails stolen by the GRU), the GRU MacronLeaks operation, as well as a more recent FSB campaign. Posobiec’s centrality to all this — as well as his involvement in other kinds of rat-fucking — is particularly pertinent because Pete Hegseth at least invited Jack Posobiec to travel with him to the Munich Security Conference where he sold Ukraine out.
Trump administration officials at the Pentagon invited a far-right activist, Jack Posobiec, to participate in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s first trip overseas, according to a planning document obtained by The Washington Post and people familiar with the decision, triggering alarm among U.S. defense officials worried about the military being dragged into partisan warfare.
Posobiec was in Ukraine yesterday — it’s not yet clear whether he traveled to Europe with the Defense Secretary.
The most charitable explanation for Bondi’s decision to shut down FITF is that she’s suffering from delusions that Jim Jordan passed on. But if she really understands what this program did, then she has deliberately chosen to make it easier for hostile countries, especially Russia, China, and Iran, to affect US elections.
Administrative Leave of CISA Election Security Staff: Which brings me to the most recent effort to help foreign adversaries, something done by Kristi Noem, not Pam Bondi. On Monday, 17 of the people who were involved in keeping the 2024 election secure were put on leave, citing a focus on election disinformation.
In recent days, 17 employees of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who have worked with election officials to provide assessments and trainings dealing with a range of threats — from cyber and ransomware attacks to physical security of election workers — have been placed on leave pending a review, according to a person familiar with the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Ten of those employees are regional election security specialists hired as part of an effort to expand field staff and election security expertise ahead of the 2024 election. The regional staffers were told the internal review would examine efforts to combat attempts by foreign governments to influence U.S. elections, duties that were assigned to other agency staff, according to the person.
All were former state or local election officials who were brought in to build relationships across all 50 states and the nation’s more than 8,000 local election jurisdictions. They spent the past year meeting with election officials, attending conferences and trainings, and ensuring officials were aware of the agency’s various cybersecurity and physical security services.
[snip]
The other staffers placed on leave are current or former members of the agency’s Election Security and Resilience team, who were told the review was looking into agency efforts to combat misinformation and disinformation campaigns, according to the person familiar with the situation. The 10 election security specialists who worked with state and local election officials reported to a different team at CISA, the field operations division.
Now, the rationale offered for this decision is a review of CISA’s involvement in warnings about mis- and disinformation. As noted above, that’s not what CISA does. To the extent it shares information with social media companies, it is to provide correct information to make it easier for people to get quality information on voting.
But consider something that these 17 people might have been involved in: the effort, in real time, to respond to bomb threats called into electoral precincts in Democratic areas, many of which were sourced to Russian email domains. (Remember that Ohio Governor Mike DeWine attributed the bomb threats in Springfield — threats ginned up with the significant involvement of Jack Posobiec — to overseas actors.)
We still don’t know whether the bomb threats targeting Springfield and voting locations actually were Russian operations or whether they were funneled through Russia by American actors to obscure their origin. We still don’t have a report from the FBI explaining what happened.
And with the decision to shut down both the FITF and to pause CISA’s election protection work, we may never get it now. We may never learn whether Democratic precincts had to shut down due to Russian involvement or that of people laundering their work through Russia.
In the wake of Trump’s victory, key Putin advisor Nikolai Patrushev claimed that, to win, Trump “relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations.”
In his future policies, including those on the Russian track US President-elect Donald Trump will rely on the commitments to the forces that brought him to power, rather than on election pledges, Russian presidential aide Nikolay Patrushev told the daily Kommersant in an interview.
“The election campaign is over,” Patrushev noted. “To achieve success in the election, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. As a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them.”
He agreed that Trump, when he was still a candidate, “made many statements critical of the destructive foreign and domestic policies pursued by the current administration.”
“But very often election pledges in the United States can iverge from subsequent actions,” he recalled.
When he gave that ominous warning, I concluded that Trump would soon sell out Ukraine and the rest of Europe. But that didn’t happen right away. Rather, for months, Trump feigned a hardline stance against Russia, all while teasing the number of calls he was having with Putin.
Until this week.
Trump didn’t move to “fulfill” the “corresponding obligations” he made to get help in the election, if indeed he did get help, until Pam Bondi instructed DOJ not to look for such things.
Emil Bove’s Prisoner Exchange
The Acting US Attorney for SDNY, Danielle Sassoon, who was hand-picked by Trump’s people, resigned today rather than do the dirty bidding of Trump’s defense attorney (and disgruntled former SDNY AUSA) Emil Bove, by dismissing the case against Eric Adams.
After she resigned, two attorneys in DOJ’s Public Integrity Division, Kevin Driscoll and John Keller, joined her rather than dismiss the case.
A letter, yesterday, from Sassoon to Pam Bondi and another, today, from Bove to Sassoon document much of what happened.
Sassoon documents that Bove likened the dismissal of charges against Adams to the Viktor Bout prisoner exchange (something that was in his original letter).
Mr. Bove proposes dismissing the charges against Adams in return for his assistance in enforcing the federal immigration laws, analogizing to the prisoner exchange in which the United States freed notorious Russian arms dealer Victor Bout in return for an American prisoner in Russia. Such an exchange with Adams violates commonsense beliefs in the equal administration of justice, the Justice Manual, and the Rules of Professional Conduct. The “commitment to the rule of law is nowhere more profoundly manifest” than in criminal justice. Cheney v. United States Dist. Ct., 542 U.S. 367, 384 (2004) (alterations and citation omitted). Impartial enforcement of the law is the bedrock of federal prosecutions. See Robert H. Jackson, The Federal Prosecutor, 24 J. Am. Jud. Soc’y 18 (1940). As the Justice Manual has long recognized, “the rule of law depends upon the evenhanded administration of justice. The legal judgments of the Department of Justice must be impartial and insulated from political influence.” JM § 1-8.100. But Adams has argued in substance—and Mr. Bove appears prepared to concede—that Adams should receive leniency for federal crimes solely because he occupies an important public position and can use that position to assist in the Administration’s policy priorities.
[snip]
Adams’s advocacy should be called out for what it is: an improper offer of immigration enforcement assistance in exchange for a dismissal of his case. Although Mr. Bove disclaimed any intention to exchange leniency in this case for Adams’s assistance in enforcing federal law,1 that is the nature of the bargain laid bare in Mr. Bove’s memo. That is especially so given Mr. Bove’s comparison to the Bout prisoner exchange, which was quite expressly a quid pro quo, but one carried out by the White House, and not the prosecutors in charge of Bout’s case.
The comparison to the Bout exchange is particularly alarming. That prisoner swap was an exchange of official acts between separate sovereigns (the United States and Russia), neither of which had any claim that the other should obey its laws. By contrast, Adams is an American citizen, and a local elected official, who is seeking a personal benefit—immunity from federal laws to which he is undoubtedly subject—in exchange for an act—enforcement of federal law—he has no right to refuse. Moreover, the Bout exchange was a widely criticized sacrifice of a valid American interest (the punishment of an infamous arms dealer) which Russia was able to extract only through a patently selective prosecution of a famous American athlete.2 It is difficult to imagine that the Department wishes to emulate that episode by granting Adams leverage over it akin to Russia’s influence in international affairs. It is a breathtaking and dangerous precedent to reward Adams’s opportunistic and shifting commitments on immigration and other policy matters with dismissal of a criminal indictment. Nor will a court likely find that such an improper exchange is consistent with the public interest. See United States v. N.V. Nederlandsche Combinatie Voor Chemische Industrie (“Nederlandsche Combinatie”), 428 F. Supp. 114, 116-17 (S.D.N.Y. 1977) (denying Government’s motion to dismiss where Government had agreed to dismiss charges against certain defendants in exchange for guilty pleas by others); cf. In re United States, 345 F.3d 450, 453 (7th Cir. 2003) (describing a prosecutor’s acceptance of a bribe as a clear example of a dismissal that should not be granted as contrary to the public interest).
[snip]
In particular, the rationale given by Mr. Bove—an exchange between a criminal defendant and the Department of Justice akin to the Bout exchange with Russia—is, as explained above, a bargain that a prosecutor should not make. Moreover, dismissing without prejudice and with the express option of again indicting Adams in the future creates obvious ethical problems, by implicitly threatening future prosecution if Adams’s cooperation with enforcing the immigration laws proves unsatisfactory to the Department. See In re Christoff, 690 N.E.2d 1135 (Ind. 1997) (disciplining prosecutor for threatening to renew a dormant criminal investigation against a potential candidate for public office in order to dissuade the candidate from running); Bruce A. Green & Rebecca Roiphe, Who Should Police Politicization of the DOJ?, 35 Notre Dame J.L. Ethics & Pub. Pol’y 671, 681 (2021) (noting that the Arizona Supreme Court disbarred the elected chief prosecutor of Maricopa County, Arizona, and his deputy, in part, for misusing their power to advance the chief prosecutor’s partisan political interests). Finally, given the highly generalized accusations of weaponization, weighed against the strength of the evidence against Adams, a court will likely question whether that basis is pretextual. See, e.g., United States v. Greater Blouse, Skirt & Neckwear Contractors, 228 F. Supp. 483, 487 (S.D.N.Y. 1964) (courts “should be satisfied that the reasons advanced for the proposed dismissal are substantial and the real grounds upon which the application is based”).
1 I attended a meeting on January 31, 2025, with Mr. Bove, Adams’s counsel, and members of my office. Adams’s attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the Department’s enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed. Mr. Bove admonished a member of my team who took notes during that meeting and directed the collection of those notes at the meeting’s conclusion.
2 See, e.g., https://thehill.com/homenews/3767785-trump-pans-prisoner-swap-brittney-grinerhates-our-country/.
In response, Bove suggested that DOJ was adopting an unreviewable judgement of “weaponization” in disciplining lawyers.
The weaponization finding in my February 10, 2025 memorandum was made pursuant to a policy set forth by President Trump, who is the only elected official in the ExecutiveBranch, in connection with a decision that was authorized by the Senate-confirmed Attorney General ofthe United States, and entirely consistent with guidance issued by the Attorney General shortly after that confirmation. Your Office has no authority to contest the weaponization finding, or the second independent basis requiring dismissal set forth in my memorandum. The Justice Department will not tolerate the insubordination and apparent misconduct reflected in the approach that you and your office have taken in this matter.
You are well aware of the Department’s weaponization concerns regarding the handling of the investigation and prosecution of Mayor Adams. Those concerns include behavior that supports, at minimum, unacceptable appearances of impropriety and the politicization of your office. The investigation was accelerated after Mayor Adams publicly criticized President Biden’s failed immigration policies, and led by a former U.S. Attorney with deep connections to the former Attorney General who oversaw the weaponization ofthe Justice Department. Based on my review and our meetings, the charging decision was rushed as the 2024 Presidential election approached, and asthe former U.S. Attorney appears to have been pursuing potential political appointments in the event Kamala Harris won that election.
I’ve been wondering for some time when Bove would wildly overstep with his aggressiveness. He’s now facing documentation that supports a quid pro quo seeking political favors. And in response, he suggested his recourse is to adopt a label — weaponization — with no due process.
Trump may yet get his quid pro quo (though Judge Dale Ho now has abundant reason to refuse to dismiss this case).
But he may lose DOJ as a result.
Update: Note that the same day Sassoon sent the letter to Bondi, Bondi sued Tish James. And as this was going on, Trump rescinded FEMA funding for NY.
Those likely are not unrelated.
Update: NYT has published the original letter instructing Sassoon to dismiss the case.
Rule of Law: Don’t Obey in Advance, But Also Don’t Give Up in Advance
For some time, we’ve all been assuming that Trump will defy court orders reining in his assault on the government. And then, in the wake of Judge Paul Engelmayer’s order enjoining Scott Bessent from altering Treasury’s payment system before Friday, JD Vance ran his mouth, convincing everyone that that moment is already here.
Overnight, filings in at least two of the lawsuits against Trump’s attacks suggests that Trump is, at least for now, complying.
- In the Rhode Island case in which states enjoined OMB from withholding government grants the government filed a response describing, among other things, how they’ve worked to ensure payments to Oregon continue.
- In the New York lawsuit, also brought by states, DOJ asked for clarification of the scope of Engelmeyer’s order and opposed the breadth of it (noting, that there were contractors who did work on the system and also listing some senior Treasury officials, political appointees, who needed access). With that, Thomas Krause submitted a declaration saying he’s the only Special Government Employee who currently has permission to access the system (meaning they’re also complying with Colleen Kollar-Kotelly’s order in DC), but also revealing that Marko Elez — the DOGE boy who was included in Kollar-Kotelly’s order — has not returned to Treasury. Krause even notes (as I did) that the order to destroy what Elez has done likely conflicts with the order Kollar-Kotelly issued.
DOJ is pushing at the terms of the orders limiting government actions. But it at least claims it is complying.
There is other conflicting evidence about implementation. I have also seen reports that USAID people stationed overseas were having their access to communications systems restored, in compliance with Carl Nicoles’ order. But WaPo reports that the Administration continues to process resignations in potential defiance of George O’Toole’s order halting the Fork in the Road program.
I don’t doubt that at some point Trump will defy the courts. But for a number of reasons, I suspect they won’t outright defy judges yet.
One main reason is obvious: Trump and Russ Vought want John Roberts to grant him the authority to — basically — neutralize Congress’ power of the purse. To do that, he needs a clean appellate record. So he has to go through the process of engaging in good faith (even while arguing, as he did in his response to the Engelmeyer order, for a maximal theory of Executive power).
Another reason likely has to do with Pam Bondi. She has her own malign goals for DOJ, such as a likely assault on medical abortion pills, both between and within states. Plus, she is pursuing Trump’s attacks on sanctuary states.
But to use DOJ for these policy purposes, there has to be a DOJ, with attorneys more competent and experienced in Federal litigation than Ed Martin, the Acting US Attorney in DC. With the possible exception of the birthright citizenship defense, DOJ has real AUSAs fighting these cases, AUSAs who are going to be unwilling to risk their bar license on frivolous legal arguments or lies.
Finally, I think DOJ is in a risky situation in its confrontation with attorneys and FBI personnel. Ben Wittes noted recently, the Administration needs the FBI, in ways it doesn’t need USAID personnel, at least not in the same potentially catastrophically visible way they need the FBI.
The FBI rank and file have power in this equation that other agencies, such as USAID, for example, do not have. The Trump administration does not need USAID. It wants to eliminate foreign aid anyway, so if the personnel at the aid agency get uppity, who cares? And if they quit? All the better.
The FBI is not that simple. For one thing, the administration does need law enforcement. If there’s a terrorist attack, and there will be, and the FBI is not in a position to prevent it or investigate it quickly and effectively, the administration will take the blame.
This administration also draws its legitimacy from backing the blue. Even in their war on the intelligence community, Donald Trump and his people always tried to distinguish between the rank and file and the “bad apples” who were running things. Waging a full-scale war against the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, a war that is all about targeting street agents for having done their jobs, is a dangerous game—far different from sacking an FBI director, or even two, who went to some elite law schools and served at the upper levels of the Justice Department.
Then there’s the problem of capacity. FBI agents are actually very hard to replace—good ones are, anyway. The physical demands are significant. Most have specialized education of one sort or another. And while people often imagine FBI agents as glorified cops who kick doors down, the truth is that a lot of agents have exquisitely specialized expertise. The training of a good counterintelligence agent takes many years. Some agents have specialized scientific training. There are even agents who specialize in art theft. Take out a thousand FBI personnel for political reasons, and you destroy literally centuries of institutional capacity. A good FBI agent is much harder to create than, say, a good assistant U.S. attorney.
The confrontation with FBI has allowed accidental hero, Brian Driscoll (who is only serving as Acting Director as opposed to Acting Deputy Director because the White House made an error), has played this well, including by raising his own profile and the successes of the FBI.
That hasn’t stopped DOJ from demanding loyalty pledges, in the form of treating the mob that violently attacked cops and the Capitol as more patriotic than the cops themselves or the Members of Congress who did their duty — effectively (though WaPo doesn’t make this clear) forcing FBI agents to disavow treating a violent attack as a crime. But that, in turn, risks real backlash.
To be sure, there’s a lot of garbage that’s being dealt here. DOJ told Colleen Kollar-Kotelly that DOGE at that point only had read-only access to Treasury data (which Anna Bower recognized as an attempt to parse). But a footnote in the overnight filing in New York confesses that’s false.
Since January 20, 2025, one other Treasury employee—Marco Elez—had “read only” access to or copies of certain data in BFS payment systems, subject to restrictions, and access to a copy of certain BFS payments systems’ source code in a “sandbox” environment. Krause Decl. ¶ 11. Mr. Elez resigned on February 6, 2025 and returned all Treasury and BFS equipment and credentials the same day. Id.
That footnote cites Krause’s declaration. But the bit about the sandbox copy is not in the cited paragraph.
Since January 20, 2025, one other Treasury non-career employee—Marko Elez—had access to BFS payment systems and payment data covered by the order. Mr. Elez resigned on February 6, 2025, and returned all Treasury and BFS equipment and credentials the same day. Treasury staff have quarantined and disabled access to all devices and accounts used by this individual, which can now only be accessed by civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties within the BFS who have passed all background checks and security clearances and taken all information security training called for in federal statutes and Treasury Department regulations. Further, based on technical controls in place, BFS oversight of Mr. Elez’s work, instructions provided to Mr. Elez regarding proper data handling, and subsequent technical review of his activities, I currently have no reason to believe Mr. Elez retains access to any BFS payment data, source code, or systems. I am concerned that deleting the contents of these accounts and devices would violate Treasury’s document preservation duties in connection with related litigation entitled Alliance for Retired Americans, et al. v. Bessent, et al., Civil Action No. 25-0313 (CKK) (D.D.C.).
Similarly, an OPM suit may well prove that DOJ has misrepresented other claims to courts. And as the FBI lawsuits hung overnight, DOJ forced Driscoll to provide names of all the FBI Agents who worked on January 6 cases.
But these discrepancies may well be useful. At the very least, it provides cause for the AGs to insist that Krause appear before Judge Jeannette Vargas, the judge assigned to the case (who ordered the parties to try to clarify Saturday’s order) to explain what Elez was doing with his sandbox and why anyone should believe he hasn’t been rehired, somewhere, to play in his sandbox some more. That, in turn, would support the very cybersecurity arguments that various lawyers are trying to make. And it’ll advance the reporting already going on.
JD Vance might well like to simply ignore Engelmeyer’s order. Mike Davis might want Trump to appeal this immediately to SCOTUS. Trump might want to start siccing his mob on judges.
But there are good reasons to believe that that won’t happen, yet — at least not until Trump gets a few more of his national security and DOJ nominees through the Senate.
And until then, this legal process is a tool — a tool that can be used to buy time, but also a tool to use to hem in Trump’s mob.
Update: In RI, John McConnell issued what is likely the first, “no really, you have to follow my orders” order.
Update: DOJ has appealed McConnell’s order, even though it is not ripe.
Meanwhile DOJ has filed really long filings in DC in an attempt to persuade Carl Nichols to reverse his TRO in the USAID example, basically slandering unnamed professionals left and right. Things do look more dire, because Trump is basically refusing to fund blue states until SCOTUS tells him to–and maybe even not then. Meanwhile, Senate Republicans have simply capitulated to Trump’s insane nominees.
Update: Above I noted that DOJ needs career AUSAs to make these arguments, at least for a while.
Well, in the USAID case, those career AUSAs just had to cop to two, um, errors. The bigger one was the central dispute at the hearing last week: Whether USAID had only frozen prospective contracts, or all of them
Additionally, although Secretary Rubio’s January 24, 2025 directive only froze future contract obligations, id. ¶ 3, payments on existing contracts were paused as well as part of efforts by agency leadership to regain control of the organization’s spending and conduct a comprehensive review of its programs. See id. ¶¶ 5–10. Counsel for Defendants was unaware of this development prior to the hearing. [my emphasis]
This implies that Peter Marocco froze existing contracts without the authority of Marco Rubio. And he’s accusing USAID personnel of being insubordinate.
Two Days In, Pam Bondi’s DOJ Is Already an Ethical Swamp
Reuters was the first to track the travails of Ed Martin, the Jan6 riot attendee turned US Attorney for DC who moved to dismiss the prosecution of one of his clients on January 21, and only two weeks later, on February 4, moved to withdraw from the case.
On January 6, 2021, Martin posted on X, then called Twitter, that he was at the Capitol himself, describing the day as “Like Mardi Gras in DC today: love, faith and joy.”
Before becoming Washington’s top prosecutor, he appeared as an attorney for three people convicted of participating in the riot, according to court records. Two of those cases ended before Trump took office; the third, against Joseph Padilla, was still ongoing on January 21 when Martin’s office filed a motion bearing his name asking a court to drop the charges.
State rules in Missouri, where Martin is licensed, bar government lawyers from handling cases involving their clients without written consent.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A private spokesperson for Martin said he is in complete compliance with the requirements for his position.
On Wednesday, Martin sent an office-wide email seen by Reuters in which he said he had “stopped all involvement” in the cases more than a year and a half ago, that he had handled them pro bono, and said he was “under the impression that I was off the cases.”
He said the U.S. Attorney’s career ethics lawyer asked him about the cases last week and complained that it “immediately leaked to the media.” This leak, he said, was both “personally insulting” and professionally “unacceptable.”
When Martin did finally move to drop off the case he had gotten dismissed weeks earlier, he offered the kind of dumb excuse you expect from a Trump flunkie.
Undersigned counsel respectfully moves the Court to withdraw as a counsel of record in this matter.
Mr. Padilla noticed his appeal in this case in September 2023. ECF No. 108. From that point forward, he was represented by an attorney working with the Office of the Federal Public Defender in New Mexico. That defender entered her appearance in this case on November 1, 2024. ECF No. 122. Although undersigned counsel has not represented Mr. Padilla in connection with postconviction litigation, counsel remains listed as counsel of record on the docket. Accordingly, as the case has now been dismissed, and as the undersigned does not currently represent Mr. Padilla, counsel requests that the Court grant this motion so the docket may accurately reflect this fact. This motion has been served upon the defendant personally. LCrR 44.5(d). Mr. Padilla has no objection to this motion.
It turns out the DC Bar membership for the Acting US Attorney for DC lapsed. His Bar membership is not in good standing.
Case Name: USA v. PADILLA
Case Number: 1:21-cr-00214-JDBFiler:
Document Number: No document attached
Docket Text:NOTICE of Provisional/Government Not Certified Status re [126] Proposed MOTION to Withdraw as Attorney Edward Martin by Edward Martin. by JOSEPH LINO PADILLA. (Martin, Edward).
Your attorney renewal/government certification has not been received. As a result, your membership with the U.S. District & Bankruptcy Courts for the District of Columbia is not in good standing, and you are not permitted to file. Pursuant to Local Criminal Rule 57.21.1, you must immediately correct your membership status by following the appropriate instructions on this page of our website: https://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/attorney-renewal.
Please be advised that the presiding judge in this case has been notified that you are currently not in good standing to file in this court. Renewal Due by 2/12/2025. (zhcn)
It further turns out that when Martin wrote a very angry letter to Judge Amit Mehta telling him the Oath Keeper seditionists whose sentences Trump commuted, but did not pardon, should have no release conditions, he signed that letter over his DC Bar Membership, which we’ve now learned was not in good standing a few weeks later.
It’s a big mess. The activist group that has gotten some of Trump’s other January 6 lawyers sanctioned is trying to make it a bigger mess, at least in Missouri, which specifically prohibits playing both sides of a legal issue.
Activist legal group the 65 Project filed a bar complaint on Thursday against Edward Martin, interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, in Missouri, where he is licensed to practice law, a day after Reuters reported the potential conflict.
Martin last month asked a judge to drop charges against a man who took part in the January 6, 2021, Capitol assault whom he also represented as a defense attorney, after Trump on his first day in office granted clemency to all the nearly 1,600 people charged with playing a role in the riot.
Lawyers generally are prohibited from taking both sides in the same case and U.S. Justice Department regulations require lawyers to step aside from cases involving their former clients for at least a year.
State rules in Missouri, where Martin is licensed, also bar government lawyers from handling cases involving their clients without written consent.
“When President Trump appointed Mr. Martin to serve as interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Mr. Martin became duty-bound under the rules of professional conduct to abstain from any role in his former clients’ criminal cases,” said Michael Teter, managing director of the 65 Project, which has brought bar complaints against Trump-affiliated lawyers, in a statement.
The complaint also notes that Martin filed the motion to dismiss for Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, after doing fundraisers for the Hitler cosplayer.
In addition, Rule 4-1.7 also prohibited Mr. Martin from appearing on behalf of his client, the United States, in Mr. Hale-Cusanelli’s criminal matter after he held a fundraiser for Mr. Hale-Cusanelli and spoke glowingly of the convicted felon.
Still, two days into Pam Bondi’s tenure as AG, things are only getting started. Consider this paragraph of Bondi’s memo entitled, “RESTORING THE INTEGRITY AND CREDIBILITY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE,” which attempts to comply with Trump’s Executive Order purporting that DOJ has been weaponized. (See this Lawfare post for links and analysis of all of Bondi’s memos.)
I hereby establish the Weaponization Working Group, which will be led by the Office of the Attorney General and supported by the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, the Office of Legal Policy, the Civil Rights Division, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, and other personnel as necessary to achieve the objectives set forth herein. The Weaponization Working Group will conduct a review the activities of all departments and agencies exercising civil or criminal enforcement authority of the United States over the last four years, in consultation with the heads of such departments and agencies and consistent with applicable law, to identify instances where a department’s or agency’s conduct appears to have been designed to achieve political objectives or other improper aims rather than pursuing justice or legitimate governmental objectives. The Department of Justice will provide quarterly reports to the White House regarding the progress of the review.
It puts the following people in charge of reviewing whether investigations into Donald Trump were weaponized:
- Bondi’s own office, barely three months after she signed an amicus in the appeal of his documents case and who also perpetuated some of Trump’s false voter fraud claims
- The Office of Deputy Attorney General, currently run by Trump’s defense attorney Emil Bove, soon to be run by Trump’s defense attorney Todd Blanche
- Office of Legal Policy, which will be led by Ken Paxton’s former deputy
- Civil Rights Division, to which Trump has nominated Harmeet Dillon, who worked for Trump’s campaign in both 2020 and 2024; she also represented the RNC in a Voting Rights lawsuit filed by a Michigan Civil Rights Group
- The DC US Attorney’s Office, run by Martin, who’s already struggling to contain his conflicts (and who was almost certainly among the 1,000 or so people investigated, but not charged, for January 6)
Literally every one of the people overseeing this review has a major conflict. If they were ever to file criminal or civil charges against a competent judge, it’d be laughed out of court for all the conflicts. Plus, Bove and Blanche have already made claims about these investigations that have been rejected by judges.
Remember, Bondi promised to consult with career attorneys about such conflicts — but they’ve already reassigned the senior most of them, Brad Weinsheimer.
And this is what Bondi does in a memo claiming to “restore the integrity and credibility of DOJ.”
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.
The Stephen Miller EOs
At least in response to questioning from journalists yesterday, Trump had — or feigned — a very limited understanding of some of the Executive Orders he has signed in the last two days. For example, he couldn’t explain why he had pardoned Danny Rodriguez, who nearly killed Michael Fanone. And he explained the Enrique Tarrio pardon by pointing to the Proud Boy leader’s burning of a BLM flag, which (along with his attempted possession in DC of unlawful weapons) was punished separately from Tarrio’s seditious attack on the Capitol.
With Trump, one should always start with the assumption he’s engaged in a con, but it really is possible he only vaguely understands some of what he just signed.
That, plus the number of typos and other sloppy errors commentators have noted in the EOs, makes me wonder whether Stephen Miller drafted everything and decided, in real time, which Executive Orders to hand to Trump to sign, like a gamer might deploy his favorite Magic Card deck. In a piece on Vivek Ramaswamy’s purge from DOGE [sic], for example, WaPo reveals that, “Draft executive orders favored by Musk were implemented, and those put forward by Ramaswamy’s team that Musk had ignored in recent weeks are unlikely to be issued.” Who knows? Maybe there’s even an EO with all the January 6 pardons that only commuted the sentences of those who assaulted cops or were deemed to be terrorists, rather than granting (in many cases) full pardons.
There are at least two Executive Orders that have Stephen Miller’s name all over them which deserve closer scrutiny: One claiming to “restor[e] freedom of speech and end[] federal censorship,” and another claiming to end[] the weaponization of the federal government.”
Both have the same structure. They order the Attorney General (and the Director of National Intelligence, in the weaponizing EO) to go chase down conspiracy theories spawned by Jim Jordan: that the Federal government is infringing on free speech and weapon or targeting Joe Biden’s opponents. Here’s how it looks in the latter case:
The Department of Justice even jailed an individual for posting a political meme. And while the Department of Justice has ruthlessly prosecuted more than 1,500 individuals associated with January 6, and simultaneously dropped nearly all cases against BLM rioters.
[snip]
(a) The Attorney General, in consultation with the heads of all departments and agencies of the United States, shall take appropriate action to review the activities of all departments and agencies exercising civil or criminal enforcement authority of the United States, including, but not limited to, the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Federal Trade Commission, over the last 4 years and identify any instances where a department’s or agency’s conduct appears to have been contrary to the purposes and policies of this order, and prepare a report to be submitted to the President, through the Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and the Counsel to the President, with recommendations for appropriate remedial actions to be taken to fulfill the purposes and policies of this order.
(b) The Director of National Intelligence, in consultation with the heads of the appropriate departments and agencies within the Intelligence Community, shall take all appropriate action to review the activities of the Intelligence Community over the last 4 years and identify any instances where the Intelligence Community’s conduct appears to have been contrary to the purposes and policies of this order, and prepare a report to be submitted to the President, through the Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and the National Security Advisor, with recommendations for appropriate remedial actions to be taken to fulfill the purposes and policies of this order. The term “Intelligence Community” has the meaning given the term in section 3003 of title 50, United States Code. [my emphasis]
These orders will give Pam Bondi cover to conduct an investigation without the predicate otherwise required, and do so outside the normal institutions (like DOJ’s Inspector General and DOJ and FBI’s Offices of Professional Responsibility; to say nothing of Trump-appointed judges who already debunked the EO’s claim about selective prosecution of January 6ers) that afford targets some due process.
The scope of this review is very strictly the last four years. Thus, it will exclude a great deal of weaponization Bill Barr engaged in (including the Brady side channel via which Joe Biden was criminally framed) and even every single one of the notices regarding misstatements about voting means, time, or location that Barr’s DOJ authorized in the 2020 election, which were one main focus of the Twitter Files. It will ignore that the investigation into Douglass Mackey — the reference to an individual who posted a political meme, above — in chatrooms to which Stephen Miller was, at the very least, adjacent (and Don Jr was in), was almost entirely conducted during the first Trump Administration.
It will likewise exclude the far greater threats to free speech going forward. Donald Trump’s threat to send Mark Zuckerberg to prison for the rest of his life? Issued before Trump returned to government. Brendan Carr demanding that CBS platform right wingers, while ignoring Fox’s production of exclusively right wing content? Officially government, as of Monday, but therefore outside the scope of the four year review. And Stephen Miller coaxing Zuckerberg to making his platforms amenable to genocide again? Not yet a government action.
Take special notice, too, that the SEC and FTC are included among the agencies where Bondi is instructed to go find weaponization. Again, that picks up a Jim Jordan crusade, one targeted at regulatory agencies holding Elon Musk accountable for agreements the company he bought had already entered into, to say nothing of Elon’s efforts to tank Xitter’s own stock. Sure, some of this is Miller’s means to undermine the legitimacy of the January 6 investigation, but it’s also a personal sop to the richest man in the world.
And after Pam Bondi conducts an investigation into things that aren’t crimes via means that evade normal due process? She writes a report and gives it to … Stephen Miller, who among other things has been cultivating first Elon and then Zuck to platform Nazis.
When Jim Jordan conducted these crusades, he was shielded by Speech and Debate from adhering to basic facts. These EOs are an attempt to create space for Bondi to similarly escape the kinds of evidentiary rules and basic due process that limited Trump’s prior attempts to target his enemies.
If they find something, Miller will feed them to Trump to make issue of. If they don’t (there are few real complaints about the January 6 investigation, aside from the shitty DC jail and difficulties created by COVID; and for much of Biden’s term, the agencies of interest to Miller for engaging in government speech were constrained by lawsuits by Miller’s allies), then Miller can just burn the report in the same fireplace Mark Meadows use to use.
In other words, these two EOs (I’m sure there are other similar ones) claim to attack the politicization of government by ordering Pam Bondi to politicize DOJ.