JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference: A Speech by Gaslight

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How Vance unsettled the Europeans

While Musk was ripping through the US government like a 10 tonne toddler on cocaine, Vice President JD Vance was dispatched to the Munich Security Conference last week to tell Europeans how to run their democracies. His 19 minute speech, coupled with Trumps’ announcement that peace in Ukraine would be decided in a meeting between the US and Russia only, has swept the legs out from under Europe, NATO, and the post-war transatlantic consensus.

The speech itself was deeply weird, and breathtakingly hypocritical. Who was it for? It’s inscrutable. It wasn’t the people in the room, Vance even joked that the room would hate it. Much of it, like talk of abortion clinic perimeters, Christians burning Qurans, and weird inaccurate anecdotes about prayers didn’t make sense for a Defense crowd. The talk couldn’t have been for  the base back home; they’ll never see it, and wouldn’t get the references if they did.

Could the Europeans be the audience? Unlikely. It misunderstood European coalition politics to the point of embarrassment. I doubt it was for his boss, who isn’t particularly interested in European details, and anyway is busy destroying the state back home with Elon Musk and Elon’s emotional support human. Perhaps it was for the Heritage-Leonard Leo-Peter Thiel crowd, but then it doesn’t accomplish much more than meeting up with them and complaining about the unmanliness of Europeans over scotch.

Vance opened with talking about an Afghan man who had driven his car into a market and killed two people recently in Munich. He segued smoothly from a convincing show of human sympathy to unconvincing and suddenly icky attempt to link migration and violence. Mass violence in Europe is an issue, but it isn’t anywhere close to how prevalent it is in America. And the common factor of mass violence events isn’t migration status, it’s men.

For me, as an American who has made the EU my home, the most disturbing aspect was the pure hit by hit gaslighting Vance delivered to his audience. Based on the faces of the mostly silent crowd, they were disturbed too. He took what could have been a strong list of America’s political flaws, and scolded the Europeans for them. It was manipulative and shameless, but at least is was also transparently manipulative. No one in the room was buying it.

A group of EU mukities being annoyed with their Vance scolding session

Not particularly into this nonsense.

Vance’s speech was a scold, talking about a number of fairly niche European issues that wouldn’t read to the regime’s American supporters back home. But he also spoke as if Germany, and indeed all of Europe, was failing to meet some obligation to the US Constitution. He seemed unable to distinguish between the legal systems of the many nations of Europe, and our Constitution. He criticized the German firewall policy to keep Nazi-adjacent parties out of the German government. But he seemed to mistake it for some formal legal mechanism, rather than just rejecting associating with someone during negotiations. Coming from the American winner-take-all system, he didn’t seem to understand the many methods of how governments are formed and fall in Europe.

It was like the geopolitical version of Americans traveling abroad who are shocked to find that local laws do apply to them, and that you can’t pay in dollars.

Perhaps the most embarrassing moment in the speech was one of his most fervent, about the Romanian election. He was outraged that the Romanian supreme court ordered a re-run of an election because of credible allegations of Russian interference. But, of course, this was a constitutional choice made by the empowered body in Romania, which importantly here, is not subject to the US Constitution.

Vance doesn’t have a lower division polysci major’s understanding of European political realities. About Romania’s troubles, he said “But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.” Here I have to give a long, deep sigh. That is correct, Mr. Vance.

Part of the project of the European Union is to help politically weakened  former eastern bloc European democracies strengthen their institutions with the goal of becoming robust democracies, one day. After decades of Soviet oppression and exploitation, institutions are weak and corruption is endemic in many of these countries. They are not strong democracies right now, and we all know that over here. It’s part of the grand conversation of the European Union. Even the former Soviet block countries’ institutions generally countenance that fact. That’s why you might want to have a method of re-running an election in an unstable situation.

Honestly though, the US could take a hint or two from some of these “not strong to begin with” democracies. Having a mechanism to re-run the 2000 election would have done this country a good turn and saved a lot of trouble, however the re-run went.

It’s hard to overemphasize how much Vance didn’t understand, or even care to understand, the nations he was speaking to and about. He misunderstood perimeter laws in the UK, coalitions in Germany, speech law everywhere, and what the European Union exists for.

But Also, Rank Hypocrisy

He pounded out the words “If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you,” this, from a country that purges its own voter rolls along ethnic and political lines regularly. Politically motivated voter purges are uncommon in the EU, whereas they are an expected piece of electioneering in America. We even have to tell people to check and recheck they have’t been caught up in partisan voter purges every election. That’s so uncommon in Europe as to be a sign of political crisis, rather than business as usual.

Vance bellowed out at the crowd that “Thin mandates produce unstable results…” without the slightest sign of self-awareness. I have to agree with him in principle, but coalitions and alternatives to FPTP voting means that unclear and close results are rarer in Europe than America. He also conveniently omitted that his ticket won by 1.5% of the vote, but everyone in that room knew it.

One of the points he seemed very confident of was that “…there’s no more urgent issue than mass migration.” Migration is a complex issue in Europe, but most urgent? No, the data simply doesn’t support that. In fact Europeans largely agree on the need for migration, but the details are devilish. Many of us in Europe put inflation, inequality, and even climate change above migration. EU wide, the relevance of migration has been dropping steadily since the crisis a decade ago. Migration is there, but it doesn’t approach the rolling crises of consumer prices, inequality, and energy costs the truly plague Europe.

Americans don’t really worry about energy and resources the same way Europe does. Most of America’s inflation problems are more or less self-inflicted, but Europe has to rely on trade with the rest of the world to meet many of its existential needs. If Vance only talked to the AfD, Le Pen, and maybe Orban, he can definitely construct an ersatz man-child Europe, terrified of brown families crossing the Mediterranean looking for a better life. But that’s not all of Europe, and not even most of it these days.

But being an American talking about mass violence events in Europe is a tricky proposition. Being from a country where the most common cause of death in child is a bullet, Vance’s sentiment of “tak(ing) our shared civilization in a new direction” misses that a lot of Europeans don’t consider America very civilized, largely because of peculiar cultural norms like gun violence.

At one point, out of nowhere, Vance said “If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunburg scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.” I have no clue what this means. I think it was meant to be a laugh line. Maybe it just sounded good in his head.

Vance mainly spoke of an America that doesn’t exist. There is no broad consensus in America, no easy confidence about a bright future. The nation is checked out, divided, and struggling to survive. He wouldn’t dare try to give a ‘Morning in America’ speech any further west than Munich. He couldn’t even do it in Munich. No one was buying what he was selling.

The Europeans saw Vance as meddling, interfering in the ways that he was accusing them of doing, because he doesn’t understand European decorum around speech. Decorum is taken seriously in a way that American’s don’t understand, and a serious person is expected to watch their words in a way that Trump’s people don’t get, or care to get.

Vance often seems like the smart grownup in an administration of weirdos and troglodytes, but he’s not. He just cleans up ok. Give him some runway, and he shows he’s just as regressive and weird as the rest of the bunch. Vance is just another one of the idiot wrecking crew tearing their way through America, and now the world.

The Response

The consequences of this political clown show were immediate.

The one-two punch of Vance in Munich and Trump cutting everyone but Putin out of negotiating the Ukraine war has shocked Europe, possibly into action. Macron has hosted a meeting of leaders in Paris, including the largest states in the EU and the UK’s Keir Starmer, who is something of a self-appointed American whisperer.

It doesn’t mean the EU is springing into action. Springing is not a thing the EU does, but meetings are. It does point to the EU waking up to how dangerous the Americans really are right now, and also how delusional. Settling the Ukraine war without Ukraine at the table is insane, and both Zelensky and European leaders have pointed that out. If the Ukrainians don’t stop fighting, and they won’t, the war doesn’t end. It just turns into Russia’s Vietnam, or Algeria, or Afghanistan, again. And Ukraine becomes a field of bones and blood and hate.

There’s talk in Europe of peace keepers in Ukraine. Not serious talk, and peacekeepers are a terrible idea, but at least they’ve started throwing spaghetti at the wall.

NATO head Mark Rutte is out pounding the pavement with leaders and press about the need to get military spending in Europe up to 5% of Everyone’s GDP. It’s a transparent call to be able to cut the Americans out and take on threats like Russia and Iran on their own. But it’s also a hard lift, at a time when economics and climate change are pressing Europe. The countries most at risk — Poland, Finland, and the Baltics, are already ramping up to resist Russian invasion. This isn’t paranoia, Russian political elites have promised to come get them after Ukraine for years.

The US, and its power to bind things together geopolitically is gone, possibly for good. But the old European terrors, mainly Russia and in-fighting, persist.

Emil Bove’s Missing Documents

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Imagine you’re Judge Dale Ho.

You’re presiding over the Eric Adams case, that of his co-conspirator Erden Arkan, and have gotten notice of another co-conspirator, Mohamed Bahi, as a related case (meaning that Bahi is likely supposed to plead guilty before you in coming days — what was intended as a last step before superseding Adams with obstruction).

The Adams case has blown up very publicly. The prosecution team has been withdrawn from the case. But even before that, the Acting Deputy Attorney General has requested you dismiss the case, without prejudice. You know Bove’s pulling a fast one. But technically, the only things before you are the Nolle Prosequi request and the withdrawal motion.

What do you do? Even beyond the question of whether you grant the request to dismiss without prejudice (Bove’s ask), you dismiss with prejudice (perhaps the easiest and most legally justifiable thing to do), or you muck things up, what do you do to get there?

Four documents pertaining to this blow up (in addition to the ones filed before Judge Ho) were released publicly last week. Here’s the purpose they ostensibly serve:

  • February 10: Emil Bove tells Danielle Sassoon to dismiss the case, without prejudice
  • February 12: Danielle Sassoon asks Pam Bondi to meet
  • February 13: Bove responds to Sassoon, accepting her resignation
  • February 13: Hagan Scotten resigns

But the documents do more. All four of them weigh in on two key paragraphs that made it into the Nolle Prosequi letter: the two stated reasons for dismissing the case against Adams, which look like this in the dismissal request:

5. In connection with that determination and directive, the Acting Deputy Attorney General concluded that dismissal is necessary because of appearances of impropriety and risks of interference with the 2025 elections in New York City, which implicate Executive Order 14147, 90 Fed. Reg. 8235. The Acting Deputy Attorney General reached that conclusion based on, among other things, review of a website2 maintained by a former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and an op-ed published by that former U.S. Attorney.3

6. In connection with that determination and directive, the Acting Deputy Attorney General also concluded that continuing these proceedings would interfere with the defendant’s ability to govern in New York City, which poses unacceptable threats to public safety, national security, and related federal immigration initiatives and policies. See, e.g., Executive Order 14159, 90 Fed. Reg. 8443; Executive Order 14165, 90 Fed. Reg. 8467. The Acting Deputy Attorney General reached that conclusion after learning, among other things, that as a result of these proceedings, Adams has been denied access to sensitive information that the Acting Deputy Attorney General believes is necessary for Adams to govern and to help protect the City.

Public comments from Damian Williams that barely mention Adams create an appearance of impropriety, Bove claims, and the prosecution would interfere with Adams’ ability to govern New York, which Bove suggests (by citation to two of Trump’s immigration crackdown Executive Orders) consists primarily in chasing migrants.

Again, the other letters are not formally before Ho (yet). But Ho has presumably read Hagan Scotten’s take on these two excuses, which labels the first as a pretext and the second as coercion.

In short, the first justification for the motion—that Damian Williams’s role in the case somehow tainted a valid indictment supported by ample evidence, and pursued under four different U.S. attorneys is so weak as to be transparently pretextual. The second justification is worse. No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives.

Mind you, Bove has invented something in his immigration excuse — that “Adams has been denied access to sensitive information that the Acting Deputy Attorney General believes is necessary.” He actually ordered Sassoon to, “take all steps within your power to cause Mayor Adams’ security clearances to be restored,” in his first letter (which, again, is not formally before Ho). He complained, again, that “Mayor Adams has been denied a security clearance that limits his access to details of national security issues in the City he was elected to govern and protect” in his response.

It’s transparent bullshit. While it may be the case that the Biden Administration had limited sharing of classified information with Adams after his indictment for allegedly taking undeclared gifts from a foreign government [!!!], that’s entirely the prerogative of the President, as Trump has made clear with his hasty grant of security clearance to people manifestly unsuited and his festival of security clearance removals since, first 51 spooks, then Joe Biden himself, and then Tish James and Alvin Bragg, among others. Pretty nutty that Bove says that Eric Adams can’t be prosecuted because it means he can’t see sensitive information when Trump has arbitrarily withheld that very same sensitive information from New York’s Attorney General and the District Attorney, huh?

It’s another pretext.

Ho can easily dismiss Bove’s first rationale — the appearance of impropriety — because (as Sassoon noted) he already did, in a ruling on one of Adams (and Elon Musk) attorney Alex Spiro’s serial claims that the government was leaking grand jury information.

One additional filing bears mention. On January 18, 2025, Mayor Adams submitted a letter accusing the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York of violating Local Criminal Rule 23.1 through statements made in an op-ed published on January 16 and on his “new website.” See Letter, Jan. 18, 2025, ECF No. 99 (“Jan. 18 Letter”). The Mayor states that this evidence “should be considered by the Court when ruling on Mayor Adams’s Renewed Motion for an Evidentiary Hearing and for Sanctions Including Dismissal.” Id. at 3. Having reviewed the submission and the evidence referenced within it, the Court concludes that it does not change the Court’s analysis. Neither Mr. Williams’s op-ed itself nor the media it incorporates by reference so much as allude to the grand jury proceedings that led to Mayor Adams’s indictment, let alone disclose protected information from those proceedings. Rule 6(e) is not implicated by the materials, and they do not substantiate Mayor Adams’s claim that the Government has disclosed grand jury information in violation of the Rule.5

5 Although Mayor Adams does not request relief under Local Rule 23.1, the Court notes that, after carefully reviewing Mr. Williams’s op-ed, the op-ed does not contain any statements that run afoul of the Rule’s prohibitions. In the op-ed, Mr. Williams provides hyperlinks to several prosecutions brought during his tenure as U.S. Attorney, including those of federal and state elected officials, but none concern Mayor Adams. In fact, the majority of the statements in the oped that Mayor Adams claims are problematic concern New York State rather than New York City politics. For example, Mayor Adams highlights Mr. Williams’s statements that “[t]he ability to raise obscene sums of money for a campaign is precisely the wrong bottleneck to elected office,” and that “[i]t reeks of pay-to-play corruption and is offensive to most New Yorkers . . . ” Jan. 18 Letter at 2 (quoting Williams’s op-ed). But those sentences are found in a paragraph lamenting the ability of candidates “to raise money from individuals or entities with business before the state,” opining that “[t]he state’s new matching funds program is woefully inadequate,” and arguing in favor of “a truly transformative public financing system for state elections. . . ” Id. (emphases added). They do not appear to be directed at New York City politics generally or at this case specifically.

There is one sentence in the op-ed stating that “[t]he public reporting alone paints a picture” that “America’s most vital city is being led with a broken ethical compass,” id. at 1, which could plausibly be read to be a reference to Mayor Adams (among others). This particular statement, however, “do[es] not cross the line drawn by [Local] Rule 23.1 in the sense that [it] do[es] not, by [itself], constitute opinions as to the Defendant[’s] guilt, and [is] not otherwise the type of statement[] proscribed by the rule.” United States v. Smith, 985 F. Supp. 2d 506, 539 (S.D.N.Y. 2013) (citing Local Rule 23.1(d)). Nor does the statement “go[] beyond the public record.” Local Rule 23.1(b). Of course, “[i]t is essential that prosecutors respect both the power of their words and their office, and ensure that their public comments are carefully tailored solely to further valid law enforcement interests and to steer far clear of violating a defendant’s fundamental right to a fair trial.” Id. at 541. Here, the Court finds that Mr. Williams has not violated those duties.

The arrogance! Bove is telling a judge he has to dismiss an indictment, in part, because Bove asserts as true something that Ho has already said is not true!

But Ho will have to, without more, treat Bove’s second excuse — Adams’ need to do his job to keep NYC safe from migrants — with a presumption of regularity.

Unless and until those other letters alleging this is a quid pro quo come before him.

Sassoon’s letter, which I assume Ho has read, did more than rebut Bove’s thin pretexts. It:

She also invoked Judge Ho, twice by function — citing Judge Ho’s treatment of Spiro’s serial claims of leaks and his specific focus on Williams’ actions (linked above) and reviewing how he had granted Adams’ own request with regards to trial timing. Then she invoked Judge Ho by name, predicting that he would do a “searching inquiry” on this case.

The assigned District Judge, the Honorable Dale E. Ho, appears likely to conduct a searching inquiry in this case. Notably, Judge Ho stressed transparency during this case, specifically explaining his strict requirements for non-public filings at the initial conference. (See Dkt. 31 at 48-49). And a rigorous inquiry here would be consistent with precedent and practice in this and other districts.

In support, she cited this admonition from Ho, in response to seeming attempts to communicate directly with chambers last fall and in the process hide public court hearings.

I want to be clear that in the future, if there are requests to change a certain date, or to have a certain date, I should say, you’ll stick to what you request. If you need a change, you’ll file it on ECF, not via email to chambers. I’ll only consider it if you explain why there’s good cause in a single submission for a change in the date. If you don’t, I’ll deny it on that basis alone. I just want to make sure that counsel understands that and see if there are any questions from counsel as to those instructions.

[snip]

THE COURT: One other guideline that I want to hit, which is with respect to the presumption of public access to documents. Now I understand there may be CIPA issues involved in this case and we’ll take those as they come, but I just want to remind counsel that there’s a presumption of public access to judicial documents, and this is obviously a case of significant public interest. Other than what you can, without court approval, file in redacted or sealed form under the local rules, things like personal identifying information, financial account numbers and the like, I expect requests for redaction of documents to be narrowly tapered.

And just to go over the rules here for the procedures, I should say, if it’s necessary to file a sealed or redacted document, you have to file a letter motion seeking to redact or seal that document specifying the reasons for such sealing or redaction and citing authority that those reasons can justify overcoming the presumption of public access and then file their own redacted documents under seal, which will remain temporarily sealed until the Court resolves the motion to redact or seal the documents, and if it’s appropriate, file a redacted version of those documents on the public docket.

So Sassoon cited “the Court” several times to lay out aspects of the record that Bove got wrong, and then she invoked Judge Ho by name, effectively saying, “Hey Judge Ho, remember that you have ordered both parties in this case to make all documents public? You might want to do that here.”

Now, there are obvious documents we’d all like to see that, if these other documents are formally aired in this case, I expect Judge Ho to request, starting with the notes someone from SDNY took at a January 31 hearing. Bove also described written submissions from prosecutors and Adams’ team in his response and a February 3 memo from SDNY that, he describes, denied a quid pro quo. He also claims Sassoon, “acknowledged previously in writing” that there was no quid pro quo, which may be that February 3 memo. And there are all the letters that are public but not formally before him.

Again, Judge Ho may demand all that if and when he begins to look closely.

But there’s another document that is missing, conspicuously so.

Bove’s Nolle Prossequi motion describes that Adams has consented to dismissal, but he does not include it.

Through counsel, Defendant Eric Adams has consented in writing to this motion and agreed that he is not a “prevailing party” for purposes of the Hyde Amendment. See P.L. 105- 119, § 617, 111 Stat. 2440, 2519; 18 U.S.C. § 3006A note.

This is, quite frankly, either insane or rank incompetence. There is no way any judge, former ACLU voting rights lead or not, would accept a dismissal without prejudice without seeing that documented. It may be that Adams will file notice of his consent on Monday (Mike Flynn filed his own notice of consent five days after Bill Barr filed to dismiss the indictment), but Bove had something in writing on Friday.

Mr. Bove specifies that Adams must consent in writing to dismissal without prejudice. To be sure, in the typical case, the defendant’s consent makes it significantly more likely for courts to grant motions to dismiss under Rule 48(a). See United States v. Welborn, 849 F.2d 980, 983 (5th Cir. 1988) (“If the motion is uncontested, the court should ordinarily presume that the prosecutor is acting in good faith and dismiss the indictment without prejudice.”). But Adams’s consent— which was negotiated without my office’s awareness or participation—would not guarantee a successful motion, given the basic flaws in the stated rationales for dismissal. See Nederlandsche Combinatie, 428 F. Supp. at 116-17 (declining to “rubber stamp” dismissal because although defendant did not appear to object, “the court is vested with the responsibility of protecting the interests of the public on whose behalf the criminal action is brought”). Seeking leave of court to dismiss a properly returned indictment based on Mr. Bove’s stated rationales is also likely to backfire by inviting skepticism and scrutiny from the court that will ultimately hinder the Department of Justice’s interests. In particular, the court is unlikely to acquiesce in using the criminal process to control the behavior of a political figure. [my emphasis]

And that may be one of the most important details in Sassoon’s letter to Bondi: Bove negotiated the key point of leverage, dismissal without prejudice with the stated expectation that DOJ will revisit things if and when Adams is reelected in November, without the involvement of SDNY.

When Sassoon invited Judge Ho, by name, to use his early admonition about public filings “to conduct a searching inquiry in this case,” she suggested that Bove was skirting that earlier admonition. Dale Ho likely didn’t need Sassoon’s invitation, and doesn’t need to first find a way to adopt this correspondence to the public docket.

Because Bove insanely submitted a request to dismiss the indictment without the most important piece of the paperwork.

Timeline and documents

January 31: Meeting at which someone from SDNY took notes, which were confiscated.

February 3: Date of SDNY memo that, per Bove, denies a quid pro quo.

Monday, February 10: Bove letter to Sassoon (addressed as Acting US Attorney), ordering her to dismiss the case.

Wednesday, February 12: Sassoon letter to Pam Bondi, asking to meet.

Thursday, February 13: Bove letter to Sassoon, firing her.

February 13 or 14: Hagan Scotten resignation letter.

Friday, February 14: Nolle Prosequi letter submitted by Acting Criminal Division Chief Antoinette Bacon and AUSA Edward Sullivan, signed by Bove.

Update: Added the February 3 memo.

Emil Bove’s Prisoner Exchange

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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.

 

Marko Elez “Resigned” the Day His Write Access to Payment Systems Was Discovered

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According to the currently operative story, Marko Elez — the DOGE [sic] boy who had source code for Treasury’s payments system — resigned in response to a query from WSJ reporter Katherine Long about his social media posts in support of

A key DOGE staff member who gained access to the Treasury Department’s central-payments system resigned Thursday after he was linked to a deleted social-media account that advocated racism and eugenics.

Marko Elez, a 25-year-old who is part of a cadre of Elon Musk lieutenants deployed by the Department of Government Efficiency to scrutinize federal spending, resigned after The Wall Street Journal asked the White House about his connection to the account.

“Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool,” the account posted in July, according to the Journal’s review of archived posts.

“You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” the account wrote on X in September. “Normalize Indian hate,” the account wrote the same month, in reference to a post noting the prevalence of people from India in Silicon Valley.

After the Journal inquired about the account, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said that Elez had resigned from his role.

But that belief is only based on correlation, not any proof of causation. Long asked about posts that are in no way exceptional for the far right boys Elon has infiltrated into the government. And Elez resigned that same day.

Sure, Elon implied that Elez quit because the boy’s far right ideology was exposed — he led a campaign for his reinstatement. That campaign — and JD Vance’s support for it — similarly led a lot of people to believe that Elez had been reinstalled at Treasury. But multiple court filings claim that Elez resigned and never came back, at least not to Treasury.

In fact, there are two things that might provide better explanations than the discovery that like Elon himself, Elez is a racist.

As WSJ itself notes, Elez resigned the same day that Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered that Elez, then still identified as a Special Government Employee, be granted only read-only access to Treasury’s networks. Once Elez no longer worked for the defendants in that case — starting with Scott Bessent — then any access he had would be exempted from the order.

More importantly, as a court filing submitted yesterday reveals, Elez’ resignation happened the same day that Treasury discovered Elez’s Bureau laptop, “had mistakenly been configured with read/write permissions instead of read-only.” The filing is a declaration from Joseph Gioeli, who has been employed as the “Deputy Commissioner for Transformation and Modernization in the Bureau of the Fiscal Service” since 2023 and is a civil servant first hired in the first year of Trump’s first term.

His declaration describes how the 4-6 week “payment process engagement plan” initiated (per Thomas Krause) on January 26 required giving Elez risky access to payment systems. Gioeli describes how they tried to mitigate those risks.

11. The scope of work as envisioned in the engagement plan required access to Fiscal Service source code, applications, and databases across all these Fiscal Service payment and accounting systems and their hosting environments. This broad access presented risks, which included potential operational disruptions to Fiscal Service’s payment systems, access to sensitive data elements, insider threat risk, and other risks that are inherent to any user access to sensitive IT systems. In light of these risks, BFS and Treasury Departmental Office employees developed mitigation strategies that sought to reduce these risks.

12. These measures included the requirement that Mr. Elez be provided with a BFS laptop, which would be his only method of connecting to the Treasury payments systems, both in connecting with the source code repository and for his read-only access of the systems. He had previously been provided a Treasury laptop from the Department shortly after he onboarded, but due to Bureau security policy, that device was restricted from accessing the BFS systems and services he had requested. BFS used several cybersecurity tools to monitor Mr. Elez’s usage of his BFS laptop at all times and continuously log his activity. Additionally, the Bureau enabled enhanced monitoring on his laptop, which included the ability to monitor and block website access, block the use of external peripherals (such as USB drives or mass storage devices), monitor any scripts or commands executed on the device, and block access to cloud-based storage services. Additionally, the device contained data exfiltration detection, which alerts the Bureau to attempts to transmit sensitive data types. The laptop is also encrypted in accordance with Bureau policy, which, if the laptop were stolen or lost, would prevent unauthorized users from accessing data contained within the laptop.

13. Additional mitigation measures that were adopted included that Mr. Elez would receive “read-only” access to the systems, and that any reviews conducted using the “read-only” access would occur during low-utilization time periods, to minimize the possibility of operational disruptions. While providing a single individual with access to multiple systems and data records accessed here was broader in scope than what has occurred in the past, this read-only approach is similar to the kind of limited access the Bureau has provided to auditors for other Treasury non-payment systems, though even in those scenarios the availability of production data was significantly limited. [my emphasis]

Gioeli goes on to describe how, starting on February January 28, the Bureau gave Elez source code in a sandbox environment.

16. On January 28, 2025, the Bureau provided Mr. Elez with the Bureau laptop and with copies of the source code for PAM, SPS, and ASAP in a separate, secure coding environment known as a “secure code repository” or “sandbox.” Mr. Elez could review and make changes locally to copies of the source code in the cordoned-off code repository; however, he did not have the authority or capability to publish any code changes to the production system or underlying test environments. This repository was separate from Fiscal Service’s typical code development environment, and unlike the usual code development environment, this new repository was segmented, to ensure that no changes to the operative source code could be made. [my emphasis]

Then, six days after giving him that sandbox access, using the same laptop, they gave him read-only access to first two and then one more systems.

17. On February 3, 2025, consistent with the engagement plan and mitigation measures developed, Mr. Elez was provided with read-only access, through his Bureau laptop, to the certain BFS systems. The read-only access that Mr. Elez was provided gives the user the ability to view and query information and data but does not allow for any changes to that information and data within its source system. While this reduces risk, it does not fully eliminate the risks identified in the assessment (for example, the risk of overburdening the system with a complex read-only query). Specifically, Mr. Elez was provided read-only access to the Payment Automation Manager (PAM) Database, Payment Automation Manager (PAM) File System, and, subsequently on February 5, the Secure Payment System (SPS) Database.

After he got that access, per a review of the logs, Elez copied some files from the active database onto his Bureau laptop, on which he had the source code.

18. ISS configured his network access and assisted him in setting up the necessary tools to connect to the PAM database on February 3. His access was closely monitored by multiple BFS administrators throughout the process on February 3. That same day, he received a “walk-through” demonstration of two BFS payment systems, the PAM database and the PAM file system (the system that controls the payment file “landing zone” discussed above), to see how the systems worked. He logged in with his read-only access to these systems on February 3 during this “walk-through” demonstration. The Bureau is in the process of reviewing the logs of Mr. Elez’s activity on his Bureau laptop, and this review remains ongoing. Based on the preliminary log reviews conducted to date, it appears that on February 3, Mr. Elez copied two USAID files directly from the PAM database to his BFS laptop; on February 4 and 5, Mr. Elez accessed the PAM file system; and on February 5, Mr. Elez accessed the PAM payment processing database. These activities are consistent with the read-only access that Mr. Elez was provided and did not change or alter any BFS payment system or record within their source systems. As noted, reviews of Mr. Elez’s work are still actively occurring; I do not have any more detail to provide at this time about his activities with respect to PAM. [my emphasis]

Then, on February 5, Elez got access to the payment system itself — again, with the same laptop on which he had source code.

19. Due to scheduling constraints, Mr. Elez was unable to meet with Bureau personnel to set up his access to the SPS database until February 5. On that date, lSS held a virtual walk-through session to help him to connect to the SPS database. He accessed this database exclusively under the supervision of Bureau database administrators in a virtual walkthrough session. According to the preliminary review of logs the Bureau has conducted to date, it appears Mr. Elez accessed the SPS database only once during that walk-through demonstration on February 5. It does not appear that he accessed the database again. As part of the ongoing review, additional log reviews are currently underway to confirm this. Mr. Elez never logged into ASAP, CARS, or ITS.gov, as technical access to those systems was never established for him. [my emphasis]

The next day, “it was discovered” (Gioeli does not say by whom, which means we’re not seeing a declaration from that person) that Elez actually “had mistakenly been configured” with read/write access, rather than “read only.”

20. On the morning of February 6, it was discovered that Mr. Elez’s database access to SPS on February 5 had mistakenly been configured with read/write permissions instead of read-only. A forensic investigation was immediately initiated by database administrators to review all activities performed on that server and database. The initial investigation confirmed that all of Mr. Elez’s interactions with the SPS system occurred within the supervised, walk-through session and that no unauthorized actions had taken place. His access was promptly corrected to read-only, and he did not log into the system again after his initial virtual over-the-shoulder session on February 5. To the best of our knowledge, Mr. Elez never knew of the fact that he briefly had read/write permissions for the SPS database, and never took any action to exercise the “write” privileges in order to modify anything within the SPS database—indeed, he never logged in during the time that he had read/write privileges, other than during the virtual walk-through – and forensic analysis is currently underway to confirm this. [my emphasis]

Throughout his declaration, Gioeli stresses that they’re still investigating whether Elez did something unauthorized with his access.

21. As noted above, the Bureau used several cybersecurity tools to monitor Mr. Elez’s usage and continuously log his activity. While forensic analysis is still ongoing, Bureau personnel have conducted preliminary reviews of logs of his activity both on his laptop and within the systems and at this time have found no indication of any unauthorized use, of any use outside the scope that was directed by Treasury leadership, or that Mr. Elez used his BFS laptop to share any BFS payment systems data outside the U.S. Government.

And his declaration stops short of saying that some mitigation techniques were used. For example, Gioeli says that the enhanced monitoring on Elez’ Bureau laptop had the ability to “block the use of external peripherals (such as USB drives or mass storage devices)” and access to the cloud, but it doesn’t say whether those functionalities was used.

Plus, Gioeli’s declaration makes it clear that they have’t involved Elez in any review of his access. No one has asked Elez, for example, whether he knew he had write access to the payment system.

Similarly, in an earlier declaration submitted in the parallel DC case, Thomas Krause gave a very couched answer about whether Elez had has any ongoing access.

I currently have no reason to believe Mr. Elez retains access to any BFS payment data, source code, or systems.”

Did anyone think to ask the guy? Does anyone know where that guy is? Are you going to interview him? Or is someone deliberately trying to keep him from being questioned further?

Worse still, Thomas Krause declaration submitted in the NY case doesn’t even say that Elez has left Treasury — only that he has resigned from the role of, “working closely with engineers at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS) on information technology (IT) matters in service of BFS’s mission to promote financial integrity and operational efficiency of the federal government through accounting, financing, collection, payment, and other relevant BFS services.”

On February 6, 2025, Mr. Elez submitted his resignation from this role. On that same day, he turned in his Treasury laptop, BFS laptop, access card, and other government devices; his BFS systems access was terminated; and he has not conducted any work related to the BFS payment systems since that date.

Elez was made a Treasury employee — contrary to early reports, he was not a SGE. That may make it easier to shuffle him off somewhere else.

What Gioeli describes is the panic that ensues when a guy who had high level access quits unexpectedly. And to date, we’ve never been given a formal explanation of why he quit — or whether he was asked to do so. We certainly can’t reconcile the claims that he has been reinstated with claims that he’s not doing what he was doing at Treasury.

Everyone has always assumed that Elez quit because his racism was discovered. But given the timeline, we can’t rule out that he quit because of the access concerns (and ongoing investigation) at Treasury.

Timeline

January 21: Elez hired.

January 23: Krause hired.

January 26: Treasury focuses on USAD. Treasury also adopts a 4-6 week engagement plan.

January 28: Bureau provides Elez with Bureau laptop copies of the source code for PAM, SPS, and ASAP in sandbox.

January 31: Treasury focuses on TAS codes; Elez assists in “automating” manual review of payments. “A high-ranking career official at Treasury also raised the issue of risks from DOGE access in a memo to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.”

February 3: Treasury gives Elez access to PAM. Booz threat contractor delivers report warning of grave insider threat.

February 5: Treasury gives Elez access to SPS, the payment system.

February 6 (afternoon): Elez resignation.

February 7: Treasury flags but then approves four payments. WaPo publishes story about Booz report and Booz contractor is fired.

February 8: Paul Engelmeyer limits Krause’s access.

February 10: Millenium Challenge Corporation submits, but then requests not to process, a payment.

Documents

Opposition to Stay

Thomas Krause Declaration: Describing the plan to use technology to provide more oversight over payments (citing three Biden-era GAO reports, not anything DOGE has discovered).

Vona Robinson Declaration: Describing that the only payment that has been intercepted at Treasury was a payment to the Millenium Challenge Corporation.

Michael Wenzler Declaration: Describing the hiring, employment status, revisions thereof, of Thomas Krause and Marko Elez, and also confirming Elez’ resignation from Treasury.

Joseph Gioeli Declaration: Describing the circumstances of Elez’ access and the investigation into what he did with it.

“The Fraudsters Complain the Loudest and the Fastest:” Legacy Media Ignores Import of Gaza Condom Fact Check

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At a weird appearance in the Oval Office rife with awkward projections that Elon Musk believes he is more powerful than Trump (here’s the full CSPAN video), a journalist asked Elon how — given the egregious error he made about condoms and Gaza — we should believe anything he said.

 

 

The exchange is bad enough: Elon basically confessed, in front of Trump, that a hoax Elon started that traveled first to Trump propagandist Karoline Leavitt and from there, through Jesse Watters’ exaggerations on Fox News, into several repetitions of the false claim by Trump was wrong.

 

 

The entire point of this presser was to substantiate Trump’s false (and undocumented) claim that DOGE [sic] had found billions of dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse and use that to, first, pressure judges who are putting brakes on DOGE and, then, justify giving DOGE [sic] authority to fire a bunch of people via Executive Order.

When Trump asked Elon to substantiate such claims, Elon instead vaguely pointed to people who were wealthy even though they had meager salaries — not something that should be under his review. He listed other things that are known — and were known, during Trump’s first term — which are archaic but not fraud.

And in that appearance, a journalist called Elon out for inventing something about Gaza that led Trump to lie publicly.

That should have led to stories about how, in Trump’s presence, Elon admitted he makes shit up and Trump repeats them.

For the most part, it didn’t happen:

  • NYT noted that Elon offered no proof of fraud, but did not mention the proof that Elon got caught in a lie.
  • WaPo focused on the EO, but later explained that neither Trump nor Musk offered proof — but didn’t mention he got caught in a lie.
  • Politico focused on the EO, but later noted that Elon said he would police his own conflicts.
  • In an analytical piece, CNN claimed that Elon offered examples of fraud (which is false), but didn’t mention Gaza.

After airing Elon about scrutiny he claimed he was getting, WSJ did mention the Gaza question.

Asked about the Trump administration’s false assertion that the federal government sent $50 million worth of condoms to Gaza, the billionaire acknowledged that he might at times promote erroneous information. “Some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected,” Musk said. “Nobody is going to bat 1,000.”

But WSJ didn’t pursue the implication of it: that Elon got caught in a false claim.

Indeed, the only specific example that Trump mentioned was funding FEMA spent in NYC to house migrants — something approved by Congress — for which the staffers have been fired (as I’ll return to, Trump’s DOJ is already misrepresenting this in courts), was also based on an Elon lie.

The Trump administration said on Tuesday that it had fired four employees from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, including the agency’s chief financial officer, over their roles in disbursing federal funds to house migrants in New York City hotels.

The firings capped a startling chain of events that began on Monday with an early-morning social media post by Elon Musk who claimed, misleadingly, that FEMA had recently sent $59 million meant for disaster relief to New York City to pay for “high end hotels” for migrants, and who called the expenditure unlawful.

New York City officials raced to clarify that the federal money had been properly allocated by FEMA under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. last year, adding that it was not a disaster relief grant and had not been spent on luxury hotels.

Nonetheless, just two hours after Mr. Musk’s post, FEMA’s acting director, Cameron Hamilton, announced that the payments in question “have all been suspended” — even though most of the money had already been disbursed — and that “personnel will be held accountable.”

By Tuesday morning, roughly 24 hours after Mr. Musk’s post, the Trump administration had followed through on one part of its pledge.

Elon also made a false claim that they had turned on AIDS prevention — in one of the state lawsuits, Washington State presented a case where funds for AIDS prevention programs was being withheld.

This press conference consisted of Elon (and Trump) making false claim after false claim.

It also consisted of Trump lying over and over, without proof, about how one only needed to look for fraud to find it. No one asked why he hadn’t looked in his first term. Indeed, several times he blamed Biden for problems that have existed for decades.

And yet, at best, journalists instead claimed only that Elon and Trump simply presented no proof.

Donald Trump’s Incorrect Shell Game of Appropriated Spending

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Yesterday, I argued that Trump would not yet defy courts because he wants to invite the Supreme Court to sanction his dictatorial powers, and so wants a clear appellate record.

Boy howdy was that a short-lived theory. Trump says he is appealing two orders that are not yet ripe for appeal in two lawsuits involving Democratic Attorneys General — RI Judge John McConnell’s order and follow-up order that the government pay grants to the states [appeal] and Paul Engelmeyer’s order ordering Treasury to stay out of the payment system [request for stay pending appeal] — as well as in Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger’s challenge to his dismissal.

So by the time Republicans figure out how they’re going to use reconciliation to pass Trump’s policies, SCOTUS may have already agreed to gut Congress’ power of the purse.

But the record in the spending cases is anything but clean.

In one of the two cases challenging DOGE’s [sic] access to Treasury systems — the DC case before Colleen Kollar-Kotelly — DOJ decided after the fact that Marko Elez, the DOGE [sic] boy who had been granted a copy of Treasury systems to sandbox, was actually a Treasury employee.

With the benefit of more time to investigate the facts over the weekend, Defendants came to understand that Marko Elez, who, at the time of the hearing was employed by the Department of the Treasury, had not, in fact, been designated by the Treasury Department as a Special Government Employee (SGE), as counsel stated at the February 5 hearing. Mr. Elez, was, however, a Treasury Department employee. Treasury hired Mr. Elez as Special Advisor for Information Technology and Modernization, Departmental Offices, Office of the Chief of Staff, under Treasury’s authority to establish temporary transitional Schedule C positions. See 5 C.F.R. § 213.3302. Although Mr. Elez could have been designated as an SGE because he was slated to perform temporary duties either on a full-time or intermittent basis for not more than 130 days, the Treasury department Ethics office did not designate Mr. Elez as a Special Government Employee, meaning that he in fact had to comply with additional ethics requirements that are not required for SGE positions.

[snip]

Defendants also wish to notify the Court that, as stated in the Declaration of Thomas Krause, Jr., filed yesterday, in State of New York v. U.S. Department of the Treasury, Case No. 25 Civ. 01144 (JAV) (S.D.N.Y.), Mr. Elez resigned from Treasury on February 6, 2025, and he returned all Treasury and BFS equipment and credentials the same day. See Exhibit 1, ¶ 11. Moreover, in that case, on February 8, the Court entered a temporary restraining order restricting who may access Treasury systems. See Ex. 2. Those restrictions are in addition to those imposed by this Court’s Order entered February 6.

This filing included Thomas Krause’ declaration (submitted in the Treasury suit filed by states, which Trump is appealing) describing that Elez had resigned (but not addressing whether he has been reinstated; in retrospect, it seems the declaration was written specifically to avoid calling Elez a DGE). But it didn’t include the underlying filing in the case, which in a footnote confesses that Elez had a full copy of the BFS system in a sandbox, falsely claiming that Krause addressed this in his declaration.

2 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

This means that this correction doesn’t correct another false claim DOJ made to Kollar-Kotelly: that Elez’ access had been “read only.” And DOJ hasn’t told Judge Jeanette Vargas (to whom the New York case was assigned after Engelmeyer issued the TRO) that Elez is a full Treasury employee and so, if he has been reinstated, potentially excluded from Engelmeyer’s order.

In the USAID case, where Trump might believe he can coax a favorable ruling from his own first term appointee, Carl Nichols, Peter Marocco submitted a long, obnoxious declaration claiming they had to shut down USAID because of widespread insubordination among USAID employees. (I’d quote from it but the declaration breaks local rules requiring OCR filings.)

But after Marocco submitted that filing, the career AUSAs on the case submitted a declaration that included this correction.

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]

Marocco confesses that existing contracts “were paused” by him this way:

Furthermore, many of USAID’s pre-existing programs were in conflict with the directives and priorities of the President and Secretary, and therefore were inconsistent with the public interest and foreign policy judgments of the Executive Branch. Given the scale of these programs, an ad hoc review of these conflicting programs would unduly burden the execution of the President’s other foreign policy priorities. A blanket pause with a waive-in process was the more efficient and effective path.

He describes this notice Marco Rubio sent to Congress, which makes no mention of pausing ongoing work. Then he continues to describe how existing programs “were paused” by him.

The first step of this review, in essence, involved the majority of USAID pausing a substantial portion of its ongoing work — going “pencils down” — so the Secretary and USAID leadership could gain control of the organization that included some employees who had refused to comply with lawful directives by the President and Secretary, directives designed to identify wasteful or fraudulent programs or those contrary to the foreign policy interests of the United States. The pause of ongoing work and use of paid administrative leave have enabled Agency leadership to begin a thorough review of USAID’s operations and align its functions to the President’s and Secretary’s priorities, without continued noncompliance by former Agency leadership and management undermining those priorities. Pausing a majority of USAID’s work was, and remains, necessary to continue this thorough review into the noncompliance issues first identified, as well as to continue to examine USAID’s processes and the manner in which USAID funds its programs.

In other words, the people that Marocco calls noncompliant are noncompliant because they’re following the law, a law uncontroverted by Trump’s order or even Rubio’s notice to Congress.

As Nichols said when he issued the TRO ordering USAID to reinstate employees, whether or not this involved existing or only prospective contracts was an issue of some contention in the hearing.

Plaintiffs finally seek a TRO as to Secretary Rubio’s January 24, 2025 order freezing funding to USAID’s contractors. As a threshold matter, the Court notes that there are significant factual questions about what the practical effect of that order is. The government argued at the hearing that the order only prevents USAID from entering “new obligations of funding”—leaving it free to pay out contracts that it entered into prior to January 24, 2025—and indeed, the text of the order does seem to permit that result. Dep’t of State, Memo. 25 STATE 6828. Yet, plaintiffs maintained at the TRO hearing that payments on existing USAID grants have been frozen, preventing certain “contracting officers” employed by USAID from using agency funds to fulfill monetary commitments that the agency had already made.

This factual dispute is relevant to plaintiffs’ TRO arguments, but ultimately is not dispositive of them. Plaintiffs allege that, by some legal mechanism, USAID contracting officers can be held personally liable for existing contractual expenses that USAID is supposed to, but does not, pay. Plaintiffs thus argue that those officers face irreparable harm as a result of the funding freeze because they will be left “holding the bag” when USAID imminently fails to disburse funds. Separately, plaintiffs argue that the general population of USAID employees will be emotionally harmed by the agency’s inability to pay its contractors because they will be stuck “watching a slow speed train wreck” as the agency reneges on its humanitarian commitments.

Even assuming the funding freeze indeed prevents payments on existing grants in the way plaintiffs claim (instead of merely preventing USAID from entering new obligations, as the government suggested during the hearing), the Court concludes that plaintiffs have not demonstrated resulting irreparable harm.

But because this suit involves employees, rather than states or other recipients of funds from Treasury (as is the case in the two suits where DOJ has said it will appeal), these plaintiffs themselves are not being injured because they’re still being paid.

DOJ is hiding behind career AUSAs making claims they likely do not know are false so as to shut down appropriations that have already been approved.

And they are appealing each instance in which a plaintiff has genuinely been injured (the states and Hampton Dellinger’s firing) in hopes — or maybe expectation? — after the Circuits deny appeals that are not yet ripe, SCOTUS will step in and render Congress impotent.

Update: USAID Inspector General somehow managed to put together a report on the damage the chaos is having. Among other things, it finds that the cuts have incapacitated any means of vetting disbursements to keep them out of the hands of terrorists.

USAID describes partner vetting as a risk-mitigation tool to “ensure that American taxpayer funds do not benefit terrorists and their supporters.” Currently, partner vetting is required for programming in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Syria, West Bank/Gaza, and Yemen where designated terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, and Ansar Allah (also known as the Houthis) operate. Before the Agency awards a contract, grant, or cooperative agreement in these locations, the proposed awardee must submit to USAID data needed to vet the organization and its key personnel. The same vetting must be undertaken before an aid organization issues a subaward. While USAID OIG has previously identified gaps in the scope of partner vetting, 10 USAID staff have reported that the counter-terrorism vetting unit supporting humanitarian assistance programming has in recent days been told not to report to work (because staff have been furloughed or placed on administrative leave) and thus cannot conduct any partner vetting. This gap leaves USAID susceptible to inadvertently funding entities or salaries of individuals associated with U.S.-designated terrorist organizations.

It’s Still Not Clear Whether Elon’s DOGE Boys Are Reviewing, Taking, or Altering Government Networks

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The big news overnight in the legal fight to rein in DOGE is that SDNY Judge Paul Engelmayer has ordered Treasury to stop letting Elon Musk’s DOGE [sic] boys to snoop in Treasury’s payment system and destroy any copies of records already made from it. [docket]

the defendants are (i) restrained from granting access to any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees, other than to civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties within the Bureau of Fiscal Services who have passed all background checks and security clearances and taken all information security training called for in federal statutes and Treasury Department regulations; (ii) restrained from granting access to all political appointees, special government employees, and government employees detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department, to any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees; and (iii) ordered to direct any person prohibited above from having access to such information, records and systems but who has had access to such information, records, and systems since January 20, 2025, to immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems, if any;

This order comes on top of Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly’s order limiting access to Treasury’s payment system to normal employees and two DOGE [sic] employees, but the latter for read-only access [docket]:

Mr. Tom Krause, a Special Government Employee in the Department of the Treasury, as needed for the performance of his duties, provided that such access to payment records will be “read only”;

Mr. Marko Elez, a Special Government Employee in the Department of the Treasury, as needed for the performance of his duties, provided that such access to payment records will be “read only”;

Anna Bower parsed how DOJ substantiated (or not) that this was really “read only” access. Which was part of what a bunch of Democratic Attorneys General, led by Tish James, pointed to to claim they still needed a TRO, over and above the one issued by Kollar-Kotelly.

The temporary restraining order entered yesterday by the D.C. District Court in Alliance for Retired Americans v. Bessent, No. 1:25-cv-313 (D.D.C.) (“ARA”), does not change this conclusion. That order continues to permit two SGEs affiliated with DOGE to have access to the BFS payment records and payment systems, restricts their access to “read only” just for payment records and not payment systems, and does not direct that any copies of data from the systems made since the Agency Action took effect be destroyed. ARA, Dkt No. 13.

Now, I’m somewhat skeptical that Engelmeyer’s order, as issued, is sustainable. He issued the order in advance of the assigned judge on the case, Jeannette Vargas, and before the government had a chance to respond to the lawsuit.

But the lawsuits to enjoin DOGE [sic] are playing catch-up to the known facts.

And the known facts get us much closer to the being able to prove that Elon and his DOGE [sic] boys are altering code, if not hacking it, rather than simply reviewing its data.

The suit and TRO before Judge Kollar-Kotelly, filed by several unions, is entirely privacy focused.

The state AGs’ suit and TRO, which establish standing by pointing to the billions of dollars of payments they get from the Feds, argues that Elon is attempting to intercept payments to entities Trump doesn’t like. It asserts a claim repeatedly backed in public reporting, but affirmatively denied before Kollar-Kotelly: that the DOGE boys — here, self-proclaimed eugenicist Mark Elez, have altered code.

5. As of February 2, 2025, the President and Treasury Secretary, directed Treasury to grant expanded access to BFS payment systems to political appointees and “special government employees” for reasons that have yet to be provided, although one apparent purpose, upon information and belief. Upon information and belief, one purpose is to allow DOGE to advance a stated goal to block federal funds from reaching beneficiaries who do not align with the President’s political agenda. For example, DOGE was tasked with freezing payments issued by the U.S. Agency for International Development (“USAID”) and sought access to BFS payment systems to accomplish that goal.5 Virtually unfettered access to BFS payment systems was granted to at least one 25-year-old DOGE associate, Mark Elez, who, on information and belief, had the authority to view or modify numerous critical files.6 Indeed, reports indicate that Elez had administrative privileges over the BFS payment system’s code, giving him the ability to alter user permissions and “read and write” code—even if the associate had “read-only” access to the system’s data.7 Elez has since resigned from DOGE after being linked to racist social media posts.8

6. Around the same time that DOGE associates were unlawfully granted access to BFS systems, Mr. Musk began publicly stating his intention to recklessly freeze streams of federal funding without warning. On February 2, 2024, Mr. Musk posted on X (formerly Twitter), an online social media platform, that DOGE is “rapidly shutting down” various “illegal payments” made by the government to grant recipients, including payments to Lutheran Family Services to provide services to migrant children.9 That same day, Mr. Musk posted that his team “spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.” Since then, Mr. Musk has unambiguously called for the cancellation of various streams of federal funding. For instance, on February 6, 2025, he alleged: “Billions of taxpayer dollars to known FRAUDULENT entities are STILL being APPROVED by Treasury. This needs to STOP NOW!”10 Mr. Musk has also made wild, unsubstantiated claims about the BFS payment system and suggested putting it on the blockchain.11

6 A 25-Year-Old With Elon Musk Ties Has Direct Access to the Federal Payment System | WIRED

7 https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-associate-bfs-federal-payment-system/

8 DOGE Staffer Resigns Over Racist Posts

9 Elon Musk on X: “The @DOGE team is rapidly shutting down these illegal payments” / X

10 Elon Musk on X: “Billions of taxpayer dollars to known FRAUDULENT entities are STILL being APPROVED by Treasury. This needs to STOP NOW!” / X

11 Fatima Hussein, “Elon Musk’s task force has gained access to sensitive Treasury payment systems, sources say,” PBS News, Feb. 2, 2025, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/elon-musks-task-force-hasgained-access-to-sensitive-treasury-payment-systems-sources-say; Billy Bambrough, “‘This Needs To Stop Now’—Elon Musk Confirms Radical Doge U.S. Treasury Plan,” Forbes, Feb. 2, 2025, https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2025/02/02/this-needs-to-stop-now-elon-musk-confirmsradical-doge-us-treasury-plan/.

It cites Elon’s insane rants on Xitter as well.

In addition to the privacy concerns addressed in the union lawsuit, the AGs’ lawsuit raises concerns about appropriations (and separation of powers), but also cybersecurity, something not included in the union lawsuit.

139. The conduct of DOGE members presents a unique security risk to States and State residents whose data is held by BFS, given that DOGE employees have already reportedly set up an unauthorized commercial server at another federal agency without a privacy impact assessment as required by the 2002 E-Government Act. Access by DOGE employees to BFS is likely to present even greater risks to the security and privacy of States’ and their residents’ data.

140. Unsecure data is susceptible to cyber attacks and identity theft. Identity theft has a significant impact on States, beyond the financial well-being of its residents. It strains law enforcement resources, damages state economies through lost productivity and consumer confidence, and raises costs for the state to redress fraudulent claims made from stolen identities for unemployment and healthcare benefits. [my emphasis]

The AGs’ suit actually doesn’t cite a source for the claim that DOGE set up a commercial server at another agency. But I think the claim comes from a lawsuit Kel McClanahan filed against Office of Personnel Management, aiming to require it to stop the all-government email DOGE [sic] set up to offer its “Fork in the Road” severance offer. McClanahan first sued, with two plaintiffs who worked at government agencies, on January 27, for a violation of the E-Government Act. [docket]

In response, the government claimed that the main theory of injury, that the government had set up the all-government email without first doing a privacy assessment didn’t apply for employees, and was moot because it had since done one, which it included here. The privacy assessment claimed this was just a Office365 account.

1.3. Has a system security plan been completed for the information system(s) supporting the project? The Office 365 mailbox has been granted an Authorization to Operate (ATO) that includes a system security plan. The government computer storing the data is subject to standard security requirements, including limited PIV access.

And it claimed that the account included only employee data.

2.1. Identify the information the project collects, uses, disseminates, or maintains. GWES collects, maintains, and uses the names and government email addresses of federal government employees. GWES also collects and redistributes responses to emails sent to those addresses, which are limited to short, voluntary, non-identifying information. Specifically, GWES contains the following:

  • Employee Contact Data: GWES collects, maintains, and uses the names and government email addresses of federal government employees. Other identifying information is not used.
  • Employee Response Data: After an email is sent using Employee Contact Data, GWES collects, maintains, and redistributes short, voluntary responses.

It largely ignored McClenahan’s claim (based largely on Reddit posts) that DOGE had installed a separate server.

But other than speculation on social media, Plaintiffs provide no evidence that OPM took any of the actions that would trigger the PIA requirement under sections 208(b)(1)(A)(i)-(ii) of the E-Government Act. Moreover, Plaintiffs disregard entirely the fact that the E-Government Act does not require a PIA when an agency is seeking to collect information about “agencies, instrumentalities, or employees of the Federal Government.”

Since then, McClanahan filed an amended complaint, which added five more plaintiffs, none of whom are Executive Branch employees (for example, one works for the Library of Congress; another is a contractor), substantiating that some of the DOGE emails went to people outside the Executive Branch, and provided additional substantiation of the Reddit claims (including raising questions about whether this could even be Microsoft365).

30. Furthermore, prior to 20 January 2025, OPM lacked the technical capacity to send direct communications to all Executive Branch employees: But just days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration, OPM did not have the capability to send a mass email of that scale, according to a person familiar with the matter. To send mass emails, the agency had used govDelivery, a cloud communications service provided by public sector IT company Granicus, a different person familiar said. The govDelivery contract had restrictions on the volume of emails available to send without incurring added costs, and the agency would not have been able to reach 2.3 million people, the approximate number of all civilian federal employees, the second person added. David DiMolfetta, OPM’s new email system sparks questions about cyber compliance Nextgov/FCW (Jan. 28, 2025), available at https://www.nextgov.com/digitalgovernment/2025/01/opms-new-email-system-sparks-questions-about-cybercompliance/402555/ (last accessed Feb. 3, 2025).

31. Additionally, OPM has used Microsoft Office 365 since at least 2021, including Outlook 365 for email. OPM, Privacy Impact Assessment for OPM – Microsoft Office 365 (May 13, 2021), available at https://www.opm.gov/information-management/privacy-policy/privacypolicy/office-365-pia.pdf (last accessed Feb. 3, 2025). Outlook 365 cannot send more than ten thousand emails per day. See Microsoft, Exchange Online limits (Dec. 11, 2024), at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/exchange-online-servicedescription/exchange-online-limits#sending-limits-1 (last accessed Feb. 3, 2025).

32. According to the FedNews Message, “Instead [of using the normal channels], an on-prem (on-site) email server was setup [sic]. Someone literally walked into our building and plugged in an email server to our network to make it appear that emails were coming from OPM. It’s been the one sending those various ‘test’ message[s] [discussed below].” FedNews Message.

33. This statement is supported by recent reporting:

A new server being used to control these [OPM] databases has been placed in a conference room that Musk’s team is using as their command center, according to an OPM staffer. The staffer described the server as a piece of commercial hardware they believed was not obtained through the proper federal procurement process.

Caleb Ecarma & Judd Legum, Musk associates given unfettered access to private data of government employees Musk Watch (Feb. 3, 2025), at https://www.muskwatch.com/p/muskassociates-given-unfettered (last accessed Feb. 3, 2025).

34. Upon information and belief, this server and/or other systems linked to it are retaining information about every individual with a Government email address.

The amended complaint argues that the privacy impact was factually and legally insufficient.

39. Neither Biasini nor Hogan were OPM employees prior to 20 January.

40. Biasini worked at the Boring Company prior to 20 January. It is not currently known if he still works there.

41. Hogan worked at Comma.ai prior to 20 January. It is not currently known if he still works there.

42. The GWES PIA was both factually inaccurate and legally inadequate.

[snip]

54. Upon information and belief, OPM has not ensured review of a PIA for any of these systems by any legally sufficient Chief Information Officer or equivalent official.

55. OPM has not published a legally sufficient PIA or made such an assessment available for public inspection for any of these systems.

In other words, as these twin lawsuits against Treasury get closer to arguing that Elon is not looking for savings but instead altering the payment system, McClanahan continues to chase proof that Elon’s DOGE [sic] boys have added their own server which, by dint of sending emails to everyone (including people not employed by the Executive branch) with a .gov address, is collecting information on everyone with a .gov address.

Meanwhile, several other developments get closer to showing that Elon is hacking the government, not assessing it.

First, late this week, OPM removed access by some DOGE [sic] boys to more sensitive OPM systems.

Directives from the agency’s interim leadership issued late this week indicated that DOGE representatives should be withdrawn from two principal systems containing personally identifiable information for millions of federal employees, according to communications reviewed by The Post and people familiar with the developments who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

Those systems are called Enterprise Human Resources Integration and Electronic Official Personnel Folder. They hold sensitive information about employees of most federal agencies, including addresses, demographic profiles, salary details and disciplinary histories.

The Post reported Thursday morning that DOGE agents had gained access to those systems along with “administrative” access to OPM computer systems. That allowed them sweeping authority to install and modify software on government-supplied equipment and, according to two OPM officials, to alter internal documentation of their own activities.

Meanwhile, both Wired and WaPo have stories describing how a Booz Allen analyst described the DOGE [sic] access as an ““unprecedented insider threat risk;” the analyst was promptly fired.

The review, delivered Monday to Treasury officials by a contractor that runs a threat intelligence center for Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service, said that DOGE’s access to the payment network should be “immediately” suspended. It also urged Treasury to scour the payments system for any changes approved by affiliates of DOGE, which is overseen by billionaire Elon Musk, the correspondence shows. DOGE stands for Department of Government Efficiency.

A Treasury employee told The Post that the threat center is run by Booz Allen Hamilton, a large federal contractor. The company confirmed it runs the threat center, which it said is embedded within Treasury.

Late Friday, after this article appeared, Booz Allen said it had “removed” a subcontractor who wrote the warning and would seek to retract or amend it. “The draft report was prepared by a subcontractor to Booz Allen and contained unauthorized personal opinions that are not factual or consistent with our standards,” company spokesperson Jessica Klenk said. Booz Allen won more than $1 billion in multiyear U.S. government contracts last year.

In a separate communication a week ago, a high-ranking career official at Treasury also raised the issue of risks from DOGE access in a memo to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, including the potential breach of information that could lead to exposure of U.S. spies abroad, according to five people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect government deliberations. The memo included recommendations to mitigate risks, which Bessent approved, said another person familiar with the matter, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity.

And while the focus at Treasury has been on eugenicist Marko Elez, whom Elon has pushed to be reinstated, closer scrutiny into Edward “Big Balls” Coristine — who is at OPM and possibly HHS — has described he has ties to hackers. Brian Krebs, who was targeted by some people in that crowd, described screen shots that suggest Coristine may have been fired for leaking internal documents to a competitor.

Wired noted that Coristine only worked at Path for a few months in 2022, but the story didn’t mention why his tenure was so short. A screenshot shared on the website pathtruths.com includes a snippet of conversations in June 2022 between Path employees discussing Coristine’s firing.

According to that record, Path founder Marshal Webb dismissed Coristine for leaking internal documents to a competitor. Not long after Coristine’s termination, someone leaked an abundance of internal Path documents and conversations. Among other things, those chats revealed that one of Path’s technicians was a Canadian man named Curtis Gervais who was convicted in 2017 of perpetrating dozens of swatting attacks and fake bomb threats — including at least two attempts against our home in 2014.

And Krebs provides chatlogs showing some of Coristine’s former associates are taking notice.

The Com is the English-language cybercriminal hacking equivalent of a violent street gang. KrebsOnSecurity has published numerous stories detailing how feuds within the community periodically spill over into real-world violence.

When Coristine’s name surfaced in Wired‘s report this week, members of The Com immediately took notice. In the following segment from a February 5, 2025 chat in a Com-affiliated hosting provider, members criticized Rivage’s skills, and discussed harassing his family and notifying authorities about incriminating accusations that may or may not be true.

Bloomberg matched Krebs’ reporting on the reason for Coristine’s firing from Path.

“Edward has been terminated for leaking internal information to the competitors,” said a June 2022 message from an executive of the firm, Path Network, which was seen by Bloomberg News. “This is unacceptable and there is zero tolerance for this.”

A spokesperson for the Arizona-based hosting and data-security firm said Thursday: “I can confirm that Edward Coristine’s brief contract was terminated after the conclusion of an internal investigation into the leaking of proprietary company information that coincided with his tenure.”

Afterward, Coristine wrote that he’d retained access to the cybersecurity company’s computers, though he said he hadn’t taken advantage of it.

“I had access to every single machine,” he wrote on Discord in late 2022, weeks after he was dismissed from Path Network, according to messages seen by Bloomberg. Posting under the name “Rivage,” which six people who know him said was his alias, Coristine said he could have wiped Path’s customer-supporting servers if he’d wished. He added, “I never exploited it because it’s just not me.”

Bloomberg tied Coristine’s past even more closely to organized abuse campaigns.

JoeyCrafter was a member of Telegram groups called “Kiwi Farms Christmas Chat” and “Kiwi Farms 100% Real No Fake No Virus,” both referencing an online forum known for harassment campaigns. Typically, the site has been used to share the personal information of a target, encouraging others to harass them online, in-person, over the phone or by falsely alerting police to a violent crime or active shooter incident at their home.

This is the kind of DOGE boy Elon has thrown at government networks — and thus far, Republicans don’t seem to give a damn that Trump has given these DOGE [sic] boys access to data on virtually all Americans, employee or no.

One thing is clear, however: There’s not a shred of evidence these boys are doing what Elon claims they’re doing.

Most of these new facts — the seeming proof that OPM isn’t doing what it claimed, the insider threat warning, the ties to hackers — are not in the AGs’ suit. And by the time the suits catch up to the facts, the complaints may look quite different.

Update: Corrected that none of the OPM plaintiffs are employees of US Courts (though they did get an email).

Trump Appointee Carl Nichols Enjoins Trump from Stranding USAID Workers

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There was a big development (and a few smaller ones) in DOGE’s [sic] attempts to start shutting down big parts — Treasury and Office of Personnel Management — of the government.

Before I look at those, I want to look at the order Trump appointee Carl Nichols (a former Clarence Thomas clerk) issued in a lawsuit two unions filed to enjoin the USAID shutdown.

The unions claimed the USAID shutdown violated:

  • Separation of powers
  • Take care clause
  • Administrative Procedure Act because it was in excess of statutory authority
  • Administrative Procedure Act because it was arbitrary and capricious

They described the death and destruction the shutdown has caused and will cause.

The agency’s collapse has had disastrous humanitarian consequences. Among countless other consequences of defendants’ reckless dissolution of the agency, halting USAID work has shut down efforts to prevent children from dying of malaria, stopped pharmaceutical clinical trials, and threatened a global resurgence in HIV.40 Deaths are inevitable. Already, 300 babies that would not have had HIV, now do.41 Thousands of girls and women will die from pregnancy and childbirth.42 Without judicial intervention, it will only get worse. The actions defendants plan to take on Friday will “doom billions of dollars in projects in some 120 countries, including security assistance for Ukraine and other countries, as well as development work for clean water, job training and education, including for schoolgirls under Taliban rule in Afghanistan.”43

And they asked for a Temporary Restraining Order on certain actions the government took, which Nichols (after a hearing) construed this way:

Plaintiffs frame their TRO request as pertaining to one overarching event: the allegedly “illegal and unconstitutional dismantling of USAID.” Mot. at 9. But at the TRO hearing, it became clear that plaintiffs’ allegations of irreparable injury flow principally from three government actions: (1) the placement of USAID employees on administrative leave; (2) the expedited evacuation of USAID employees from their host countries; and (3) Secretary Rubio’s January 24, 2025 order “paus[ing] all new obligations of funding . . . for foreign assistance programs funded by or through . . . USAID.” Dep’t of State, Memo. 25 STATE 6828. The Court finds that a TRO is warranted as to the first two actions but not the third.

The request for a Temporary Restraining Order included declarations describing the injuries the shutdown has and will cause, including this one describing the harm a sudden move will cause to an employee’s two special needs kids.

This directive will have profound impacts on the wellbeing of my kids’ personal, educational and psychological development. I have two children at Post: a seven-year-old in first grade and a two-year-old in preschool. Both have received “Class 2” medical clearances from State MED and thus they receive a Special Needs Education Allowance (SNEA) for occupational therapy (OT). My older child has documented gross and fine motor skill delays due to prenatal intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR). My younger child also has documented gross and fine motor skill delays due to torticollis. Both children receive OT services in conjunction with their schooling in a purposefully integrated manner, a best practice promoted by specialists at the State Department ‘s Office of Child and Family Program (CFP) who oversee their care. Additionally, my older child who is in first grade was recently diagnosed by a licensed medical professional with ADHD and anxiety. They are now receiving Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) at Post from a licensed therapist and the Embassy Medical Unit is tracking their care.

Uprooting my children from their school, OT service providers, and child therapist in the middle of the school year will undoubtedly set back their development with possible lifelong implications. In the United States, we currently have no home or ties to a specific school district. My kids have lived overseas nearly their entire life in service of our country. There will be an inevitable gap – possibly a long one – before they are back in a stable routine of integrated schooling, OT services, and psychological services, a routine that medical professionals have determined they need to overcome developmental delays, and in the case of my seven-year-old, ADHD.

Or this one, describing the danger of losing access to security protections in high risk locations.

Personal Safety Risks: The shutdown could have life-threatening consequences for PSC colleagues serving in high-risk locations. The abrupt shutdown of government devices and access was highly reckless to colleagues in active conflict zones, such as Ukraine and Somalia. Friends and colleagues lost access to the Embassy safety communication channels, and many could no longer use a safety app called “Scry Panic 2.0,” which is installed on government-furnished equipment. In addition, many PSCs serving USAID abroad were unsure if they remained under U.S. chief-of-mission authority, which guarantees access to U.S. Government resources to ensure staff safety and accountability, including for emergency evacuations. U.S. Department of State officials, who were tasked with developing a plan to get USAID officials home, had no instructions or information on the next steps.

Many USAID PSCs work in high-risk environments where access to security resources is critical. I have heard from overseas colleagues who have now lost access to Diplomatic Security systems, meaning they can no longer coordinate security protocols, evacuations, or emergency procedures. Without official communication from USAID leadership, these PSCs remain in dangerous locations without clarity on whether they still have institutional protection. Others fear that in the event of a medical emergency or security threat, they will be forced to rely on personal funds or external assistance, as USAID has not provided guidance on whether existing security protocols still apply to them.

A risk exacerbated, the declaration explains, by the false claims launched against USAID staffers.

PSCs are also at increased risk of physical harm due to the threats, harassment, and misinformation that have accompanied the shutdown. The reckless rhetoric spread on social media and in political discourse has put USAID personnel at risk. I have heard from colleagues who have been labeled as criminals, supporters of terrorists, or Marxists—simply for doing their jobs.

High-profile figures, including Elon Musk and his supporters, have fueled this misinformation, creating a hostile environment where USAID staff fear for their personal safety. With individuals involved in the January 6th insurrection now released, there is a heightened sense of danger that USAID employees could be targeted next. I have colleagues who no longer feel safe in their own homes, with some refusing to leave family members alone out of fear that someone radicalized by online misinformation may try to harm them.

Judge Nichols cited both of those injuries in enjoining the government. He cited the latter risk when disputing the government claim that putting 2,700 USAID employees (500 of whom were already put on leave, the others would have been as of yesterday) was just a “garden-variety personnel action.”

Taking the TRO factors somewhat out of order and beginning with irreparable injury, the Court finds that plaintiffs have adequately demonstrated that their members are facing irreparable injury from their placement on administrative leave, and that more members would face such injury if they were placed on administrative leave tonight. Many USAID personnel work in “highrisk environments where access to security resources is critical.” ECF No. 9-10 ¶ 14. No future lawsuit could undo the physical harm that might result if USAID employees are not informed of imminent security threats occurring in the countries to which they have relocated in the course of their service to the United States. The government argued at the TRO hearing that placing employees on paid administrative leave is a garden-variety personnel action unworthy of court intervention. But administrative leave in Syria is not the same as administrative leave in Bethesda: simply being paid cannot change that fact.

And he cited the former injury when ruling that immediately recalling the officers overseas would create real injury, one not counterbalanced by any pressing government need.

Specifically, whereas USAID’s “usual process” provides foreign service officers with six to nine months’ notice before an international move, plaintiffs allege that USAID has now issued a “mandatory recall notice” that would require more than 1400 foreign service officers to repatriate within 30 days. Mot. at 18.

Plaintiffs have demonstrated that this action, too, risks inflicting irreparable harm on their members. Recalling employees on such short notice disrupts long-settled expectations and makes it nearly impossible for evacuated employees to adequately plan for their return to the United States. For instance, one of plaintiffs’ members attests that, if he is recalled from his foreign post, he will be forced to “[u]proot” his two special-needs-children from school in the middle of the year, “set[ting] back their development with possible lifelong implications.” ECF No. 9-5 ¶ 6. He also attests that, because his family has no home in the United States and his children have “lived overseas nearly their entire life,” there will be “an inevitable gap—possibly a long one—before they are back in a stable routine . . . that medical professionals have determined they need to overcome developmental delays.” Id. Other of plaintiffs’ members tell similar stories, explaining that the abrupt recall would separate their families, interrupt their medical care, and possibly force them to “be back in the United States homeless.” See ECF ECF No. 9-4 ¶ 7; ECF No. 9-5 ¶ 8; ECF No. 9-9 ¶ 6. Even if a future lawsuit could recoup any financial harms stemming from the expedited evacuations—like the cost of breaking a lease or of abandoning property that could not be sold prior to the move—it surely could not recoup damage done to educational progress, physical safety, and family relations.

But perhaps the most important language in Judge Nichols’ short opinion was his disdain for the government’s flimsy claims that the USAID employees have to be put on leave because of vague claims of fraud.

When the Court asked the government at the TRO hearing what harm would befall the government if it could not immediately place on administrative leave the more than 2000 employees in question, it had no response— beyond asserting without any record support that USAID writ large was possibly engaging in “corruption and fraud.”

That is, when pushed to justify this purge to a sympathetic Trump appointee, DOJ simply couldn’t substantiate claims of fraud.

To be sure, Nichols only enjoined the government until February 14. And he didn’t reverse the freeze on funding — notwithstanding that the government likely lied in saying that the freeze only applied to prospective funding obligations.

As a threshold matter, the Court notes that there are significant factual questions about what the practical effect of that order is. The government argued at the hearing that the order only prevents USAID from entering “new obligations of funding”—leaving it free to pay out contracts that it entered into prior to January 24, 2025—and indeed, the text of the order does seem to permit that result. Dep’t of State, Memo. 25 STATE 6828. Yet, plaintiffs maintained at the TRO hearing that payments on existing USAID grants have been frozen, preventing certain “contracting officers” employed by USAID from using agency funds to fulfill monetary commitments that the agency had already made.

But Trump’s administration had a chance to substantiate the wild claims of fraud and abuse that Elon Musk has leveled at USAID.

And Carl Nichols was unimpressed.

How to [Attempt to] Get Republicans to Object

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Axios did a piece the other day on the pressure by progressive groups on Democrats to fight harder. It included several quotes saying, “you’ve got the wrong focus.”

Why it matters: Some lawmakers feel their grassroots base is setting expectations too high for what Democrats can actually accomplish as the minority party in both chambers of Congress.

  • Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told Axios: “What I think we need to do more is: Put the onus on Republicans, so that the calls that we’re getting are directed toward Republicans.”
  • “There has definitely been some tension the last few days where people felt like: you are calling the wrong people. You are literally calling the wrong people,” said one House Democrat.

Blumenthal and his anonymous colleague are not wrong. While Democrats have had some splashy events this week — staging protests at one after another Agency that Musk’s DOGE [sic] has taken over, sending letters and more letters, and filibustering all night before Russ Vought was confirmed on a party line vote — such efforts had the sum effect of getting press attention, laying a foundation going forward, and killing time until the inevitable Vought confirmation. But it didn’t stop the inevitable — nor could it.

Indeed, in the time since Dems have ratcheted up their efforts, Trump has actually had more success with wavering Republicans, security party line votes for two of his most outrageous nominations, Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr, from Senators like Susan Collins, Bill Cassidy, and Todd Young. Trump is doing something — it may be primary threats, it may be quiet concessions on other issues, like the Canada tariffs — to get these Senators to vote against their own power.

Meanwhile, contra a really asinine column from Ken Klippenstein conflating a legal strategy largely pursued by civil society with the  media strategy described above, with a few exceptions (like one of two lawsuits that have enjoined Trump from halting grant funding), the lawsuits that have succeeded in slowing the implementation of Trump’s work have been launched by civil society, including unions.

Some of what has been achieved in recent days (see JustSecurity’s Litigation Tracker for others):

  • A bunch of retirees got Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to limit any access and dissemination of Treasury data to two DOGE people (one of whom resigned after WSJ exposed his support for eugenics), until further litigation. This suit also got statements from DOJ about the access that conflict with public reporting, which may be useful going forward.
  • Some unions got Judge George O’Toole to delay the deadline for the “fork” resignation offer until Monday, allowing further legislation.
  • A dispute over whether DOJ can share a list of FBI agents who worked the January 6 cases outside of DOJ will continue until tomorrow.
  • Both Judge John McConnell (in a case brought by Democratic Attorneys General) and Judge Loren AliKhan (in a case brought by NGOs) enjoined Trump from withholding grant funds.

These are legal judgments, though, and in at least the latter case, Trump seems to be either defying it or unable to reverse steps already taken. Most notably, Head Start programs around the country are having problems accessing their funding, in spite of both the dual injunctions and the Trump administration claims that Head Start would have been exempt anyway.

[A] growing number of Head Start grant recipients, which operate on razor-thin margins, have reported delays in accessing approved grant funding, according to the National Head Start Assn. While most Head Start programs have not experienced major disruptions, some have had no other option but to close down services, while others are scrambling to find other funding sources to keep their doors open, the association said.

As of Thursday — 10 days after the federal freeze was announced — the association said at least 52 programs across 22 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico are still experiencing funding delays. The programs, which serve nearly 20,000 children from birth through age 5, report receiving “pending” or “in process” messages when they request to draw down funds from their grant from an online payment system.

Something more certain happened with USAID. When DOGE [sic] started IDing things to defund, Republicans like John Cornyn and Bill Cassidy called to exempt PEPFAR, the George HW Bush program funding AIDS drugs in poor countries. But even though PEPFAR reportedly got a waiver from cuts, AIDS drugs nevertheless remained in warehouses, inaccessible.

Marco Rubio, who like the sucker he is was belatedly named Acting USAID Administrator just as this started to blow up, tried to avoid accountability for the problems, suggesting that programs were simply incompetent to ask for a waiver.

But Rubio, on a Latin America tour, also said he was issuing waivers which would allow for “immediate” and “life-saving” aid to continue after President Donald Trump ordered a 90-day suspension on taking office.

“I don’t know how much more clear we can be than that,” he told reporters in Costa Rica.

“I would say if some organization is receiving funds from the United States and does not know how to apply a waiver, then I have real questions about the competence of that organization, or I wonder whether they’re deliberately sabotaging it for purposes of making a political point,” said Rubio, a former Republican senator who long voted for foreign assistance.

Nevertheless, Rubio fired all but around three hundred USAID workers (of more than 10,000), waggling around a word, “insubordination,” Trump flunkies elsewhere are using.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who took control of U.S.A.I.D. as acting administrator on Monday, insisted during a Fox News interview this week that the takeover was “not about getting rid of foreign aid.”

“But now we have rank insubordination,” he said, adding that U.S.A.I.D. employees had been “completely uncooperative, so we had no choice but to take dramatic steps to bring this thing under control.”

On Thursday, he reiterated the promise that some workers would be offered exemptions to minimize the hardship of the sudden recall. The pledge was made first in a notice put on the U.S.A.I.D. website Tuesday night that announced that employees around the globe would be put on administrative leave or let go by Friday.

Two unions that represent some of those affected — represented by Democracy Forward, the same legal NGO behind some other lawsuits — sued. In their complaint, they described some of the havoc caused already and explained why Rubio’s chaotic efforts to disclaim the damage fail.

23. As a result of these actions, most functions of the agency immediately halted, with life-threatening consequences. Clinics stopped distributing HIV medication.12 Staff who operate humanitarian operations at refugee camps in Syria were told to stop work, leaving thousands of people vulnerable to instability and violence at the hands of ISIS.13 Soup kitchens that feed nearly a million people in famine-stricken Khartoum were shut down.14 Toddlers in Zambia were deprived of rehydration salts to treat life-threatening diarrhea.15 Doctors at U.S.-funded medical facilities in Sudan that treat severely malnourished children were forced to choose whether to obey Defendants’ orders and “immediately stop their operations or to let up to 100 babies and toddlers die.”16

[snip]

25. Second, on February 1, 2025, the State Department announced a “limited waiver” for “[l]ife-saving HIV care and treatment services, inclusive of HIV testing and counseling, prevention and treatment of opportunistic infections including TB, laboratory services, and procurement and supply chain commodities/medicines” and “[p]revention of mother-to-child transmission services, inclusive of commodities/test kits, medicines and PrEP for pregnant and breastfeeding women.”19

26. These waivers offered little –to no relief for USAID partners who suffered from defendants’ freeze in funding. They were not “self-executing by virtue of the announcement,”20 so contractors and grantees scrambled to reach USAID contacts to ascertain if they were covered by the waiver. But because agency staff had already suffered severe cuts, groups doing lifesaving work were unsure how to request a waiver and received little to no information about the status of such requests.21

Because of the chaotic nature of the attack on the US government, because this is all being done by men who excel, first and foremost, at dodging accountability for their failures, this will continue to happen. Even if Trump claims to exempt stuff, things will still get shut down.

It will not change without some (more public and more aggressive than they’re already provably doing) pushback from Republicans, too. Particularly if and when it becomes clear that Trump is simply defying court orders.

And that’s why Richard Blumenthal is not wrong. There needs to be far more attention focused on Republicans. It’s far too easy — and defeatist — for Democrats to imagine that screaming louder at Democrats will fix this, because the most it will do is provide some nice PR moments.

That’s a huge task. But not impossible, particularly not if more people focus on better messaging to Republicans rather than louder yelling at Democrats.

Make the damage visible and accountable to Republicans

I said from the start of this that the effort to shut down government will make visible things that government does that most people ignore. And the effects are already being felt — and felt in red states. As one example, in the lawsuit against OMB’s recision order, plaintiffs provided this declaration from a tiny West Virginia non-profit helping disabled people stay in their own homes, describing how losing funding has led it to lay off staffers and contemplate withholding services. Among the people affected are an 86-year old woman they bring to her dialysis appointments and a 19-year old who just aged out of foster care who is being trained to work at Goodwill.

These aren’t AOC or Chuck Schumer’s constituents. They are represented by Shelley Moore Capito, Jim Justice, Riley Moore, and Carol Miller (the latter of whom took to YouTube the other day insisting that Trump would take care of WV).

It is more urgent for progressive groups to identify these stories and get calls to Republicans than to flood Democrats with more calls. Better yet, buy billboards advertising how these members of Congress are letting the richest man in the world disrupt the life of an 86-year old diabetes patient.

Importantly, much of this needs to be predictive. Rather than saying, “Trump gave access to grandma’s social security and granny may not get her check,” Democrats should always pin this on Republicans: “Mike Crapo did nothing after DOGE [sic] seized control of Treasury’s computer, and that may lead to Idaho small businesses losing their government loans.

As one of a handful of Senators who’ll always be among potential swing voters, Susan Collins needs to be a specific focus — not because it’ll work, but because she needs to be held accountable for the effect of her capitulations. In an interview with a local outlet, she listed a number of actions she deems illegal, but said she’d still vote for Russ Vought, even though he promised to pursue those illegal activities.

“I do intend to support his nomination,” Collins said. “If there are impoundments, I believe it will end up in court, and my hope is the court will rule in favor of the 1974 impoundment and budget control act.”

Time to start listing all the ways Vought’s foreseeable impoundments of appropriations will hurt Maine residents. More importantly, time to point out that Collins’ role atop the Appropriations Committee — one reason Maine voters might prefer her against a Democrat — is useless if Vought makes her role meaningless.

Until Republican Members of Congress are made to answer to the harm they’re allowing Trump do to their constituents, they’ll instead continue to respond to Elon’s more visceral threats. That vacuum needs to be filled with localized accountability.

Demonstrate the hypocrisy

Republicans know these cuts are disastrous. Most are just too cowardly to say that in public, making it more likely that any lobbying they’re doing to reverse course is in direct conversations with Trump where other quid pro quos (such as votes for unqualified nominees) might be arranged.

But there are ways to make them do so: by relying on their past statements. For example, CNN has a compilation of all the things Marco Rubio has said about USAID.

Rubio on Monday accused the agency of operating as a “global charity,” telling Fox News, “They have basically evolved into an agency that believes that they’re not even a US government agency.”

But a CNN KFile review of Rubio’s past comments shows he has been for more than a decade a major supporter of foreign aid and USAID, which in fiscal year 2023 distributed more than $40 billion in foreign aid to more than 160 different countries.

Rubio’s most recent comments directly contradict years of support and praise he has directed toward USAID, including a tweet he posted in February 2017 that said, “Foreign Aid is not charity. We must make sure it is well spent, but it is less than 1% of budget & critical to our national security.”

During his Fox News interview Monday, Rubio also dismissed concerns that scaling back USAID’s presence could allow China to expand its influence in developing nations.

But just three years ago, Rubio argued the exact opposite, urging the Biden administration in a 2022 letter to prioritize USAID’s funding as a key tool to “counter the Chinese Communist Party’s expanding global influence.”

>A longtime defender of US foreign aid, Rubio pushed back against criticism of the agency in repeated comments uncovered by CNN — defending aid as both vital and a small part of America’s overall fiscal budget.

“We don’t have to give foreign aid. We do so because it furthers our national interest. That’s why we give foreign aid. Now obviously there’s a component to foreign aid that’s humanitarian in scope, and that’s important too,” he said in February 2013.

These comments — and similar ones from other Republicans — can be used as a way to respond to the flood of disinformation from Elon and Karoline Leavitt.

Get hawkish

By abandoning US soft power overseas, the US creates a vacuum for China to fill. Many of the other actions Trump has taken — like insisting that a list of recent CIA recruits, many focused on China, be sent in unclassified email — imperil US efforts to counter China.

Both Elon and Trump have their own venal reasons to suck up to China. And Trump appears to be preparing to sell out Taiwan to China.

This is a specific example of the effort to warn of potential effects, one that could and should deploy the most hawkish language Republicans adopt (albeit focused on the country and the harm to US standing Republicans say China’s rise poses, not the people), not least because it’s an easy way to make Republicans look weak.

Unlike the focus on the 86-year old granny in West Virginia, this is divorced, somewhat, from the pain affecting Americans. But it is nevertheless a visceral issue for many Republicans and their self worth. Trump is selling them out. Make that clear.

No focus on Republicans will have an immediate effect. I’m not saying it will. But when things start falling apart, it’ll mean Democrats have already laid the groundwork for holding Republicans — all of them, not just Musk — accountable. That may not be enough, in the short term, to cure them of their terror of Trump and Musk. But it stops letting them off easy.

Stephen Miller Claimed Elon Musk Was the One Elected in November

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Yesterday, Stephen Miller RTed a propagandist’s attack on Jamie Raskin, in which he reframed Raskin’s legal points — that Congress has the power of the purse, that Elon Musk cannot eliminate agencies created by Congress — by suggesting they were an attack on DOGE’s [sic] efforts to “eliminat[e] waste and fraud.”

Miller suggested Democrats — defending the Constitution — hate democracy, because (Miller said) “voters have the right to elect a president to drain the permanent unelected DC swamp.”

With his RT, the Deputy Chief of Staff of Donald Trump’s White House suggested Elon had been elected.

Elon. Not Trump.

According to Politico, propagandists were posting this argument on Xitter, with Elon RTing them to assert his own legitimacy.

On X, Musk reposted accounts arguing Americans voted for Musk to play a major role in the Trump administration.

But there’s a big difference between Draino and Eric Daugherty suggesting that Elon, not Trump, was elected, and Stephen Miller doing so.

Meanwhile, this NYT article suggests that the White House isn’t in control of what Elon is doing.

Senior White House staff members have at times also found themselves in the dark, according to two officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive discussions. One Trump official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said Mr. Musk was widely seen as operating with a level of autonomy that almost no one can control.

[snip]

This time, however, he carries the authority of the president, who has bristled at some of Mr. Musk’s ready-fire-aim impulses but has praised him publicly.

“He’s a big cost-cutter,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Sunday. “Sometimes we won’t agree with it and we’ll not go where he wants to go. But I think he’s doing a great job. He’s a smart guy.”

[snip]

Several former and current senior government officials — even those who like what he is doing — expressed a sense of helplessness about how to handle Mr. Musk’s level of unaccountability. At one point after another, Trump officials have generally relented rather than try to slow him down. Some hoped Congress would choose to reassert itself.

Mr. Trump himself sounded a notably cautionary note on Monday, telling reporters: “Elon can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval. And we’ll give him the approval where appropriate, where not appropriate, we won’t.”

“If there’s a conflict,” he added, “then we won’t let him get near it.”

It depicts a fight that — last week — was pitched as proof that Chief of Staff Susie Wiles had managed to limit Elon’s access to Trump by denying him an office in the West Wing as instead, at least as Elon tells it, a concession about office size.

At one point, Mr. Musk sought to sleep over in the White House residence. He sought and was granted an office in the West Wing but told people that it was too small. Since then, he has told friends he is reveling in the trappings of the opulent Secretary of War Suite in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where he has worked some days.

And amid all that, it notes Elon’s ties to Miller, linking a story that focuses on immigration, not destroying government.

He has a close working relationship with Mr. Trump’s top policy adviser, Stephen Miller, who shares Mr. Musk’s contempt for much of the federal work force.

Now, for all its star power, this is not the article you should read to find out what’s going on in the agencies. Wired has, generally, been leading the pack on that front, having IDed the boys Elon has installed, confirmed one of those boys has control over Treasury’s payment systems, recorded the Musk boys’ platitudes about AI, and found that even after PEPFAR was exempted from USAID cuts, it remains unfunded. And if you want to understand where access by these boys to the government’s HR records will lead, read Mike Masnick.

But I want to compare the impotence portrayed by NYT — the refashioning of the office space fight, the anonymous confirmation that few if anyone in the White House know what Elon’s doing, the on the record quotes from a clueless Trump, a lying Karoline Leavitt, and … from Stephen Miller’s spouse, Katie, who has been installed in Elon’s group, that nothing will go wrong here — with the relative success of the two billionaires’ days yesterday.

Trump got his ass handed to him.

After promising big tariffs on our closest trading partners yesterday, he twice announced one month delays on the tariffs, tied to concessions that “Sleepy Joe Biden” actually negotiated, in one case four years ago. Worse still, both Claudia Sheinbaum and Justin Trudeau beat Trump to the microphone, and in Canada’s case, their Ambassador showed up on Fox News to make it clear Canada already agreed to the things Trump was hailing as a big concession, while Biden was still President. Better yet, some journalists have learned the lesson of the Colombia “negotiation,” in which the same thing happened. Leavitt’s lies about concessions may get less and less effective, moving forward, each time she tries to claim that Trump is some great dealmaker.

I suspect that between the time Trump announced tariffs and the time he capitulated, Senators and possibly even Rupert Murdoch told him how insane the tariffs were. I further suspect that these discussions involved a quid pro quo, perhaps tying a Susan Collins vote for Tulsi Gabbard, for example, in exchange for a reversal on tariffs that might affect Maine.

However Trump was talked off that cliff, he got his ass handed to him.

He didn’t even entirely succeed at claiming this was a fight over immigration and fentanyl trafficking, when that excuse was obvious bullshit as it pertains to Canada.

The one bright spot of his day was making a big announcement about a Sovereign Wealth Fund, yet another piece of paper Stephen Miller handed him to sign, probably, but a promise that, like the plan to annex Canada and purchase Greenland, remains unfunded and undiscussed in heated talks in the House and Senate about how to do reconciliation.

As I suggested Friday, so long as Stephen Miller keeps handing Trump papers to sign, he seems content to imagine he’s the President.

Meanwhile, Elon did succeed in getting the Trump-whisperers at NYT to accept that his attack on bureaucracy, which started with an agency with a $40 billion budget, 1% of government expenditures, and has never glanced at the agency with an $800 billion budget that has never passed an audit.

Mr. Musk has told Trump administration officials that to fulfill their mission of radically reducing the size of the federal government, they need to gain access to the computers — the systems that house the data and the details of government personnel, and the pipes that distribute money on behalf of the federal government.

Mr. Musk has been thinking radically about ways to sharply reduce federal spending for the entire presidential transition. After canvassing budget experts, he eventually became fixated on a critical part of the country’s infrastructure: the Treasury Department payment system that disburses trillions of dollars a year on behalf of the federal government.

Mr. Musk has told administration officials that he thinks they could balance the budget if they eliminate the fraudulent payments leaving the system, according to an official who discussed the matter with him. It is unclear what he is basing that statement on. The federal deficit for 2024 was $1.8 trillion. The Government Accountability Office estimated in a report that the government made $236 billion in improper payments — three-quarters of which were overpayments — across 71 federal programs during the 2023 fiscal year.

[snip]

In private conversations, Mr. Musk has told friends that he considers the ultimate metric for his success to be the number of dollars saved per day, and he is sorting ideas based on that ranking.

“The more I have gotten to know President Trump, the more I like him. Frankly, I love the guy,” Mr. Musk said in a live audio conversation on X early Monday morning. “This is our shot. This is the best hand of cards we’re ever going to have.”

This is ridiculous garbage, as are Elon’s daily claims of money he has saved (which NYT accedes elsewhere). You’re not going to eliminate the deficit by shutting down USAID. You will, however, cut off a lot of funding to Ukraine, with Russia laughing gleefully as it watches. As Elon moves onto reviewing individual employees, you’ll cut off employees who’ll have to be replaced by more expensive contractors.

You won’t cut spending appreciably.

Nothing Elon is doing will balance the budget. Nothing Elon is doing will make government more efficient. Hell, his AI boys can’t even tell the difference between a condom and a hospital, and as a direct result, Trump keeps making transparently bogus claims about Gaza funding.

But as we try to get a sense of where the attacks on democracy are coming from, it’s worth noting that the first thing that happened — before the Senate installed one after another of Trumps’ wildly unqualified nominees, and before Congressional Republicans have decided how to defund government themselves — Elon has gone in and started changing code at government agencies, and done so with feeble claims of approval from the White House.

Meanwhile, people who seem to answer to Miller — people like Acting DC US Attorney Ed Martin, one of three January 6 insurrectionists salted through government so far — appear to be working for Elon, not Trump.

Update, February 5: Both NBC and Atlantic are reporting that Susie Wiles claims to be in charge of what Elon is doing.