Here is a topic that isn’t as consequential in itself as the wholesale and illegal reshaping of the federal government. But it is of a piece with it and captures the mood and pretensions of DOGE and Trumpism generally. News emerged a few days ago that the FBI has created a 20-person security detail for FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino. Bongino is the first deputy director who doesn’t come from within the FBI. That’s customary because often the director is a judge or a prosecutor who lacks knowledge of the agency from the inside. The director’s deputy, as a veteran of the bureau, provides that operational knowledge and thus a hands-on managerial control. Since Bongino has been a failed political candidate and podcaster for as long as he wore any kind of uniform, one might be tempted to ascribe this security detail to his personal quirks and pretensions. But it’s actually pervasive across the Trump administration, often especially within DOGE and with DOGE-adjacent appointees, whose firing squads often show up at target agencies with security details of uncertain origin.
What the DOGE security fetish is all about can be a bit hard to say. Self-importance and tough guy-ism is at least half of it. But it also has at least some of its roots in the culture of billionairedom. As I’ve described before, one recurrent line of reasoning in the billionaire class is that billionaires are so powerful that they need higher levels of government protection. Being so powerful can get people mad. So the government needs to step in and get between the billionaires and people who are mad at them. I first noticed this a few years ago in the wake of Citizens United. There was a big push not only to allow the ultra-rich to contribute into political campaigns on an unlimited basis but to let them do so anonymously, unlike everyone else who has to disclose their contributions. The argument was that you can’t really exercise your right to contribute $1 million to a political campaign if that contribution runs the risk of creating personal bad publicity for yourself or your business or boycotts or whatever. As you can see, to the extent this is a logic, it’s a rather pernicious one.
We’ve seen something similar with DOGE. With DOGE, in each department or agency there is usually an appointee enforcer who actually executes the DOGE decisions. That person is either Senate-confirmed or officially “acting” and has the statutory power to order people to do what DOGE wants. There are many examples of those DOGE-backed enforcer appointees walking the halls of this or that department or agency with a personal security detail in tow. Mind you, this is inside a tightly secured government building you can’t even get into if you don’t work there. So, some of it is performative tough-guy-ism and menace, the rapper hitting the club with his security team and all that. But when people ask, “why the F do you need a security detail here in the office?” the answer usually amounts to, “Hey, we’re here firing everybody and generally owning the libs and maybe breaking some laws to do it. What if someone gets mad and goes off?”
As I said, it’s a pernicious logic.
Which brings us to Keith Sonderling.
I first came across the name of Sonderling when he drew the assignment of leading a DOGE firing squad into the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the agency which among other things funds many of the rural and small town libraries across the country. But Sonderling’s main gig is as Deputy Secretary of Labor. And it’s there that he felt the need for some muscle in the workplace.
Now, the Labor Department plays a key and often under-appreciated role in the broader economy of governance. But it’s not what you’d call the most kinetic of departments, certainly not for the deputy secretary. The department does have a security office for the sole purpose of providing personal security for the secretary. But that’s it. Not for anyone one else. But Sonderling felt he needed his own security detail. At first I thought he might be worried about feral librarians. But that wasn’t it. There’s also an Office of Inspector General, which has a small security team. One of its roles is to provide security for department staff who face some sort of threat in the course of their work. But that’s the key. It has to be in the context of some kind of investigation. But there hadn’t been any threats. I’m told the only things he could point to were “weird looks” he felt he was getting from people around the department. There was also an email which someone who had been DOGE-fired from another department sent to a mutual acquaintance. The emailer called Sonderling a toady who was unqualified for his job. Sonderling got word of the email and interpreted it as a threat.
None of that passed muster as any kind of real threat. But the Office of Inspector General did provide Sonderling with a security detail for a little more than a week. But without any credible threat that wasn’t a workable solution. So he and the secretary decided to add him to her team’s duties. The problem was that the rules say that the Department’s Division of Protective Operations can only protect the secretary. They have no legal authority to use their police powers to protect anyone else. So they resorted to having the U.S. Marshals Service come in and deputize the protective operations office to guard Sonderling too.
Then there was another problem. The staff of 16 or 17 people at Protective Operations wasn’t staffed to guard two full time protectees. They needed to hire more people. But that led to more internal squabbling since DOGE is in the process of gutting the Department of Labor as a whole. The Department Office of Inspector General, which had momentarily been doing Sonderling’s security, also needed more inspectors for its own work. And they’d gotten rejected. Eventually Sonderling and DOGE won out. That led to this recent posting at USAJobs with DOL advertising eight new positions at its Division of Protective Operations, for a rough total of about $2 million a year. Most or all of this is entirely for the purpose of protecting Keith Sonderling.
It’s a slice of life under DOGEdom. Kinetic bossdom.