A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
The Tip of the Politicization Spear
Since the dawn of Trump II, Stephen Miller has been the barely hidden hand running the Justice Department from the White House. Now a new report from CBS News adds quite a bit more detail to the level of influence and control that Miller exerts over the Trump DOJ.
The story is framed around an apparent conflict of interest. Miller attended an counterterrorism training session at FBI headquarters on Sept. 29 that was focused on President Trump’s notorious NSPM-7 on domestic terrorism and political violence. Miller urged the federal agents in attendance to be more aggressive in pursuing threats against government officials and their families — at the same time he was an alleged victim and potential witness in a case of alleged threats to his wife, Katie. Miller was reportedly frustrated by the pace of the criminal investigation into the allegedly threatening communications.
“In his comments, Miller spoke about the need for federal law enforcement agents to be more proactive in investigating threat cases and told them that no case is too small, whether the threats are directed toward a congressman, a spouse, friends, loved ones or a speaker at a college campus, the senior FBI official said,” according to CBS News.
The top two FBI agents in the counterterrorism division of the FBI Washington Field Office were demoted last month over “frustration shared by the Miller family” that the Katie Miller case was moving too slowly. Their demotions reportedly factored into the resignation of FBI co-deputy director Andrew Bailey, although the FBI publicly dimissed that reporting as “fake news.”
Two days after Miller spoke to federal agents at the training session, a Massachusetts man was indicted for cyberstalking on Oct. 1 — despite reported concerns from career prosecutors in Boston that his communications to Katie Miller didn’t amount to a federal crime. He was charged with using interstate communications with the intent to harass and intimidate by sending her at least 40 calls, voicemails, and text messages in August and September, some of them crude and profane.
But a glaring conflict of interest is just one element of this story, and probably not the most important one.
Notably, this episode appears to be a subset of the Trump administration’s broader push to lump all threats together with legitimate political opposition and brand them as domestic terrorism. The criminalization of political opposition to Trump is one of the darkest through-lines of his second term.
In this episode, two things jump out: (i) Miller picked a counterterrorism training session to urge more aggressive action in cases involving threats and harassment, citing the assassination of Charlie Kirk; and (ii) Katie Miller’s alleged cyberstalker was “arrested by members of the F.B.I.’s joint terrorism task force, an unusual show of force for a cyberstalking case,” the NYT noted last week.
In other words, what might have normally been a local law enforcement matter is now federalized and turned into a counterterrorism investigation. The Trump White House went so far as to defend Miller’s presence at the training session on domestic terrorism grounds, telling CBS News that Miller is tasked with carrying out the NSPM-7 mandate to “investigate, disrupt, and dismantle all stages of organized political violence and domestic terrorism.”
The other big picture issue is the one Morning Memo keeps coming back to: the mind-blowing fact of an unabashedly political White House aide addressing federal agents at FBI headquarters. The DOJ, including the FBI, being run out of the White House remains the defining corrupt act of the Trump II presidency.
The CBS News story — co-bylined by Sarah N. Lynch, a superb reporter on the DOJ beat — goes quite a bit further in revealing how involved Miller is in the running of the Justice Department:
- In an earlier episode, Miller pressured the DOJ to take action against a Virginia political activist who protested outside of the Millers’ Arlington home and distributed their address on flyers. A federal magistrate judge twice rejected search warrant applications in the case, CBS News previously reported.
- In the Virginia case, Miller asked FBI counterterrorism agents to go undercover in his neighborhood’s political activist group and regularly called the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the the Eastern District of Virginia for updates.
- Miller has been holding monthly meetings with the heads of federal law enforcement agencies about the deployments of the National Guard and federal agents to D.C. and Memphis in Trump’s “violent crime crackdown.”
- “Miller is also in touch multiple times a week with the Deputy Attorney General’s office to discuss fraud and immigration cases, according to sources with direct knowledge of the matter,” according to CBS News. The DAG is essentially the chief operations officer at DOJ and runs the department day to day.
Miller’s meddling (which may be too weak of word) at DOJ is truly unprecedented. He is the tip of Trump’s spear aimed at politicizing the Justice Department.
Kurt Olsen Reportedly Failed a Polygraph
Kurt Olsen — the Big Lie proponent who stepped down as the lead prosecutor in the bogus investigation into a “grand conspiracy” by the Deep State to deprive Donald Trump of his civil rights — had his DOJ security clearance terminated last month after failing a polygraph test, Reuters reports.
‘I Can Do Whatever I Want, If I Want’
Mass Deportation Watch
- The American Prospect: In an important development, U.S. District Judge John C. Hinderaker, a Trump appointee in Arizona, has ordered DHS to “facilitate” the return to the United States of an Egyptian man that it deported to Equatorial Guinea, a country where he has no ties. As reporter Gillian Brockell notes, the ruling “could have far-reaching implications for thousands of others subjected to the Trump administration’s third-country removal scheme.”
- Washington Sun: In a ruling this week, U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown, a Trump appointee in Brooklyn, condemned ICE agents for falsifying records to cover up a pair of bad arrests. “The evidence suggests that ICE attempted to support their unsupported misidentification argument through false or misleading documentation and testimony,” Brown concluded.
- CNN: ICE told agents nationwide on Tuesday to increase immigration arrests by 1,000 people per day, returning to a previous goal of 3,000 daily arrests.
Quote of the Day
“On Monday night, it was our understanding that Christa was brain dead and that life support would be removed the next day. But on Tuesday, to the shock of everyone, including me, including her team, including the medical team, Christa woke up and began talking.”—Randy Spivey, a lawyer for Christa Pike, on her recovery from Tennessee’s attempted execution
The Corruption: Kimberly Guilfoyle Edition
The WSJ manages to outdo its remarkable story last month on Kimberly Guilfoyle, the U.S. ambassador to Greece and former fiancée of Don Jr., with a follow-up bombshell.
I started to summarize the highlights, but I really can’t do it justice. Just go read it.
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Frist. Now I will go back and actually read it.
When have they listened to anything from anyone on 3rd country deportations? And “facilitate” the return is where we started the whole thing of mass deportations to 3rd party countries.