Career Prosecutors Balk Again At Corrupt Ask From Trump DOJ

Posted on by David Kurtz

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

This Is What A Weaponized DOJ Really Looks Like

The corrupt use of federal criminal investigative tools to try to claw back $20 billion in funding issued by the Biden EPA – a gambit that already led to the forced resignation of a career prosecutor who raised objections – has continued below the radar, the WaPo is exclusively reporting.

The “investigation” is being spearheaded by acting D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, who has no previous prosecutorial experience. The imbroglio is rooted in a video by the right-wing conspiracy-generator Project Veritas that has animated EPA administrator Lee Zeldin. The ostensible goal of Zeldin and Martin is to get at the $20 billion in already-disbursed program funds being held by Citibank.

Here are the lowlights from the WaPo exclusive:

  • Following the Feb. 18 resignation of Denise Cheung, Martin “personally submitted a seizure warrant application without any other prosecutors in his office.”
  • A federal magistrate judge in DC rejected the search warrant application, ruling that it and an accompanying affidavit from a FBI agent failed to establish a reasonable belief that a crime occurred, sources told the newspaper.
  • Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove approached at least one other U.S. attorneys office about launching a grand jury investigation and seeking a court order to freeze the Citibank funds. Prosectors there (the WaPo only identifies the U.S. attorney’s office as “in the southeastern United States) balked the same way that the DC prosecutor had and refused to play ball.
  • FBI agents questioned Environmental Protection Agency employees this week about the matter.

It’s not clear if the Trump DOJ has succeeded in obtaining a court-ordered bank freeze, but three grant recipients told the WaPo they have not been able to draw funds from their Citibank accounts for the past two weeks.

Welcome To The Strange New World Of Kash Patel’s FBI

FBI Director Kash Patel held his first video conference call with the bureau’s 55 field office supervisors this week, and it yielded an abundance of WTF stories about his plans beyond weaponizing federal law enforcement:

  • UFC? Patel is considering bringing in UFC trainers to train agents in martial arts and self-defense.
  • $100M? Overruling objections, Patel ordered the bureau to commence a $100 million restructuring with no clear way to pay for it.
  • Vegas? Patel, who reportedly plans to spend a lot of time at his home in Las Vegas and not at FBI headquarters in Washington, confused “intelligence” and “counterintelligence” on the call, using them interchangeably.

Pam Bondi’s Gross Hyping Of The Jeffrey Epstein ‘Files’ 

(From L) Political commentator Rogan O’Handley, aka DC Draino, TikToker Chaya Raichik, US conservative activist Scott Presler, commentator Liz Wheeler and US conservative political commentator Chad Prather carry binders bearing the seal of the US Justice Department reading “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” as they walk out of the West Wing of the White House in Washington, DC, on February 27, 2025. The Trump administration has said it would release documents on late tycoon and convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein who was found dead in his prison cell in 2019. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP) (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

The sitting attorney general fed and pandered to right-wing conspiracy theorists by trumpeting the release of the so-called “Epstein Files,” the NYT reports:

  • Bondi made a Fox News appearance Wednesday night where she touted her own “breaking news”: “Breaking news right now, you’re going to see some Epstein information being released by my office. This will make you sick.” 
  • Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel offered a sneak preview of the documents Thursday afternoon to several conservative influencers.
  • The sneak peek for conservative influencers took place not at the Justice Department but in the West Wing of the White House.

It’s rough but insufficient justice that the much ballyhooed release disappointed and further inflamed conspiracy nuts because it contained little to none new information.

The Big Picture: Trump Is Sidelining The Lawyers

The NYT’s Charlie Savage goes deep on Trump’s sweeping effort to marginalize administration lawyers so that they can’t serve as roadblocks to his lawlessness.

Hmmm …

SEC halts fraud prosecution of Chinese national Justin Sun, who invested millions in Donald Trump’s crypto startup.

The Purges

  • NOAA/NWS: In a devastating blow to public safety and science, the Trump administration fired hundreds working on weather forecasts, satellite data and radar systems
  • FEMA: More than a dozen senior leaders have left the agency in addition to the roughly 1,000 FEMA workers who have been purged or resigned.
  • DoD: Five former defense secretaries – Lloyd Austin, Jim Mattis, Chuck Hagel, Leon Panetta and William Perry – denounced President Trump’s “reckless” Pentagon purges.
  • Massive federal office closures and relocations are part of Trump’s plan for sweeping layoffs of federal workers.

DOGE Watch

  • NYT: How Elon Musk Executed His Takeover of the Federal Bureaucracy
  • WSJ: Inside DOGE’s Clash With the Federal Workforce
  • WaPo: A second “What Did You Do Last Week?” email is slated to go out to federal workers Saturday and become a weekly occurrence.

USAID Is Ground Zero For Trump II Destruction

  • WaPo: The USAID inspector general is not releasing two highly critical reports on the impacts of the spending freeze in Africa and the Middle East for fear of retaliation from the Trump White House.
  • NYT: The United States has terminated funding for polio, HIV, malaria and nutrition programs worldwide.
  • Politico: USAID cuts expected to devastate global health.
  • NYT: Stunned USAID workers return to clean out their desks.

What The Courts Are Doing

  • OPM: U.S. District Judge William Alsup of California ordered the Trump administration to retract two OPM directives that targeted 200,000 probationary federal workers for firing, ruling that they were illegal. The judge suggested the firings should stop, but did not directly order them halted.
  • DOGE: U.S. District Judge John D. Bates of Washington, D.C., ordered a representative of DOGE to be deposed in a case seeking to block Elon Musk’s team from accessing personal data at Labor, HHS, and CFPB.
  • CIA: U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga of Virginia declined to block CIA Director John Ratcliffe from firing employees involved with diversity efforts, ruling that Ratcliffe had broad authority to fire employees at will.

Quote Of The Day

“The Office of Personnel Management does not have any authority whatsoever, under any statute in the history of the universe, to hire and fire employees at another agency. They can hire and fire their own employees.”–U.S. District Judge William Alsup of California, in ruling that Congress has given hiring and firing authority to individual agencies for their own employees, not broadly to OPM

An Unsatisfying Conclusion

A Mississippi state judge lifted her order requiring the Clarksdale newspaper to unpublish an editorial critical of city government – but only after city officials voted to drop their defamation lawsuit against the newspaper.

Spectacular

The 11th episode in the months-long intermittent summit eruption at Kilauea produced fountains of lava this week taller than the Washington Monument:

Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!

Two Good Reads.

Posted on by Josh Marshall

There are two good, big feature pieces out from the Times and the Journal this morning about the origins and rampage of DOGE. They don’t break a lot of new news, but they both bring the overall story together in compelling and new ways. And they do add some important details, especially how far back the planning for DOGE went and how Musk and associated techies were recruiting far-right stool pigeons and would-be accomplices among mid-level employees at various agencies who could be elevated to taking over agencies. Also there in spades, though not surprising, is how much Musk’s anger at federal regulators powered his dedication to the wilding spree. Neither story quite connects that thread to particulars, but you can see it specifically in the especial animus toward the FAA and CFPB.

While the Times and Journal articles certainly hold back from the language, the plain facts of what both pieces describe make clear that the best conceptual model for DOGE is something between an “insider threat” action and a terrorist operation. The emphasis on secrecy, misdirection and illegality is all there, the focus on seizing control of central nodes of power and destroying things before the true stakeholders can figure out what happened. Both good reads.

Are You a Fired Federal Employee? Let Us Give You a Free Membership

Posted on by Josh Marshall

If you are a recently fired federal employee, we want to give you a free, one-year membership to TPM. This is not a new offer or program, simply a new application of our community-supported membership program which dates back to the beginning of TPM’s membership program in 2012. As the sign-up page puts it: “Community-supported memberships are designed to give TPM readers on fixed incomes or those who are suffering financial hardship access to the same benefits as TPM Prime members.” It’s our way of balancing the needs of our business model (paid subscriptions) with the imperatives of our values: we don’t want anyone to be denied access to the journalism and commentary we publish because of financial need. To take us up on our offer, just click right here. If you are suffering a financial hardship for any other reason or on a fixed income, our invitation is for you as well. We have an additional program which entitles any registered student, full time or part time, to a free membership as well. Click here for that.

All community-supported and student memberships are made possible by readers who contribute to The TPM Journalism Fund.

It Continues

Posted on by Josh Marshall

It’s not precisely a town hall event as we normally describe it. But a staffer for Rep. Jeff Hurd (R-CO) was set to appear a League of Women Voters town hall event at the Dolores Public Library in Montezuma County. But when she arrived and saw the crowd, she literally bolted and apparently then also left town. Here’s a write-up in the Durango Herald.

Thanks for TPM Reader EO for flagging this news to our attention.

A Test For SCOTUS, A Test For POTUS

Posted on by Kate Riga

Two of the key questions of the second Trump administration could be days, if not hours, away from being answered: To what degree will the ultra-conservative Supreme Court stop Trump from doing what he wants? And will Trump flatly disregard an unfriendly court order, kicking off a five-alarm constitutional emergency?

Continue reading “A Test For SCOTUS, A Test For POTUS” →

Memo on ‘Organizational Restructuring’ at Social Security Administration

Posted on by Josh Marshall


A short time ago the Human Resources office of the Social Security Administration sent out what it titled a major “organizational restructuring” of the agency. As one SSA vet put it to me, this is a way to say “we are giving you a chance to leave on your own accord before we fire you.”

“Employees are going to jump at this,” the same person told me.

Memo after the jump.

Continue reading “Memo on ‘Organizational Restructuring’ at Social Security Administration” →

Congress Turns To Stopgap As GOP Tries To Spin Dems’ Separation Of Powers Request As ‘Unreasonable’

Posted on by Emine Yücel

With the March 14 deadline to fund the government looming, Republican leadership on Thursday began abandoning plans for a potential bipartisan spending deal, all while laying the rhetorical groundwork to try to blame Democrats — who are in the minority in the House and Senate — for a potential government shutdown.

Continue reading “Congress Turns To Stopgap As GOP Tries To Spin Dems’ Separation Of Powers Request As ‘Unreasonable’” →

Josh and Kate are Hitting the Road

Posted on by Joe Ragazzo

TPM is finally leaving the Acela Corridor (probably). After years of requests, we’re going to host an event somewhere other than New York City or Washington D.C. in early May. Our next live podcast will take place in one of the cities we’ve chosen below. And we’d like your input to help us decide where we should go.

Continue reading “Josh and Kate are Hitting the Road” →