Has Trump brought peace to Gaza? Ended the war and cycle of killing that has now been going on for two years? I’ve had a number of TPM Readers ask me different versions of this. And in those questions is a lurking undercurrent, sometimes more or less explicit, of “does this malevolent clown actually get credit for this?” I wanted to address this question. And my answer is that this is perhaps the first time when Trump’s frequent and degenerate boast — I alone can do it — has a very real element of truth.
I don’t think Trump expended any great amount of energy over this and I don’t think he really cares greatly about any of the people on either side of the conflict. Let’s remember that a few months ago he backed a plan to “voluntarily” depopulate Gaza and remake it as a series of mediterranean resorts, sort of Monaco only 150 times the size.
Elected officials, activists, and at least one former high-ranking Department of Homeland Security official have all noticed the same thing: when the Trump administration wants to turn up the heat, they send in Gregory Bovino.
Before we get into the substantive coverage of developments related to the Trump Justice Department, a quick foray into the absurdism that is never far from the surface.
Thanks to a notebook dump by WSJ reporters in a story ostensibly about the politicization of the Justice Department under the thumb of the Trump White House, we have a bunch of new nuggets that are equal parts cringey and preposterous.
There was the time earlier this year, for instance, when President Trump cut his hand on Attorney General Pam Bondi’s gaudy wedding ring. I can’t even with this story. That and the other lowlights of the WSJ story:
Say what you want about disgraced Attorney General John Mitchell, but he never made Richard Nixon’s hand bleed with his wedding ring (so far as we know):
Trump occasionally reminds aides about an incident last year in which Trump cut his hand on Bondi’s large wedding ring, causing him to bleed.
Officials confirmed that Trump’s social media post demanding that Bondi hurry up and indict former FBI Director Jim Comey already was meant to be a direct message to her and not intended to put her on public blast:
Trump believed he had sent Bondi the message directly, addressing it to “Pam,” and was surprised to learn it was public, the officials said. Bondi grew upset and called White House aides and Trump, who then agreed to send a second post praising Bondi as doing a “GREAT job.”
No story on the absurdist Trump DOJ is complete without a cameo from Ed Martin:
He works from an office dubbed the “Freedom Suite” on one end of a hallway on the deputy attorney general’s fourth floor, which visitors have described as being decorated with oversize photos of Trump and a small cup of holy water on the wall.
As with all things in the Trump era, the absurdism is an inextricable part of the corruption, retribution, and destruction. As historically significant as the ruination of the Justice Department is and as seriously as we must take it, it’s important to remember it’s been gutted by clowns and imbeciles. Absurdly.
Now on to the Substance of the WSJ Report …
More substantive nuggets from the WSJ story on the politically motivated retribution prosecutions:
Federal prosecutors in Maryland are “expected in coming days” to charge former Trump national security adviser turned Trump critic John Bolton with mishandling classified information, the paper reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Former FBI Director Christopher Wray, a relatively recent target of Trump’s ire, is now under full-blown investigation, though for exactly what is not clear: “Former officials have received subpoenas in recent days in the Wray inquiry, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.”
Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, who has ginned up the mortgage fraud allegations against New York Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), went farther than previously reported in getting the bogus allegations in front of Trump: “This summer, Pulte visited the White House and gave Trump an elaborate presentation with visuals that included why the New York attorney general should be charged.”
Comey Pleads Not Guilty
During the arraignment of former FBI Director Jim Comey on politicized charges of lying to Congress, his attorney previewed the main pre-trial challenges he will raise to the indictment.
As expected, former Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, a longtime Comey friend and now his attorney, will zero in on the unusual circumstances surrounding the indictment and on President Trump’s questionable appointment of Lindsey Halligan as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
With Fitzgerald complaining that the bare-bones indictment left him guessing about the identities of key figures in the government’s case, I’d expect him to eventually file a motion for a bill of particulars, a more fact-specific rendering of the indictment.
The two line prosecutors brought in from North Carolina to help Halligan with the case — because prosecutors in her own office have largely washed their hands of it — are still getting up to speed on discovery, an unusual position to be in post-indictment. “We feel that, in this case, the cart has been placed before the horse,” Fitzgerald said during the arraignment. “My client doesn’t want to wait around while they look for things.”
Fitzgerald told U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff, a Biden appointee, that he had not had substantive contact with prosecutors about the case until Tuesday afternoon.
Nachmanoff set an aggressive but not crazy initial schedule for pre-trial motions. It’s almost inevitable that those deadlines will get pushed back, but this district is notorious for its rocket docket, so the case is not likely to linger.
Still, Comey’s challenge to Halligan’s appointment will have to be heard by a judge from outside the district because she displaced the prior interim U.S. attorney who had been appointed by the judges of the district, creating a conflict of interest. So that may slow things down a bit.
Kash Patel Fires 2 FBI Agents From Jack Smith’s Probe
The fallout has already begun from Republicans screaming bloody murder because Special Counsel Jack Smith investigated whether they were involved in subverting the 2020 election. To get ahead of the outrage machine, FBI Director Kash Patel took action against three FBI agents, including firing two of them, NBC News reports.
‘Come and Get Me’
Just another day in Trump’s America as he uses social media to threaten to jail Illinois’ governor and Chicago’s mayor:
Pritzker: “This is a convicted felon…who is threatening to jail me. This guy is unhinged. He's insecure. He's a wannabe dictator. And there's one thing I really want to say to Donald Trump: If you come for my people, you come through me. So come and get me.”
Greg Sargent: Inside Stephen Miller’s Secret Plan to Normalize Trump’s Dictator Rule
‘We Can’t Rule That Out’
After a crazy meeting at the White House in which Attorney General Pam Bondi said the administration was going to treat antifa the way it’s treated drug cartels, a sobering warning from Sen. Schiff (D-CA) on President Trump’s threat to domestic opposition groups:
Schiff: "You begin to wonder — do they believe they have the authority by putting some groups on a list, even domestic groups, to use lethal force against them, with no trial, no due process, no nothing? The reality is we can't rule that out."
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A grand jury Tuesday night declined to indict two protesters in the Chicago area accused of assaulting law enforcement, the latest in a shocking string of failures by the Trump Department of Justice.
The scale and scope of federal data and statistics that have been completely removed or otherwise compromised by President Donald Trump’s administration is too overwhelming to chronicle fully. When the president’s executive orders banning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives came down in January and February, the federal agencies now under his authority scrambled to comply. Per tallies at the time, around 8,000 webpages and approximately 3,000 datasets were taken down or modified. Some went back up, but not without changes that subject matter experts are still working to quantify nearly nine months later.
“We know that in some cases what was changed was about identity. But in other cases, there just hadn’t been systematic analysis or transparency about what was done to them,” said Margaret Levenstein, director at the University of Michigan’s Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. “And so we don’t know what else might have been changed.”
Some of the most sweeping alterations were made to data on transgender and gender identity-related topics, and diversity and race, thanks to the so-called “Defending Women” and “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs” executive orders, respectively. Those changes, which have been thoroughly reported, are some of the clearest examples of explicit policy decisions that have compromised the accuracy and adequacy of information that makes a difference in people’s lives.
Data has also been compromised as a result of Trump’s firing spree. Some of the disruption results from deep layoffs at federal statistical and research agencies like the National Occupational Research Agenda, United States Agency for International Development, and the National Center for Education Statistics, as well as the dismissal of experienced officials like ousted Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner Erika McEntarfer.
Many agencies have long flagged that budgetary constraints were limiting their ability to accrue accurate, timely data on which both the private and public sector rely. But the actions of the Trump administration have made this existing problem far worse.
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon has been clear about her desire to shut down the agency she runs. She’s laid off half the staff and joked about padlocking the door.
But the department is not behaving like an agency that is simply winding down. Even as McMahon has shrunk the Department of Education, she’s operated in what she calls “a parallel universe” to radically shift how children will learn for years to come. The department’s actions and policies reflect a disdain for public schools and a desire to dismantle that system in favor of a range of other options — private, Christian and virtual schools or homeschooling.
Over just eight months, department officials have opened a $500 million tap for charter schools, a huge outlay for an option that often draws children from traditional public schools. They have repeatedly urged states to spend federal money for poor and at-risk students at private schools and businesses. And they have threatened penalties for public schools that offer programs to address historic inequities for Black or Hispanic students.
McMahon has described her agency moving “at lightning rocket speed,” and the department’s actions in just one week in September reflect that urgency.
Rep. Mike Bost (R-IL), who voted in 2020 to overturn the presidential election results, leads a case the Supreme Court heard Wednesday in which he and a couple of Republican electors challenge Illinois’ ballot-counting grace period.
It’s always a complicated matter to say who is “winning” a shutdown fight. By one measure, no one “wins” since voters are unhappy with everyone and more generally the “system” for letting things get to such a point of dysfunction. Polls provide one of our most objective measures. But majority opinion isn’t always the terrain that one or both parties is playing to. What’s more, it may be fickle. If it doesn’t last until the next election, does it even matter? The real measure is who’s moving and who’s not, who is coming off their first positions, negotiating with themselves? By this measure — and in fact the others too — Democrats are pretty clearly winning the current shutdown fight.
Polls have been clear: more Americans blame Trump and the Republicans for the shutdown then Democrats. Every poll that I’m aware of has shown this. Republicans now say the latest polls show the blame divide narrowing in their favor. And it’s possible that’s true, though it could just as easily be noise in the polls. And in any case losing by slightly less isn’t exactly a big rallying cry. The real evidence is who is budging. The shutdown started with the White House saying it absolutely wouldn’t budge and threatening a big new round of layoffs to punish Democrats into submission. More and more evidence now shows that the firings threat was a bluff the White House feels unable to follow through on. As this has become more obvious, they’ve been forced to say that they’ve simply decided to delay the firings for no apparent reason. Even the elite media outlets which for days were passing on the White House threats as news are now, belatedly, seeing that it’s not happening, at least not yet. After failing to follow through on that threat, the White House and OMB moved to a new threat: no back pay. But that seems as empty a threat as the first one. In any negotiation or test of wills the failure to follow through on a threat always signals weakness. And these are no different.
‘Problematic’ and ‘Likely Insurmountable Problems’
Prior reporting had already suggested that a key witness in the bogus prosecution of former FBI Director Jim Comey was not helpful to prosecutors, but ABC News has a new story out this morning that expands on the obstacle the witness presents to interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan’s case.
The witness is longtime Comey friend Daniel Richman, a law professor at Columbia University.
ABC News has consistently had good sources seemingly from within the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. Its sources for the latest story are familiar with the contents of the internal memo in which career prosecutors laid out the reasons for not seeking an indictment of Comey. That decision led Trump to force out then-acting U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert (Trump’s own nominee for the permanent post) and replace him with Halligan, who promptly indicted the case personally.
As I read the ABC News story, the quoted phrases “problematic” and “likely insurmountable problems” are directly from the memo declining to prosecute:
Federal prosecutors investigating former FBI Director James Comey for allegedly making false statements to Congress determined that a central witness in their probe would prove “problematic” and likely prevent them from establishing their case to a jury, sources familiar with their findings told ABC News. …
According to prosecutors who investigated the circumstances surrounding Comey’s 2020 testimony for two months, using Richman’s testimony to prove that Comey knowingly provided false statements to Congress would result in “likely insurmountable problems” for the prosecution.
Investigators detailed those conclusions in a lengthy memo last month recommending that the office not move forward in charging Comey, according to sources familiar with the memo’s contents.
To put it bluntly, a key witness is “hostile,” in the words of Halligan’s deputy, to the prosecution’s case. Some cases can survive that kind of weakness, but prosecutors in Virginia and earlier in DC, have failed to find additional evidence that Comey lied to Congress as alleged. So there’s precious little evidence for prosecutors to use to overcome the weakness presented by Richman:
Investigators who reviewed material from Comey’s emails, including his correspondence with Richman, could not identify an instance when Comey approved leaking material to a reporter anonymously, sources told ABC News.
What’s this all mean?
(1) It reinforces Halligan’s prosecutorial misconduct in seeking an indictment against Comey despite the fatal flaws with the case already identified and spelled out by prosecutors.
(2) It shows how vulnerable the case will be to dismissal (on various grounds) before it ever gets to trial.
(3) It confirms that the point of this whole exercise — and of all of Trump’s politically motivated prosecutions — is to damage the target’s reputation, force them to spend time and money defending themselves, and in some instances take them off the political playing field (or at least wrong-foot them). A successful conviction is just icing; it’s not the ultimate objective.
One other point separate from the ABC News story: Halligan is still likely to face a challenge to the validity of her appointment as interim U.S. attorney, same as Trump interim USAs in New Jersey and Nevada. Whether it’s Comey or another criminal defendant in the Eastern District, someone is going to make that argument, and if they win it would likely nullify the Comey indictment that Halligan personally presented to the grand jury.
Comey is in court this morning in Alexandria, Virginia, for his arraignment.
Dark Times and Getting Darker
I’ve become a lot more circumspect over the last decade about trumpeting the worst trolling of the MAGA right because so much of it is performative and intended to shock, provoke, and stir the pot. But since President Trump and GOP elected officials started using the assassination of Charlie Kirk to paint all political opposition as terroristic, violent, and radical, the rhetoric has shifted to a darker, more ominous place than we’ve seen in U.S. politics in at least a century.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a GOP Senate candidate, is a leading MAGA troll but the press release he put out yesterday in his official capacity is so propagandistic and chilling in the tale it spins that it serves as a good indicator of where things stand right now. It reads in part:
In response to the political assassination of national hero Charlie Kirk and the disturbing rise of leftist violence across the country, Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched undercover investigations into various groups affiliated with left-wing political violence known to be operating in Texas.
“Leftist political terrorism is a clear and present danger. Corrupted ideologies like transgenderism and Antifa are a cancer on our culture and have unleashed their deranged and drugged-up foot soldiers on the American people,” said Attorney General Paxton. “The martyrdom of Charlie Kirk marks a turning point in America. There can be no compromise with those who want us dead. To that end, I have directed my office to continue its efforts to identify, investigate, and infiltrate these leftist terror cells. To those demented souls who seek to kill, steal, and destroy our country, know this: you cannot hide, you cannot escape, and justice is coming.”
During yesterday’s Senate Judiciary Committee testimony of Attorney General Pam Bondi, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) used similarly chilling language:
Schmitt: "Let's just call it out. We need a cleansing here. Let's just be truthful about what's happening. This left-wing political violence is not a both sides thing. It's not."
“The struggle over regime change is about whether the aspiring authoritarians can subdue civil society. Their strategy is to play divide and conquer, rewarding friends and brutally punishing opponents. They win when society cracks, creating a self-enforcing set of expectations, in which everyone shuts up and complies because everyone expects everyone else to shut up and comply, too.”–Henry Farrell, professor of democracy and international affairs at Johns Hopkins
Welcome to the Era of Kavanaugh Raids
We talked last week about “Kavanaugh stops,” a word play on Terry stops, morbid legal humor for ICE’s detention of U.S. citizens caught up in President Trump’s authoritarian mass deportation system. But Garrett Graff draws a different historical parallel: the Palmer raids conducted by President Woodrow Wilson’s Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer in 1919-1920:
Palmer oversaw a series of sweeping raids against suspected Communists during the country’s first Red Scare (there are two and they’re worth distinguishing between!) that ultimately led to the arrests and detention of perhaps as many as 10,000 people across nearly 40 US cities. The raids were led by a rising bureaucratic star named J. Edgar Hoover. Many arrests and seizures happened absent any warrants; many “radicals” were detained for simply being members of entirely legal organizations.
Here, I will say that this effort to use the military against American citizens — an effort backed, it seems, by almost the entire Republican Party — makes a mockery of the longstanding conservative claim that theirs is a movement of small government and states’ rights. Trump’s push to invade cities using the National Guard is as aggressive a use of federal power as one can imagine. And as we think about antecedents to this administration, this particular episode is structurally similar to the controversy over the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required the citizens and officials of Northern free states to act as slave catchers against their will and often against the laws of the states in which they lived.
