When President-elect Donald Trump said Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would recommend major cuts to the federal government in his administration, many public employees knew that their jobs could be on the line.
Now they have a new fear: becoming the personal targets of the world’s richest man – and his legions of followers.
Last week, in the midst of the flurry of his daily missives, Musk reposted two X posts that revealed the names and titles of people holding four relatively obscure climate-related government positions. Each post has been viewed tens of millions of times, and the individuals named have been subjected to a barrage of negative attention. At least one of the four women named has deleted her social media accounts.
Although the information he posted on those government positions is available through public online databases, these posts target otherwise unknown government employees in roles that do not deal directly with the public.
Several current federal employees told CNN they’re afraid their lives will be forever changed – including physically threatened – as Musk makes behind-the-scenes bureaucrats into personal targets. Others told CNN that the threat of being in Musk’s crosshairs might even drive them from their jobs entirely – achieving Musk’s smaller government goals without so much as a proper review.
“These tactics are aimed at sowing terror and fear at federal employees,” said Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 800,000 of the 2.3 million civilian federal employees. “It’s intended to make them fearful that they will become afraid to speak up.”
This isn’t new behavior for Musk, who has often singled out individuals who he claims have made mistakes or stand in his way. One former federal employee, previously targeted by Musk, said she experienced something very similar.
“It’s his way of intimidating people to either quit or also send a signal to all the other agencies that ‘you’re next’,” said Mary “Missy” Cummings, an engineering and computer science professor at George Mason University, who drew Musk’s ire because of her criticisms of Tesla when she was at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Going dark after attacks
Last week Musk reposted an account with the handle Fentasyl and the name “Datahazard,” which describes itself as “Unincorporated Think Tank ~~ Focus: Govt Efficiency, Civil Rights, Victim Advocacy.”
One of the posts reads: “I don’t think the US taxpayers should pay for the employment of a ’Director of Climate Diversification (she/her)’ at the US International Development Finance Corporation,” with a partial screengrab of an employee and her location.
Musk, who called himself “super pro climate” in an X post last year, reposted and commented: “So many fake jobs.” The post has received more than 33 million views and a storm of negative comments. Some called the role a “fraud job” and others demanded Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency cut jobs like it. One user commented: “Gravy train is over.”
It appears the woman Musk targeted has since gone dark on social media, shutting down her accounts. The agency, the US International Development Finance Corporation, says it supports investment in climate mitigation, resilience and adaptation in low-income countries experiencing the most devastating effects of climate change. A DFC official said the agency does not comment on individual personnel positions or matters.
Musk also called out the Department of Energy’s chief climate officer in its loan programs office. The office funds fledgling energy technologies in need of early investment and awarded $465 million to Tesla Motors in 2010, helping to position Musk’s electric vehicle company as an EV industry leader. The chief climate officer works across agencies to “reduce barriers and enable clean energy deployment” according to her online bio.
Another woman, who serves as senior advisor on environmental justice and climate change at the Department of Health and Human Services, was another Musk target. HHS focuses on protecting the public health from pollution and other environmental hazards, especially in low-income communities and communities of color that are experiencing a higher share of exposures and impacts. The office first launched at Health and Human Services under the Biden administration in 2022.
A senior adviser to climate at the Department of Housing and Urban Development was also singled out. The original X post said the woman “should not be paid $181,648.00 by the US taxpayer to be the ‘Climate advisor’ at HUD.” Musk reposted with the comment: “But maybe her advice is amazing.” Followed by two laughing emojis.
CNN reached out to all four federal employees who either declined comment or were unable to be reached. CNN also reached out to HHS, DOE and HUD for comment.
X did not respond to an email seeking comment.
The AFGE public union pointed out that as a federal contractor, Musk himself has benefited from government programs, with $750 billion per year spent on federal contractors compared to about $200 billion for the civilian federal workforce. “We are a comparative steal, and we want to help clean it up too,” Kelley said.
Putting people in harm’s way
Musk has done this kind of thing before – and it’s led to real danger for the people named.
Missy Cummings angered Musk when she was appointed a senior advisor at the NHTSA because her research and public comments were critical of Tesla’s driver-assist programs and she had called for regulating the systems.
Musk targeted Cummings on what was then called Twitter, and his legions of fans followed.
In an interview, Cummings said she received a torrent of attacks, including death threats, and had to temporarily relocate before she eventually moved.
Cummings said she already knows of federal employees who “have dedicated their lives to civil service,” already quitting their jobs in anticipation of what’s to come.
“He intended for them, for people just like this, to be intimidated and just go ahead and quit so he didn’t have to fire them. So his plan, to some extent, is working,” she said.
CNN reached out to multiple experts and academics who specialize in cyber harassment, doxing and online abuse. But several declined to comment on the record for fear of themselves becoming Musk’s targets.
“What has happened has an incredible and horrific chilling effect,” one of them said.
Another said they are “not surprised” with Musk’s re-posts, adding they are an example of a “classic pattern” of cyber harassment.
Ramaswamy did not directly respond to questions about singling out individual federal employees but told CNN: “Most federal employees, like most human beings, are fundamentally good people and deserve to be treated with respect, but the real problem is the bureaucracy.”
“Our opponent is not any particular individual. Our opponent is the bureaucracy,” he added.
In a follow-up post, the Fentasyl account, which itself is anonymous, wrote: “It goes without saying that you should not harass someone solely because they hold a senior government plum job that should probably not exist,” the account posted. “But senior government officials are not mere rank-and-file employees. We deserve to know who is running our government & what they do.”
Cummings, who was also one of the first female fighter pilots in the US Navy, said she felt an obligation to speak out.
“Somebody has got to speak out,” she said. “I’m just not going to let him win on this point.”
FearNoneInc.@RayInsideOut Here's a list of techies on the ground helping Musk gaining and using access to the U.S. Treasury payment system. Akash Bobba Edward Coristine Luke Farritor Gautier Cole Killian Gavin Kliger Ethan Shaotran I wonder if the fired FBI agents may want dox them and maybe... twitter.com/i/web/status/1
"COUP!" Jamie Raskin issues TAKEDOWN of Elon Musk Brian Tyler Cohen Feb 4, 2025 Interviews with Brian Tyler Cohen
[Jamies Raskin] We need to be very clear about what's going on. And I think the easiest way to wrap your head around it is that this is a coup, which is a a seizure of state power by unelected actors by taking control over the central institutions and functions of government. So Elon Musk has essentially seized control over the financial payment systems of the US government, much of the communications systems of the United States, the data infrastructure, and of course he's got his claws also into the military infrastructure as well.
INTERVIEW - Brian interviews Jamie Raskin about his feud with Elon Musk, Trump's government overreach, and what Americans can do to fight back.
Transcript
I'm joined Now by Congressman Jamie Raskin Congressman thank you for joining me you bet I'm delighted to be with you Brian all right so we are in a constitutional crisis right now where the executive branch led by the unelected richest man in the world is basically usurping all power in government and unilaterally accessing sensitive information has access to the treasury he's shutting down agencies deciding where congressionally allocated funding can go and whe whether it can go so I I I want to start off by channeling The Voice of millions of people out there who want to know really what the hell is going on right now, and and what Democrats are doing to push back against this?
[Jamie Raskin] Well thank you Brian for putting the question so clearly I do believe that as um despondent as it is uh we need to be very clear about what's going on and I think the easiest way to wrap your head around it is that this is a coup which is a a seizure of state power by unelected actors by taking control over the central um institutions and functions of government so Elon Musk has essentially seized control over the financial payment systems of the US government, much of the communications systems of the United States, the data infrastructure, and of course, he's got his claws also into the military infrastructure as well so um you know in addition to everything that Donald Trump is doing to dismantle every part of government that doesn't profit him personally and his friends personally we have this additional problem of Elon Musk essentially trying to consolidate state power under him and transform the nature of our constitutional order.
[Brian] So as it relates to Elon I I know that the answer is that he can't do the things that he's doing but the reality is the the Practical reality is that he is doing them so given that we're beyond the point where he and Trump are respecting the law what is our recourse then here well we're going to have to fight them um in every channel and uh social context and governmental Arena that we can uh we're going to fight them in subcommittees and in the Committees of the house and of the Senate we're going to fight them in court um there have already been several setbacks dealt to the administration in court as you know Donald Trump tried to impose a new Birthright citizenship rule basically taking millions of people who are United States citizens in the country and then making them into undocumented immigrants based on who their parents were uh that was shut down by a Reagan appointed judge uh they're appealing it but that's a win uh as you know they froze uh federal spending um at the end of last week and over uh the weekend completely nullifying congressional power over Appropriations that's a central power of the legislative branch of government the power of the purse um and um again a United States district court judge in the District of Columbia shut that down and enjoined it and there were oral arguments on that uh yesterday that went very well uh for our side so uh we are going to assert the Constitution the rule of law the Civil Service rules as a blockade against what they're doing at every turn and public pressure public uh vigilance about what's happening um are going to be essential in this process Congressman among your Republican colleagues is there any red line for them I mean to to see an unelected bureaucrat basically on this on the pretense of trying to block other unelected bureaucrats even though that's what he is at this point to see him going in there and putting his his Clause into everything getting access to sensitive information putting high school graduates in charge of payment processing systems that that include Social Security numbers is there any Red Line in in public or private among your Republican colleagues well we'll see Brian I mean we weren't in session last week and we weren't in session the last couple days I think that they sent us out of session early actually because there was such popular and political rejection of their Mass pardons of The Proud boys and the oathkeepers and the insurrectionists they wanted to change the subject that's what I think gave a lot of people the impression that our leadership wasn't doing anything and people were beating up on the Democrats we weren't here I mean for someone like me whose district is right next door to Washington it's easy enough for me to go down to usaid and to protest and to object and we had a bunch of the Maryland and Virginia people there uh but in any event uh we have gotten our fight back people are ready to fight this now as for the Republicans we don't know there are one or two who have been uttering uh some of their reservations and their objections to what's going on but I've been absolutely shocked and really devastated at the way that they've fallen into line for these completely um corrupt and unqualified cabinet nominees that Trump has put through including cash Patel an election denier a j6 uh Enthusiast and supporter um and uh you know an avatar of Mega lawlessness um who is just about to become the director of the FBI I mean it's just dumbfounding to me this is taking place and Lincoln's party of Liberty and Union has become a Trump's party of chaos and dysfunction you you'd mentioned that that there were all of one or two who have been you know issuing some Rumblings behind the scenes what do you think that these same people these Republicans would say if George Soros all of a sudden was anointed some special government uh adviser and got access to every sensitive agency every sensitive piece of information all of Americans private data Social Security numbers what do you think those same Republicans all of whom are falling in line right now would say about that well Brian I used to perform that mental experiment all the time including during the impeachment crisis where I said imagine if Bill Clinton or Barack Obama had incited a mob of tens of thousands of people to go and fight and fight like hell and if you don't you're not going to have a country anymore and sat back and watched it eating hamburgers uh outside of the Oval Office and not saying anything other than my vice president didn't have the courage to do what need to be done and I would always flip it over and I would POS it to them and then I realized that that represents an obsolete mode of thinking which is that uh the GOP members will act according to principles and to principled reasons for Action they have dissolved in into complete tribalism they believe including the ones they've stuck on the Supreme Court that Donald Trump can do no wrong oras Trump you know so vividly put it you I could uh shoot somebody um in the middle of Fifth Avenue and I wouldn't lose their support he was right about that he understood the cultish dimensions of their support so I try to flip these over in the mental thought experiment that you propos but it's meaningless to them they don't understand it for them whatever Donald Trump does goes they will defend it no matter what and whatever he says about the foes or the enemies of Donald Trump uh they will believe and they will follow that too right is a complete moving Target gone are the days where there's any long-standing principles that you can pin them to at this point to your exact point it's just complete difference to whatever Trump says and does and if that changes by by the week the day the hour the minute so be it they they're just along for the ride it's a completely humiliating thing to them I mean you have members over there like Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz whom uh Trump has personally insulted he's called their lives uh ugly said Ted Cruz's father uh assassinated John F Kennedy or was in on the plot to do it I mean just outrageous things and they all come and uh uh they kiss his ring and that's not all um and so it's utterly abasing and humiliating and denigrating for them um but they do it so ours in addition to being the party of democracy and freedom now is the party of self-respect yeah you know you got into a public argument with Elon Musk over the last couple of days where you know you were standing up along with some colleagues to protect us usaid Elon came out he called it a coup because of course he's trying to to draw some false equivalency between January 6th and rightfully standing up for an agency that that Elon Musk has no power to dissolve um while you were standing up for USA ID uh Elon Musk wrote back and I'll put the Tweet right here on the screen what Raskin actually means is that he wants his kickbacks and bribes to continue. So that was obviously a defamatory statement by Elon, because Elon, and Trump, and Republicans now clearly have their marching orders, and that is to destroy everything that really doesn't serve the ultra wealthy, doesn't serve these Republican donors. And so they're on this scorched earth mission to just denigrate every agency that doesn't help them.
First off, can you very briefly explain what USAID is, and why it's important?
[Jamie Raskin] [USAID] was created originally by President Kennedy and by Congress to engage in what today we call, "soft power," or the projection of American influence, and American foreign policy objectives by rendering aid to people. And that could be anything from helping people build effective water projects, to fighting HIV AIDS, to malaria nets, and antimalaria campaigns, to building up development projects, democracy -- we're all over the world with USAID. It's less than 1% of the overall budget. The whole foreign aid budget's around $40 billion a year, compared to 900 billion that goes to the Department of Defense alone, without getting into other national security agencies and departments. So it's a a tiny fraction. But that money means something, and has helped to buy lots of goodwill for America, and also help to prevent diseases that come back and haunt us, and also prevent the disease of authoritarianism and autocracy. Which is one of the key reasons that Elon Musk and Donald Trump want to dismantle it right now.
[Brian Tyler Cohen] At the risk of getting too wonky here, on that exact point, this is a really important point I think about USAID. China has what's called the Belt and Road initiative. So why is USAID important to combat Chinese soft power, and what are the implications going to be if we cede that ground to the Chinese?
[Jamies Raskin] But we're already hearing now, with them having pulled the plug on all foreign aid projects of USAID all over the world, that China is moving in to say, "Well, they don't want to help you, but we're happy to help you.
I mean one of the things people love about America is the compassion of America, the Democratic solidarity of America, the fact that we're a country with a big heart made up of people who come from all over the world, and we stand with people. And then suddenly, we're sending the message that we are going to stop programs to help pregnant women and infants all over the world? We're going to stop programs to bring food raised by farmers in Iowa, and Louisiana, and California, to starving people in Asia and in Africa? It just makes no sense. But it is coherent from a political philosophy. Which is that America can only get its way by being a bully.
[Brian Tyler Cohen] And we're seeing that same strategy play out right now with these tariffs and these trade Wars. In your estimation Trump basically pushing all of our allies away showing them that America's word is no good anymore that if we negotiate a trade deal by the way a trade deal like the usmca which Trump himself signed into law that those are only as good as you know the person in power in the term that he's in it and maybe not even beyond that and so can you just speak on what that is what the implications are going to be what the impacts are going to be more broadly on America's standing in the world and our ability to even have alliances when even among our own closest friends we are instantly picking fights from Canada to Mexico to Panama to Greenland and on and on
[Jamie Raskin] I mean I've seen tv ads that the Canadian government and Ontario government are running in America saying, "Remember we are allies; we are closest trading partners; we are friends; we go back and forth; we were together in World War II fighting the Nazis." And so good for Canada reminding the American people of the relationship that we actually have. And that's something that obviously people who live in Michigan and Minnesota and the northern states understand better than people who live in the South, and so. But you know, the Wall Street Journal itself called this the Dumbest trade war in American history. Nobody can even understand why Donald Trump is doing it. It just makes no sense. It's incoherent. More chaos. More dysfunction.
[Brian Tyler Cohen] Can you speak on the fact that really at the end of the day what he was able to extract from the Canadians was border security that they had announced back in December and so it would seem to me that what Trump is trying to do is just create a crisis manufacture a crisis out of nowhere look for whatever vague excuse of a of a concession he can he can cast out as PR win and then and then beat his chest as some master negotiator and that that none of this is really amounting to anything they're building ill will all over the world inclus including from our closest allies and you know it may be that you're right Brian that he knew all along he was going to have to give nothing essentially or rather get nothing because right what was given by Canon and Mexico was already given I think they pulled the wool over his eyes I mean uh Mexico said they're going to put 10,000 Troop troops on the border they already had 15,000 troops on the border that been negotiated I think a year or two ago so you know he just likes a lot of rasle Dazzle and noise but the leaders of the world are laughing at him um and we can recognize what like fraudulent pretense this whole thing was and at the same time you've got Mexico and Canada's leaders who recognize that Trump really just is looking for some PR win that he's looking for anything he can slap his name on and say look I've averted crisis that by the way I created but then you look at the Chinese for example they have placed retaliatory tariffs on the US and so now this trade war is is happening we're in it because they're not they're not playing playing into his gamesmanship and so his his effort basically to Stave away uh again a crisis of his own making at least as it relates to Canada and Mexico is not going to work with the Chinese.
[Jamie Raskin] That's right, that's right. Well, In fact, Elon Musk, who's obviously pulling Donald Trump's strings now, is completely in bed with the CCP and the Chinese government. So they're not going to do anything to help people in Taiwan, or Hong Kong, or the Tibetans. They're not going to do anything to challenge the authoritarian autocrats who they emulate. They think that there might be some political mileage in having a fake trade war with China, but everybody understands the game that's being played. This is like Orwell's 1984.They basically want to cede a sphere of influence to China so China can just stomp on the human rights of anybody under them. And they want to be able to do the same thing here. I mean, to the point of ridiculousness, of saying they're going to take over Panama and Greenland. We do need two new states in America, but it's not Panama and Greenland, it's Puerto Rico and Washington DC. That's what we're fighting for.
House Democrats say GOP caved to Musk in funding bill, protecting his China interests by Lora Kolodny CNBC Published December 21, 2024 Updated on December 21, 2024 at 10:45 pm
• House Democrats Jim McGovern and Rosa DeLauro accused Republican colleagues of bending to Elon Musk's demands in sinking a bipartisan funding bill. • Congress passed a stopgap funding bill instead on Saturday, but discarded a provision to screen and regulate U.S. investments in China. • The scrapped provision "would have made it easier to keep cutting-edge AI and quantum computing tech — as well as jobs — in America," McGovern wrote on X.
House Democrats Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut say their Republican colleagues in Congress caved to the demands of Elon Musk, sinking a bipartisan government funding bill that would have regulated U.S. investments in China.
Congress passed a separate stopgap funding bill over the weekend, averting a government shutdown.
In a series of posts on X, McGovern said more could have been accomplished. The scrapped provision "would have made it easier to keep cutting-edge AI and quantum computing tech — as well as jobs — in America," he wrote. "But Elon had a problem."
Tesla, run by Musk, is the only foreign automaker to operate a factory in China without a local joint venture. Tesla also built a battery plant down the street from its Shanghai car factory this year, and aims to develop and sell self-driving vehicle technology in China.
"His bottom line depends on staying in China's good graces," McGovern wrote about Musk. "He wants to build an AI data center there too — which could endanger U.S. security. He's been bending over backwards to ingratiate himself with Chinese leaders."
SpaceX, Musk's aerospace and defense contractor, has reportedly withheld its Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan at the request of Chinese and Russian leaders. Taiwan is a self-ruling democracy that Beijing claims as its territory. Taiwan's status is one of the biggest flashpoints in U.S.-China relations.
DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, wrote in a letter to Congress on Friday that Musk needs "Chinese government approvals for his company's projects in the country." It's concerning, that Musk "has ingratiated himself with Chinese Communist Party leadership," she wrote.
In the letter, DeLauro referred to the Tesla and SpaceX CEO as "President" Musk, alluding to the fact that the world's richest person began railing against the prior funding bill on Wednesday, before President-elect Donald Trump came out with a statement of his own.
Trump had wanted the GOP to sink the bill, and issue a new one that would raise the debt ceiling so he could avoid that fight during the start of his second term in office. The stopgap funding bill, which President Joe Biden signed on Saturday, did not include the two-year suspension of the U.S. debt limit that Trump was seeking.
Musk responded to DeLauro's concerns by calling her an "awful creature" in a post on X.
After acquiring Twitter in 2022, Musk rebranded it X and used it to help propel Trump back into the White House, becoming a close adviser and major backer to the incoming president along the way.
Musk contributed $277 million to the Trump campaign and other Republican causes during the 2024 cycle, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Since the election in November, Musk has become a nearly constant presence at Trump's side, including in meetings with foreign leaders.
Trump appointed Musk to co-lead a group that's not yet formed, but will be tasked with finding ways to cut regulations, personnel and budgets.
[Bryan Tyler Cohen] All the while, by the way, with this trade war in effect, that means prices are going to go up on Americans because we import goods ranging from clothing, to electronics, to to shoes, to toys, and everything in between from China. And so that's going to have absolutely adverse impacts on everybody in this country thanks to a President, by the way whose entire election campaign was predicated on this idea that grocery prices were too high, and that's something that he himself admitted that the cost of groceries is why he won this election. And his first act as president is to launch a trade war for no reason at all where the consequence of that is that Americans are going to be paying more money for all goods under the sun. The price of eggs by the way have never been higher in US history.
Yeah I want to end with this. What can Americans be doing right now? I I get a lot of emails from people saying look I I I understand this is what Democrats are doing in Congress this is what Democrats are doing in the Senate this is what our elected officials are doing but what can we do out here you know we we may not be having women's marches with you know millions of people taking to the streets but there are people agitating at home they're looking for some way to help what can they do well first of all we're not having marches of millions of people right now because uh Trump would undoubtedly deploy his private militia of uh pardoned oathkeepers and proud boys and 3centers and violent insurrectionist to come and clash with protesters to claim antifas there and to create Street violence so as to give Trump an excuse for imposing martial law so so uh I think that the forces of opposition which represent a majority of the American people are being far more Nimble and clever than that and there are lots of rallies and demonstrations breaking out all over the country in different ways um in different places but not allowing one to be the focus that they can uh try to go and crack down on but we need to be expressing solidarity that's the watch word solidarity with everybody who's under attack whether it's you know high school kids in the lgbtq uh Community whether it's refugees and immigrants who are under attack whether it's federal civil service workers um people who just did their jobs as FBI agents and prosecutors we are defending the whole American constitutional order so um when people say what do we need to do I say what day and what hour are you talking about because we need everybody to be vigilant uh to be awake uh to everything that's taking place because we are witnessing an attempt to replace the American constitutional order but they don't know what they're messing with on their side because every time they attack another institution another Community another person that's one more Ally for us and our forces are growing we get stronger every day well Congressman I appreciate you being in this fight and for taking some time out to talk to me today thanks for everything that you're doing Brian [Music]
FBI Agents file TWO LAWSUITS Against Trump's DOJ to Prevent Unlawful Firings of Agents by Glenn Kirschner Feb 4, 2025
In what is perhaps one of the most important developments seeking to resist the lawlessness of the Trump administration, FBI agents just filed two lawsuits against Trump's acting Attorney General and against the Department of Justice.
The FBI agents are seeking injunctive relief, asking the court to stop Trump's DOJ officials from wrongfully firing the agents who worked on the January 6 and classified document investigations.
This development also may help it make more difficult for Trump and his henchmen to plunge the nation into a constitutional crises, as this video discusses.
Transcript
So friends, FBI agents just filed a lawsuit -- two lawsuits actually -- against the acting Attorney General of the United States -- one of Donald Trump's lapdogs -- and against the Department of Justice, to put a stop to Trump's corrupt scheme to purge the FBI of the thousands of agents who worked on the January 6 cases and who worked on the classified documents in the Mar-a-Lago case. Friends, this is an enormously important development, and perhaps the strongest point of light yet. Let's talk about that, because Justice matters [Music] Hey all. Glenn Kirschner here. So friends, the men and women of our nation's preeminent law enforcement agency, the FBI, are standing up to, and pushing back against, Donald Trump's lawlessness, and the lawlessness of Trump's henchmen at the Department of Justice. Let's start with the new reporting. This from Newsweek. Headline: "FBI agents Sue Department of Justice over unlawful and retaliatory January 6 list." And that article begins:
"A group of FBI agents brought a class action lawsuit against the justice department on Tuesday accusing it of carrying out an unlawful and retaliatory directive from president Donald Trump to purge the Bureau of agents who worked on the January 6th, 2021 Capital Riot probe and the classified documents investigation into Trump. The lawsuit, brought by nine Anonymous agents, was filed as thousands of Agency personnel have been ordered to fill out questionnaires about their involvement in cases related to the deadly Capitol Riot.
On Tuesday afternoon, the FBI turned over the names of 5,000 employees who worked on January 6 cases to the Justice Department. CNN reported that's about 13% of the Bureau's workforce. Last week a top DOJ official also ordered the acting U.S. attorney in Washington DC to fire about 30 prosecutors who worked on Capitol riot cases over the last four years, prosecutors who did nothing wrong who did everything right, who followed the facts and applied the law went to trial and won convictions against January 6th defendants. But Donald Trump didn't like it. So he told the U.S. attorney to fire those people -- all my editorial addition. The article continues: "Tuesday's lawsuit was filed against the Justice Department and acting Attorney General, James McKenry, but it mentioned Trump by name multiple times: 'Upon returning to the presidency, Mr. Trump has ordered the DOJ to conduct a review and purge of FBI personnel involved in these investigations and prosecutions.' It said, this directive is unlawful and retaliatory and violates a federal law protecting government employees from unfair treatment. The Complaint said that in addition to grilling FBI personnel about their involvement with the January 6 cases, the questionnaires that were distributed last week asked them to identify if they played a specific role in the Special Counsel Jack Smith's investigation into Trump's hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after he left office in 2021."
So friends, how absurdly transparent is Donald Trump and what he's trying to accomplish here. He says, 'I want to know all the names and the identities of the FBI agents who worked the January 6 cases, and I want to know the names, the identities of, all of the agents who worked the classified documents Mar-a-Lago case.'
This has nothing to do with the quality, or the legality, or the legitimacy of the work these FBI agents performed. It's all about revenge, retribution, retaliation. And it is unlawful. It is an obscene abuse of power by Donald Trump and his DOJ henchmen. It's because Donald Trump wants them to pay for investigating and exposing his crimes. And this is the stuff of dictators.
Now, let's turn briefly to the two new lawsuits that have been filed. The first one is Federal Bureau of Investigation Agents Association John Doe number one two 3 4 and Jane Doe number one two and three plaintiffs in the case versus the United States Department of Justice and the United States of America defendant why Jane do why John Doe why don't we know the names because the extreme danger that Donald Trump is putting putting these people in you know first he opens the doors of the prisons and lets all these violent j6 convicted defendants pour back into our streets and our communities and you've already seen some of the reporting they're out there trying to you know get together to try to find and retaliate against FBI agents that's why John Doe that's why Jane Doe and there's the other lawsuit that was just filed John and Jane those number 1-9 employees agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on behalf of themselves and those similarly situated plaintiffs versus Department of Justice James McKenry acting Attorney General of the United States defendant and let me read just a little bit of the opening Salvo of this lawsuit that was just filed by these FBI agents class action complaint comes now plain John and Jane Do's 1-9 on behalf of themselves and all similarly situated current and former agents Andor employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation by and through undersigned councel with their class action complaint for injunctive Relief and States as follows plaintiffs are currently employed agents Andor employees of the FBI who during the course of their duties worked on or participated in in the investigation of persons suspected of criminal activity related to the January 6th 2021 attack on the United States capitol building at the behest of Donald Trump Andor the unlawful removal retention and storage of classified documents by Mr Trump the maralago case Upon returning to the presidency Mr Trump has ordered the doj to conduct a review and Purge of FBI person involved in these investigations and prosecutions this directive is unlawful and retaliatory and violates the civil service reform act additionally honor about February 2nd 2025 plaintiffs were instructed to fill out a survey that would identify their specific role in the January 6th and marago cases some plaintiffs were required to fill out the survey themselves others were were told that their supervisors would be filling out the form plaintiffs were informed that the aggregate information is going to be forwarded to upper management plaintiffs assert that the purpose for this list is to identify agents to be terminated or to suffer other adverse employment action plaintiffs reasonably fear that all or parts of this list might be published by allies of President Trump thus placing themselves and their families in immediate danger of Retribution by the now pardoned and at large January 6th convicted felons defendants Gathering retention and disclosure of plaintiff's activities related to the acts of former president Trump is a violation of plaintiff's rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution it is also a violation of plaintiff's Fifth Amendment substantive and due process rights such that the court has the authority to enjoin the serious harm it is likely to cause moreover the publication or dissemination of the information in these surveys would be a violation of the Privacy Act of 1974 and would place plaintiffs in immediate risk of serious harm accordingly plaintiffs seek to enjoin the publication or dissemination of the surveys or any information derived there from and who are the plaintiffs in this case plaintiffs are employees of the FBI who worked on January 6th Andor maralago cases and who have been informed that they are likely to be terminated in the very near future the week of February 3rd through 9th 2025 for such activity they intend to represent a class of at least 6,000 thousand current and former FBI agents and employees who participated in some manner in the investigation and prosecution of crimes and abuses of Power by Donald Trump or those acting at his behest and friends I'm going to stop there but I would urge you to read the rest of this 16-page lawsuit it's pretty short it's pretty digestible and it's really important but let me leave you with this one of the reasons I think this development is so important probably the most important lawsuit we have seen filed against the Department of Justice and the Trump Administration thus far is because of something that we call a constitutional crisis now that's a term of art it gets thrown around a lot and people might disagree you know with precisely what the most accurate definition of a constitutional crisis is for gosh sakes every minute Donald Trump is in power it feels like our constitution is in crisis but I think the most precise definition of a constitutional crisis is when two co-equal branches of government start budding heads and there is no other Branch or authority to break the tie so for example if a trial court judge a federal judge part of the co-equal judicial branch issues an injunction tells the Trump Administration stop you can't do it it's unlawful and the Trump Administration says we don't care we're doing it anyway that's a constitutional crisis if the Supreme Court issues a ruling that says something that a president wants to do for example in an executive order is unlawful and unconstitutional and he can't do it but that President says I don't care I'm doing it anyway maybe he would even add um why don't you judicial branch federal court judges go ahead and send your army send your law enforcement agency to try to stop me oh oh wait a minute you don't have an army you don't have a law enforcement agency only I do in the executive branch that is a true constitutional crisis and I think with the FBI standing against Trump's lawlessness formally in these lawsuits that are being filed makes it much harder for Donald Trump to disobey court orders and plunge us into a true constitutional crisis because in part he would have to turn to his law enforcement agency you know trying to Rally the FBI behind him if he was is going to act unlawfully in violation of court orders or Court rulings so I think this lawsuit goes a long way in making it much harder for Donald Trump to plunge us into a true constitutional crisis but I can already hear what you're saying friends you're probably saying to yourself uh yeah but Glenn the president has the military so you know the FBI is no match for the military and in one sense that's true but in another sense I was active dut the Army for six and a half years before I joined the Department of Justice and you know what they drill into our heads as military members one we must obey lawful orders but two even more importantly we must disobey unlawful orders just as the FBI albeit a civilian um organization as opposed to the military just as the FBI is formally standing up in court against Donald Trump's lawlessness and the lawlessness of his doj henchmen I expect our military to refuse to comply with unlawful orders if they are issued by Donald Trump or his henchmen at the Department of Defense like the Secretary of Defense I would expect them to disobey unlawful orders that is their sworn obligation to the Constitution so we're not out of the woods heck the woods are probably still well ahead of us but boy the FBI standing up to Trump's lawlessness is huge because Justice matters friends as always please stay safe please stay tuned and I look forward to talking with you all again tomorrow [Music]
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BREAKING: FBI agents STRIKE BACK at Trump in SHOCK move Brian Tyler Cohen Feb 4, 2025 The Legal Breakdown with Glenn Kirschner
Legal Breakdown episode 457: @GlennKirschner2 discusses FBI agents filing a class action lawsuit against the DOJ and Trump.
Transcript
you're watching the legal breakdown Glenn we have some unprecedented news here as you know Donald Trump is seeking retribution against the thousands of FBI agents who participated in the prosecutions um related to January 6th we had spoken last week about the prospect of some type of class action lawsuit for example that FBI agents could take against this Administration we have a major update on that front can you explain what just happened you know Brian on the legal RoR scale between 1 and 10 this is about a 17 this is the f FBI in a class action lawsuit brought expressly against the leadership of the Department of Justice but make no mistake about it it is brought in a very real sense against Donald Trump and his Lawless cabal his administration these FBI agents just went to a federal court in Washington DC and they are seeking injunctive relief what does that mean they want a court to order Donald Trump to stop you know what he's doing which includes potentially endangering the safety of FBI agents and employees and wrongfully terminating FBI agents and employees for what what was their transgression they investigated and assisted in Prosecuting the crimes that we all saw committed at the US capital on January 6th 2021 and because apparently Prosecuting the people who committed those crimes at Donald Trump's urging remember that fight like hell you won't have a a country anymore now go to to the capital and stop the certification stop the steal because they make Donald Trump look bad not only did he pardon all of the j6 criminals but he's now trying to punish the FBI agents and the prosecutors who did the hard work of the American people abided by the rule of law were loyal to the Constitution and held those j6 criminals accountable and the FBI just said enough we're done we are taking the doj leadership and by proxy Donald Trump to court to put a damn stop to a runaway Lawless presidential administration because that's what it is now here is just a little flavor Brian and I urge all of our viewers to read the very short and digestible 16-page lawsuit that was just filed by nine FBI agents who are representative of the class in fact it says comes come now the plaintiff John and Jane do what does that mean they don't even want to put their names on this pleading for fear of retaliation retribution by Trump and his supporters including his January 6 mob that he opened the prison doors for so they could go out and continue to do his dirty and dangerous bidding comes now plaintiffs John and J Jane do 1-9 on behalf of themselves and all similar ly situated current and former agents Andor employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and they are asking that the court put an immediate stop to what Donald Trump has demanded the FBI agents and supervisors do which is fill out a questionnaire I want the names of every FBI agent and employee who participated in the investigation and prosecution of January 6 defendants I want to know what what they did and I want those names because there is no mistaking what Donald Trump intends to do with those names one unlawfully terminate those people from federal government employment and two distribute those names to everybody so his supporters can potentially get after those people and it is that second nefarious goal of Donald Trump and his henchmen at the Department of Justice that the plaintiffs the FBI agents who filed this suit zoom in on on page two plaintiffs assert that the purpose for this list of agents and employees who worked on January 6th cases is to identify agents to be terminated or to suffer other adverse employment actions plaintiffs reasonably fear that all or part of this list might be published by allies of President Trump thus placing themselves and their families in immediate danger of Retribution by the now pardoned and at large January 6th convicted felons and they go on to set out three different counts three different causes of action in this legal filing this lawsuit but let me tell you this is historic and we can talk in a few minutes about why this lawsuit being filed has such important implications for not only the health of our future democracy but the very viability of our democracy Glenn I want to dig into the prospect of cash Patel's impending confirmation if if these FBI agents are successful in in seeking injunctive relief and then ultimately win this case what are the implications if cash Patel becomes FBI director because of course he's going to want to be deferential to Pam Bondi and the doj and Donald Trump and so would would would these FBI agents winning this case um prevent cash Patel from doing what he so clearly wants to do by by rooting out these people from the FBI hard to say and I can't predict just how far cash Patel will go to um put into action the retribution against his enemies remember cash Patel in his book government G gangsters has a 60 person deep State list the Washington Post characterizes characterizes it as an enemies list we don't know whether this will have any deterrent effect on cash Patel's desires to do Donald Trump's dirty unlawful Revenge bidding by going after this these people I can only hope it does deter him from you know nefarious conduct moving forward in the horrific event he is confirmed as director of the FBI but I think what this tends to suggest Brian is the FBI Rank and file will not respect um a cash Patel if he insists on doing Donald Trump's dirty bidding now that the FBI agents themselves have gone to court to ask a federal judge to order Donald Trump to to effing stop it I'm really agitated right now but we can talk about why this is so important this lawsuit because let's let's remember there were already lawsuits filed When Donald Trump tried to revoke the Constitutional guarantee of Birthright citizenship and within about 24 hours a federal judge put a stop to it and when he tried to pull all federal funding I think we're up to two federal judges who have put a stop to it and what happened the Trump Administration backtracked I have a feeling that this lawsuit may not work its way through the system it may have the desired effect of having Donald Trump and his henchmen at the Department of Justice who themselves seem perfectly willing to violate the law on behalf of dear leader it may cause them to back up and say okay maybe our our criminal scheme to wrong to unlawfully terminate FBI employees who worked on the j6 cases wasn't so smart and maybe they will back up on this one as well but if they don't here is the second really important takeaway Donald Trump has already been flirting with ignoring court orders you know the I think the last move of an aspiring dictator a tyrant an autocrat is when Court order him and his administration to decline to do something a an autocratic government a dictator will say I don't care what the courts have ordered me not to do I'm doing it anyway and you know why because the courts don't have an army or a law enforcement agency to enforce their orders it is only through the goodwi of the executive branch that we abide by Supreme Court rulings or court orders and so I I have a feeling you know this is sort of the battle being met between the preeminent law enforcement agency for the United States of America the FBI and a lawless Trump Administration who is determined to wrongfully hollow out the FBI and I think it will make it much much harder for the Trump Administration if they are deprived of the law enforcement resources of the FBI because they choose to violate court orders that are put in place to protect FBI agents from wrongful termination I think it makes it much harder for Donald Trump to sort of wield the dictatorial power that I think he is dying to wield you know Glenn all of this push back Trump is going to use this as evidence that the that the the Deep state or these people against him actually exist right like he'll he'll try to do something illegal he'll brand these people as deep State operatives when there is inevitable push back because what he's doing is illegal is unlawful then that kind of feeds into the very narrative that he's been perpetuating he'll say well look there wouldn't be this much push back if if I wasn't exactly correct if I wasn't hovering over the target so I'm wondering if the fact that the acting FBI director Brian Driscoll who is a a a a trump guy right like he he is there was there's a reason that he's elevated to that position in anticipation of of course cash Patel being named FBI director but but Trump already got rid of Christopher Ray who by the way he himself appointed so that Brian Driscoll could could be elevated to acting FBI director so this is somebody who Trump viewed as acceptable to lead the FBI while we await cash Patel's confirmation does the fact that even he Brian Driscoll is pushing back against this as a republican as somebody who was palatable for these Maga folks does the fact that he's pushing back kind of undermine this this idea that Trump trying to fire all of these FBI agents is in fact not some deep State plot or deep State push back but in fact just an illegal action it's doesn't just sort of cut against or debunk Donald Trump's claim that the entire FBI apparatus that investigated the January 6 crimes they're all members of the deep state it eviscerates that that Donald Trump is forever spewing in the Public Square but here's the really good news now that this lawsuit is filed on this precise issue doesn't it breathe life into the deep State narrative that Donald Trump is always SP that narrative will not play in federal court and at this moment that's all that matters it might forever play with a certain segment of Donald Trump's hardcore supporters I mean these are the people who when they hear Donald Trump saying we're going to have to have a a necessary recession and you're going to experience a lot of pain these people say genius I'm here for it dear leader I'm Taking Liberties and I don't mean to mock all of them because it's a small segment who are just so so so sucked into the cult that they just can't seem to get themselves out of it or out of their own way once it gets into court just like he was forever spewing that he didn't do anything wrong in New York and yet a jury said yeah you're wrong Sport and promptly convicted him of 34 felony crimes so let's get these things into court where rational Minds will win the day and Donald Trump's uh scheme will be defeated in the long run Glenn let's finish off with this while this class action lawsuit is going on is this going to prevent Donald Trump from even being able to fire these people or is this just going to give them some type of platform for example to be able to collect collect back pay or collect money um after they were fired I I think the goal for us look we want to see I think you and I are aligned in wanting to see these people stay at the FBI um so that they can continue the work and won't just be replaced by Trump acolytes right Trump sick ofans but I think I think the the other possibility here is that if they are terminated then obviously this was these are retaliatory uh terminations the unlawful terminations and so they're eligible for financial compensation but that isn't going to which is which is the right thing to do to seek that kind of relief but that's not going to help our broader goal of making sure that the FBI isn't taken over by by Trump you know by by magga acolytes and so so what are we looking at here are we looking at trying to keep these people in place or are we just looking to make sure that they have some relief in the event that they are indeed terminated first we're looking for the former we want this to be stopped dead in its tracks this unlawful action by Donald Trump this Revenge this retribution this retaliation we wanted to stop this minute and I think it is likely about to stop given this injunctive relief this lawsuit that was just filed by the FBI agents because we don't want to wait for these FBI a agents to be unlawfully terminated only so that they have to spend the next year or two fighting in court they will probably win as others before them including people from the FBI have won wrongful termination suits right but but they'll be gone already and so that's not going to help the broader goal of making sure the FBI doesn't just turn turn into a a Maga loyal wing of the executive branch yeah that's exactly right and you know what it feels like an eternity but it's only been what 3 to four weeks since Donald Trump was sworn in and people were like when are when are folks going to start filing class actions well the most important class has just been assembled and filed a scorched Earth pleading I urge everybody to read it because they set out how Donald Trump virtually launched the attack on January 6th how he refused to call off the attackers who he was directing he had every power during the three plus hours to stop the damn attack against our police officers and on the United States capital he refused to it and they take the reader through chapter and verse of Donald Trump's Insurrection this is so important that the preeminent law enforcement agency for the United States of America is the one pursuing this lawsuit against the Department of Justice and by proxy Donald Trump because they are fighting back with everything they have just like James Dene who is the top FBI official in the New York field office of the FBI it was reported yesterday said to his troops when they were being told self-report tell them who you are tell them what you did so you can be wrongfully terminated he said we will not do that he said I'm a former Marine and I'm used to digging in foxholes getting in there having the back of my people and hunkering down and he said and I quote it may suck but it works and that is what the leadership of the FBI is doing not only up in New York but as you say Brian Driscoll Donald Trump's acting director of the FBI in Washington Washington DC it seems that the FBI is coming together against this lawlessness and for days now Brian I've been saying and we've been discussing how the FBI will not take this lawlessness lying down and they just Pro that in the most dramatic way well obviously this is a major story uh as you said a 17 out of 10 on the RoR scale so we will continue to cover it as we have any updates we'll bring them to you uh I will put a link to the lawsuit itself in the post description of this video for anybody who wants to read it and for those who are watching right now if you want to follow along please make sure to subscribe we are seeing over and over and over again that so many of the Legacy Media sources are just looking to defer to Donald Trump to bend the knee to him and his administration in any way they can Glenn and I will continue to cover this as soon as we have any updates so please make sure to subscribe the links to both of our channels are right here on this screen I'm Brian Tyler Cohen and I'm Glenn kersner you're watching the legal breakdown [Music]
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FBI Agents Sue DOJ Over 'Unlawful And Retaliatory' January 6 List by Gabe Whisnant and Sonam Sheth Newsweek Published Feb 04, 2025 at 1:04 PM EST Updated Feb 04, 2025 at 9:43 PM EST https://www.newsweek.com/doj-sued-fbi-a ... st-2026046
A group of FBI agents brought a class-action lawsuit against the Justice Department on Tuesday, accusing it of carrying out an "unlawful and retaliatory" directive from President Donald Trump to purge the bureau of agents who worked on the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot probe and the classified-documents investigation into Trump.
Newsweek reached out to the White House and Justice Department for comment via email.
Why It Matters
The lawsuit—brought by nine anonymous agents—was filed as thousands of agency personnel have been ordered to fill out questionnaires about their involvement in cases related to the deadly Capitol riot.
On Tuesday afternoon, the FBI turned over the names of 5,000 employees who worked on January 6 cases to the Justice Department, CNN reported. That's about 13 percent of the bureau's workforce.
Last week, a top DOJ official also ordered the acting U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. to fire about 30 prosecutors who worked on Capitol riot cases over the last four years.
What To Know
Tuesday's lawsuit was filed against the Justice Department and acting attorney general James McHenry, but it mentioned Trump by name multiple times.
"Upon returning to the Presidency, Mr. Trump has ordered the DOJ to conduct a review and purge of FBI personnel involved in these investigations and prosecutions," it said. "This directive is unlawful and retaliatory" and violates a federal law protecting government employees from unfair treatment.
The complaint said that in addition to grilling FBI personnel about their involvement with January 6 cases, the questionnaires that were distributed last week asked them to identify if they played a "specific role" in the special counsel Jack Smith's investigation into Trump's hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after he left office in 2021.
The complaint included screenshots of a three-page survey the plaintiffs said DOJ leaders plan to use to identify thousands of agents who worked on the January 6 and Mar-a-Lago cases.
"Plaintiffs were informed that the aggregated information is going to be forwarded to upper management. Plaintiffs assert that the purpose for this list is to identify agents to be terminated or to suffer other adverse employment action," the lawsuit said. "Plaintiffs reasonably fear that all or parts of this list might be published by allies of President Trump, thus placing themselves and their families in immediate danger of retribution by the now pardoned and at-large Jan. 6 convicted felons."
They were referring to the roughly 1,500 people Trump pardoned who were convicted of crimes related to the Capitol riot, as well as 14 people, some of whom were convicted of seditious conspiracy, whose sentences Trump commuted.
The plaintiffs have reason to believe the information they provide will "be used to target them for retaliatory discharge due to the Trump administration's perception of their loyalties," the suit said.
It pointed out that Trump himself has made repeated public pronouncements of his intent to exact revenge upon persons he perceives to be disloyal to him by simply executing their duties in investigating acts incited by him and persons loyal to him."
The lawsuit said that if Trump or his allies choose to publicize the information in the surveys or if it's otherwise leaked, the impact could go beyond personal consequences for the agents involved.
"Should this information fall into the wrong hands, the national security of the Unite[d] States would be severely compromised," it said.
Second Group of FBI Agents Sues The DOJ
Shortly after Tuesday's lawsuit was filed, a second group of anonymous FBI employees sued the Justice Department, accusing it of carrying out "the mass, unlawful termination of Bureau employees" involved in the Capitol riot investigation.
The lawsuit mentioned the survey that was distributed to FBI personnel over the weekend and said that "strangely, the selection of FBI agents who received this information included many who did little to no work on January 6 investigations, while others who did work January 6 investigations did not receive a survey request."
The FBI Agents Association, which represents 14,000 current and former bureau personnel, is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, as are seven anonymous FBI employees. The anonymous plaintiffs are special agents, forensic examiners, a forensic chemist and an intelligence analyst. The complaint named the Justice Department as a defendant.
In addition to accusing the Justice Department of trying to purge as many as 6,000 agents from the bureau, the lawsuit said multiple January 6 defendants who were pardoned or had their sentences commuted by Trump have since gone on to publicly call for "retribution" against agents involved in their prosecutions.
What People Are Saying
Cheri Jacobus, a former Republican turned Trump critic, celebrated the lawsuit, writing on X: "YES! FBI employees are suing Trump acting AG for violating the Constitution and their rights."
The FBI Agents Association urged Congress to protect the jobs of FBI personnel who could be fired, saying in part: The organization has "urgent concerns about recent actions taken by acting officials at the Department of Justice that threaten the careers of thousands of FBI Special Agents and risk disrupting the Bureau's essential work."
A group of Senate Democrats said in a letter to the acting AG and acting FBI director: "Retaliating against these career public servants who were simply doing the work assigned to them is outrageous and unacceptable."
What Happens Next
The FBI complied with a Tuesday deadline to turn over the names of thousands of agency personnel who worked on Capitol riot cases, even as the nine anonymous agents brought their class-action lawsuit.
The Justice Department has not yet issued a statement on the suit but will likely seek to have it dismissed.
Update 2/4/25 1:59 p.m. ET: This story has been updated with additional information. Update 2/4/25 2:05 p.m. ET: This story has been updated with additional information. Update 2/4/25 4:26 p.m. ET: This story has been updated with additional information.
STUNNING update on Trump’s conviction appeal Brian Tyler Cohen Feb 4, 2025 Democracy Watch with Marc Elias
Democracy Watch episode 247: Marc Elias discusses Trump's new legal team in his NY appeal.
Transcript
this is democracy watch Mark we've got some surprising news here that I legitimately did not expect Donald Trump was able to get representation by one of the top legal firms not just in New York but in the entire country for his appeal with his 34 criminal counts his his conviction in New York did this surprise you um it does and it doesn't I mean it surprises me in that Donald Trump has not been able to attract top tier legal Talent uh before and it's actually been notable right it was notable that uh in his various criminal cases you did not have a high-profile um National Law Firm representing him that in the post election in 2020 remember he relied on the likes of Rudy Giuliani uh Jenna Ellis and uh and Sydney pal right he did not have you know the best and the brightest even Jones day which is a big DC law firm uh that had done work for Trump did not do post-election litigation for him really in 2020 so so we become used to the fact that that big law firms are allergic to working for Donald Trump for two reasons number one he you know is not a great client he doesn't exactly follow legal advice and there's been questions whether he pays his bills but second the reputational harm the thought is that representing Donald Trump would be an anathema to a large number of your lawyers your your staff at the firm uh they might be unhappy and also to your clients right it would be it would be alienating to other clients well you know the fact that Sullivan and Cromwell is representing Donald Trump on this criminal appeal this suiv and Cromwell is one of the most prestigious law firms on Wall Street uh it is one of the you know most prestigious law firms as you say in the country the fact that they are taking on his appeal really tells you not just something about that law firm or about the big law firms in general but about their clients right what it really does is law firms are are in the service business they're they're tracking the attitudes of their clients what it means is that the business Community is now on board with Donald Trump which is sort of something we we had suspected but this is just further proof of right I mean in in a normal world and I I know that that ship is long since sailed but in a normal World there would be reputational harm by virtue of them um representing Donald Trump that would have a kind of a trickle down effect with their other clients because they wouldn't want to be repped by the same Law Firm that is also representing somebody who is that deplorable that that um that even taking him on would be enough to push these people away but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore that's right and that is particularly true given the case that they have chosen right it's not like they're representing the Trump organization in some real estate transaction right or representing Donald Trump in some ethics form filling out or something like that right they are actually taking the appeal of a criminal case now historically a lot of big law firms thought doing criminal work you know itself had some reputational uh risk to it that's that's not the case any longer and there's that that isn't true now but they are but they are taking a criminal appeal of the stormmy Daniels hush money case this is hardly the kind of case that normally a big Wall Street law firm is looking to associate itself with right yeah I mean it's like Donald Trump it's Donald Trump paying off Stormy Daniels you know it it is not it is not the thing that normally uh one would put on the front page of their website or in their client brochures how much of a difference does it make how much of an impact does it make to have such a prestigious Law Firm does this make the likelihood of the appeal succeeding that much higher look these are excellent lawyers I mean the four lawyers who are reportedly working on this are all former Supreme Court clerks so these are you know these are Elite lawyers at an elite law firm and so yeah that that could make a difference because they're excellent law for lawyers um but it I think what it really does is it sends a very very not so subtle signal to the judges who hear the cases to the other lawyers in the cases to state of the lawyers for the state of New York for example or for the City of New York uh and the broader legal community that Donald Trump is now to be embraced that you know that that the that the the the shame of this is now shifting and you know remember some of Donald Trump's lawyers in these cases had to leave their big law firms in order to work for Donald Trump because the law firms they at wouldn't work for them so this is a really really big deal again for what it means for his case yes what it means for his positioning in the legal industry for sure but to me the real story here is sou and Cromwell is not doing this if their other clients are objecting and so what it means is that the big Fortune 500 companies the Big Wall Street Banks the big tech companies the big companies that are involved in deals that they are you know they're this is like part and parcel of that uh because otherwise you would not see a law firm like this get involved in a case involving hush money to a prostitute on on an appellate basis and so what does it say to you that now we've got big Tech we've got big media and now we've got big law all of whom are perfectly willing to openly Embrace Donald Trump yeah I think it has both societal consequences and it has some real practical consequences the societal consequences are exactly as you suggest that
[Marc Elias] You know I wrote a piece for democracy docket saying we're on our own. And this is just further Evidence we're on our own. At the time I wrote it I was really focused mostly on the Legacy Media, like Legacy Media is not here to help. They are not. They are not going to be the force that is going to protect democracy. Big corporations -- yeah we're on our own there too, right? Like they are they are not going to be a force. You're not going to see CEOs standing up against Donald Trump's attack on Democracy. But I think at a very practical level, what this means is that we shouldn't count on big law either. And that has, in some ways, as big an impact as the others. So at a time where Donald Trump is engaged in a broadside against so many aspects of American society, and so many aspects of democracy, you know big law firms have historically provided the manpower, and the women power, to staff pro bono legal matters; to represent Indigent defendants; to represent immigration groups; to represent groups that are trying to uphold the rule of law against the government. And this is to me a very, very chilling sign that they may not be available that this time the legal profession, and may also be leaving behind, large chunks of the legal profession may be leaving behind, the people who need representation the most. Again, I don't know that that will be true for every Law Firm. I don't even know for sure that'll be true for Sullivan & Cromwell. But it is certainly an early signal that you are not going to see what we saw in 2017. Remember, at the airports in 2017, you saw big law firms sending their lawyers to those airports. I've been noticing over the last just week we are not seeing in any of these cases we've been talking about: the birthright citizenship case, the cases involving the the impoundment of funds through OMB. I have been noting the absence of big law firms present in taking on the Trump Administration. And this, to me, is a chilling sign that we may really be on our own.
And what do you attribute this to as far as big law is concerned because I understand why Jeff Bezos does it who who who is also being regulated in his other business entities I understand why Mark Zuckerberg is doing it who who has too much exposure it's not just Facebook he has too many other things going on in front of the government I understand why you know so many of these of these billionaires Elon Musk is doing it but big law isn't necessarily overleveraged in the same way that these that the tech billionaires are and so they they they risk Nothing by virtue of maintaining their integrity and so why why do this why take this this step and kind of and kind of bend the knee to to to somebody who it look is overtly Lawless in a in front of a profession where they literally swear an oath to uphold the law yeah and again especially in you know an appeals case involving hush money payments right to an adult film star you know like it's not like you know there's a big money in this for them there's not like this is like a a prestigious client that could lead to other things like you know there there's this this case is kind of a dog to take as an aell argument right but but they're but they're taking the dog and and I think the answer to your question is that they want the work from the people you just listed you know Jeff so's companies control a lot of legal spend uh Elon Musk has a lot of companies that hire lawyers um you know I listened uh recently to an interview that um uh Mark andreon uh the big venture capitalist out west gave um and you know these are these businessmen they employ a lot of lawyers and I think that these lawyers are are or not these lawyers specifically with these but law firms in general they are going where they see their clients go and so when they see Disney giving $15 million to Elon Musk if you're a lawyer for Disney and again I don't know that sou represents Disney but if you're a lawyer for Disney you're thinking all right well if that's what my clients want you know like that's great and if you're a lawyer for for um uh you know for uh The Washington Post or for one of bezos's you know for Amazon or for SpaceX you know like it just I think that the lawyers are are are not viewing this through the prism of what is their oath they're seeing this through the prism of who are their clients yeah well again that puts on full display how important it is to have um advocates for democracy itself and not just folks who are chasing the money um because that's where it is um so for folks who are looking to support Fearless journalism journalism that holds power to account please make sure to sign up for democracy docket it's the news Outlet Mark founded to focus on everything voting in elections I'll put the link right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video again a great way to support the invaluable work that Mark and his team are doing right now I'm Brian teller Cohen I'm Mark Elias this is democracy watch watch [Music]
We're Living Through a Coup in the United States of America by Heather Cox Richardson Politics Chat February 4, 2025 15 hours ago
[Heather Cox Richardson] Hey, folks. Yeah. Good. I'm glad. Louisiana's mad at Senator Cassidy. Washington state, Saint Louis, Middletown, Connecticut. Am I missing you, Danny? Do you go flying by? How long of a walk is it? About a mile and a half over here. And, And it was fine. A little icy, actually. And I like to walk, so it's. I don't feel bad about doing it, but I didn't necessarily leave enough time for myself. I did in the end, but I didn't. I wasn't sure Nebraska. One of my favorite states. I mean, do I have a state I don't like? Actually not really. I like the states that have really cool history. So in Nebraska, one of them actually. Does any state not have a cool history? No, actually they pretty much all do. You know, someday when all this is over, I'm just going to write some state histories because they're really, they're really cool. All right. I'm going to get right down to it here because I know you're waiting for, I know, I know coaches elsewhere today. Because I know you're waiting for me to make comments about what's happening. And I'm going to start with, something that I guess needs to be said and that's that we don't know. You are used to me being able to say, this happened, this happened, this happened, this happened. And here are my sources for how I know these things happened. And here's why I trust these sources, and here's why I don't trust these other sources. But one of the points of where we are right now in this second administration of President Donald Trump is that there is a lot going on that we don't know about, but transparency is gone. One of the things that the Biden-Harris administration moved back into the public was transparency, and that's gone. So we're doing a lot of sort of guessing, even though, you know, that there are people who are deliberately lying to you sometimes just to cover their, you know, what's because they've made some mistakes. So I'm going to start right there with that, that I sort of feel like usually I can say to you, unless I slip up and say something, I know exactly what's going on. I don't I don't any longer. It's taking me forever to write the nightly letters, because so much simply has to be checked and cross-checked and to see what you've got and what people sources look like and so on. That's got a good side as well as a bad side that I'll get to on a little bit. But having said that, I also want to say something else, and that is, we are in a time that is designed to exhaust us, to overwhelm us, and to make us tune out the news and also to make us make bad decisions. And a lot of people are asking me what you should do with your finances. And I was just joking with, with my husband. And I said, you know, if you're coming to me for financial advice, you might as well just put it in a pile and burn it, because I have zero qualifications for that. And a lot of people are going to make suggestions to you about what you should do and what you shouldn't do. Either with your finances, your health, or anything like that, don't make snap decisions based on the fact you like somebody or that somebody seems to know something you don't, because then you're acting out of panic and not out of actual, valuable information. So get that information, but not from people like me. And if people are not forthcoming about the fact they don't know what they're talking about, don't trust them.
All right. That being said, what I do know is politics and history and that I can give you a lot of which is I mean, we're in an amazing moment. We're living through a coup in America, the United States of America. And we are 248 year old democracy that is right now on the ropes. I want to emphasize again, it's not over yet at all, but I just I truly never thought it would come to this, even though my very first book, which came out in 1997, warned that the Republican Party was going in a really bad direction. And of course, I've been saying that ever since.
And now we're here, and where we are is that Trump, who is now president, was elected with the help of at least $290 million from the man who at least claims on paper to be the richest man in the world. And he is not elected. He is not a natural born U.S. citizen. He was born in South Africa, so he couldn't be president himself, although he joked before the election that he might be sort of like the president. But what he has done, and I'll talk more about what Trump has done, but what this man Elon Musk has done is he has essentially taken over the mechanics of the United States government. And what I mean by that beginning on Friday after 5:00, at least, that's when the news started to break. And that's not insignificant because that's called a Friday night news dump. Basically, if you were watching the news this weekend, you know, the independent news sources were covering what was happening in in Washington. But, you know, some of the major papers didn't mention it at all. And that's because there were skeleton crews over the weekend. So if you're going to dump scary news, you do it on Friday night. It's called the Friday Night News dump. And this is what happened on last Friday night.
And what happened then was that a team of engineers from Elon Musk's companies -- it appears you got to put together a lot of pieces to make this happen -- tried to strong-arm the person who was in charge of the United States payment systems, into letting them access the computers. And he said, no, he was a courier. A courier civil servant, who had been in the position of essentially keeping the nation's checkbook, I think, for about ten years. That's not sitting in front of me right now. And he knew very well that very few people have access to these systems because essentially you're keeping the checkbook, what comes in and what flows out for the U.S government. Not the Department of Defense, usually, and not the U.S. Postal Service, which has its own payment system, but everything else.
So it's it's not all the way up to 6 trillion, but it's pretty close to $6 trillion. And he was just the bookkeeper, you know, "here's this payment due now, and here's that payment due tomorrow." And and he made it all work. Not literally with a checkbook, but he oversaw the entire system. It's a highly skilled position. And when he refused to let the members of Trump, Musk's engineering team in, somebody, and I have not been able to chase down who, put him on administrative leave, with the idea that they were going to fire him. And then he abruptly resigned. And a lot of people are angry at these career service people who are resigning. But it is my understanding that if you resign rather than being fired, you get to keep your pension and your benefits, and that may be what was going on there. Again, I'm not an H.R. specialist, but that's my understanding of why people are suddenly resigning, because if they're going to be unemployed, they'd rather be unemployed with a paycheck rather than not. Or with a pension rather than not.
Anyway, he resigned, and as of last night, I'm sorry. As of Friday night, the 31st of January. Yeah. So 31st of January, at least one and probably two and maybe three. I'm telling you, things are vague. Engineers from Musk's former company is the one who did this. Who was the the lead of this team, worked at SpaceX and then at X, and went into that main system, plugged computers into the system of the United States government that makes payments from the Treasury of up to $6 trillion a year. Now, when this happened, lots of Friday night, right? A lot of people weren't paying attention, but others were. I was one of the lucky ones who saw it early. There was a huge outcry going, what's going on here? And then people tried to figure out how they got in there. And Scott Bezzant, the new secretary of the Treasury under Donald Trump, said that he had given them access or somebody said that, but that they were only allowed to read the material that they covered. Now, what's in those files is going to be the personal information, social security number, date of birth, address, financial information for every American who has had any interaction with the United States government financially, tax returns, unless you filed them, by you know, if you did them electronically, all that sort of thing, if you've had a grant, Social Security, veterans benefits and so on. It's also any, any business that has had, contracting business with the United States government. And that's, of course, Musk's major competitors. Now, we learned, as I think it was 1 or 2 last night, and it's been picked up today in the technology magazines that, just just by the way, I am not an investigative reporter. I read a lot, and I can digest for you what's in the investigative reports. And actually, people have started to send me information myself. But when I tell you this stuff, I am repeating what intrepid investigative reporters are finding on their own through their sources. And, and we're going to owe them a lot going forward. I'll speak more to that. But of I think it was 102 last night. Wired, which has been following this story, reported not only who the main person engineer was who broke into that system at the Treasury, but also that he's 25 years old and that the, the on the somebody else is working on that story and then built on it this morning. And that's Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo. His sources told him that, in fact, those engineers had begun to rewrite the code in that system. And they are doing so apparently to, to be able to shut off the flow of payments to certain people, certain groups. I shouldn't say people we don't know because we can't stand over their shoulders and to hide how they have done that. Now, the people who are actually at those IT positions in the Treasury have been helping reluctantly, only because they're terrified that these people are going to crash the entire system, take down the entire payment system of the United States government. And Marshall's article pointed out that, the entire system is supposed to be migrated this weekend, and they're making these changes live as opposed to testing them first. So it's unclear how that's how that's going to play out and whether or not we're going to have problems with that. But people have noted, for example, that their login credentials have gone down or so on and so forth. And I don't know if that's related or not, but I suspect we're going to see a lot of that. All right. So that's what's happening at the Treasury level. And it's worth now perhaps thinking about what's going on. You know, what is Musk doing. Musk is, destroying things. He is he is breaking everything the way he did at Twitter. And his philosophy is get in there fast, break everything. And if you break something that we turns out we need, we can always bring it back. We can always rebuild it. That's, I think, the philosophy there. Although he has his own goals for, the United States government that I may or may not have time to talk about today. Okay. So once they went through Treasury, they've also been systematically going through the other parts of the United States government. And once they were into the Treasury files, Musk over the weekend sat there tweeting on his social media platform what he was throwing away. You know, what he thought was wasted money? He said he was cleaning out diversity, equity and inclusion programs. And we don't know if he was doing it or not. He said he was doing it. And there's always a difference between those two things. I'm always hammering on that. But he said he was doing things like throwing away, payments or getting rid of payments that supported, Lutheran Family Services, for example, which runs a lot of nursing homes in the, the, in the Midwest, in places like South Dakota. So he was sitting there saying, now we don't need this, we don't need this, we don't need this. Okay? So why is that a problem? A lot of mangas that I'm talking to are saying we love him. We think this is great. We wanted to get rid of all the fat in the government. All right. First of all, as a part of GDP, the gross domestic product, American's expenditures on, you know, on, on domestic, on domestic stuff in our country, have not gone up at all since the 1950s. What's changed is who pays them, but they've basically stayed absolutely flat. There was a big spike during Covid, but now it's it's still basically flat.
And the reason that there is a problem, the reason that our budget is in the red, is because of George W Bush, his tax cuts. Remember that Reagan cut a bunch of taxes, and George W. Bush brought a lot of those taxes back because we were so far in the red. And then we had the tech boom under Bill Clinton. And then in the 1990s, the US budget was in the black. We were running a surplus. George W Bush came in and had a massive tax cut with the idea that we would destroy the federal government. There was a reason for that. They wanted to destroy the federal government because they wanted to get rid of regulations, business regulations, and because they wanted to get rid of the taxes that support social programs. This is how we got the $50 trillion moving from the bottom 90% to the top 1% between 1981 and 2021. So we had that and we had the George W Bush tax cuts.
And then we had the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both started under George W Bush that were not funded. Normally when the US goes to war, it imposes a war tax. He did not do that.
And then of course, we get the 2017 Trump tax cuts, which were hideously expensive. And that has put us even more into the red now, Trump has vowed and investment. The new secretary of the Treasury has said this is the most important thing for the Republicans going forward is to extend those tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations. Otherwise, they say we're going to have a fiscal crisis.
However, there's a problem with that because the US budget is so far in the red. Part of what Musk appears to be trying to do is to cut everything he possibly can so that they can say, "See, there's plenty of money for another tax cut."
All right? So once they had gone through the treasuries, they say they have gone systematically through different departments going in, going plugging into the computers and then and then downloading the information and saying, we're going to get rid of this, we're going to get rid of this and so on. We're going to get rid of employees and so on. Now stop for just a minute. Did you vote for Elon Musk? This is what is why this is a coup. And why this is stunning is because nobody elected Elon Musk. And it is very unclear. Even though Trump tried to give a fig leaf to the Department of Government Efficiency, or dodgy, as I call it, to say that what he was doing was covered by the executive branch. It is not at all clear that that is a legal organization at all. Furthermore, they have, not only broached Americans privacy and security and privacy through the breaches, which is against the law, but also when they broke into the computers at USA aid, which is the the United States Agency for International Development, which is less than 1% of our budget. And it has an extraordinary return on investment by helping American soft power around the world. They broke into computers that were secured because they had, you have security clearances to look at them because that's it. Classified information on them. And there was at that point, they got into a fight with, security people who were trying to protect the information on those computers. And, and that's because the U.S. agency for International Development, or U.S. aid, takes advice from the State Department. And so now they've they've have, breached those computers as well. And then, as I say, they've gone on to General Services Administration, which is what those are our, federal real estate, about 7500 buildings, or or properties. They've gone on, to the Department of Education and they seem to be going straight through these, but nobody voted for Elon Musk. He is a private citizen. He is a private citizen. And these are his six engineers who are going systematically through yours. And my information, this is shocking. But there's another element to it as well that is really, really important. And that's that must can't do this. That is it is not legal for in any way for him to do this, not only because he doesn't have authorization, but because of the way our Constitution is set up. It is Congress that spends our money. Remember, that was the whole point of having a fight with the King, King George of the Third of England. Because it is our Congress that gets to decide how our money is spent. And once Congress decides that it's the job of the president and the executive branch to carry that out, they can't decide. I'm not going to spend money on this. That was Richard Nixon tried that. And in 1974, Congress said, don't try it, because that's illegal. And the courts have upheld that ever since. And so Trump can't do that, but certainly must can't do that.
So so now, I'm sure you're sitting there going, "Then why is this happening?" It's happening for a couple of reasons. And I want to start with the obvious one. The Republicans in Congress could stop this any time they wanted to. They could stop this any time they wanted to. But I gotta say, not for much longer. Because once Musk and or Trump decide that they can do whatever they want, whether Congress voted for it or not, why do they need Congress? They don't is the bottom line. And the fact that the Democrats are screaming from the rooftops, it will take a number of Republicans to say, "Hang on just a minute here" before it can stop.
And, and the other piece of this is that it appears, as of this afternoon, again, fuzzy, and we're not sure there, when he got into office, Trump's people tried to stop the disbursement of monies -- it's called impoundment, and as I say, in 1974, Congress expressly made it illegal -- to fund things like USAid, which is really an important agency in the government. And the people who were affected by that instantly sued, not just over USAid, but sued over the fact that if we stopped disbursing all the monies that Congress has said we need, -- I mean, that's local law enforcement, that's education, that's everything -- if we do that, again, that flies directly in the face of this Congressional law.
So they went to the federal courts, and the federal courts were like, WTF? Of course you can't do this. They called it blatantly unconstitutional.
Now, as of this afternoon, it appears that the administration is simply ignoring the courts. Okay. If they're ignoring the Congress and they are ignoring the courts, that leaves us with the executive branch being in charge of everything. That leaves us with an authoritarian. At this moment, it's not clear whether that is Elon Musk who is taking all this power, even though he doesn't have it -- he does not have the power to do this; he could be fired or simply arrested at any moment if there were the will to do that. The other person who's supposed to be in charge is Donald Trump, and it's not at all clear to me, although he said yesterday that Musk was acting on his orders, he seems like he does not understand what's going on at all. And they seem to be sort of -- Timothy Snyder put it this weekend that he could be signing ever larger pieces of paper for the cameras. He does not seem to be on top of what's happening. So it's not clear that even though he wants to be a dictator for sure, that he has any concept of what's happening here. And he's just trying to stay out ahead of it. But that's where we are, right now.
And people have asked why? Why aren't there lawsuits being filed? There are. There is a blizzard of lawsuits being filed. It's not going to help us if they ignore the courts, and and why aren't people trying to stop these guys? One of the reasons that it's hard to stop them is because normally, when people are breaking the law, or are trying to make changes or whatever, they try to stay within the law, and there's a mechanism to say, "Oh, you're outside the law." But if you get somebody who just says, "I don't care, then it's a little hard to know who grabs that person. What do you do? And you can see this, I think, with the sort of bewilderment over the weekend with people like, "Where are we? What's happening? What are we going to do?" Because if somebody has breached U.S. government servers, and is rewriting the code, that was unimaginable a week ago. And I just think people don't know how to respond.
Now, that being said, how do what how do we proceed? And then I want to talk a little bit about the history of how we got here. How do we proceed? Well, there's a really important connection here between, the fact that the Republican Party as it currently exists and I've said a million times, this isn't the traditional Republican Party, which once upon a time was a grand party. It was called the Grand Old Party for a reason. That's where GOP comes from. If you've ever heard that term, people don't use it much anymore. But this version, the MAGA version since the 1980s, has not been able to attract a majority of the popular vote. People don't like the laws that are slashing our social safety net, that are that are destroying education, that are, cutting regulations, that are moving money upward. They have not liked it since 1986. It was clear by the midterm elections of 1986 that the Republicans had a problem. So increasingly since then, and I've talked about this a gazillion times, the Republicans stayed in power by suppressing the vote of their opponents by mechanical things like gerrymandering. And after 2010, by pouring, by by pouring money, having corporate money pouring into their coffers so they could flood the zone with, with blanketing ads that made people think that, Joe Biden was a doddering old man, for example. And again, you could see the media falling for that again and again and again. The fact that nobody is talking about the fact that Donald Trump can't put together a coherent sentence and it's not headline news, and then you compare it to how much we heard about Biden, Biden's limp, after he broke his foot, right after he got elected playing with his dog, just says to you that that flooding of the zone really works. But by increasingly design that only a few people have the right to make decisions for the American people, we got to the place we are now, where, as I emphasized last night in the letter I wrote last night, the Republicans control the House, the Senate, the white House and the Supreme Court. If they wanted to get rid of the Department of Education, for example, or, U.S. aid, or do any of the things that Elon Musk is doing, they have control of Congress and the president and the the, the Supreme Court, but they don't want to do it in Congress because they know they don't even have the votes among their own people. This is a really small group of extremists who have seized our government, and they're the ones who are saying, yeah, well, one of them literally said this morning, well, yes, what he is doing is unconstitutional, but you shouldn't worry too much about that. You shouldn't worry too much about that. I'm worried about that. Because if you lose the law and the Constitution, you have nothing left except authoritarianism. And that's where we are headed right now.
So let me go in a little bit more to how we got here, and then how we push back against it. So coming out of World War II with FDR's New Deal, then what Republican Dwight Eisenhower added to it, he called it the Middle Way. Together, those two things made up an ideology that almost every American shared: Republicans, independents, Democrats. They all shared the idea that a government should do basic things. It should provide a basic social safety net. It should regulate business, it should promote infrastructure, and it should protect civil rights. And the reason it should do all those things is because if it did that, it would create a wealthy country. It would create a country where people had good lives, good secure lives. They had education which made them upwardly mobile. They had roads to drive on. They had hospitals to take care of their health. They had vaccines so that they didn't get polio. They had ways to work together to make sure that people were having the things that gave them true wealth in their lives. It made the country really wealthy, a growing GDP because people had the education to create and so on.
Now, the problem with that was that for those few Americans who hated what became known as the liberal consensus, that is a consensus that there should be a liberal democracy and liberal in this context means protecting the rights of the individual through these government programs that make sure, for example, that we all have equal access to education, or we all have equal access to hospitals or whatever. There are people who didn't like that, and they didn't like that because creating wealth for everybody meant they got less cash, they got less money. And so they wanted to get rid of especially government regulations on business. That was their big thing more than anything else. They didn't like infrastructure. They wanted to do that themselves, because they could make money off it. They didn't like protecting civil rights, and they didn't really like a basic social safety net, but mostly they didn't want regulation. But every time they tried to say to people, hey, let's get rid of this liberal consensus and go back to the 1920s when businessmen ran everything, everybody looked at them like they were on drugs and said, come on, there's no way we want to do that.
And in 1948, Harry Truman, president Harry Truman begins to desegregate the military and to say, you know what? If we're all going to create this wealth together, everybody's got to be in on it. And that creates the beginnings of the Dixiecrats, the beginnings of a political movement to say, "No, no, no, no, no. This is a white country, and we don't want to do that." And those people are going to make common cause with the businessmen who don't like business regulations. So they're the Dixiecrats.
Chapter Three: Bill Clinton and the Neoliberal Presidency
I used to think if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or a .400 baseball hitter. But now I want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.
—Clinton adviser James Carville
The Political Context of the Clinton Presidency
Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 brought an end to a period in which the Republican Party had controlled the White House for 12 consecutive years, and for 20 of the previous 24 years. Clinton won 32 states and the District of Columbia for 370 electoral votes, compared to 18 states and 168 electoral votes for President George H. W. Bush. Clinton was able to capture four of the 11 states of the southern Confederacy (Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Georgia), though he garnered only a plurality of the nationwide popular vote (43 percent). In an unusually strong showing for an independent candidate, Texas businessman H. Ross Perot received nearly 19 percent of the popular vote. With his reelection in 1996, Clinton became the first Democratic President since Franklin D. Roosevelt to serve two full terms as president.
As Bill Clinton campaigned for president in 1992, how had the terrain of politics been shaped by the structural factors we foreground in our analysis, especially by changes in the character and direction of the American political economy? The dominant characteristic was a “Right-turn” in American politics that accompanied and responded to the economic downturn, stagflation, and crisis of profitability in the 1970s. This turn was not a response to any upsurge of conservatism in public opinion. Rather, working through a network of think tanks, policy organizations, and media outlets, business elites and conservative political actors mobilized to discredit post–World War II economic and social liberalism and to some extent the New Deal itself. Economist Thomas I. Palley distinguishes between the dominant pre-1980 and post-1980 growth models. Before 1980, economic policy, building on Keynesian insights, aimed at full employment and linked wage and productivity gains in a “virtuous circle of growth.” After 1980 a commitment to full employment was abandoned and the link between productivity and wage growth was severed. “Adherents of the neo-liberal orthodoxy made controlling inflation their primary policy concern, and set about attacking unions, the minimum wage, and other worker protections. Meanwhile, globalization brought increased foreign competition from lower-wage economies and the prospect of off-shoring of employment,” Palley notes.1 Over time this set of macroeconomic policies would come to be known as neoliberalism. 2 The new emphasis was on business-oriented tax cuts, economic deregulation, reductions in social safety net programs, and attacks on the power of labor unions.
While the Right-turn is most strongly associated with President Ronald Reagan (1981–1989), it is important to note the administration of the last Democratic president, Jimmy Carter (1977–1981), was also marked by, and in several ways originated, a shift to the Right. Especially from late 1978 onward Carter embraced fiscal conservatism, balanced budgets, a version of supply-side economics and the deregulation of the airline, railroad, and trucking industries. He also appointed Paul Volcker as chair of the Federal Reserve System in 1979. Volcker, aiming to curb inflation, adopted a restrictive monetary policy that reduced economic growth and led to a severe recession. Finally, in national security policy, Carter reversed the post-Vietnam decline in defense spending and in reaction to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan identified the Middle East as a strategic area of US interests, laying the groundwork for repeated US military interventions in that region in the decades since. This led some observers to call Carter the most conservative Democratic president since Grover Cleveland (1885–1889, 1893–1897).
During the Reagan years some Democratic Party leaders moved to adapt themselves to the conservative environment by courting business interests and countering the progressive presidential campaigns of Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988....
-- W. F. Grover et al., The Unsustainable Presidency
When we think of prosperous eras in modern U.S. history, conservatives often point to the Reagan administration as a crucial turning point. To the corporate class, there’s a good deal of truth to this, but mostly to the extent that the seeds of neoliberalism planted in the '70s were watered during this period. The full blossom would come under President William Jefferson Clinton. Today, establishment Democrats recall the Clinton years with the same fondness conservatives treat the Reagan era with. Forget the sex scandals, questionable real estate investments and swirling conspiracies about body counts. The real scandal of the Clinton '90s was the death of progressivism.
Dan Lasater is a talented entrepreneur. Born poor in rural Arkansas, he started a chain of hamburger restaurants called Scotty's at the age of 19 and succeeded in undercutting McDonald's by selling burgers at 12 cents instead of 15 cents -- and making up the profits with a higher price for french fries, a formula that apparently made him a millionaire by his mid-twenties. [11] By the time he was 30 he was the owner of the Ponderosa steakhouse chain in Ohio and Indiana, with annual sales of more than $300 million. Cashing in his equity for around $15 million, [12] he turned to horse racing and soon became the most successful breeder and racer of thoroughbreds in the world. With stables of 80 horses in Florida and Kentucky, he was the leading money winner three years in succession -- 1974, 1975, and 1976 -- netting a total of $10 million in prizes, and winning the Eclipse Award of the racing industry. But according to a police statement by one of his employees, Lasater's success with the horses was achieved by "putting in the boot"-fixing the races. [13]
It was at the Oaklawn Race Track in Hot Springs that Lasater first befriended Virginia Kelley, the mother of Governor Clinton, and began to close his vice around the First Family of Arkansas. Collecting governors was one of his business specialties. In early 1983 he bailed out Governor John Y. Brown of Kentucky with $300,000 cash in a paper sack at the Lexington airport. At the time Brown was desperately trying to stay one step ahead of the IRS. He had withdrawn $1 million out of a Florida bank without a "cash transient" report. [14] "I just took care of John Y.'s money problems," Lasater told his colleague Michael Drake. [15]
Lasater also tried to befriend Governor Tony Anaya of New Mexico, offering him a consulting job at the end of his term. Anaya never took up the offer, but he did use taxpayer funds to construct an 8,900-foot runway at the Angel Fire Ski Resort owned by Dan Lasater.
The governor was viewed by his opponents as naive but honest. However, the Attorney General's Office in Santa Fe was later to investigate Lasater for suspected "narcotics trafficking via aircraft with possible Organized Crime ties" operating out of Angel Fire. [16] At the time of the alleged drug trafficking, Angel Fire was managed by Patsy Thomasson, later to become Director of the Office of Administration at the White House [under Bill Clinton]. "I put Patsy in as the assistant chairman, and she pretty well ran that project for me," said Lasater. [17]
But the show trophy of his collection was undoubtedly Governor Clinton, who seemed to require more favors than most. When Clinton needed a safe house for his delinquent half-brother Roger, it was Lasater who spirited him out of Arkansas and gave him a sinecure job as a "stable hand" in Ocala, Florida. And when Roger fell behind in payments to his Medellin contact -- a stash of cocaine had been stolen from his convertible, which his mother had just given him -- it was Lasater who paid the debt, or perhaps a better word is ransom. [18] The Colombians, apparently, were hinting that there could be violent reprisals against the Governor himself. [19]
Always restless, Lasater moved into the bond business in 1980. A brief business partnership with Senator George Locke was dissolved, because of enveloping SEC violations, before Lasater embarked on his own as Lasater & Company. One former broker told me that he never witnessed enough authentic business to justify the existence of Lasater's office at 312 Louisiana Street. He suspected that Lasater was "shuffling money." [20] By the mid-1980s Little Rock was a hub of petty racketeering and fly-by-night securities trading. The target: small, deregulated thrifts that had been neglected by the big firms on Wall Street. "You have no idea how crazy it was here in the mid-eighties," said Ron Davis, a former Lasater broker. "At one point there were 54 investment houses in Little Rock. There were 4,000 brokers working in this city. In 1987 we did more institutional sales than any other city in the world, and that includes New York, London, and Tokyo. You had used car dealers signing up making a $1 million a year in commissions."[21]
For investigators attuned to the methods of organized crime, the Lasater empire looked suspiciously like a laundromat for tens of millions of dollars of drug profits. Nor was this an idle hunch. In 1977 Lasater had lost a Lear jet in Santa Marta, Colombia, after it was confiscated by the Colombian authorities on suspicion of narcotics trafficking. The aircraft was insured at Lloyds of London, so he was not too bothered by the event, but the FBI took note. [22] The jet had been leased to a Las Vegas outfit called Jet Avia, which was under investigation for Mafia ties. It had been flown to Colombia to evacuate a badly burned pilot who had crashed a DC-6 loaded with marijuana in the jungle. [23] Among the passengers on the jet was Jamiel "Jimmy" Chagra, viewed as one of the most dangerous mob bosses in the United States. In 1982 he was prosecuted for conspiring to murder Judge John H. Woods, the first U.S. federal judge to be assassinated this century. He was acquitted on that charge, but was ultimately convicted on charges of cocaine smuggling.
Lasater was a player in the cocaine trafficking network of the Dixie Mafia as early as the mid-1970s. Intelligence reports show that the DEA had opened a file on Lasater in 1983 and had assigned him a tracking number of 141475. [24] Lasater was tipped off at once. A source called him in 1983 to inform him that he was listed in the computer as the subject of a DEA probe. [25]
In February 1984 Lasater, accompanied by Patsy Thomasson, flew to Belize in his private jet to negotiate the purchase of a 24,000-acre ranch. [26] The deal fell through because of a dispute with the "governor of Belize who was hard to deal with." One member of the Lasater party boorishly proposed "that the governor should be wasted." [27] This caused some heartburn for the U.S. Ambassador who was present during these interesting negotiations. Also present was a lawyer from Washington, D.C., named Ed Cummings, who had flown down with Lasater. [28]
Ostensibly, Lasater was looking for a horse farm. But the property, known as the Carver Ranch, was in fact a refueling stop for smugglers coming up from Colombia. Located near the border with the Yucatan, it has cropped up in a number of investigations. One of them was the "Mena" probe of Arkansas State Trooper Russell Welch, which focused on the smuggling empire of Barry Seal. This is what Welch wrote in his notebook during a debriefing of one of Seal's pilots: "With orders from Seal he would fly to a place in Southern Colombia, bordering Peru, and pickup 200 kilos of cocaine. This operation was to be staged from 'Carver Ranch' ... operated by Chester Cotter. Seal met Cotter through Roger Reeves. [Roger Reeves was the intermediary who introduced Barry Seal to the Medellin Cartel.] Seal used this ranch frequently." [29] So, apparently, this ranch was no horse farm. It was part of the Medellin trafficking empire.
It was certainly well known among the drug pilots. Basil Abbott, a convicted smuggler, told me that he used it frequently when he operated from Belize in the early 1980s. He remembers Cotter, the manager, as a man with legendary sway over the local "peons." He would have the fuel supplies ready at the landing strip. The usual route to the United States, explained Abbott, was through a blind spot in the mountains of Mexico, near Monterrey, crossing the border five miles east of the McAllen control tower. "There were about seven or eight of us doing it, and none of us ever got caught," he said. On one occasion in early 1982 he flew a Cessna 210 full of cocaine into Marianna, in the rice delta of eastern Arkansas. The aircraft was met by an Arkansas State Trooper in a marked police car. "Arkansas was a very good place to load and unload," he said. [30]
Lasater had his own agents in the State Police. One of them was a narcotics investigator named Mike Mahone, whom he had befriended at the Oaklawn Race Track in the box of Virginia Kelley -- Governor Clinton's mother. [31] Lasater spotted easy prey. The subsequent courtship offers a revealing insight into his methods of corrupting law enforcement. First he invited Mahone to spend the July 4th weekend, 1985, in one of his condominiums at the Angel Fire Ski Resort. [32] Having broken the ice, the bribery began. It was disguised, of course. What Lasater did was to instruct one of his subordinates to buy a run-down property belonging to Mahone. The price was inflated, netting the State Trooper a windfall profit. [33] Lasater also paid off $7,500 of a delinquent loan that Mahone had taken out in his sister's name.
In return for these little favors, Mahone was generous with police intelligence. In the early summer of 1986 he met with Lasater and Senator Locke at a hotel in Chicago to brief them on the status of the investigation into their drug activities. [34] He warned them to be careful of their telephones and told them that the two State Troopers on the case -- Doc Delaughter and Larry Gleghorn -- had a "hard on" for Lasater. The two officers could be found at "Spanky's" restaurant, he added, as if tempting Lasater to take drastic action.
Trooper Mahone advised Lasater to freshen up his image by donating money to the Gyst House for Drug Abuse. So, with a nice sense of the absurd, Lasater launched a philanthropic Blitzkrieg that included funding for the Florence Crittenden Home for Unwed Mothers. This caused huge amusement at Lasater & Company, where the running joke was guessing which of the unwed mothers Lasater had sent there in the first place. [35] (Years later, Lasater was profiled by CNN's investigative reporter John Camp as a humble born-again Christian, trying to redeem his soul by helping in a soup kitchen.)
It was chilling for Doc Delaughter to discover that he was being betrayed by criminal elements within his own police department. But nothing about this case was normal, least of all the two status reports he gave to Colonel Tommy Goodwin, the commander of the State Police. They were strictly verbal, conducted on the telephone, and both times the calls were patched through to the personal offices of Governor Clinton.
"I don't know if Bill Clinton was listening on the line," said Delaughter. "I wasn't in the room. But he had no business being in the loop." [36]
Delaughter believed that he had sufficient evidence to pursue a full-fledged investigation of Lasater for drug trafficking. At the very least there were grounds for probing his transportation of cocaine on private jets. But Delaughter was squeezed out of the investigation, prevented from attending the critical interviews of Lasater, Senator George Locke, and Roger Clinton. In the end, U.S. Attorney George Proctor offered Lasater a plea agreement that charged Lasater with a conspiracy to distribute cocaine for "recreational use." It was a slap on the wrists. Lasater was paroled after one year, most of it spent at a halfway house in Little Rock. The prosecutor was later appointed to be head of the Justice Department's Office of International Affairs by President Clinton.
At the sentencing U.S. Federal Judge Thomas Eisele said: "There are a lot of people who would like to believe that your financial success was derived, because it was so spectacular, from nothing less than being in the drug business. But I have to rely on the evidence, and there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that you were making money in the drug business," he intoned before falling into tabloid cliche: "I think we are dealing with essentially an American tragedy, a case where the American dream turned into the American nightmare."
Others in law enforcement were less inclined to regard Lasater as a victim. According to The Albuquerque Journal, the FBI and U.S. Customs in New Mexico opened a fresh probe in 1988 under the auspices of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, naming Dan Lasater as the chief target. But it fell apart in early 1989 due to jurisdictional bickering between the FBI and Customs on one side, and the DEA on the other. [37]
Governor Clinton gave Lasater a state pardon in 1990, purportedly so that he could regain his hunting license. The pardon was of dubious validity, because Lasater had been sentenced by a U.S. federal court, not a state court. But it sent a signal to the Arkansas authorities that Lasater should be allowed to resume his financial and broking activities without hindrance.
Lasater retreated to a 7,400-acre heavily guarded estate in the Cockspur Mountains of Saline County. (Complaints by neighbors about low-flying aircraft had been passed on to the DEA, according to Captain Gene Donham of the Saline County Sheriffs Department.) But Lasater's influence lives on through the tenacious Patsy Thomasson, his adjutant and partner in adventures at the Carver Ranch. Her rise to prominence in Washington is remarkable, given that she worked so closely with Lasater -- a convicted drug distributor -- continuously from June 1983 until July 1992. "I was his eyes and ears. Whatever needed to be done I did," she explained. [38]
The Albuquerque Journal reported that Thomasson was still listed as the registered agent of Lasater's Phoenix Mortgage Company after she went to work at the White House. She was executive vice president of Lasater & Company, and president of Angel Fire Corporation and the Phoenix Group Incorporated. She was the signing officer for Agency del Sol, Portfolio Services Incorporated, Emerald Isle condominium development, and Starfire Resorts Incorporated.
When Lasater was sent to prison, she was given "durable power of attorney" to manage his business empire. This included everything from signing checks, to selling off his properties, and filing lawsuits in his name.
A self-styled "yellow-dog Democrat" with short black hair and a brusque no-nonsense manner, she had once served on the staff of Arkansas Congressman Wilbur Mills. At Lasater's, she was viewed as the link to the Democratic Party by the firm's employees. "We'd all have to make contributions to the Clinton campaign funds, anywhere from $500 on up, scaled on earnings," said one bond salesman, describing the obligatory tithing system at the firm. "Patsy was the one who handled the money." [39]
Feared and disliked by many members of the firm, she was clearly a favorite with Bill Clinton. He installed her as executive secretary of the Arkansas Democratic Party to help build the foundations for his presidential bid. After the 1992 elections, she was catapulted into one of the most powerful positions in Washington -- Director of the White House Office of Administration, in charge of personnel, computers, security, and drug testing -- where she continued to make her presence felt in the successive scandals that have beset the Clinton presidency.
She participated in a six-hour meeting on May 15, 1994, with the FBI that eventually led to the investigation and firing of the Travel Office staff. And it was, of course, Patsy Thomasson who was found sitting in Vincent Foster's office on the night of his death, rifling through his drawers. All this without benefit of a White House security clearance. For reasons that have never been explained, the Secret Service refused to give Patsy Thomasson a White House security clearance until March 5, 1994. [40]
The five waiting men were clearly taken aback when Governor Bill Clinton stepped from the vehicle with his aide, Bob Nash, and led the entourage into the World War II ammunition storage bunker that would serve as the meeting place.
In a low tone, Cathey turned to Terry and said: "Shit! I was afraid he'd show up. That'll certainly upset our agenda. I'm glad Johnson is here. He'll be able to handle him."
The waiting group of five had expected Nash, but not his boss, Arkansas' Commander-in-Chief, Bill Clinton. By his mere appearance, Clinton was risking exposure of his involvement in unauthorized covert operations. But he seemed desperate.
The meeting had been called at Camp Robinson, an Army facility outside Little Rock, to get some problems ironed out. In addition to the governor and his aide, the "guest list" included Max Gomez (Felix Rodriguez), John Cathey (Oliver North), resident CIA agent Akihide Sawahata, Agency subcontractor Terry Reed -- and the man in charge, the one who would call the shots. He called himself Robert Johnson.
Johnson had been sent from Washington to chair this very delicate operational briefing that would hopefully extricate the Agency from its entanglement in what was becoming a messy situation in Arkansas....
Cathey began the briefing.
"Governor Clinton," he said switching to his toastmaster tone, "I'm glad you could attend tonight's meeting with us. We're both surprised and honored. Bobby (Nash) didn't inform us you would be attending ... However, let's get down to it....
Terry viewed this meeting as his initiation into the inner circle. But this impromptu appearance by Governor Clinton, however, would expose Terry to yet more things that he had no "need to know." It would also confirm his suspicions that operations in Arkansas were being run with Clinton's full knowledge....
"Gentlemen," Cathey said, "this meeting is classified Top-Secret. The items discussed here should be relayed to no one who does not have an operational need to know. I repeat Top-Secret. There are to be no notes taken."...
Johnson, Cathey said, was the personal representative of CIA Director William Casey and had been sent to chair the meeting. Casey was too important to show his face, Terry assumed. But he felt honored, and yet surprised, to find he'd been dealing with someone so closely connected to the Director of Central Intelligence, the top of the intelligence pyramid.
"Thank you," Johnson said. "As Mr. Cathey mentioned, I am the emissary of Mr. Casey, who for obvious security reasons could not attend. We are at a major junction of our Central American support program. And I am here to tie up a few loose ends. As you are all aware, the severity of the charges that could be brought against us if this operation becomes public ... well, I don't need to remind you of what Benjamin Franklin said as he and our founding fathers framed the Declaration of Independence ..."
Cathey interrupted. "Yeah, but hanging is a much more humane way of doing things than what Congress will put us through if any of this leaks out." This marked the only time during the briefing that laughter was heard.
"This is true," Johnson replied. "And therefore, Governor Clinton, I'm going to find it necessary to divide this meeting into groups so that we don't unnecessarily expose classified data to those who don't have an absolute need to know. We can first discuss any old business that concerns either "Centaur Rose" or "Jade Bridge", and I think that you will agree that afterwards you and Mr. Nash will have to excuse yourselves ..."
Clinton was visibly indignant, giving the angry appearance of someone not accustomed to being treated in such a condescending manner.
"It seems someone in Washington has made decisions without much consulting with either myself or my aide here, Mr. Nash. And I'd like to express my concern about the possible exposure my state has as you guys skedaddle out of here to Mexico. I feel somewhat naked and compromised. You're right, there are definitely some loose ends!"...
Nash interjected: "Sir, Governor Clinton's concerns are that there may be some loose ends cropping up from the Mena operation in general. As you know, we have had our Arkansas State Police intelligence division riding herd on the project. And that has been no simple task. Even with some of our ASP officers undercover over there, we couldn't have gained any real inside knowledge had it not been for Mr. Reed's ability to report it directly to me. This thing about Barry Seal getting Governor Clinton's brother involved is what's got us all upset. I mean, as we speak, there's an investigation going on that could spill over onto some very influential people here in Arkansas, and people very close to the governor personally ..."
Johnson looked like he was getting irritated. Clinton had not been scheduled to be there and his original agenda now was being discarded.
"Hold on!" Johnson shot back. "Calm down! Mr. Casey is fully in charge here. Don't you old boys get it. Just tell me what has to be taken care of, or who needs to be taken care of, and I'll fix it for you!"
Johnson boasted to the group that Attorney General Edwin Meese, by arranging the appointment of J. Michael Fitzhugh as U.S. Attorney in Western Arkansas, had effectively stonewalled the ongoing money laundering investigations in Mena where the Contra training operations had been centered. It was his impression, Johnson said, that everything was now "kosher" and the "containment" was still in place. Operations "Rose" and "Bridge" had not been exposed because federal law-enforcement agencies had been effectively neutralized. But Johnson said he was now concerned that the "drug" investigation there might expand beyond his control and unmask the residue of black operations.
Now the meeting was starting to turn into a shouting match. Terry quietly observed that Clinton appeared on the verge of losing his well-rehearsed, statesman-like demeanor. Stopping investigations around Mena had helped the CIA and its bosses in Washington, but it had not solved any of the governor's local political problems. And these same problems were threatening to unveil the Mena operations.
It was the spring of 1986, just over a month after Barry Seal's assassination in Louisiana. Clinton was facing a very tough and dirty reelection campaign. His Republican opponent was certain to be ex-Governor Frank White, the only man who had ever defeated Clinton. The newspapers were filled with stories about Clinton's brother, who had been convicted and served time from federal drug trafficking charges, giving White the dirt he needed to launch a serious and damaging political attack.
Roger Clinton had "rolled over" and turned informant, enabling the Feds to begin an investigation of investment banker Dan Lasater, a close personal friend and campaign contributor of Clinton's. This investigation, it was clear, could spill over into Lasater's firm, possibly exposing CIA money-laundering and other possible illegal activities. [1]
The investigation of Clinton's brother had been carried out largely by disloyal state police officials who were backing White, and without Clinton's knowledge, when the inquiry was first initiated. Terry wondered whether a "coup" was building? Clinton was clearly in big political trouble, and his demeanor now was not the cool and composed man people saw on television. Perhaps the CIA and the Reagan administration wanted another "presidente," a Republican one, in its banana republic?
Rumors were also running wild that the bond underwriting business, in which Lasater was a major figure, had been used to launder drug money. In addition, candidate White had another big issue to run with. He would charge later that Clinton was directing choice state legal work as bond counsel to the prestigious Rose Law firm, where his wife, Hillary, was a senior partner. And Clinton had to be fearful that exposure of the Mena operations would be the death blow to his reelection hopes. And, if that weren't enough ammunition, the governor was also facing a possible state budgetary shortfall of more than $200 million.
By his comments, the governor's political problems and his potential exposure were clearly on his mind. Clinton showed his contempt for the young man from Washington as he lost his composure, jumped to his feet and shouted: "Getting my brother arrested and bringing down the Arkansas bond business in the process isn't my idea of kosher! You gents live a long way from here. Your meddling in our affairs here is gonna carry long-term exposure for me! I mean us. And what are we supposed to do, just pretend nothing happened?" He was angry.
"Exactly, pretend nothing's happened," Johnson snapped back. "It's just like the commercial, you're in good hands with Allstate. Only in this case, it's the CIA." Johnson paused, took a deep breath, and continued. "Mr. Clinton, Bill, if you will, some of those loose ends you refer to here were definitely brought on by your own people, don't you agree? I mean your brother didn't have to start shoving Mr. Seal's drugs up his nose and your friend, Lasater, has been flaunting his new wealth as if he's trying to bring you down. We're having to control the SEC and the IRS just to keep him afloat.
"Our deal with you was to help 'reconstruct the South,''' Johnson sniped, using a term Southerners hate, since it reminds them of the post-Civil War Yankee dominance of the South. "We didn't plan on Arkansas becoming more difficult to deal with than most banana republics. This has turned out to be almost comical."
"Bobby! Don't sit here on your black ass and take this Yankee shit!" Clinton yelled at Nash in an appeal for support. "Tell him about Seal bribing those federal agents!" It was getting to resemble a verbal tennis match as volleys were being lobbed, each one with more intensity. From the comment about Seal, Terry concluded that Clinton did in fact have his own intelligence network, too.
"Why, Mr. Clinton, with racial slurs like that, the federal government could terminate educational busing aid here," Johnson wryly shot back. "I thought Arkansas was an equal opportunity employer!"
Nash touched the governor's arm, coaxing him back into his chair.
Johnson continued, "The deal we made was to launder our money through your bond business. What we didn't plan on was you and your token nigger here to start taking yourselves seriously and purposely shrinking our laundry."
"What do you mean by shrinking the laundry?!" Clinton asked still shouting. By now, Clinton's face was flushed with anger.
To the CIA, Arkansas had to be a money-launderers' heaven. To understand why, one must realize that intelligence agencies have the same problem as drug traffickers. To launder cash, a trafficker must either find a bank willing to break the law by not filing the documentation required for cash deposits, or go offshore where reporting requirements are less strict. Like traffickers, once offshore, the CIA must use wire transfers to get their money into the U.S., but at great risk of detection.
The trafficker, having broken the law to make his money, has no legal recourse if his banker double-crossed him. In other words, it's an insecure investment, which pays low interest, if any.
Arkansas offered the CIA something money launderers are rarely able to achieve, a secure business environment containing a banking industry where vast amounts of money move around unnoticed as part of the normal course of business. Through its substantial bond underwriting activities, the state had a huge cash flow that could allow dirty and clean money to co-mingle without detection. All they were lacking was the "dirty banker" to cooperate with them by ignoring the federal banking laws.
And that they found within the Clinton administration. This "banker" was none other than the Arkansas Development and Finance Authority, or ADFA, which was a creation of, and directly under the control of, the governor's office. Its official mandate was to loan money to businesses either already in or coming to Arkansas in order to develop an industrial base for new jobs that Clinton had made the centerpiece of his administration. ADFA, was in effect, a bank making preferred loans.
But, from what Terry had learned from Seal and Sawahata, that was not all ADFA was doing. ADFA, in effect a state investment bank, was being "capitalized" by large cash transfusions that the Agency was taking great pains to hide.
"No paper, no trail," seemed to be the dominate doctrine of the Agency's activities since, by design, cash dropped from an airplane in a duffel bag is not the standard way of transferring money.
ADFA was designed to compete for the profits generated by the bond issues necessary to industrialize Arkansas. The old Arkansas Industrial Development Commission that Clinton had inherited had no money of its own, and was forced to send prospective clients seeking industrial development loans to the established, privately-run investment banking industry in Little Rock. The state could be very selective in its referral business, however, and those who received the state's business stood to profit handsomely.
This insider referral business was alive and well when Terry moved to Arkansas, and he saw Seth Ward's son-in-law, Finis Shellnut, jockey for a position to reap these profits by going to work for Lasater, who was getting the lion's share of the secret sweetheart deals.
Before ADFA's creation, the state sent preferred business directly to investment banking firms like Lasater's. All that was needed for money-laundering was the firm's silence and a source of cash, which, in this case, the CIA provided. The heads of these firms were a coterie of wealthy and well-connected people who got even richer by doing what comes natural in Arkansas, "The Natural State" as it's called ..... dealing incestuously under the table.
Arkansas desperately needed new businesses -- and so did the CIA. It had plenty of black money, but that alone was not enough. "You can't kill an enemy by lobbing dollars at him" was the phrase Cathey had used with Terry to explain the CIA's dilemma of having the monetary resources to fund the Contras, but no legal way to deliver it directly. The Agency was barred by Congress from converting the cash into weapons and training the Contras needed on the battlefield, at least not through traditional Department of Defense suppliers.
Under Director William Casey's plan, the CIA needed other companies that would be a source of secretly-produced weapons that would find their way into the hands of the Contras. These selected businesses needed payment to perform these services for the CIA, and that cash came to them conveniently in a legal and undetectable manner, through ADFA, in the form of industrial development loans backed by tax-free development bonds. The CIA should have been showing a profit through accrued interest on their secured investments. But a problem had arisen. As Johnson had said, the "laundry" was shrinking.
And Johnson was not happy about that as evidenced by the way he was firing back at Clinton. [b][u]It was apparent that Johnson knew Clinton and his people had not abided by his agreement with the Agency.
"Our deal was for you to have 10 per cent of the profits, not 10 per cent of the gross," Johnson sternly admonished Clinton.
"This has turned into a feeding frenzy by your good ole boy sharks, and you've had a hand in it, too, Mr. Clinton. Just ask your Mr. Nash to produce a business card. I'll bet it reads Arkansas Development and Finance Authority. We know what's been going on. Our people are professionals; they're not stupid. They didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday, as you guys say. This ADFA of yours is double-dipping. Our deal with you was to launder our money. You get 10 per cent after costs and after post-tax profits. No one agreed for you to start loaning our money out to your friends through your ADFA so that they could buy machinery to build our guns. That wasn't the deal. Mr. Sawahata tells me that one of ADFA's first customers was some parking meter company that got several million in ... how shall we say it ... in preferred loans.
"Dammit, we bought a whole gun company, lock, stock and barrel and shipped the whole thing down here for you. And Mr. Reed even helped set it up. You people go and screw us by setting up some subcontractors that weren't even authorized by us. Shit, people who didn't even have security clearances. That's why we're pulling the operation out of Arkansas. It's become a liability for us. We don't need live liabilities."....
Clinton had paused for a moment to ponder Johnson's words. "What do ya' mean, live liabilities?" he demanded.
"There's no such thing as a dead liability. It's an oxymoron, get it? Oh, or didn't you Rhodes Scholars study things like that?" Johnson snapped.
"What! Are you threatenin' us? Because if ya' are ..."
Johnson stared down at the table, again took a deep breath, and paused. It appeared he wanted to elevate the tone of the disintegrating exchange.
"Calm down and listen," Johnson said. "We are all in this together. We all have our personal agendas ... but let's not forget, both the Vice President [George Bush] and Mr. Casey want this operation to be a success. We need to get these assets and resources in place and get them self-sustaining and prospering on their own while we have the chance. This is a golden opportunity. The timing is right. We have communists taking over a country in this hemisphere. We must all pull together and play as a team. This is no time for lone wolves. Mr. Seal is an example of what happens to lone wolves. They just don't survive in the modern world of intelligence.
"I'm not here to threaten you. But there have been mistakes. The Mena operation survived undetected and unexposed only because Mr. Seal carried with him a falsely created, high-level profile of a drugrunner. All the cops in the country were trying to investigate a drug operation. That put the police in a position where we could control them. We fed them what we wanted to feed them, when we wanted to feed them; it was our restaurant and our menu. Seal was himself a diversion. It was perfect until your brother started free-enterprising and now we have to shut it down. It's as simple as that. Mr. Seal was a good agent and it's a shame he's dead. But, hopefully, our new operation will build on Seal's success in sustaining our Contra support effort while goddamn Congress dilly dallies around as the Russians take over Nicaragua."
Clinton just glared back. "That was a good sermon, but what can you specifically do to end this investigation concerning my brother and the bond business?"
"Your brother needed to go to jail," Johnson said staring at the governor. "As governor you should intervene and make things as painless as possible now. As far as the money investigation goes, Mr. Meese is intervening right now. There will be no money investigation. The U.S. attorney's office (in Little Rock) is 'getting religion' as we speak. *
"There may be nothing we can do about your friend Lasater's drug problem. I suggest that he and everyone else caught with their pants down take the bad along with the good and do a little time -- as your brother has. It's a shame. But bartenders shouldn't drink. If some of our people are going to be in the drug business as a cover, they should do as Mrs. Reagan says and 'just say no'."
Johnson had applied the balm and now the massage began. "Bill, you are Mr. Casey's fair-haired boy. But you do have competition for the job you seek. We would never put all our eggs in one basket. You and your state have been our greatest asset. The beauty of this, as you know, is that you're a Democrat, and with our ability to influence both parties, this country can get beyond partisan gridlock. Mr. Casey wanted me to pass on to you that unless you fuck up and do something stupid, you're No. 1 on the short list for a shot at the job you've always wanted.
They're out there and they're not really very powerful. And you can see this when in 1948, Harry Truman wins election again, you know, the picture of him standing there with the newspaper over his head that says Dewey wins or Dewey beats Truman. That is the Chicago Tribune printed those up ahead of time, because Truman had actually been the first American president to, campaign in Harlem, which is a black neighborhood, primarily a black neighborhood. Then, and everybody thought that would kill him with white voters. And it didn't it didn't because people were like, yeah, okay, we're on board of this. So, it doesn't really take off until 1954 and in 1954, with Brown versus Board of Education, which used federal troops and federal monies to desegregate the schools. At first it Brown v board and 54 is the Supreme Court saying that public schools must be desegregated. And then in 1957, Eisenhower sends the troops to Little Rock, Little Rock Central High School, to desegregate those schools.
With that, there's a really key moment, because when that happens, those people who want to get rid of this government say to white voters primarily who were the voters who are benefiting from this liberal consensus from the unions and from the the the food benefits and from the new highways and from the good jobs. They say to them, see, we told you that this government was going to use your cash, your tax dollars, and redistribute them to black people. And that idea that this liberal consensus, this government that was designed to create wealth for all of us was actually about cash giving cash from white people to black people, essentially in the 1950s. And then, of course, it includes brown people and women. And you know, LGBTQ plus and so on. What that what we are seeing now is the, the, the, the logical outcome of that all along, those people who wanted to destroy this liberal consensus have said, we got to get rid of it because your tax dollars are going to those people and starts, as I say, in the 50s, and it really takes off under Nixon and then under Reagan. And then you get the Willie Horton ads under, George H.W. Bush, and then you get, George, George W Bush with the, the, the, the dividing he was doing. And finally we get Donald Trump talking about criminals coming from Mexico and making fun of, disabled Americans and, and, and making vile comments about women and so on. But where we are now is literally what they were trying to do in the 1950s, this unelected man is sitting in the, the, the, the bowels of our government deciding what he thinks is doing what he thinks are programs that are benefiting people of color and women and, and, and, disabled Americans and, religious minorities and, gender minorities and so on. And this is where the rubber finally hits the road. People like me have been saying all along, based actually from me on something Lincoln said, if you start to say you people are not welcome in this polity that is trying to create wealth for everybody, it is only a question of time until you are one of those groups that is being shut out. And so what what Musk is doing and his people are doing is they are literally saying, Department of Education. We don't need the department of Education. Do you know the Department of Education does, among other things, it's the one that funds special needs, that needs education and, provides grants to poor schools. You know, especially poor schools. Well, you know, that is going to affect a lot of Americans who probably thought that Donald Trump was a great idea. One of the things that they have said they are going to cut is, as I say, these, these programs that are they said we're cutting religious stuff. But one of the things that they cut seemed to cut is they say we don't know whether it's happened or not. Is, an organization that that that gets grants to establish nursing homes, and that's going to affect everybody, and it's going to affect everybody, not just because, I mean, maybe you don't have anybody in a nursing home. I don't. But all of that money that we have used in our federal government to support a society that grows wealth for everybody means that if you shut down a nursing home, it's really bad news for the people who no longer can have that level of care. It's also really bad news for the people who worked in the nursing home, and who maybe drove people around from that nursing home and provided the food and the linens and, you know, the equipment to that nursing home. But think about then what that does to the communities. So the people who work to the nursing home are no longer going to be buying coffee at your coffee shop and on down across the American economy. What we are seeing here is the ultimate destruction of the idea of this liberal consensus that was designed to use our government, our tax dollars, us as a way to create a structure, the roads and the hospitals and the schools and the safety net. Because if you have, you know, before we had Social Security and you were an old, older person, not only were you in danger of starving to death, but you were a real burden on your kids. Once we have Social Security, you actually can help your kids out. Or there's a reason for you to be living with them because you actually have some payments that you can help with that household. This whole idea of creating this, this net that is going to create wealth for all of us, we are seeing destroyed. In order for somebody like Elon Musk and those oligarchs in our country to turn all of that wealth back into cash and to put it in their own pockets. That's not going to turn out well for anybody. And so the bigger picture here is not well, I never really liked the grant that went to, puppet theater. Anyway, I made that up. I just thought maybe that was something somebody might say. That's a stupid use of money. You may say, I don't care because I don't like that. But what you're not seeing is that those grants are made by our representatives in Congress, theoretically, to guarantee that we have created this consensus, this liberal consensus, that we will use our tax dollars to create a world in which we have access to the resources to create wealth for all of us. And that destruction cannot be done piecemeal. And again, what what what what Musk is doing is saying, I'm going to tear it all down if I don't agree with it. Out he goes. And then if it turns out, you know that we need nursing homes, we can bring in a weak private. The private industry will fill that in. But here's the kicker this isn't X and it isn't a private company. It's a nation, and it's a nation, first of all, in which you can't stop payments for a month and expect everything to be able to to pick up again. I mean, you know this in your own life. What are you going to do if they if they cut veterans benefits, you know, just not eat for a month? I mean, that's that is literally not how this works. So first of all, the hardship is extraordinary. But second of all, you'll take down the whole system. And then of course, is is quite likely what a few of the the oligarchs like Musk want. That's what Timothy Snyder said over the weekend in a great piece, he wrote that they want to destroy everything, leave us all helpless, leave us all, you know, unable to function all divided. And they will sell the parts that are valuable and keep the, you know, keep the money. And the rest of us are just on our own, and maybe we can create something entrepreneurially, or we can just work for them. And you know, Tim Snyder put it in terms of, you should think of the government like a car that maybe when you voted, you thought of the fact you were going into, to a mechanic shop and you just wanted a tune up on the car because you didn't really like the way it was running. And so you voted for somebody to take it into the mechanic shop and change it, and you drive into the mechanic shop, and the people who are there don't really look like mechanics, but you leave the car there and you come back for it, and they tell you they have stripped it of all the parts that were valuable, sold those parts, kept the money, and you should thank them for what they've done. And that's what we're looking at right now. So, let me. Go here to. What to do about it. Because I know people are completely freaking out. I want to start once again. Musk is not elected. He has no more power to do this than I do. That's important to remember because he's a funny character in that he is able to wield a lot of power over the elected Republicans right now because he's threatening to to fund somebody to to run against him in a primary. And so they're doing what he wants. But if he is able to do this, he doesn't need them anymore. And they need to wake up to that because once he doesn't need them anymore, why should he keep them? I mean, like I say, maybe, maybe for cocktail parties, but he's probably got his own friends for that. So it's important to remember that he is not himself the person who has the authority to do this. And the fact that the people who are really pushing this for him are six young people between the ages of 19 and 25. This is not the Huns crossing the Alps. This is a group that is essentially launched. It has launched as is in the middle of a coup against you and me in 300 and, 332 million Americans. And there's seven of them. And that's an important thing to remember, because the question right now is not whether you're a Trumper or whether you're MAGA or any of or whether you're Republican or whether you're Democrat or any of those things. The first question is who elected Elon Musk? And that's a question to take to everybody, because right now, Elon Musk and his gang of what did somebody just call them? Gizmo Crats somebody call them gizmo Crats, which I kind of like. These people have access to your information and they, you know, they could if they wanted to. I'm not saying they're going to, but they could stop any payments they want to. And literally I mean, is that something that matters to is there anybody you know who would say, oh, I don't care, I trust them, you know, I, I and without leaving fingerprints, by the way, if some tech people have been writing to me about about what you can do with that sort of power, and I will not express more about that, but you could, you know, you can go in and start change and stuff and get people in a lot of trouble really fast without leaving fingerprints on it. And, I mean, it's chaos is what it is. Is there anybody who doesn't care about that? So the first thing to do and I want to shout, give a shout out here to my friend, Joanne Freeman, a scholar of the American Revolution, because I asked her last night, you know, we are operating outside the Constitution, so the place to look is at the American Revolution. When they didn't have a constitution, how did they mobilize people to understand what was at stake? When we were talking about things like cheap tea, I mean, the the the monopoly that the Crown put on the tea from the East India Company actually made it cheaper to buy than tea had been before. And how did you, how did you convince many pre literate people of how to that this was important for them to boycott because it would give, it would establish the principle that Parliament could tax the colonists without without them having a say there. How did you do that? And what she said, I thought was really interesting. She said, governments need popular buy in to be legitimate. They have to have people behind them in order to be legitimate. And you see this with Trump. I was screaming about how he had a landslide. More people voted for somebody other than Donald Trump, than voted for him. There was no landslide. You see it when he talked about how huge his inaugural, crowd was, the first time around and his refusal to do a second inaugural. Probably because he recognized he wouldn't have the kind of numbers that he would like to see there. You need to to be legitimate. You need to have support. You need to have popular support. You can see this again, even in places like Russia, where every time they hold an election, they get 87% support. Right. You know, that's not true. But they're trying to push that idea on their remaining supporters. So nobody dares to turn out against them. So in this moment, make your voices heard. That is any time any representative has, a representative Senator has a town hall. Go to it. Any time they have any kind of a public event, go to it. If you if they have open office hours or they're available in their offices, go to them. And I would urge you a couple of things, just as I'm, I'm. Is it like, it's kind of a rabbit hole? No violence, really, no violence. And that's not me being wussy. That's that. If you study America, it's not true in other countries, but in America, the United States of America, any time a movement turns violent, people turn against it. So if you're being strategic, no violence. And, and, you know, behave with respect, but make it really clear that you do not support Elon Musk having control of the United States government. You can all you don't have to be there in person either. Call, call and everybody every day and ask to speak to whomever is in charge of whatever it is you issue is you care about. Again, being polite and and, and overwhelm. As you know, the you may not know, the switchboards went down in Washington yesterday because so many people called every day. Keep that up. Keep that drumbeat going, and do it at the state level as well, because those people have contacts with the national level. Make sure people know how you feel. Now another let me step back a little bit on another thing here. Please don't yell at the Democrats. You can certainly say we want leadership or whatever, but I promise you, they're doing the best they can. They do not hold power. So they're trying to gum the works up wherever they can. And what tends to happen again in the United States is that, people recognize that Republicans aren't going to change, so they yell at the Democrats, and it's really demoralizing. People yell at me all the time because obviously they want to see changes and they're yelling at me about it. I promise you, I have zero power to make a Democratic lawmaker do anything. So yelling at me just makes me feel bad when I'm drinking my coffee, yell at the people who are causing the problem, yell at the arsonists who are setting the building on fire, not at the people trying to put the fire out, but make your voices heard all the time. Make sure you're out there and that people see this and that they see how enormously unpopular this is. But I'm not done. There are other ways to get out. The word I said on Sunday that I thought people should make sure that their, Republican voting family members and friends understand that Musk has taken control of all their private information. And a lot of people, some people said it worked and people didn't know about that. Other people said they got a lot of pushback on that. One of the things somebody said, they did was to go to their local bank in a red district and say, what steps, you know, are you taking to protect my information? And in the person did that, not expecting them to have an answer and they didn't. But the people there did not know what was going on. And this was a way to say, well, haven't you heard that the Treasury systems have been breached and that Musk has, has taken all or has access to all our private information? Now, again, people aren't going to believe you the first time, but if you hear it enough times, people are going to start to pay attention because right now we need to demonstrate that what is going on does not have popular support. Now, Musk is the immediate problem and pushing on the senators especially. But the Republicans who are supporting them is crucial. But I think the larger picture here is really important for people to understand that all these years, people have thought that this government that what Trump calls the deep state, the swamp, you know, all these words that they've used for it are their neighbors who are doing the work of creating a world where we all have access to educations and health care and the opportunity to work hard and rise. That's what the US government is. That is us working together to make it possible for our neighbors to survive and to prosper, but also for ourselves. And the cutting of these programs, especially the Department of Education, which Trump wants to get rid of. Congress doesn't. But Trump is going to try and get rid of it. U.S. aid, which has been enormously. I mean, aside from the fact the morality of it, you can't have a better return on your investment than and then putting less than 1% of the budget into programs in 60 countries all around the world that, for example, undercut ISIS. I mean, that's that's part of keeping us safe. That idea that that this government is there to protect and to support all of us is, is not just to help our neighbors, but also to help us. And I think this is the point place that a lot of MAGA voters jump ship and said, oh, no, no, no, this government is only helping, you know, some racial, ethnic, religious, gender minority. And I'm not one of them. I don't care. But now they're seeing that what's being cut our nursing homes are money for roads are, education are the kind of money that will keep hospitals afloat. Law enforcement grants, all those things that we did together are the things that are currently on the chopping block. And what will happen and spatters right here is that the the valuable parts Musk and his cronies are going to sell off and keep the money from. And we're all back on our own trying to figure out how to survive as a society with our all those pieces falling apart. And it's important to understand that, and it's important to talk about that with people. I will I will be talking about it more. But really what we're seeing is the the logical outcome of where we have been for the last 40 years, that idea that we would undercut the government by saying your tax dollars are going to help black kids go to school, it's a waste of money that is now finally coming home to roost. And we are seeing that the take down of that liberal consensus is the take down of the American society that we built after World War two to make sure that everybody, everybody in society had access to the tools, the health, the education and the infrastructure to enable them, as well as all of their neighbors to prosper. And that's going to be a really important thing going forward, because this isn't just about, whether or not you care about this particular thing or that particular thing. Americans need to understand that, that this is what the federal government is and what the federal government does. And the Republicans have been really good for the last 40 years at doing things like calling out one little tiny piece of one grant and saying, did you really want your tax dollars to go to study? Here you go. The mating habits of the Atlantic cod. You know, of course, you know, people would roll their eyes and say, well, that's really stupid. Why do I care what the Atlantic cod are doing? You care what the Atlantic cod are doing because they're, a major part of the, food chain in the Atlantic that has been utterly disrupted. And the problem is nobody can figure out why they I mean, scientists are working on. And maybe they've decided this by now, but two years ago, they couldn't figure out why they're not able to repopulate those banks with fry. And it appears to be something to do with they actually have home ground, but that's what that home ground is. It's been lost because of the destruction of those species in the 1970s. That's not about something stupid having to do with a little fish. That's something having to do with the health of the Atlantic Ocean and that, you know, grants and funding are not just handed out like checks when they're done, really through the federal government. It's a little different when, George W Bush went into Iraq or Afghanistan. But, but that's what our representatives and the people they hire are doing with our money to try to make sure that we are secure, as in it through our Defense Department defending us, our Defense Department, and that we have health and Human services and that we have education and that we have transportation and that, you know, you can go on through here, that we are operating with, as I say, this consensus that we will use our tax dollars to create wealth for all of us and not simply use them as cash to put in the pockets of a few oligarchs. I. Again, I'm going to say just one more time here. Things are bad, and, you know, I'm I'm I tend to be a glass half full person. This is a bad moment. It is not over. You know, the the people who are throwing up their hands and saying it's over. American democracy is over. Listen, I'm not happy about where we are. This is the worst place we have ever been as a country. But it's not over. You know, as I say, power is sloshing around. The president is dotty, and he is not clear. He's in control. You've got this rogue guy from South Africa running amok in the computers. There's probably going to be fallout from that because my guess is, is they start messing around with computers. Things are going to fall apart pretty quickly. There's a lot of places still where a lot is still not determined. And I would urge you to look at the difference between that and a country like Syria was before the fall of Al Assad a few weeks ago. You couldn't speak up. You couldn't, you know, you were under the the finger of under the thumb of that guy who had these, these torture prisons and so on and so forth. We're not there yet. Now, we could get there. I mean, I didn't talk at all about the other things that Trump has been doing, not least that, he thinks he's been talk or he has been talking to El Salvador about taking not only undocumented migrants, but also American prisoners, American citizens, which is so unconstitutional I can't even begin to articulate it. Or the fact that his new secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, refused to outlaw torture, during his confirmation hearings, or the fact that they have opened a 3000 bed, camp at Guantanamo Bay. And I make that that distinction. You need to read these articles carefully in the news. It's not 3000 person, it's 3000 bed. And people are making the assumption that those two things are the same things. And they are not. You'd like to think that that that's what they're talking about. But it's 3000, 30,000, not 3030 thousand bed migrant camp. All of those things could come to America, but we are not there yet. We have pockets of resistance in the states. The state governors are doing in in blue states are doing a fabulous job. We have foreign countries that are pushing back against the Trump administration. We have lawsuits being filed right and left. We have people out, protest, and we have people calling so much they shut down the the, the circuit boards yesterday or the switchboards yesterday in Washington DC. And we have, interestingly enough, not only independent media like me, but we have, I think, a renewed interest on the part of other forms of media in this story, because one of the things that always kind of made me crazy about the Trump years is that reporters tended to chase everything Trump, Trump said, because it was newsworthy and he was always off the wall. He's no longer the big story. The big story is Musk. And what's happening to the government. And all of a sudden, if you're watching, which you may or may not be on, on social media, especially on blue Sky, you've got all sorts of reporters saying to sources, here's my my encrypted information, please let me know any information you've got. And that is going to change the the media dynamic as well. So before you throw up your hands and say it's all over, it's not all over. There are 332 million of us. Very few people want to see American democracy fall. The people who are not standing against it in the Senate are cowards. And I will say that the Republicans are cowards and they need to find a spine. He's going to come for you anyway. You might as well take a stand against him now and defend your constituents. And I guess I will leave you with this. I've made this this comparison before. I used to read a great blog, and one of the the people who wrote into it once a year was a long haul trucker who was at the time was incarcerated. But he would write once a year, all the things that you should know as a driver, not as a long haul trucker, but as a regular driver, because he'd seen everything. And, you know, there was stuff like, just so you know, we can see inside your cars and we I've seen everything and just see you now, you know, here's this, here's that. But one of the things he always said was, first of all, slow down five miles an hour faster is not going to matter in terms of how fast you get there. And five miles slower could save your life. So slow down. And the other thing he said is, he said, if you want to survive an accident, don't stop driving. He said, you know, in in many accidents when somebody is coming into a bad situation, they panic. They take their hands off the wheel and they cover their eyes. And he said 100% of the time that's a fatal accident. You can't take your hands off the wheel and cover your eyes. You got to keep driving. He said, you know, it may not turn out well for you, but it could be that the accident that you're pulling into slides off the side of the road. Or it could be that there's a lucky bounce and you miss it, or it could be that you managed to steer around it. Whatever you do when you are in a catastrophe, do not stop driving. And that's the position we're in right now. We must not stop driving, and that's where we are. If you need to take a break, do it. Make sure you're always with friends. Make sure that when you push back against these things, you have a community around you to help you do it. Number of places where you can find formulas for talking to your your, representatives on the phone for writing. Don't bother email. They throw that out. You can write letters, you can write postcards. Calling and showing up are the most important things to do. There are a number of organizations where they will help you build what they call squads for example, at Red Wine and Blues so that you're not alone. There are all kinds of places that will help you organize, but for right now, let's just keep driving. Thank you for being here. I'll see you again soon.
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION AGENTS ASSOCIATION; JOHN DOE 1; JOHN DOE 2; JOHN DOE 3; JOHN DOE 4; and JANE DOE 1; JANE DOE 2; and JANE DOE 3, Plaintiffs, v. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE and THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Defendant.
Case No. 1:25-cv-00328 Filed 02/04/25
COMPLAINT
Plaintiffs the Federal Bureau of Investigation Agents Association (“FBIAA”), by and through their attorneys, and John Does 1 through 4 and Jane Does 1 through 3 (the “Doe Plaintiffs”), collectively, the “Plaintiffs,” by and through their attorneys, hereby bring this Complaint against the Defendants United States Department of Justice and United States of America. In support thereof, upon personal knowledge as well as information and belief, Plaintiffs allege the following:
NATURE OF THE ACTION
Plaintiffs consist of longtime current special agents and other personnel employed at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”). They have brought this case to remedy Defendants’ unlawful retaliation for their pursuit of lawful and appropriately commenced cases and investigations in their capacity while employed with the FBI regarding the attacks on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Plaintiffs seek this Court’s protection from Defendants’ anticipated retaliatory decision to expose their personal information for opprobrium and potential vigilante action by those who they were investigating.
JURISDICTION AND VENUE
1. This Court has subject matter jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1331 because Plaintiffs’ causes of action arise under the Constitution and laws of the United States. The Court also has jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1361 because Plaintiffs seek a writ of mandamus to compel officers and employees of the United States and its agencies to perform duties owed to Plaintiff and required under law.
2. Sovereign immunity for non-monetary relief is waived under 5 U.S.C. § 702, which entitles Plaintiffs to relief when Defendants acted unconstitutionally and beyond statutory authority.
3. Venue is appropriate in this judicial district under 28 U.S.C. § 1391(b) and (e).
PARTIES
4. FBIAA is a non-profit professional organization dedicated to the service of FBI agents. Its mission is to advocate for the careers, economic interests, conditions of employment, and welfare of its members. Its membership includes both current and former Special Agents. FBIAA has approximately 14,000 members. The FBI employs approximately 13,800 Special Agents. Approximately 12,000 of the FBI’s 13,800 Special Agents are members of FBIAA.
5. The Doe Plaintiffs include Special Agents, forensic examiners, a forensic chemist, and an intelligence analyst. Each are currently employed by the FBI.
6. Defendant, the United States Department of Justice, is a Cabinet agency within the executive branch of the United States government and controls its subordinate component FBI, which employs the Plaintiffs.
7. Defendant, the United States of America, is responsible for the exercise of state action being challenged by Plaintiffs in this case.
FACTS
8. FBI employees are regularly called upon to undertake some of the most critical and high-stakes law enforcement investigations in our nation. They work at the direction of senior leaders at the Department of Justice to investigate and help prosecute complex crimes, often against sophisticated and powerful adversaries.
9. The FBI’s mission is as diverse as it is sensitive. FBI Special Agents have among the broadest of investigative authorities and are frequently the lead investigators on cases involving counterterrorism, fentanyl trafficking, child pornography, cybercrime, and other critical threats. FBI agents are empowered by law to conduct investigations of and to make arrests for offenses enumerated in the United States Code.
10. The targets of their investigations often have many tools of their own at their disposal that can be used to interfere with the FBI’s work or to endanger its agents.
11. On any given day, an FBI agent may be face-to-face with an individual who would sooner resort to violence than submit to the law. FBI agents, including those among the FBIAA Plaintiffs, have worked undercover using pseudonyms in order to operate within an investigation.
12. Other employees of the FBI, for example, certain of the Doe Plaintiffs, are not Special Agents but support investigations in other ways like computer or intelligence analysis and forensic examination.
A. January 6, 2021
13. The events of January 6, 2021, and the activities leading up to the violence that ensued on the U.S. Capitol on that day, have been well documented by courts in this circuit. Specifically, “[o]n January 6, 2021, a mob professing support for then-President Trump violently attacked the United States Capitol in an effort to prevent a Joint Session of Congress from certifying the electoral college votes designating Joseph R. Biden the 46th President of the United States. The rampage left multiple people dead, injured more than 140 people, and inflicted millions of dollars in damage to the Capitol. Then-Vice President Pence, Senators, and Representatives were all forced to halt their constitutional duties and flee the House and Senate chambers for safety.” Trump v. Thompson, 20 F.4th 10, at 15-16 (D.C. Cir. 2021).
14. Following the November 3, 2020 presidential election in which “Americans elected Joseph Biden as President, giving him 306 electoral college votes[,] [t]hen-President Trump . . . refused to concede, claiming that the election was ‘rigged.’” Trump v. Thompson, 20 F.4th at *18 (quoting President Donald J. Trump, Statement on 2020 Election Results at 0:34-0:46, 18:11-18:15, C-SPAN (Dec. 2, 2020), https://www.c-span.org/video/?506975-1/ ... on-results). In the ensuing weeks following the 2020 election, “President Trump and his allies filed a series of lawsuits challenging the results of the election,” and “[t]he courts rejected every one of the substantive claims of voter fraud that was raised.” Id. (citing Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. v. Secretary of Pennsylvania, 830 F. App’x 377, 381 (3d Cir. 2020) (“[C]alling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”) (additional citations omitted).
15. On January 6, 2021, Congress proceeded in its solemn Constitutional duty “[a]s required by the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act,” and “a Joint Session of Congress convened on January 6, 2021 to certify the results of the election.” Id. (citing 3 U.S.C. § 15; 167 Cong. Rec. H75-H85 (daily ed. Jan. 6, 2021)). In advance of the Constitutionally-mandated certification of the electoral votes, “President Trump had sent out a Tweet encouraging his followers to gather for a ‘[ b]ig protest in D.C. on January 6th’ and to ‘[ b]e there, will be wild!’” Id. (quoting Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump), Twitter (Dec. 19, 2020, 1:42 AM).
16. On January 6, 2020, “[s]hortly before noon . . . President Trump took the stage at a rally of his supporters on the Ellipse, just south of the White House,” where he gave a speech “reiterat[ing] his claims that the election was ‘rigged’ and ‘stolen,’ and urged then-Vice President Pence, who would preside over the certification, to ‘do the right thing’ by rejecting various States' electoral votes and refusing to certify the election in favor of Mr. Biden.” Id. at 18-19 (quoting Donald J. Trump, Rally on Electoral College Vote Certification at 3:33:05-3:33:10, 3:33:32-3:33:54, 3:37:19-3:37:29, C-SPAN (Jan. 6, 2021), https://www.c-span.org/video/?507744-1/ ... tification (“January 6 Speech”)). Nearing “the end of the speech, President Trump announced to his supporters “we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue * * * to the Capitol and * * * we’re going to try and give our Republicans * * * the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country." Id. (quoting January 6 Speech at 4:42:00-4:42:32). President Trump “[u]rg[ed] the crowd to ‘demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated[,]’ he warned that ‘you'll never take back our country with weakness’ and declared ‘[w]e fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.’” Id. (quoting January 6 Speech Id. at 3:47:20-3:47:42, 4:41:17 -4:41:33).
17. Thereafter, “[s]hortly after the speech, a large crowd of President Trump's supporters—including some armed with weapons and wearing full tactical gear—marched to the Capitol and violently broke into the building to try and prevent Congress’s certification of the election results.” Id. Violence ensued. “The mob quickly overwhelmed law enforcement and scaled walls, smashed through barricades, and shattered windows to gain access to the interior of the Capitol. Police officers were attacked with chemical agents, beaten with flag poles and frozen water bottles, and crushed between doors and throngs of rioters.” Id. at 18 (citations omitted).
18. “As rioters poured into the building, members of the House and Senate, as well as Vice President Pence, were hurriedly evacuated from the House and Senate chambers. Soon after, rioters breached the Senate chamber. In the House chamber, Capitol Police officers barricaded the door with furniture and drew their weapons to hold off rioters. Some members of the mob built a hangman’s gallows on the lawn of the Capitol, amid calls from the crowd to hang Vice President Pence.” Id. (quotation marks and citations omitted); see also United States v. Alford, 89 F. 4th 943 (D.C. Cir. 2024) (“That afternoon, however, a mob broke through the perimeter, tore down the barricades and clashed with police. Members of the mob entered the Capitol through broken windows and then threw open the doors to their compatriots. Ultimately, the mob delayed the electoral certification by several hours. Both the Senate and the House recessed shortly after 2:00 p.m. and did not resume until 8:00 p.m. that night after law enforcement secured the building.”).
19. “The events of January 6, 2021 marked the most significant assault on the Capitol since the War of 1812. The building was desecrated, blood was shed, and several individuals lost their lives. Approximately 140 law enforcement officers were injured, and one officer who had been attacked died the next day. In the aftermath, workers labored to sweep up broken glass, wipe away blood, and clean feces off the walls. Portions of the building’s historic architecture were damaged or destroyed.” Thompson, 20 F.4th at 19.
C. Federal Law Enforcement Investigations and Prosecutions in the Aftermath of January 6
20. Following the events of January 6, 2021, the FBI and Department of Justice began investigating the myriad federal crimes seemingly committed, pursuant to the missions of their respective law enforcement agencies. In fact, federal law enforcement mobilized that very day to assist in quelling the riots, bringing order to the Capitol, and seeking out those who broke the law.
21. Investigative efforts were centralized out of the District of Columbia federal district (“DDC”). Functionally, this meant that FBI agents swore out arrest warrant affidavits in front of DDC magistrate judges. Upon receipt and review of the sworn affidavit, DDC magistrate judges approved the FBI’s arrest warrant applications and provided a signed, lawful arrest warrant to the arresting FBI agent or FBI task force officer (local law enforcement detailed to the FBI) for execution.
22. In some instances, individuals were arrested pursuant to a grand jury indictment. In these cases, FBI agents testified in front of a federal grand jury under Fed. R. Crim P. 6. If the grand jury found probable cause based on the evidence presented, a supervising court would then issue a lawful arrest warrant for execution.
23. Many of the perpetrators of the January 6 riots fled Washington, D.C., immediately after the carnage. Because of this, the FBI had to coordinate efforts across the country in order to amass evidence. This frequently entailed applying for search warrants under Fed. R. Crim. P. 41 in the district where the evidence was to be located. Again, the FBI applied for warrants via sworn affidavits presented to neutral and detached magistrate judges. In the context of search warrants for physical property (e.g., phones, clothes, stolen property), these lawful warrants were issued by a multitude of magistrate judges outside of DDC.
24. On November 18, 2022, then-Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith as a Special Counsel to investigate matters relating to the events of January 6, 2021. See In re Sealed Case, 77 F. 4th 815 (D.C. Cir. 2023). Even prior to that appointment, however, federal law enforcement investigated and prosecuted over 1,500 individuals in connection with the events of January 6, 2021. All told, the Department of Justice charged nearly 1,600 individuals with crimes from the attack. See https://www.npr.org/2021/02/09/96547204 ... ir-stories (last visited February 4, 2025).
25. In the ensuing years, President Trump repeatedly referred to the defendants in the cases arising from the events of January 6, 2021 as “hostages.” See, e.g., https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrum ... 3255858788 (with audio of incarcerated January 6 defendants) (last visited February 4, 2025); Emma Barnet and Jillian Frankel, Trump says there will be a “bloodbath” if he loses the election, NBC News (March 16, 2024) (discussing his comments at a 2024 rally referring to January 6 prisoners as “hostages”), https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald ... rcna143746 (last visited February 4, 2025).
26. Trump has also repeatedly and publicly attempted to portray the FBI not as law enforcement investigators but as “[t]hugs”, “[t]yrants,” and “Gestapo.” See https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrum ... 5533954622 (last visited February 4, 2025) and https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrum ... 8482982758 (last visited February 4, 2025). 29. He has also been a prolific promulgator of conspiracy theories in an attempt to redefine the events of January 6. See Alyssa Meiman, Trump has spread conspiracy theories about January 6th more than 175 times on Truth Social, CREW (June 6, 2024), https://www.citizensforethics.org/repor ... th-social/ (last visited February 4, 2025).
29. He has also been a prolific promulgator of conspiracy theories in an attempt to redefine the events of January 6. See Alyssa Meiman, Trump has spread conspiracy theories about January 6th more than 175 times on Truth Social, CREW (June 6, 2024), https://www.citizensforethics.org/repor ... th-social/ (last visited February 4, 2025).
D. Actions Since January 20, 2025
30. During his inauguration speech on January 20, 2025, Trump once again referenced his perceived “weaponization” of federal law enforcement, stating “The vicious, violent and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department and our government will end.” See https://www.whitehouse.gov/remarks/2025 ... l-address/ (last visited February 4, 2025).
31. One of President Trump’s first actions following his inauguration was pardoning or commuting the sentences of every single person prosecuted by the Department of Justice for conduct related to January 6, 2021. Proclamation, “Granting Pardons and Commutation of Sentences for Certain Offenses Relating to the Events at or Near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021” (Jan. 20, 2025), https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential ... ry-6-2021/.
32. Since receiving their presidential pardons or commutations, the leaders of the January 6 riot and others have tagged FBI agents who worked on the investigation and prosecutions of those rioters.
33. For example, on February 1, 2025, a leader of the violent Proud Boys gang publicly posted the following on social media:
Enrique Tarrio@NobleOne
I'm calling for the firing and the arrest of Special Agent Nicole Miller of the @FBI for perjury, tampering with evidence and violating 18 USC 1512 Obstructing an Official Proceeding.
Throughout the trial of @ENordean @RealJoeBiggs @zachrehl @DomPezzola0351 And I, Agent Nicole Miller lied on the stand, Tampered with evidence and eavesdropped on attorney client privileged calls. She hid her messages that showed personal bias against us during her illegal investigation.
She must be brought to justice and made to answer for her crimes. True justice can only be accomplished by holding our government accountable for the crimes they committed.
To ALL J6ers I encourage you to tell your stories and name those who committed these heinous acts. They tried to take OUR lives for political gain and we cannot let things stand. You want to Make America Great Again? This is a start.
34. Originally sentenced to 22 years in prison, Enrique Tarrio has been recently released from federal custody and has openly expressed his intent to seek retaliation against the FBI. In his X bio line, he claims to be the “United States Secretary of Retaliation.”
35. Mr. Tarrio has also threatened that “[t]he people who did this, they need to feel the heat, they need to be put behind bars, and they need to be prosecuted…. Success is going to be retribution.” Rachel Leingang, Proud Boys leader thanks Trump for January 6 pardon and vows revenge, The Guardian (Jan. 24, 2025), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... que-tarrio (last visited February 4, 2025).
36. As of the date of this affidavit, multiple hashtags are trending on X that allow January 6 convicts-turned-pardons to link to each other in posts promoting violence and insurrection against law enforcement agents. For example, the below user @magashredguitar (“Steve”), whose bio claims he was a “J6 attendee,” re-posted the following post from another January 6 convict-turned-pardon recipient Chris Quaglin (@CQuaglin) which apparently depicts Mr. Quaglin’s FBI interview subsequent to his arrest in 2021. On February 3, 2024, Steve captioned his re-post “This FBIer better have filled out that survey today asking about his J6 prosecution (persecution) involvement.”
37. For context, according to the Department of Justice, Quaglin was ultimately sentenced to 12 years in prison before being pardoned by President Trump. The Department of Justice described that on January 6, 2021, Quaglin, dressed in a hard-sided helmet, full-faced gas mask, and carrying a backpack and bear spray (chemical irritant), “was part of the initial group of rioters who overtook the police line,” assaulted multiple Capitol Police officers with is hands, hit another officer with his gas mask, stole another police officer’s shield and attacked him with it, and “raised a can of chemical irritant in the air, reaching around the officers' shields, and sprayed the officers directly in their faces.” According to the Department of Justice, Quaglin showed no remorse for his crimes and instead claimed to be a political prisoner, despite the fact that his assaults on multiple police officers were caught on camera. See https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/new- ... er-charges (last visited February 4, 2025).
38. Violent threats against FBI agents who have carried out lawful orders in relation to January 6th or subsequent investigations have been a consistent problem for the FBI for years. For example, in 2022, agents who carried out the search of then-former-President Trump's home were doxed on Trump’s social media network, which climaxed when an individual attempted a siege of the FBI field office in Ohio, resulting in his death. Around the same time, a Pennsylvania man was arrested and charged with threatening to kill FBI agents. The threat of retaliation by vigilantes was so profound that “the FBI issued a joint intelligence bulletin warning of an increase in threats, quietly hardened its facilities and scrubbed personal information from websites to protect personnel from possible danger.” See Perry Stein et al., As the FBI Comes Under Threat, its Leaders Try to Stay out of the Fray (August 20, 2022) (emphasis added), https://www.washingtonpost.com/national -security/2022/08/20/fbi-comes-under-threat-its-leader-tries-stay-out-view/ (last visited February 4, 2025).
39. Another pardoned January 6 felon, upon release from prison, threatened that his next actions would be “To regroup, go home and find out the nefarious actors in local homes and towns.” Ryan J. Reilly and Gary Grumbach, Relief, revenge but little repentance: Trump’s pardons delight Jan. 6 offenders, NBC News (Jan. 22, 2025), https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald ... rcna188798 (last visited February 4, 2025).
40. In addition to the above examples of January 6 rioters, individuals currently serving in senior executive branch officials in the current administration have regularly publicized the names of disfavored individual civil servants in an attempt to intimidate them. For example, White House Advisor Elon Musk of DOGE recently shared the names and titles of individual civil servants holding “relatively obscure climate-related government positions,” generating a “barrage of negative attention” for those employees and leading at least one of them to delete their social media accounts. Hadas Gold and Rene Marsh, Elon Musk publicized the names of government employees he wants to cut. It’s terrifying federal workers, CNN (Nov. 27, 2024), https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/27/business ... index.html (last visited February 4, 2025).
E. Recent Department of Justice Activity
41. In the weeks since, the administration has summarily fired or forced into retirement law enforcement personnel involved in investigations and prosecutions arising out of the events of January 6, 2021. On January 27, 2025, the administration fired more than a dozen prosecutors who worked on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team. See Sarah N. Lynch and Andrew Goudsward, Trump’s Justice Department launches sweeping cuts targeting Jan. 6 prosecutors, FBI agents, Reuters (Jan. 31, 2025), https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fbi-la ... 025-01-31/ (last visited February 4, 2025). On Friday, January 31, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove “told the top federal prosecutors in each state to compile a list of all prosecutors and FBI agents who worked on the investigation of the Capitol riot.” Id. (emphasis added). Bove did so by issuing a memo entitled “Terminations.”
42. “That memo ordered eight FBI officials to resign or be fired, saying that their participation in the Jan. 6 cases represented part of what Trump has called the ‘weaponization’ of government,” id., and identified at least some of the terminated officials. See Ken Dilanian, Tom Winter, Jonathan Dienst & Ryan J. Reilly, Senior FBI official forcefully resisted Trump administration firings, NBC News (Feb. 1, 2025), https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/nation ... rcna190301 (last visited February 4, 2025).
43. Upon information and belief, supported by credible press reports, acting leadership at the Department of Justice has begun to take steps towards the mass, unlawful termination of Bureau employees who had any involvement in certain investigations related to President Trump, including Jan. 6 cases, and the lawful search of President Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago. Adam Goldman at al., Trump Officials Fire Jan. 6 Prosecutors and Plan Possible F.B.I. Purge, N.Y. Times (Jan. 31, 2025); Evan Perez, et al., Trump DOJ demands list of thousands of FBI agents, others who worked on Jan. 6 and Trump investigations for possible firing, CNN (Jan 31, 2025), https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/31/politics ... ry-6-fired (last visited February 4, 2025).
44. Upon information and belief, as many as 6,000 FBI employees may currently be targeted for unlawful firing. See Adam Goldman et al., Top F.B.I. Agent in New York Vows to ‘Dig In’ After Removals at Agency, N.Y. Times (Feb. 2, 2025) (“Mr. Trump’s political appointees plan to purge career bureau officials, including rank-and-file field agents. That number could reach 6,000 — or about a sixth of the bureau’s 38,000 employees, according to the F.B.I.”), https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/us/p ... trump.html (last visited Feb. 4, 2025).
45. In addition to being unlawful, a mass, unlawful firing of 6,000 FBI employees would be catastrophic to national security.
46. On Sunday, February 2, 2025, the Defendants ordered certain FBI agents to answer a questionnaire about their work on cases related to the events of January 6, 2021, to be completed by 3:00 p.m. the following date, February 3, 2025. The survey was titled “A/DAG Memo Response: Events that Occurred at or Near the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.” The survey memo included the following questions (all marked “require I'md), each accompanied by a drop-down menu of available answers:
1. What is your current title?
2. Are you currently a supervisor?
3. Are you currently an ASAC or SSIA?
4. Are you currently an SES employee (e.g., SAC, Section Chief, DAD, AD, etc…)?
5. What was your title when you participated in investigation(s) or prosecution(s) of events that occurred at or near the US Capitol on January 6, 2021?
6. Were you a supervisor when you participated in investigation(s) or prosecution(s) of events that occurred at or near the US Capitol on January 6, 2021?
7. Were you an ASAC or SSIA when you participated in investigation(s) or prosecution(s) of events that occurred at or near the US Capitol on January 6, 2021?
8. Were you an SES employee when you participated in investigation(s) or prosecution(s) of events that occurred at or near the US Capitol on January 6, 2021?
9. What division are you currently in? (The drop down menu is sorted first by Field Offices, Legat Offices, then HQ divisions, and then in alphabetical order by the division’s 2-character code).
10. What division were you in when you participated in investigation(s) or prosecution(s) of events that occurred at or near the US Capitol on January 6, 2021?
11. What was your role in the investigation(s) or prosecution(s) relating to events that occurred at or near the US Capitol on January 6, 2021?1
12. What was the approximate date of your last activity relating to the investigation(s) or prosecution(s) relating to events that occurred at or near the US Capitol on January 6, 2021?
47. Strangely, the selection of FBI agents who received this information included many who did little to no work on January 6 investigations, while others who did work January 6 investigations did not receive a survey request. On information and belief, Department of Justice is currently in a state of transitional disorganization and has been unable to confirm the accuracy of this basic informational data of its members.
48. On information and belief, the Defendants intend to publicly disseminate the names of those employees who responded to this survey, and/or those employees who the Defendants plan to demote, transfer and/or terminate based on this survey, and/or publicly disseminate employees’ responses to the survey questions outlined above.
49. Such public disclosures would directly put the safety of all impacted individuals at risk as well as their family members.
COUNT ONE: Violation of the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552a(e)(6)
50. Plaintiffs hereby reallege and incorporate all allegations in the above paragraphs as if fully set forth herein.
51. The Privacy Act requires that an agency, “prior to disseminating any record about an individual to any person other than an agency . . . make reasonable efforts to assure that such records are accurate, complete, timely, and relevant for agency purposes.” 5 U.S.C. § 552a(e)(6).
52. On information and belief, Defendants have disseminated or will imminently disseminate records about the Plaintiffs and their involvement in sensitive investigations.
53. On information and belief, Defendants have not made any reasonable efforts to ensure that the maintenance and public release of the records at issue in this case are accurate, complete, timely, and relevant for agency purposes.
54. Defendants’ violation will cause substantial and irreparable harm to Plaintiffs. Defendants’ anticipated intentional, willful, and unauthorized disclosure(s) of records pertaining to Plaintiffs will have demonstrable adverse effects on them. Among others, these effects include a risk to their safety and that of their family members, damage to their personal and professional reputations, harm to future employment opportunities and the ability to earn a living, and significant emotional distress. This bell cannot be unrung, and once the Plaintiffs’ personal information is released it will be eternally available on social media.
COUNT TWO: Violation of the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552a(b)
55. Plaintiffs hereby reallege and incorporate all allegations in the above paragraphs as if fully set forth herein.
56. Defendant Department of Justice is an “agency” within the meaning of the Privacy Act, Whittle v. Moschella, et. al., 756 F. Supp. 589, 596 (D.D.C. 1991), and maintains one or several “system of records” as defined by 5 U.S.C. § 552a(a)(5). This/these system(s) of records contain(s) “records,” as defined by 5 U.S.C. § 552a(a)(4) that pertain to and are about Plaintiffs, including their personally identifying information.
57. The disclosures of Plaintiffs’ names based on their work on investigations and prosecutions arising out of the January 6, 2021 events came from FBI and/or DOJ sources. The information about Plaintiffs’ case assignments is stored exclusively within FBI and/or DOJ systems of records.
58. 5 U.S.C. § 552a(b) provides that “[n]o agency shall disclose any record which is contained in a system of records by any means of communication to any person or to another agency, except pursuant to a written request by, or with the prior written consent of, the individual to whom the records pertains.” No exception to this disclosure prohibition applies in this case. Upon information and belief, Defendants plan to willingly and intentionally disclose Plaintiffs’ identifying information without their prior consent or approval, in violation of this provision.
59. Defendants’ violation will cause substantial and irreparable harm to Plaintiffs. Defendants’ anticipated intentional, willful, and unauthorized disclosure(s) of records pertaining to Plaintiffs have demonstrable adverse effects on them. Among others, these effects include a risk to their safety and that of their family members, damage to their personal and professional reputations, harm to future employment opportunities and the ability to earn a living, and significant emotional distress. Once the Plaintiffs’ personal information is released it will be eternally available on social media.
60. Plaintiffs hereby reallege and incorporate all allegations in the above paragraphs as if fully set forth herein.
61. Under the APA, a court shall “hold unlawful and set aside agency action found to be . . . arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law . . . contrary to constitutional right, power, privilege, or immunity . . . without observance of procedure required by law . . . [or] . . . unwarranted by the facts to the extent that the facts are subject to trial de novo by the reviewing court.” 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(B).
62. Here, the Defendants’ current and anticipated actions are contrary to the Defendants’ right to privacy, their right to qualified immunity as law enforcement officers acting pursuant to lawful orders, and are in flagrant violation of well-established procedures for the safeguarding of personally identifiable information.
COUNT FOUR: Mandamus under 28 U.S.C. § 1361
63. Plaintiffs hereby reallege and incorporate all allegations in the above paragraphs as if fully set forth herein.
64. The provisions of 28 U.S.C. § 1361 provide a statutory basis for jurisdiction in cases seeking relief in the nature of mandamus against federal officers, employees, and agencies, and they provide for an independent cause of action in the absence of any other available remedies.
65. Defendants’ actions, as set forth above, constitute unlawful, intimidating, and threatening behavior towards Plaintiffs in response to Plaintiffs’ lawful actions of executing lawful search and arrest warrants and participating in lawful investigations of crimes committed by January 6 perpetrators.
66. Defendants do not have discretion to redefine the truth of January 6, 2021. Nor do Defendants have any discretion to recast the lawful actions taken by the FBI and the previous leaders within the Department of Justice as illegal, let alone any discretion to retaliate and disclose names.
67. Defendants have no discretion when it comes to ensuring the safety of the American people from extremist violence, let alone the safety of their own employees.
68. If no other remedy is available through which the unlawful termination orders may be rescinded, then Plaintiffs are entitled to relief in the nature of mandamus compelling Defendants to recognize Plaintiff to rescind the unlawful termination orders.
COUNT FIVE: First Amendment Violation for Retaliation Based on Perceived Political Affiliation
69. Plaintiffs hereby reallege and incorporate all allegations in the above paragraphs as if fully set forth herein.
70. The First Amendment protects government employees from discrimination and adverse action based on a perception—even an incorrect one—about the employee’s political beliefs, expression, or affiliation.
71. As set forth above, Defendants are subjecting Plaintiffs to imminent and irreparable risks of physical, reputational, and financial harm based solely on their perceived lack of political loyalty, in violation of their First Amendment freedoms. This retaliation is all the more outrageous given that it is based solely on their faithfully performing their job duties to investigate crimes and uphold the law.
COUNT SIX: Due Process Violation (Reputational Harm)
72. Plaintiffs hereby reallege and incorporate all allegations in the above paragraphs as if fully set forth herein.
73. Defendants’ actions imminently violate Plaintiffs’ substantive Due Process rights, which arises from their protected interest in their stellar reputations following distinguished yearslong careers at the FBI.
74. The Fifth Amendment protects against both “reputation plus” and “stigma plus” harm caused by government actors. Here, Defendants’ actions harm Plaintiffs’ interests beyond their reputations, with the loss of their present government employment and the intent to harm their future employment prospects. In addition, Defendants’ actions have actually stigmatized Plaintiffs’ reputations by charging Plaintiffs and other similarly situated persons with dishonesty through allegations of improper political motivations in their faithful performance of their job duties to investigate crimes and uphold the law, which stigma hampers their future employment prospects.
75. As set forth above, Plaintiffs are being targeted for firing and public identification based on the false and defamatory premise that they abused their positions of authority for partisan reasons.
COUNT SEVEN: Due Process Violation (Intentional Violation of Privacy Interests)
76. Plaintiffs hereby reallege and incorporate all allegations in the above paragraphs as if fully set forth herein.
77. The Fifth Amendment requires the government to balance federal officers’ constitutional privacy interests against the purported public interest in disclosure.
78. Defendants’ disclosure of the identities of Plaintiffs and other similarly situated persons would cause irreparable harm to Plaintiffs by exposing them to the reasonable probability of violence. As set forth above, there are multiple indications on social media and other sources promoting violence and insurrection against law enforcement agents, including FBI agents such as Plaintiffs and other similarly situated persons. Plaintiffs therefore have a reasonable probability that the compelled disclosure of their identities will subject them to threats, harassment, or reprisals either from the government or private parties.
79. Plaintiffs’ constitutional privacy interests outweigh any limited public interest in the compelled disclosure of their identities. Thus, Plaintiffs have a right to nondisclosure under the circumstances here.
REQUEST FOR RELIEF
80. WHEREFORE, Plaintiff requests that this Court:
a) Enjoin Defendants from any further collection or dissemination of personally identifiable information of Plaintiffs and other similarly situated persons;
b) Issue writs of mandamus as appropriate;
c) Award Plaintiffs their costs and reasonable attorneys’ fees incurred in this action; and
d) Award other relief as the Court deems just.
Dated: February 4, 2025
Respectfully submitted,
/s/ Mark S. Zaid Mark S. Zaid, D.C. Bar #440532 Bradley P. Moss, D.C. Bar #975905 Attorney for Plaintiffs John Doe 1-4 and Jane Doe 1-3 LAW OFFICE OF MARK S. ZAID, P.C. 1250 Connecticut Avenue, NW Suite 700 Washington, D.C. 20036 Tel: (202) 498-0011 Fax: (202) 330-5610 [email protected] [email protected] /s/ Norman L. Eisen
Norman L. Eisen, D.C. Bar #435051 Tianna J. Mays, D.C. Bar #90005882 Attorney for Plaintiffs John Doe 1-4 and Jane Doe 1-3 STATE DEMOCRACY DEFENDERS FUND 600 Pennsylvania Avenue SE #15180 Washington, DC 20003 Tel: (202) 594-9958 [email protected] [email protected]
For the Federal Bureau of Investigation Agents Association,
/s/ Christopher Mattei Christopher Mattei (Pro Hac Vice Pending) ttorney for Plaintiff Federal Bureau of Investigation Agents Association Federal Bar No. 27500 KOSKOFF, KOSKOFF & BIEDER, PC 350 Fairfield Ave., Suite 501 Bridgeport, CT 06604 Tel: (203) 336-4421 Fax: (203) 368-3244 [email protected]
/s/ Margaret M. Donovan Margaret M. Donovan (Pro Hac Vice Pending) Attorney for Plaintiff Federal Bureau of Investigation Agents Association Federal Bar No. 31787 KOSKOFF, KOSKOFF & BIEDER, PC 350 Fairfield Ave., Suite 501 Bridgeport, CT 06604 Tel: (203) 336-4421 Fax: (203) 368-3244 [email protected]
_______________
Notes:
1 For this answer, a respondent can check from the following box options: [] Analytical support; [] Approved ECs or other documents in a case file; [] Arrest-led operation or participated in arrest; [] Assigned as case agent for investigation(s); [] Assigned as co-case agent for investigation(s); [] Conducted baseline database checks for case opening; [] Conducted surveillance of subject(s); [] Discovery; [] Evidence collection or disposition; [] Grand jury subpoena – submission or review; [] HQ Program Management Support; [] Interviewed witness(es), subject(s), and/or complainant(s); [] Responded to lead set [sic] by another office; [] Search warrant – led operation or participated in search; [] Supervised squad conducting investigation(s); [] Testified at trial; and [] Other (with a fillable space).
[USAID] was created originally by President Kennedy and by Congress to engage in what today we call, "soft power," or the projection of American influence, and American foreign policy objectives by rendering aid to people. And that could be anything from helping people build effective water projects, to fighting HIV AIDS, to malaria nets, and antimalaria campaigns, to building up development projects, democracy -- we're all over the world with USAID. It's less than 1% of the overall budget. The whole foreign aid budget's around $40 billion a year, compared to 900 billion that goes to the Department of Defense alone, without getting into other national security agencies and departments. So it's a a tiny fraction. But that money means something, and has helped to buy lots of goodwill for America, and also help to prevent diseases that come back and haunt us, and also prevent the disease of authoritarianism and autocracy. Which is one of the key reasons that Elon Musk and Donald Trump want to dismantle it right now.
But we're already hearing now, with them having pulled the plug on all foreign aid projects of USAID all over the world, that China is moving in to say, "Well, they don't want to help you, but we're happy to help you.
I mean one of the things people love about America is the compassion of America, the Democratic solidarity of America, the fact that we're a country with a big heart made up of people who come from all over the world, and we stand with people. And then suddenly, we're sending the message that we are going to stop programs to help pregnant women and infants all over the world? We're going to stop programs to bring food raised by farmers in Iowa, and Louisiana, and California, to starving people in Asia and in Africa? It just makes no sense. But it is coherent from a political philosophy. Which is that America can only get its way by being a bully. And and we're seeing that same strategy play out right now with these tariffs and these trade wars...
I mean I've seen tv ads that the Canadian government and Ontario government are running in America saying, "Remember we are allies; we are closest trading partners; we are friends; we go back and forth; we were together in World War II fighting the Nazis." And so good for Canada reminding the American people of the relationship that we actually have. And that's something that obviously people who live in Michigan and Minnesota and the northern states understand better than people who live in the South, and so. But you know, the Wall Street Journal itself called this the Dumbest trade war in American history. Nobody can even understand why Donald Trump is doing it. It just makes no sense. It's incoherent. More chaos. More dysfunction....
In fact, Elon Musk, who's obviously pulling Donald Trump's strings now, is completely in bed with the CCP and the Chinese government. So they're not going to do anything to help people in Taiwan, or Hong Kong, or the Tibetans. They're not going to do anything to challenge the authoritarian autocrats who they emulate. They think that there might be some political mileage in having a fake trade war with China, but everybody understands the game that's being played. This is like Orwell's 1984.They basically want to cede a sphere of influence to China so China can just stomp on the human rights of anybody under them. And they want to be able to do the same thing here. I mean, to the point of ridiculousness, of saying they're going to take over Panama and Greenland. We do need two new states in America, but it's not Panama and Greenland, it's Puerto Rico and Washington DC. That's what we're fighting for.
Sen. Whitehouse Makes the Case Against Russ Vought's Nomination to Lead OMB by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse Feb 5, 2025
Senator Whitehouse and Senate Democrats hold up the Senate Floor to oppose Russ Vought's disgraceful nomination.
Transcript
THE PRESIDING OFFICER: THE SENATOR FROM RHODE ISLAND.
MR. WHITEHOUSE: WELL, WE'RE IN INTERESTING TIMES, MR. PRESIDENT. AND WE'RE BEGINNING TO SEE THE CORPORATE AND BILLIONAIRE TAKEOVER OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT. AND IN THAT CORPORATE AND BILLIONAIRE TAKEOVER OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT, THE NOMINEE RUSS VOUGHT TO RUN OMB HAS A KEY ROLE. AND THAT KEY ROLE TO DO THE WORK FOR THE BILLIONAIRES AND THE BIG CORPORATIONS IS WHAT MAKES HIM UNFIT AND DANGEROUS AND WHAT COMPELS US TO COME TO THE FLOOR TONIGHT TO WARN THE AMERICAN PEOPLE OF WHAT THIS GUY WILL DO AND WHO HE IS. LET'S START WITH A LITTLE HISTORY. THIS IS THE GUY WHO VIOLATED THE IMPOUNDMENT CONTROL ACT BY WITHHOLDING 214 MILLION APPROPRIATED DOLLARS FROM THE SOLDIERS F AND DYING IN THE TRENCHES OF UKRAINE AGAINST PUTIN'S THUG ARMY. IT WAS THAT STUNT THAT LED TO THE IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENT TRUMP. THIS IS THE GUY WHO CAUSED LIVES TO BE LOST IN THOSE UKRAINIAN TRENCHES BY WITHHOLDING FUNDING THEY NEEDED DESPERATELY, WITHHOLDING THE FUNDING THEY DESPERATELY NEEDED ILLEGALLY AND WITHHOLDING THAT DESPERATELY NEEDED FUNDING ILLEGALLY IN ORDER TO SUPPORT A SCHEME BY PRESIDENT TRUMP TO PUT PRESSURE ON THE UKRAINIANS TO GIVE HIM DIRT ON HIS POLITICAL OPPONENT. THAT'S A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY OF WHERE THIS GUY WILL GO. THE OMB IS THE NERVE CENTER OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, AND TO HAVE SOMEONE THERE OF THAT CHARACTER IS DANGEROUS. VOUGHT IS ALSO LAWLESS. THE IMPOUNDMENT CONTROL ACT THAT HE VIOLATED, THE GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE SAID THIS. FAITHFUL EXECUTION OF THE LAW DOES NOT PERMIT THE PRESIDENT TO SUBSTITUTE HIS OWN POLICY PRIORITIES FOR THOSE THAT CONGRESS HAS ENACTED INTO LAW. HE VIOLATED THAT AND THEY SPECIFICALLY FIND THEREFORE WE CONCLUDE THAT OMB VIOLATED THE IMPOUNDMENT CONTROL ACT. IS HE RE-PENTANT ABOUT THAT NOW THAT THE ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICES THAT CALLED IT OUT AS BEING ILLEGAL. NEVER MIND THE UKRAINIAN LIVES HE CAUSED TO BE LOST. NO. HE CONTINUES TO SAY THE IMPOUNDMENT CONTROL ACT IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL, EVEN THOUGH NO COURT HAS EVER SAID SO. HE WAS PRESSED ON THIS QUESTION IN THE BUDGET COMMITTEE. IN ANSWERING THE APPROPRIATIONS RANKING MEMBER SENATOR MURRAY'S QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS, HE SAID, PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS STATED THAT THE IMPOUNDMENT CONTROL ACT IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL. I AGREE WITH THE PRESIDENT'S POSITION. AGAIN, NO COURT HAS SAID THIS. HE SAID, IF I AM CONFIRMED AS THE DIRECTOR OF OMB, I WILL FOLLOW THE ADVICE OF LEGAL COUNSEL AND ULTIMATELY THE PRESIDENT WITH RESPECT TO THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE IMPOUNDMENT CONTROL ACT. PAY ATTENTION. I WILL FOLLOW THE ADVICE OF LEGAL COUNSEL AND ULTIMATELY THE PRESIDENT. NOT I WILL FOLLOW THE LAW. NOT I WILL FOLLOW COURT DECISIONS THAT SAY WHAT THE LAW IS. NO. I WILL FOLLOW THE ADVICE OF LEGAL COUNSEL AND ULTIMATELY THE PRESIDENT. SO LET'S JUST HAVE A QUICK LOOK AT WHO HIS LEGAL COUNSEL IS. PEOPLE MAY REMEMBER THIS. THIS IS A PAINTING THAT WAS COMMISSIONED BY THIS GUY, THE BILLIONAIRE HARLAND CROW. AS YOU MAY REMEMBER THE BILLIONAIRE HARLAND CROW HAS BEEN FUNDING THE LIFESTYLE OF THE NEXT PERSON OVER, JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS. MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN SECRET GI GIFTS TO THE THOMAS FAMILY. AND THE NEXT GUY OVER IN THE PAYMENTSING -- BY THE WAY, IF YOU SAW KRISTI NOEM SWORN IN BY JUSTICE THOMAS, HE HAS A PICTURE OF THIS RIGHT BEHIND THEM. HE'S SO PLEASED WITH IT THAT HE'S GOT HIS OWN VERSION OF IT. HIM WITH HIS BILLIONAIRE SUGAR DADDY AND WITH MARK PAOLETTA. THIS IS THE GUY WHO IS GOING TO BE THE LEGAL COUNSELS WHO ADVICE VOUGHT IS GOING TO LISTEN TO. THIS GUY IS NECK DEEP IN THE BILLIONAIRE COURT CAPTURE SCHEME. OF COURSE HIS ADVICE IS GOING TO BE WHAT THE BILLIONAIRES SAY. THE NEXT GUY OVER IS LEONARD LEO, THE COURT FIXER. THIS IS BASICALLY A PANORAMA OF THE CORRUPTION OF THE SUPREME COURT. THE BILLIONAIRE WHO FUNDS IT, THE JUSTICE WHO SECRETLY ACCEPTS MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN BILLIONAIRE GIFTS, THE GUY WHO COOKS UP THE WHOLE SCHEME AND TRAVELS WITH JUSTICES ON THESE BILLIONAIRE-FUNDED TRIPS, AND IS HERE AT THE BILLIONAIRES' ESTATE IN THE ADIRONDACKS WITH THEM AND OF COURSE MARK PAOLETTA. THAT'S WHOSE ADVICE HE'S GOING TO TAKE. AGAIN, HE WAS CAREFUL NOT TO SAY NOT THE COURTS, NOT THE LAW. THE BILLIONAIRE COURT-FIXER GUY WHO'S NOW HIS COUNSEL AND THE PRESIDENT WHO'S ALREADY SAID HE THINKS THE LAW IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL. THIS GUY ON THIS QUESTION OF THE IMPOUNDMENT CONTROL ACT, HE HASN'T SAID HE'S GOING TO FOLLOW THE LOU EITHER. IN FACT, HE SAID, THE IMPOUNDMENT CONTROL ACT IS A STUPID LAW, AND HE TWEETED AT RUSSELL VOUGHT, IMPOUND BABY, IMPOUND. HUH, YEAH, YOU'RE GOING TO GET SOBER, LEGAL ADVICE FROM A GUY WHO SAYS IMPOUND, BABY, IMPOUND, AND HANGS OUT WITH BILLIONAIRES WHO FUND THE CAPTURE OF THE SUPREME COURT AS PART OF LEONARD LEO'S SCHEME. THIS IS AN ILLUSTRATION OF HOW THIS GUY, RUSSELL VOUGHT, IS A CREATURE OF THE FAR-RIGHT BILLIONAIRE DARK MONEY WORLD. BEFORE HE WENT TO OMB THE FIRST TIME, HE WORKED AS VICE PRESIDENT OF HERITAGE ACTION. WHAT IS HERITAGE ACTION? HERITAGE ACTION IS A BILLIONAIRE-FUNDED DARK MONEY GROUP THAT ADVOCATES FOR THE THINGS THAT DARK MONEY BILLIONAIRES WANT, AND HE FOR YEARS WORKED FOR THEM. THEN HE WENT INTO OMB, AND I SUBMIT HE STILL WORKED FOR THEM, ALTHOUGH THEY WEREN'T PAYING HIS PAYCHECK AT THE TIME. HE GETS BACK OUT AFTER TRUMP WON, AND HE SETS UP SOMETHING CALLED THE CENTER FOR RENEWING AMERICA. AGAIN, A BILLIONAIRE-FUNDED DARK MONEY ENTERPRISE WHOSE PURPOSE IS TO ADVOCATE FOR THE THINGS THAT THE DARK MONEY BILLIONAIRES WANT. IT ALSO, BY THE WAY, TOOK CARE OF THE REFUGEES FROM THE FIRST TRUMP ADMINISTRATION. THAT CREEPY CHARACTER JEFFREY CLARK, WHO WAS IN THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE AND TRIED TO WANGLE HIS WAY INTO THE ATTORNEY GENERAL PARTNERSHIP BY PROPOSING THAT HE WOULD PUT THE ATTORNEY GENERAL INTO THE ELECTION-FIXING SCHEME THAT PRESIDENT TRUMP WAS RUNNING DOWN IN GEORGIA, THAT GUY. WHERE DID HE LAND? RIGHT, THE CENTRALITY FOR RENEWING AMERICA. CONSIDER THE CENTER FOR RENEUROAMERICA, COURTESY OF -- THE CENTER FOR RENEWING AMERICA. WHO ALSO THERE? MR. PAOLETTA? WHO ELSE? KASH PATEL, THE GUY WHO HAS THREATENED OVER AND OVER AGAIN TO TURN THE FBI INTO A POLITICAL WEAPON FOR DONALD TRUMP AGAINST HIS ADVERSARIES. HE WENT SO FAR AS TO REPOST A TWEET OF HIMSELF CHAINSAWING THE HEADS OFF MEMBERS OF HIS ENEMIES LIST. YEAH, THIS IS THE GUY WHO PUBLISHED AN ENEMIES LIST OF WHO HE WAS GOING TO GET IN WHAT HE CALLED A MANHUNT, A MANHUNT BEGINS NOW, HE SAYS OF HIS ENEMIES LIST. AND TRUMP WANTS TO PUT HIM IN CHARGE OF THE FBI SO IT BECOMES HIS PERSONAL POLITICAL WEAPON. AND KASH PATEL HAS SHOWN TIME AFTER TIME, INSTANCE AFTER INSTANCE, HE IS ALL TOO WILLING TO DO THAT. AND WHERE DID HE LAND? YEAH, RIGHT AT VOUGHTS'S CENTER FOR RENEWING AMERICA. SO THIS GUY VOUGHT IS NECK DEEP IN THE BILLIONAIRE DARK MONEY OPERATION THAT IS WORKING RIGHT NOW TO TAKE OVER THE U.S. GOVERNMENT AND RUN IT ITS OWN WAY. THE WAY IT WANTED TO DO THIS IS THROUGH THE PLAN THAT IT COOKED UP AND PAID FOR CALLED PROJECT 2025. AND IF YOU LOOK AT THE FIRST COUPLE OF WEEKS OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION, YOU SEE PROJECT 2025 PLAYING OUT AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN, AND WHO WAS THE CENTRAL ARCHITECT OF THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION'S PROJECT 2025? OH, YES -- RUSSELL VOUGHT. PAID FOR WITH $120 MILLION. YOU KNOW IN RHODE ISLAND THAT'S STILL A PRETTY GOOD NUMBER. $120 MILLION FROM A COUPLE OF RIGHT-WING BILLIONAIRE FAMILIES TO COOK UP A SCHEME TO RUN THE GOVERNMENT AND VOUGHT BOTH WRITES IT AND NOW GOES INTO IMPLEMENT PROJECT 2025. IF YOU WANT TO LOOK AT THE GUY'S LAWLESSNESS FROM ANOTHER ANGLE, HE DOESN'T BELIEVE IN INDEPENDENT GOVERNMENT AGENCIES, SO THE FEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION, FOR INSTANCE, THAT IS AN INDEPENDENT GOVERNMENT AGENCY BECAUSE IT ADJUDICATES DISPUTES IN THE ENERGY SECTOR AND BECAUSE IT MAKES POLICY AND HAS TO DO A NUMBER OF THINGS, BUT IT HAS TO BE INDEPENDENT TO HAVE THIS ADJUDICATIVE FUNCTION, OR THE SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION OR THE FEDERAL RESERVE. HE DOESN'T BELIEVE THAT ANY OF THEM SHOULD BE INDEPENDENT. HE SAYS, WHAT WE'RE TRYING TO DO IS IDENTIFY THE POCKETS OF INDEPENDENTS AND SEIZE THEM. SEIZE THEM. FOR THE CORPORATE AND BILLIONAIRE TAKEOVER THEY WANT TO SEIZE THE INDEPENDENT AGENCIES IN GOVERNMENT SO THAT THEY'RE UNDER THE CONTROL OF THE BIG DONORS WHO PUT THIS ADMINISTRATION IN. HE SAID SPECIFICALLY ABOUT THE FEDERAL RESERVE, IT IS VERY HARD TO SQUARE THE FED'S INDEPENDENCE WITH THE CONSTITUTION. EXCEPT THAT THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES HAS SQUARED THE FED'S INDEPENDENCE WITH THE CONSTITUTION FOR DECADES. THE DECISIONS OF THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT SUPPORTING THE EXISTENCE OF INDEPENDENT AGENCIES GOES BACK TO THE HUMPHREYS EX-HE CAN COULD YOU -- EXECUTOR'S CASE. THIS HAS BEEN PRECEDENT IN WHICH LITERALLY DOZENS OF CASES INVOLVING INDEPENDENT AGENCIES HAVE COME BEFORE THE COURT, AND IT HAS NEVER SAID THAT IT'S HARD TO SQUARE THE INDEPENDENCE OF AGENCIES CONGRESS HAS DEEMED TO BE INDEPENDENT WITH THE CONSTITUTION. THIS IS AN ECCENTRIC AND LAWLESS LEGAL VIEW AND THEY INTEND TO IMPOSE IT, NOTWITHSTANDING THE LAW. THERE ARE -- NUMBER ONE, HE SAID, IS GOING AFTER THIS WHOLE NOTION OF INDEPENDENCE. THERE ARE NO INDEPENDENT AGENCIES, HE SAYS. THE SEC, THE FCC, THE CFPB -- NONE OF THAT IS SOMETHING THAT THE CONSTITUTION UNDERSTANDS. OH, YEAH -- EXCEPT FOR THOSE 90 YEARS OF SUPREME COURT PRECEDENT INTERPRETING THE CONSTITUTION TO UNDERSTAND EXACTLY THAT. IN ADDITION TO THE BILLIONAIRE STOOGERY THAT HE'S BEEN INVOLVED IN FOR DECADES, IN ADDITION TO HIS PENCHANT FOR LAWLESSNESS WHERE THERE IS CLEAR SUPREME COURT PRECEDENT, HE'S JUST A LITTLE BIT STRANGE. HERE'S WHAT HE HAS SAID ABOUT THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO WORK IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT -- WE WANT THEM, HE SAID, TO BE TAU MATTERICALLY AFFECTED -- TAU MATTERICALLY AFFECTED. WHEN THEY WAKE UP IN THE MORNING, WE WANT THEM TO NOT WANT TO GO TO WORK BECAUSE THEY ARE INCREASINGLY VIEWED AS THE VILLIANS. THE POSTMAN, THE VILLAIN; THE MEAT INSPECTOR WHO MAKES YOUR STEAK SAFE, THE VILLAIN A THE PEOPLE WHO DO BRAIN CANCER RESEARCH FOR US. YES WE DEFINITELY WANT THEM TO BE VIEWED AS VILLIANS. HE GOES ON, WE WANT THEIR FUNDING TO BE SHUT DOWN SO THAT -- AND OF COURSE HE PICKS THE EPA BECAUSE WE'RE DEALING MOSTLY WITH POLLUTER BILLIONAIRES -- WE WANT THEY ARE FUNDING TO BE SHUT DOWN SO THAT THE EPA CAN'T DO ALL OF THE RULES AGAINST OUR ENERGY INDUSTRY BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO BANDWIDTH FINANCIALLY TO DO SO. WE WANT TO PUT THEM IN TRAUMA. IF YOU WANT THAT'S NORMAL, YOU WANT TO GO HAVE JUST A LITTLE LOOK IN THE MIRROR. HE WANTS MASS FIRINGS, WHICH WE'RE ALREADY SEEING THREATENED. HE WANTS TO ELIMINATE THE CIVIL SERVICE, FIRE STAFFERS SO THAT THEY CAN BE REPLACED WITH LOYAL PARTISANS. SO LET'S SAY YOU'RE BIG POLLUTER. LET'S SAY YOU'RE A BIG OIL COMPANY. LET'S SAY YOU'RE NOT CLEANING UP YOUR METHANE LEAKS. YOU'RE SPEWING METHANE INTO THE AIR FOR EVERYONE ELSE TO BREATHE. PROGRAMS THE DEPARTMENT OF INTERIOR COMES TO YOU AND SAYS TO YOU, YOU KNOW, YOU'VE GOT TO CLEAN UP YOUR MESS HERE. YOU'RE SPILLING METHANE INTO THE ATMOSPHERE. IT IS POISONING PEOPLE. YOU'VE GOT TO KNOCK IT OFF. NOPE. OUT YOU GO. BRING IN THE SYCOPHANTS, BRING IN THE LOYAL PART, BRING IN -- LOYAL PARTISANS, BRING IN PEOPLE WHO HAVE TELL THE PEOPLE AT WORK NOW, NEVER MIND. WE'VE GOT YOUR BACK NOW. YOU JUST KEEP LEAKING THAT METHANE. HERE'S ONE THAT KIND OF STUNNED ME. PRETTY SIMPLE QUESTION. I ASKED HIM, DID JOE BIDEN WIN THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION? WHAT WAS HIS ANSWER? I BELIEVE THAT THE 20 ELECTION WAS RIGGED F -- I BELIEVE THAT THE 2020 ELECTION WAS RIGGED. NO COURT HAS EVER BELIEVED THAT. PEOPLE GOT THEIR BAR TICKET REMOVED FOR TELLING COURTS FALSEHOODS THAT THE ELECTION WAS RIGGED. THIS WAS THE FIRST BIG LIE OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION, AND HE'S NOT OVER IT. AND HE WANTS TO GO AND RUN THE NERVE CENTER OF OMB. HE EVEN WANTS TO INVOKE THE INSURRECTION ACT, BRING IN THE UNITED STATES MILITARY ONTO DOMESTIC SOIL TO BREAK UP PEOPLE WHO ARE PROTESTING THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION. THIS IS NOT A NORMAL GUY. THIS IS NOT A GUY WHO RESPECTS THE LAW AND THE CONSTITUTION. THIS IS A TOOL OF A VERY SMALL RIGHT-WING BILLIONAIRE ELITE, AND HE HAS PROVEN HIMSELF WITH HIS PARTICIPATION IN THE TRUMP SCHEME TO HOLD BACK URGENTLY NEEDED MONEY FROM UKRAINIAN WARRIORS TRYING TO DEFEND THEIR COUNTRY AGAINST PUTIN SO THAT HE COULD PUT PRESSURE ON ZELENSKYY TO DEVELOP DIRT ON TRUMP'S POLITICAL OPPONENT. HE WAS PART OF THAT SCHEME. WHAT A GIECHLT THE LAST THING THAT I'LL MENTION -- WHAT A GUY. THE LAST THING THAT I'LL MENTION IS THAT HE HAS DESCRIBED JOE BIDEN AND HIS ADMINISTRATION AS HAVING ENGAGED IN CLIMATE FANATACISM. CLIMATE FANATACISM. THIS FROM THE SLOW, CAUTIOUS, TEMPERATE, NONCOMBATIVE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION. I WISH THEY'D BEEN A LITTLE BIT MORE FANATIC. BUT THEY SURE WEREN'T. THEY WERE SLOW, THEY WERE CAUTIOUS, THEY WERE TEMPERATE, THEY WERE NONCOMBATIVES AND HE FOUND THAT TO BE FANATIC. WELL, I'LL CLOSE WITH WHAT'S COMING BECAUSE WHAT'S COMING FROM CLIMATE CHANGE IS A BEGINNING MELTDOWN IN PROPERTY INSURANCE MARKETS ALL AROUND THE COUNTRY, WHICH IS GOING TO CASCADE INTO A PROBLEM IN MORTGAGE MARKETS AROUND THE COUNTRY BECAUSE YOU CAN'T GET A MORTGAGE IF YOU CAN'T GET PROPERTY INSURANCE. AND UNLESS YOU'RE SELLING BILLIONAIRE TO BILLIONAIRE PALM BEACH ESTATES A, IF YOU WANT TO SELL YOUR HOME, YOU GOT TO FIND SOMEBODY WHO CAN GET A MORTGAGE. IF YOUR HOME CAN'T GET A MORTGAGE BECAUSE THEY CAN'T GET INSURANCE, YOU CAN'T I FIND A BUYER AND SO YOUR PROPERTY VALUES CRASH. AND THE CHIEF ECONOMIST FOR FREDDIE MAC HAS WARNEDED THAT THIS INSURANCE TO MORTGAGE TO PROPERTY VALUES CRASH IS GOING TO HAPPEN AND IS GOING TO HIT AS HARD AS THE 2008 MORTGAGE METTLEDOWN. SO SOMEBODY THAT TAKES THIS NOT SERIOUSLY AT ALL IS THE WRONG PERSON TO LEAD US AS WE HEAD TOWARDS DISASTER. OUT OF THE BUDGET COMMITTEE, WHERE'S WHERE WE'RE SEEING MASSIVE NONRENEWAL RATE INCREASES. THAT IS THE INSURANCE COMPANIES TELLING PEOPLE WHO PAY THEIR PREMIUMS FOR YEARS, YOU'RE FIRED. WE DON'T WANT YOU ANYMORE. WE'RE NOT GOING TO INSURE YOUR PROPERTY ANY LONGER. YOU'RE DONE. OR JACKING UP THE RATES. AND YOU CAN SEE OBVIOUSLY WHERE THE HIGH PERCENTAGE PLACES ARE. IT'S IN COASTAL AND WILDFIRE AREAS. HERE'S ANOTHER ONE. THIS FOLLOWED OUR BUDGET COMMITTEE REPORT, BUT THAT I JUST AMERICANSED. THIS IS WHERE HOME INSURANCE PREMIUMS ARE PREDICTED TO GO BECAUSE OF CLIMATE CHANGE. UP TO A 300% INCREASE. THATS'S QUADRUPLING. IF YOU HAVE A $600,000 INSURANCE POLICY THAT'S $2400. THAT'S ALL OVER. IT'S IN THE HOT SPOTS FOR WILDFIRE AND IN THE HOT SPOTS FOR COASTAL PROPERTY DAMAGE FROM STORMS AND SEA LEVEL RISE. AND WHEN YOU RAISE HOME INSURANCE PREMIUMS BY THAT MUCH, WHAT DO YOU DO? YOU KNOCK DOWN THE VALUE OF THE HOME. BECAUSE WHEN YOU BUY A HOME, IF YOU'RE BUYING INTO A, LET'S SAY, $24,000 EXPENSE EVERY YEAR, THE PRESENT VALUE OF $24,000 OUT OF YOUR POCKET YEAR AFTER YEAR AFTER YEAR COMES OFF THE VALUE OF THE HOUSE. SO IT WILL KNOCK DOWN PROPERTY VALUES. INDEED, IT IS PREDICTED THAT IN MANY OF THESE AREAS HOMES ARE GOING TO LOSE AS MUCH AS 100% OF THEIR VALUE. A HOME THAT PEOPLE HAVE INVESTED IN, PURCHASED, LOVED, RAISED THEIR CHILDREN IN WILL LOSE ITS VALUE IN SOME PLACES COMPLETELY BECAUSE YOU CAN'T GET INSURANCE, YOU CAN'T GET A MORTGAGE, YOU CAN'T FIND A BUYER, THE PLACE IS GOING TO BURN, THE PLACE IS GOING TO FLOOD. AND IT'S NOT JUST ME WARNING OF THESE THINGS. HERE IS AN ARTICLE FROM THE "ECONOMIST" MAGAZINE, NOT EXACTLY A LIBERAL GREEN PUBLICATION, PREDICTING GLOBALLY THAT THE NEXT HOUSING DISASTER IS GOING TO COME FROM CLIMATE CHANGE. SEVERE WEATHER BROUGHT ABOUT BY GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS IS SHAKING THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE WORLD'S MOST IMPORTANT ASSET CLASS -- REAL ESTATE. THE WORLD IS FACING ROUGHLY A $IT 25 TRILLION HIT. THE IMPENDING BILL IS SO HUGE IT WILL HAVE GRIM IMPLICATIONS NOT JUST FOR PERSONAL PROSPERITY, BUT ALSO FOR THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM. CLIMATE CHANGE IN SHORT COULD PROMPT THE NEXT GLOBAL PROPERTY CRASH. AND IF YOU LOOK BACK HERE TO FLORIDA, YOU SEE HOW ACUTE THE TROUBLE IS AS THAT INSURANCE MARKET MELTS DOWN. HOME INSURANCE IN FLORIDA, THE AVERAGE ANNUAL PREMIUM FOR A TYPICAL SINGLE FAMILY HOME IN THE STATE IS LIKELY TO HIT NEARLY $12,000 THIS YEAR, SAYS "THE ECONOMIST" MAGAZINE. CITIZENS PROPERTY INSURANCE CORPORATION HAS BECOME FLORIDA'S LARGEST HOME INSURER. IT'S EXPOSURE IS NOW $423 BILLION, MUCH MORE THAN THE STATE'S PUBLIC DEBT. THIS IS A HIGH-RISK SITUATION. THE FINANCIAL TIMES REPORTING SAYS THAT BILLION-DOLLAR-PLUS DISASTERS OCCUR ONCE EVERY THREE WEEKS NOW ON AVERAGE COMPARED WITH EVERY FOUR MONTHS FOR EQUIVALENT EASTERS IN THE 1980'S. CRACKS IN THE U.S. HOUSING MARKET WILL WIDEN. THIS DANGER OF HOUSING VALUES COLLAPSE IS ALREADY UNDER WAY. RESIDENTIAL PROPERTIES IN THE U.S. ARE OVERVALUED BY $121 BILLION TO $237 BILLION FOR FLOOD RISKS ALONE. NOT THE WILDFIRE RISKS OUT WEST. THE FLOOD RISKS ALONE. THAT'S THE FINANCIAL TIMES. "THE NEW YORK TIMES," WITHOUT INSURANCE IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO GET A MORTGAGE. WITHOUT A MORTGAGE, MOST AMERICANS CAN'T BUY A HOME. HEADLINE -- INSURERS ARE DESERTING HOMEOWNERS AS CLIMATE SHOCKS WORSEN. BLOOMBERG NEWS, U.S. HOME INSURANCE REAL ESTATE MARKETS TEETER ON FINANCIAL CRISIS. HERE'S WHAT THEY SAY. IT'S HARD TO OVERSTATE THE ROLE THAT INSURANCE PLAYS IN THE MODERN ECONOMY. BANKS WON'T MAKE MORTGAGE LOANS FOR UNINSURABLE PROPERTIES. WITHOUT THOSE LOANS, THE REAL ESTATE MARKET SLOWS TO A CRAWL WHICH IN TURNS EATS AWAY HOUSEHOLD WEALTH AND THE TAX REVENUE THAT STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS RELY ON. FOR INSURERS TO PLAY THEIR PART THEY HAVE TO FEEL CONFIDENT PREDICTING HOW MUCH DAMAGE THEY MAY HAVE TO COVER. THEY BUILD MODELS OF THE FUTURE BASED ON WHAT HAPPENED IN THE PAST. THEY DON'T HAVE TO BE RIGHT ALL THE TIME. JUST ENOUGH TO WIN BY MORE THAN THEY LOSE. CLIMATE CHANGE HAS MADE THAT MUCH HARDER. A WARMING WORLD IS MORE DANGEROUS AND UNPREDICTABLE IN THE 1980'S. THE U.S. EXPERIENCED ROUGHLY THREE DISASTERS A YEAR THAT DID AT LEAST $1 BILLION IN DAMAGE. NOW THE ANNUAL OCCURRENCE IS CLOSER TO 18. AND IT'S NOT JUST NEWS REPORTS. HERE'S THE CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE ANALYSIS. THE RISKS OF CLIMATE CHANGE TO THE UNITED STATES IN THE 21ST CENTURY, AS EMISSIONS OF GREENHOUSE GAS FROM HUMAN ACTIVITIES ACCUMULATE IN THE ATMOSPHERE AND OCEAN, IN THE UNITED STATES THOSE CHANGES WILL HAVE CONSEQUENCES FOR ECONOMIC ACTIVITY, REAL ESTATE, AND FINANCIAL MARKETS. HERE'S THE FINANCIAL STABILITY BOARD. IT'S THE GLOBAL BOARD THAT ADVISES BANKS ON HOW TO STAY SOUND. L CLIMATE RELATED VULNERABILITIES IN THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM WHEN TRIGGERED BY CLIMATE SHOCKS COULD THREATEN FINANCIAL STABILITY AND IN THE REAL ECONOMY OR THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM LEANED TO FINANCIAL LOSSES. CLIMATE SHOCKS COULD ALSO AFFECT THE REAL ECONOMY THROUGH DAMAGE TO REAL ASSETS OR THE CREATION OF STRANDED ASSETS OR A DISRUPTION TO ECONOMIC ACTIVITY THAT CAN FEED BACK TO THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM. I'LL CUT TO ONE OF THE END POINTS HERE. THE PROJECTED PHYSICAL RISK IMPACT FROM CLIMATE CHANGE COULD CAUSE GLOBAL GDP TO DECLINE VERSUS THE BASELINE BY 5.3% BY 2030 AND BY UP TO 15% BY 2050. THAT IS A GLOBAL RECESSION, FOLKS. DRIVEN BY CLIMATE CHANGE, POUNDING INSURANCE MARKETS WHICH POUND MORTGAGE MARKETS. AND THIS GUY THINKS THAT TAKING CLIMATE SCIENCE SERIOUSLY IS FANATACISM. HERE'S WHAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE THINK ABOUT SOME OF THIS STUFF. PENALTIES ON HIGH POLLUTION IMPORTS. LETTING HIGH POLLUTION CHINESE PRODUCTS INTO OUR COUNTRY, PUTTING A PENALTY ON THAT? 12% OPPOSE. 74% SUPPORT. A 62% BE POSITIVE SWING. CARBON POLLUTION LIMITS ON BIG COMPANIES, 12% DISAPPROVE, 72% SUPPORT. IMPOSE A FEE ON BIG POLLUTERS, 10% OPPOSE. 74% SUPPORT. A 64% SWING. THE AMERICAN PUBLIC WANTS TO SOLVE THIS CLIMATE PROBLEM WHICH IS WHY THE BILLIONAIRES NEED TO COME IN AND TAKE OVER THE GOVERNMENT FROM THE INSIDE WITH PEOPLE LIKE RUSSELL VOUGHT, SO THEY CAN DEFEAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, CONTINUE TO POLLUTE, AND LET THE ECONOMIC MAYHEM ENSUE. AND I'LL CLOSE WITH THIS LAST IMAGE JUST BECAUSE I REALLY LOVE IT. HERE'S THE MAGA GUYING STANDING OUTSIDE THE WALL OF TRUMP MAR-A-LAGO PALACE. WE SHOWED THOSE ELITES WHO'S IN CHARGE. MEANTIME INSIDE ARE THE HELICOPTERS FROM WALL STREET, BIG TECH, BEZOS, PHARMA, BIG AG, MUSK, MUSK, KOHL, BIG OIL, CRYPTO BROS. THIS IS WHAT IS HAPPENING. MAGA MAY HAVE THOUGHT IT WON THE ELECTION, BUT HERE'S WHO REALLY WON THE ELECTION. THE LOOTERS AND THE POLLUTERS. THE MUSKS WHO ARE RUNNING INTO OUR INFORMATION SYSTEMS LOOTING DATA OUT OF THEM FOR THEIR OWN PURPOSES, AND THE POLLUTERS WHO WANT TO PRETEND THAT THIS CLIMATE CHANGE THREAT IS NOT REAL. RUSS VOUGHT IS DANGEROUS BECAUSE HE WON'T FACE THE FACTS ON THESE THINGS BECAUSE HE
BREAKING: Trump & Musk ACCEPT MAJOR LOSS in Court... SURRENDER?!?! by Michael Popok Legal AF Feb 6, 2025 The Intersection with Popok
The rule of law is on a winning streak, beating the Trump administration six times already in the first 16 days. In breaking news, we have the latest temporary restraining order against Trump to stop Elon Musk from accessing Americans, personal and sensitive financial and medical information. Popok reports.
Transcript
[Michael Popok] We got a breaking news story here on legal AF. We have the fifth temporary restraining order entered against the Trump Administration. This time they've agreed to it. That's how bad their legal position is this time related to stopping Elon Musk and his phony Doge from accessing yours and my sensitive financial and medical information contained on the treasury Department servers related to all federal payments to Americans Medicare, Medicaid, disability, food stamps, welfare checks, student loans -- you name it! It's all housed on that server. Think about the things you've submitted, or been forced to submit, to the federal government in order to receive payments. That's what Elon Musk had access to.
Well no more, because there is a consent order, meaning the Trump Administration knew they were going to lose, and they entered into a temporary restraining order to avoid the judge doing it for them. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, senior judge, you could tell there was no love lost between the Judge and Donald Trump, because she thinks it was outrageous that he pardoned all the Jan6 insurrectionists after she worked to convict them. Justice convicted them. And she sentenced them. And so now we have the revenge of the DC judges.
I'm Michael Popok. As I said at the top of this, it's rule of law: 5; Trump Administration: 0. We have 5, actually 6 -- we have 5 temporary restraining orders; 1 preliminary injunction against 3 major issues that are important to Donald Trump; 1 win for the birthright citizenship not being eliminated from the Constitution by blocking an executive order; 1 preliminary injunction; 1 temporary restraining order for the federal funding related to stopping the federal funding to States, and not for-profits, that has been blocked; 2 temporary restraining orders stopping transgender men/women from being housed in a male prison, stopped by temporary restraining order.
and now, we've got the writing on the wall. We've got this group in Doge that said "Uncle! We'll agree to a temporary restraining order to stop Elon Musk, at least temporarily." Why is it temporary? It's because in the life cycle of a case in federal court, it starts with a temporary restraining order where the Judge kind of peeks under the hoods and says, "Yeah, I think you're going to win this case ultimately, and there's other factors that have to be analyzed: the balance of equities and you're going to suffer irreparable harm and all of that, and I'm going to hold the ring in the case -- it's got to go back to the status quo before the bad thing happened until I get around to a full-blown evidentiary hearing and a fuller record, and then she will consider it on a preliminary injunction standard, which is a similar standard, with more evidence, later in the case."
Well, the Judge said effectively, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly who's a senior status Judge who's been doing this for a long time, she took a look at the papers, and she said to the parties, "Yeah, I could rule on this temporary injunction, or you guys could work it out and come up with something, meaning you, the Department of Justice/Department of the treasury/Trump, like, you're going to lose. So you might want to try to get something out of this, half a loaf out of this."
So the parties talked, and they did narrow the actual injunction from what the lawsuit seeks, but that doesn't mean that at the time of the preliminary injunction hearing in a month or two, that doesn't mean the Judge is going to adopt this narrow injunction, narrow block of Elon Musk, but he has been blocked.
I'll go over with you how it's narrower than what was originally sought, but that doesn't matter at the time of the preliminary injunction hearing which will probably be in the next week, two weeks, three weeks or so.
Meantime, the thing is blocked. And if you're the Movant, the party seeking the injunction, or the temporary restraining order, you don't care when the preliminary injunction hearing is set as long as you have your TRO right now, because you got what you want. Everything's stopped. Nothing can be done.
So here's what happened. Let's start with the lawsuit that got filed on February 3rd, then I'll read to you from the proposed order and the consent and we'll go from there.
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Alliance for Retired Americans, 815 16th Street NW, 4th Floor Washington, DC 20006, American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO, 80 F Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20001, and Service Employees International Union, AFL-CIO, 1800 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20036,
Plaintiffs,
v.
Scott Bessent, in his official capacity as Secretary of the Treasury, 1500 Pennsylvania Ave. NW Washington, DC 20220, Department of the Treasury, 1500 Pennsylvania Ave. NW Washington, DC 20220, and Bureau of the Fiscal Service, 3201 Pennsylvania Drive, Building E Landover, MD 20785, Defendants.
Civil Action No. 25-313
[url=x]COMPLAINT FOR DECLARATORY AND INJUNCTIVE RELIEF[/url]
So this was filed by Norm Eisen's group, for those that follow him closely here on the MeidasTouch Network and legal AF, under a couple of organizations he works with. One of them is State Democracy Defenders Fund; and the Public Citizen Litigation group. And they filed on behalf of the Alliance for Retired Americans; the American Federation of Government Employees by way of the AFL/CIO. So a labor union. And another labor union, the Service Employees International Union for the AFL/CIO, against the Treasury Secretary; the Department of Treasury; the Bureau of Fiscal Service, which is the one that takes in all the $5 trillion worth of revenue through the Internal Revenue Service, and other ways, and pays out $4-1/2 trillion dollars a year to payees like you and me. Really, it's the Trump Administration.
And what they, listen listen to these allegations. I'll read to you from the complaint first, then we'll get to the Order. Page 4, paragraph 7:
People who must share information with the federal government should not be forced to share information with Elon Musk or his “DOGE.” And federal law says they do not have to. The Privacy Act of 1974 generally, and the Internal Revenue Code with respect to taxpayer information, make it unlawful for Secretary Bessent to hand over access to the Bureau’s records on individuals to Elon Musk or other members of DOGE. Plaintiffs file this action to put an immediate stop to Defendant’s systematic, continuous, and ongoing violation of federal laws that protect the privacy of personal information contained in federal records. This Court’s exercise of equitable authority is the only adequate avenue available to Plaintiffs to protect the trust that Plaintiffs’ members, and other citizens, taxpayers, and workers, have placed in the federal government in reliance of the laws that Congress enacted to assure the public that what Secretary Bessent is doing would never happen.
And then basically they're saying the Treasury Secretary, a week on the job, just turned over the keys to the servers and computers to Elon Musk, and they've been sucking it out with their own servers, apparently, trying to get the information.
I think damage has already been been done that needs to be redressed by the court. That looks like it'll be done at the preliminary injunction standard hearing.
Scott Beseant, in order to make changes in the privacy policy, or to make changes in how documents and information, data, private data of you and me is handled, he's got to go through the Administrative Procedures Act. He's got to announce it; he's got to publish it; he's got to tell us about it, and we have to have time to object, and do public comment; he has to file all sorts of notices about Privacy Act changes. He didn't do any of that! He just said, "Oh, there's the door."
You know, even when they try to do something good they do something terrible. Like when they nominated the guy, just to digress for a second, Scott Bessent, he's the first openly gay Treasury Secretary. He was there with his husband and his children when he got sworn in and I was like, "Well, all right. I get it. I mean I disagree with everything about the Trump Administration policy, but I do recognize the historic precedent of having Scott Bessent, who's a gay American, become Treasury Secretary. But all he's done is just turn over the keys to the kingdom immediately to whoever Donald Trump told him to do, exercising no independent judgment at all. So I'm done celebrating Scott Bessent.
Here's the Prayer for Relief. This is what the lawsuit seeks. Then I'll compare it to the judgment, or the new consent temporary restraining order that's about to be entered by the Judge. What they're see seeking is:
PRAYER FOR RELIEF
WHEREFORE, Plaintiffs pray that this Court:
a. Declare that Defendants’ decision to implement a system by which Elon Musk or other DOGE-affiliated individuals may access the Bureau’s records and obtain personal information about individuals and taxpayers contained there is unlawful. b. Enjoin Defendants from continuing to permit such access or obtain such personal information. c. Enjoin Defendants to ensure that future disclosure of individual records will occur only in accordance with the Privacy Act, the Internal Revenue Code, and the SORNs applicable to the system of records at issue. d. Grant any temporary, preliminary, or permanent injunctive relief necessary to protect the privacy of individuals whose information is contained within the system of records. e. Award Plaintiffs their costs and attorneys’ fees for this action; and f. Grant any other relief as this Court deems appropriate.
Now, here's what they ended up with. They ended up with something a little bit narrower than that. But, you know, it's only temporary. They filed a consent motion saying that the parties had gotten together at the Judge's urging and they've agreed to the following Proposed Order being entered by the Judge. All that means is that there's a temporary restraining order by consent.
I think it's interesting that the the guy for the Department of Justice, Trump's Department of Justice, that's signing on a lot of these things, is this guy Brett Shumate. I've talked about Brett Shumate, because they pressed him into action on day 1 to go argue in Seattle Washington about Birthright citizenship, being able to be removed from the Constitution by way of an Executive Order, where he got his head handed to him in two seconds flat by Judge Coughenour. It's the same Brett Shumate. So, they're sending him out to do a lot of the losing in the Department of Justice.
But what they've now agreed to is that the defendants will not provide access -- this is from the Proposed Order -- to any payment record or payment system maintained by The Bureau except to the two different people that work in the Treasury Department, blocking Elon Musk.
Now, I don't think, it's not defined payment record. And I don't like payment record. I want medical records; financial data; privacy data; personal information. I don't think this goes far enough. But it's only for a week or two as Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly sets the full preliminary injunction hearing which, spoiler alert, the Trump Administration is going to lose. That will end up being the 2nd or 3rd preliminary injunction against this Administration.
But we kind of dove in there a little bit, got into the weeds, about how things work in courts with injunctions and temporary restraining orders. But that's the math: 32 cases filed already; 5 different temporary restraining orders; 1 preliminary injunction, soon to be 2 preliminary injunctions. So seven losses for the Trump Administration. And we're only 16 days in.
