Thursday, March 13, 2025
Justinian in Corruption, Roger Fitch Esq, Trump, US politics
Dangerous words likely to
be scrubbed from the Trump era lexicon ... Musk and his techie vandals ... The
shredder going full blast at the FBI ... Stolen national security documents
sent back to Mar-a-Lago ... Cabinet clown show ... White supremacy unleashed
... Consumer protection prosecutions dropped ... Lawyers and law firms
threatened ... Roger Fitch from Washington
The Sack of
Washington continues. At crime scenes throughout the capital, the federal
government, the so-called "administrative state", is being
dismembered, led by two klepto-anarchists, the spectacularly
corrupt Donald Trump and equally-crooked, unauthorised
intermeddler, the ketamine-addled oligarch Elon Musk.
Musk "techies"
break into government agencies (sometimes using
extrajudicial force), push aside officials and fire or lock-out
managers and workers while sensitive agency data is confiscated and even illegally
destroyed.
Without regard
to privacy and confidentiality, unlawfully-accessed data is
being word-searched, e.g, at the Centres for Disease Control and National Science
Foundation, for alleged fraud or waste.
Words such
as female and women (but not "male"
or "men") flag further
review, as do advocacy, barrier, bias, disability,
discrimination, diversity, gender, in/equality, in/equity, indigenous, LGBT,
minority, multicultural, race and ethnicity, sexual preference, social justice,
systemic, underserved, and victim.
The intent is
to purge the public sphere of anything likely to promote equality or social
good, or provide scientific advice, always suspect for the Christian
Nationalists embedded with Trump.
The wholesale
abrogation of federal laws, impounding of
congressionally-appropriated funds, arbitrary and indiscriminate
sackings, are all utterly unlawful, but the Trump-Musk team is spurning
congress, the required Administrative
Procedure Act and public comment.
Meanwhile,
with Kash Patel
as its
director, the FBI is ransacking its evidence rooms, seeking to destroy or
return Republican-compromising physical evidence, e.g, that of the pardoned
January 6 rioters, and in the case of the stolen classified and National
Archives documents recovered from Donald Trump and the subject of his 32-count
indictment under the Espionage Act,
possibly to the defendant.
Patel -
destruction of incriminating evidence
The latter
were loaded onto Air
Force One and sent back to Mar-a-Lago on the same plane as the
offender. To the extent that this evidence included documents that the 4th
Circuit had already ruled belonged to the federal government, it would seem
that new thefts have occurred and a new statute of limitations applies.
Trump himself
is safe from arrest, thanks to the
supreme court, but he's contracting-out the coup dirty work. His
recent recruit Musk is as crazy as he is, and so eccentric that he named the
child he drags around with him, "X æ A-12", which sounds suspiciously
gender-neutral.
Donald Trump
has now held his first "cabinet meeting". Shortly after it convened,
the pungent Musk bounded into the well-dressed assemblage in his trademark
black T-shirt and cap, minus his chainsaw.
Two department
secretaries confronted Musk,
but Trump's plutocrat appointees
remained nervously silent, like new members of the Politburo,
while Musk and Trump chatted.
The lawyers
present no doubt looked down at their hands, mindful, perhaps, of the civil
litigation and criminal liability Musk is incurring; his young hackers and
looters have even less authority, never having been interviewed or hired under
government requirements, or possessing necessary qualifications or
clearances.
The Washington
Spectator speculated that Bivens
actions (currently under
Justice Department assault) may lie against all the identifiable
trespassers, brought by the injured parties.
≈ ≈ ≈
"Competent white men must be put in
charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology
is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and
demoralizing competent white men"
- tweet, State Department
Under-Secretary Darren Beattie
Trump is more than a
racist. He's a white supremacist trading
on "white racial
antipathy". His goal seems to be positive discrimination and
assistance for ostensibly-oppressed white males. How else to explain blocking USAID for
dark people overseas (with devastating
consequences) while creating special refugee status for White Afrikaners who
aren't poor or persecuted, or asking for help?
It was left to
the Department of Education's "Civil Rights Office" to say the quiet
part out loud. In a Dear Colleague
Letter (here),
sent to educators at every level, recipients were essentially directed to no
longer honour, respect or distinguish student minorities. They were told,
"treating students differently on the basis of race to achieve nebulous
goals such as diversity, racial balancing, social justice, or equity is
illegal".
Who knew that
social justice and equity were contentious things? They are to Trump
supporters, who want the freedom to be cruel, hateful and intolerant.
≈ ≈ ≈
The Cabinet
meets with Musk
For the felon
Donald Trump, a successful crime is no crime. A cheat and bigot himself, he's
never been comfortable punishing crimes of peculation and prejudice. In cases
of self-dealing, bribery,
payoffs and financial
plunder, and violence against
women, Trump doesn't believe a crime has even occurred, or
should be punished.
In Elon Musk,
presently deep in criminal heists throughout the public service, Trump has a
soul mate, instinctively greedy and of equally-ambitious criminal intent. Their
joint crime is the biggest scandal no one is mentioning: the new
age of bribery and corruption they have unleashed in
American politics.
The interests
of the two men seem to particularly coincide where corporate, financial or
other white collar crime is involved. A good example is the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau.
Pending cases
brought at the CFPB that were begun under Biden are now being dismissed with
prejudice by the (business-detested) regulatory agency's new
hirelings.
Who paid off
whom - or whether it was free - is not yet known, but banks and finance
companies were involved, and they have a lot of loose money lying around,
especially when it can be directed to those in a position to drop expensive and
image-damaging litigation.
The Musk-Trump
political philosophy is that anything "liberal" or humane (especially
"DEI") has to go. Instead, arms shipments to repressive
regimes must be re-allowed; police
misconduct tolerated and
covered up; ghost guns legalised;
assassination targets expanded;
and cruelty to asylum-seekers resumed.
Medical research will be blocked and great
universities silenced.
Overseas, there will be inhumanity, starvation,
disease and death.
≈ ≈ ≈
There have
been alarming sackings
of the top career Pentagon lawyers, Justice Department lawyers and FBI
agents.
At Justice, AG
Pam Bondi seeks more amenable, "loyal" lawyers, ready to tell the
Trump administration what it wants to hear, i.e, do as directed, like GW Bush's
"torture lawyers".
They will be
closely watched by politically-appointed legal officers, who, in their Senate
confirmations, refused to commit to obeying court orders (the supine Senate
confirmed them anyway).
Perkins Coie
sued over Trump's executive order which banned it from government work
Trump is
replacing reputable lawyers with malodorous hacks, e.g, the new DC US attorney
Ed Martin, and in one "executive order", Trump purported
to exclude the highly-regarded law firm Covington &
Burling from doing business with the government, because they had
provided pro bono services to the Special Counsel Jack Smith in
his prosecutions of Trump. Another "order" targeted the
Democrat law firm Perkins Coie.
These so-called
orders confirm the new government's urgent need for competent, independent
legal advice. Steve Vladeck comments on
Defence. Timeline here on
Trump's "weaponisation" of DOJ.
