A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
This Is What A Weaponized DOJ Really Looks Like
The corrupt use of federal criminal investigative tools to try to claw back $20 billion in funding issued by the Biden EPA – a gambit that already led to the forced resignation of a career prosecutor who raised objections – has continued below the radar, the WaPo is exclusively reporting.
The “investigation” is being spearheaded by acting D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, who has no previous prosecutorial experience. The imbroglio is rooted in a video by the right-wing conspiracy-generator Project Veritas that has animated EPA administrator Lee Zeldin. The ostensible goal of Zeldin and Martin is to get at the $20 billion in already-disbursed program funds being held by Citibank.
Here are the lowlights from the WaPo exclusive:
- Following the Feb. 18 resignation of Denise Cheung, Martin “personally submitted a seizure warrant application without any other prosecutors in his office.”
- A federal magistrate judge in DC rejected the search warrant application, ruling that it and an accompany affidavit from a FBI agent failed to establish a reasonable belief that a crime occurred, sources told the newspaper.
- Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove approached at least one other U.S. attorneys office about launching a grand jury investigation and seeking a court order to freeze the Citibank funds. Prosectors there (the WaPo only identifies the U.S. attorney’s office as “in the southeastern United States) balked the same way that the DC prosecutor had and refused to play ball.
- FBI agents questioned Environmental Protection Agency employees this week about the matter.
It’s not clear if the Trump DOJ has succeeded in obtaining a court-ordered bank freeze, but three grant recipients told the WaPo they have not been able to draw funds from their Citibank accounts for the past two weeks.
Welcome To The Strange New World Of Kash Patel’s FBI
FBI Director Kash Patel held his first video conference call with the bureau’s 55 field office supervisors this week, and it yielded an abundance of WTF stories about his plans beyond weaponizing federal law enforcement:
- UFC? Patel is considering bringing in UFC trainers to train agents in martial arts and self-defense.
- $100M? Overruling objections, Patel ordered the bureau to commence a $100 million restructuring with no clear way to pay for it.
- Vegas? Patel, who reportedly plans to spend a lot of time at his home in Las Vegas and not at FBI headquarters in Washington, confused “intelligence” and “counterintelligence” on the call, using them interchangeably.
Pam Bondi’s Gross Hyping Of The Jeffrey Epstein ‘Files’
The sitting attorney general fed and pandered to right-wing conspiracy theorists by trumpeting the release of the so-called “Epstein Files,” the NYT reports:
- Bondi made a Fox News appearance Wednesday night where she touted her own “breaking news”: “Breaking news right now, you’re going to see some Epstein information being released by my office. This will make you sick.”
- Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel offered a sneak preview of the documents Thursday afternoon to several conservative influencers.
- The sneak peek for conservative influencers took place not at the Justice Department but in the West Wing of the White House.
It’s rough but insufficient justice that the much ballyhooed release disappointed and further inflamed conspiracy nuts because it contained little to none new information.
The Big Picture: Trump Is Sidelining The Lawyers
The NYT’s Charlie Savage goes deep on Trump’s sweeping effort to marginalize administration lawyers so that they can’t serve as roadblocks to his lawlessness.
Hmmm …
SEC halts fraud prosecution of Chinese national Justin Sun, who invested millions in Donald Trump’s crypto startup.
The Purges
- NOAA/NWS: In a devastating blow to public safety and science, the Trump admninsitration fired hundreds working on weather forecasts, satellite data and radar systems
- FEMA: More than a dozen senior leaders have left the agency in addition to the roughly 1,000 FEMA workers who have been purged or resigned.
- DoD: Five former defense secretaries – Lloyd Austin, Jim Mattis, Chuck Hagel, Leon Panetta and William Perry – denounced President Trump’s “reckless” Pentagon purges.
- Massive federal office closures and relocations are part of Trump’s plan for sweeping layoffs of federal workers.
DOGE Watch
- NYT: How Elon Musk Executed His Takeover of the Federal Bureaucracy
- WSJ: Inside DOGE’s Clash With the Federal Workforce
- WaPo: A second “What Did You Do Last Week?” email is slated to go out to federal workers Saturday and become a weekly occurence.
USAID Is Ground Zero For Trump II Destruction
- WaPo: The USAID inspector general is not releasing two highly critical reports on the impacts of the spending freeze in Africa and the Middle East for fear of retaliation from the Trump White House.
- NYT: The United States has terminated funding for polio, HIV, malaria and nutrition programs worldwide.
- Politico: USAID cuts expected to devastate global health.
- NYT: Stunned USAID workers return to clean out their desks.
What The Courts Are Doing
- OPM: U.S. District Judge William Alsup of California ordered the Trump administration to retract two OPM directives that targeted 200,000 probationary federal workers for firing, ruling that they were illegal. The judge suggested the firings should stop, but did not directly order them halted.
- DOGE: U.S. District Judge John D. Bates of Washington, D.C., ordered a representative of DOGE to be deposed in a case seeking to block Elon Musk’s team from accessing personal data at Labor, HHS, and CFPB.
- CIA: U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga of Virginia declined to block CIA Director John Ratcliffe from firing employees involved with diversity efforts, ruling that Ratcliffe had broad authority to fire employees at will.
Quote Of The Day
“The Office of Personnel Management does not have any authority whatsoever, under any statute in the history of the universe, to hire and fire employees at another agency. They can hire and fire their own employees.”–U.S. District Judge William Alsup of California, in ruling that Congress has given hiring and firing authority to individual agencies for their own employees, not broadly to OPM
An Unsatisfying Conclusion
A Mississippi state judge lifted her order requiring the Clarksdale newspaper to unpublish an editorial critical of city government – but only after city officials voted to drop their defamation lawsuit against the newspaper.
Spectacular
The 11th episode in the months-long intermittent summit eruption at Kilauea produced fountains of lava this week taller than the Washington Monument:
This one went to 11…
This clip shows a view of 600-foot-high lava fountains from episode 11 of the ongoing eruption of Kīlauea. The episode started at 6:26 p.m. HST on February 25, and paused at 7:06 a.m. HST on February 26.
Make sure you have the volume turned up… pic.twitter.com/OssL5TGHzh
— USGS Volcanoes🌋 (@USGSVolcanoes) February 26, 2025
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