A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Operation Fast Casual Buried by Trump DOJ
In a blockbuster weekend story, MSNBC reported that the Trump Justice Department shut down a bribery investigation of Tom Homan, now the White House border czar, which recorded him allegedly accepting $50,000 of cash during a sting operation in the summer of 2024:
The federal investigation was launched in western Texas in the summer of 2024 after a subject in a separate investigation claimed Homan was soliciting payments in exchange for awarding contracts should Trump win the presidential election, according to an internal Justice Department summary of the probe reviewed by MSNBC and people familiar with the case.
Homan was recorded accepting the $50,000 in bills in a bag from the fast casual chain Cava, Reuters reported.
FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche issued an extraordinary joint statement in which they condemned the investigation as “baseless.” The Trump White House called it a “blatantly political investigation.”
MSNBC and, later, other outlets reported that rather than the investigation being over or it having found no evidence of wrongdoing, investigators were waiting to see if Homan followed through on the quid with a quo once he took office. That would have arguably advanced the seriousness of the case from conspiracy to commit bribery to actual bribery. But the probe was scotched by the new incoming Trump political appointees at DOJ.
Emil Bove, then the acting deputy attorney general and now a judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, “told Justice Department officials he did not support the investigation,” MSNBC reported. Bove called it a “deep state” operation, according to Reuters, which reported that Patel ordered the investigation closed over the summer.
The Whole U.S. Attorney Scandal Plays Out in a Weekend
Nearly 20 years ago, TPM cuts its chops on the 2006-07 U.S. attorney scandal. The Bush II-era firings of Republican U.S. attorneys for failing to be aggressive enough in pursuing bogus voter fraud charges led to congressional hearings and eventually the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez.
It all seems almost quaint now by the standards of Donald Trump.
In a cascading series of corrupt moves over the weekend, President Trump revealed for all to see that he himself is the prime mover behind targeting his political foes for retribution with criminal investigations and prosecutions.
With Erik Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, having failed to secure an indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James on bogus mortgage fraud charges, the president told reporters that he wanted Siebert out. In response, Siebert — who was also investigating former FBI Director James Comey, another leading Trump foe — told his staff he was resigning, though Trump insisted he’d fired the career prosecutor.
In a mad king series of social media posts — the initial one perhaps intended as a private DM, perhaps not — Trump publicly pressured Attorney General Pam Bondi to get moving on prosecuting a host of Trump foes, including James.
It was Trump himself — not a White House aide, overzealous underling, or misguided political appointee — publicly directing that charges be brought, the evidence be damned. It was Trump himself finding a compliant loyalist — Lindsey Halligan, a former personal lawyer of his with no prosecutorial experience — to replace Siebert in running one of the most important U.S. attorney’s offices in the country. For now Bondi has appointed Mary “Maggie” Cleary, a Republican lawyer in Virginia, as acting U.S. attorney, Politico reports.
Two decades ago, White House interference with U.S. attorneys took weeks to uncover and months to play out. This time, a turbocharged version of the same scandal played out across one weekend, with the president himself the primary conspirator.
“We’ve never seen anything even approaching this level of interference with the day-to-day job of prosecutors,” said Carol Lam, a former U.S. attorney who was among those forced to resign in the Bush-era scandal, told the WaPo.
‘Hands Can Become Dirty’
Conservative Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith speaks directly to political appointees about the perils of continuing to justify remaining at the Trump DOJ: “At some point, it defies [your] oath to serve a president who rejects the rule of law and bends the Department to his abuses.”
The Retribution: Thanks, John Roberts
Mother Jones’ Pema Levy on how the Roberts Court cleared the way for Trump’s lawless and retributive political prosecutions.
Pentagon Goes to War Against Journalists
The Trump Pentagon is trying to impose an unprecedented new condition on reporters who want to hold press credentials. As the NYT reports:
The new pledge asks journalists to acknowledge in writing that acquiring or using unauthorized information would be grounds for “immediate suspension” of Pentagon access. It defined off-limits information to include both classified materials and “controlled unclassified information,” a broadly defined category that includes materials that could pose a risk to national security if released to the public.
This Is How Democracy Ends
The kind of authoritarianism I fear is emerging in the United States, which political scientists call “competitive authoritarianism,” doesn’t involve the outright criminalization of the opposition or formal martial law. Instead, it depends on perverting the law, modifying and twisting it with the intent of incrementally undermining the opposition’s ability to compete fairly in elections.
Judge Drop-Kicks Trump’s NYT Lawsuit Out of Court
In a scolding order, U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday of Tampa, Florida, rejected President Trump’s absurd 85-page defamation lawsuit against the NYT as too long and tedious under court rules:
… a complaint remains an improper and impermissible place for the tedious and burdensome aggregation of prospective evidence, for the rehearsal of tendentious arguments, or for the protracted recitation and explanation of legal authority putatively supporting the pleader’s claim for relief. As every lawyer knows (or is presumed to know), a complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective — not a protected platform to rage against an adversary. A complaint is not a megaphone for public relations or a podium for a passionate oration at a political rally or the functional equivalent of the Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner.
The judge gave Trump 28 days to file an amended complaint of no more than 40 pages.
RFK Jr.’s Prescription for America: Pure Chaos
[L]ast week showcased another, equally important side of Kennedy’s management: the way he is eliminating the people and dispensing with the procedures that allow agencies like the CDC to carry out their basic functions in a transparent, scientifically sound way. The effect isn’t so much to realign priorities as it is to unleash chaos. But that can still be corrosive to the government’s credibility—and hazardous to the people who depend on it.
Data Destruction Watch: USDA Edition
The Trump administration is canceling an annual USDA effort to gather data on how many Americans struggle to get enough food, the WSJ reports.
A Good Read
Drew Johnson offers an extended reflection on the long-forgotten Rep. James M. Hinds (R-AR), the first sitting member of Congress to be assassinated, ambushed by a Klansman in October 1868.
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