A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Don’t Sleep On This
I want to center Stephen Miller’s little-noticed role in overseeing the investigation of the investigators because it is by itself a serious erosion in Justice Department independence from the White House that in any other era would be a howling scandal.
President Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government,” directs the attorney general to review federal law enforcement activity over the past four years for any “weaponization” – code for investigating the investigators. (As we all know now, this as a license to weaponize the Justice Department while purporting to stamp out weaponization.)
The EO orders the attorney general to prepare a report “with recommendations for appropriate remedial actions” for the President and to submit it through the deputy chief of staff for policy and the White House counsel. The deputy chief of staff for policy is … Stephen Miller.
Attorney General Pam Bondi has since taken the EO and started running with it, immediately setting up a “Weaponization Working Group” within DOJ that will do the work Trump assigned to her in the EO. Her memo creating the working group closely mirrors some of the key language in the EO.
In a move that experts told TPM’s Khaya Himmelman is a crossing the Rubicon moment for DOJ independence, Bondi ordered the working group to “provide quarterly reports to the White House regarding the progress of the review.” Along the news that the White House is enabling itself to exert more influence over the Justice Department in specific cases, there go 50 years of post-Watergate reforms to shield DOJ from the White House. Just like that. Poof.
To reiterate, the EO directs the attorney general to report on her work to Stephen Miller. The attorney general in turn has ordered regular updates for White House. So it looks like the guiding hand on the retribution campaign against prosecutors and investigators will be Trump’s most notorious political aide.
Stephen Miller is not a lawyer, even tho he spent time between Trump presidencies as founder and president of the bullying legal advocacy group America First Legal Foundation. He has a poli sci BA from Duke and was a Hill aide before latching on to the Trump ’16 campaign. He’s a purely political creature.
The position of White House deputy chief of staff for policy that Stephen Miller holds is the same one Karl Rove held under President George W. Bush. Imagine Rove meddling with federal prosecutors and seeking retribution against them. Yes, as TPM readers well know, we already had that scandal.
A final note: Miller is credited with having “personally drafted or coordinated most of” the EOs that Trump signed on Day 1. The “weaponization” EO was in that batch. It’s not clear if Miller drafted it, too, thus making himself the point person for retribution.
Latest Developments At DOJ/FBI
- NBC News: Trump pledges to ‘fire some’ FBI agents who investigated Jan. 6
- Politico: Trump administration agrees not to publicly identify FBI agents on Jan. 6 cases without advance warning
- WSJ: Emil Bove Revived His Career Defending Trump. Now He’s Upending the Justice Department.
- NYT: At Justice Dept., Trump’s Former Criminal Defender Emil Bove Emerges as His Enforcer
- Mother Jones: Kash Patel Took $25,000 From Russia-Linked Firm to Appear on an Anti-FBI TV Series
- Wired: Trump’s FBI Pick Kash Patel Took Up to $5M in Stock From Chinese Ecommerce Giant Shein
Not Normal For A Federal Prosecutor
Ed Martin, the acting U.S. attorney in DC, continues to outdo himself, sending yet another love letter to Elon Musk and posting it to social media:
Follow up.
Sent only via X: to @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/FVO7pDFf3Q— Ed Martin (@EagleEdMartin) February 7, 2025
The Treasury-DOGE Fiasco
The top developments in the incursion by DOGE into the Treasury Departments payment systems:
- WSJ: Federal Judge Blocks Elon Musk’s DOGE From Treasury System
- Politico: Trump administration seeks urgent end of ‘impermissible’ court order blocking access to Treasury systems
- NYT: Musk Team’s Treasury Access Raises Security Fears, Despite Judge’s Ordered Halt
- Wired: A US Treasury Threat Intelligence Analysis Designates DOGE Staff as ‘Insider Threat’
- WaPo: Booz Allen “removed” the subctractor who warned of “insider threat risk” DOGE posed at Treasry
- ProPublica: Elon Musk’s DOGE Is Expected to Examine Another Treasury System Next Week
This Is Where We’re At
Another DOGE staffer has “boosted white supremacists and misogynists online,” Reuters reports. Meanwhile, the president and vice president want to see the return of another DOGE staffer who quit before his racists posts online were reported publicly:
Trump says he agrees with Vance that a DOGE staffer fired after being outed for making extremely racist posts should be brought back
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) February 7, 2025 at 2:41 PM
And a third DOGE staffer is a teenager who was fired by a cybersecurity firm for leaking company secrets to a competitor, Bloomberg reports.
Judge Halts USAID Purge
Among the many developments in President Trump’s lawless dismantling of USAID:
- Politico: Judge blocks Trump administration from putting 2,200 USAID workers on leave
- WaPo: How an ex-State Department official fueled Elon Musk’s attack on USAID
CFPB Is Squarely In the Trump II Crosshairs
On Friday night, OMB Director Russell Vought added a second brief to his portfolio: acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. By Saturday night, he had cut off new funding to CFPB. By Sunday he had shuttered its offices for the week. This comes after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had halted all CFPB activities while he was briefly the acting head of CFPB. Meanwhile, DOGE has arrived at CFPB, and Elon Musk posted “CFPB RIP.”
Ominous
We seem destined for an inevitable refusal by President Trump to abide by federal court orders. While we’re not there yet, Vice President JD Vance is eager to get there and teed up the issue in a social media post:
If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal.
If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal.
Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.
— JD Vance (@JDVance) February 9, 2025
Trump Revokes Joe Biden’s Security Clearance
President Trump retaliated against former President Joe Biden, members of his administration, and others by revoking their security clearances. Among those targeted:
- former Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken
- former national security adviser Jake Sullivan
- former deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco
- former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann
- New York Attorney General Letitia James
- Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg
- national security attorney Mark Zaid
- attorney Norm Eisen
Biden of course revoked Trump’s security clearance in the midst of the revelations that Trump swiped highly classified documents as he left the White House and kept them in comically insecure circumstances at Mar-a-Lago. In another retaliatory move related to the Mar-a-Lago case, Trump fired Colleen Shogan, who oversees the National Archives.
Loyalty Test
Candidates for top national security positions in the new administration are being asked whether they subscribe Trump conspiratorial fever dreams, the WaPo reports, citing unnamed sources:
These people said that two individuals, both former officials who were being considered for positions within the intelligence community, were asked to give “yes” or “no” responses to the questions: Was Jan. 6 “an inside job?” And was the 2020 presidential election “stolen?”
Both individuals did not answer “yes” and did get not the jobs.
Quote Of The Day
“Trump’s tornado has changed the world in just a couple of weeks. Yesterday we were the heretics. Now we are the mainstream.”–Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, at a Madrid gathering of far-right leaders whose slogan was “Make Europe Great Again.”
How We Rationalize Anticipatory Obedience
M. Gessen has a thoughtful essay that starts from this premise: Yale historian Timothy Snyder makes “anticipatory obedience” sound irrational but it is not. “In my experience, most of the time, when people or institutions cede power voluntarily, they are acting not so much out of fear but rather on a set of apparently reasonable arguments,” Gessen argues before laying out five categories of rationalizations.
A Reagan Appointee Holds Firm
In case you missed it last week, U.S. Direct Judge John Coughenour of Seattle used unsparing language to defend the rule of law against President Trump’s attack. It came as the judge blocked the Trump executive order on birthright citizenship:
It has become ever more apparent that, to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals. The rule of law is, according to him, something to navigate around or simply ignore, whether that be for political or personal gain. Nevertheless, in this courtroom, and under my watch, the rule of law is a bright beacon which I intend to follow.
You can listen to Coughenour, an 83-year-old Reagan appointee, here and here.
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