A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Trump’s Campaign Of Retribution Reaches Colorado
The Trump Justice Department is urging a federal judge to give “prompt and careful consideration” to the long-shot bid by former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters to overturn her state conviction for Big Lie-related voting-machine tampering. It is highly unusual for the Justice Department to intervene on the side of a criminal defendant convicted on state charges.
Making matters worse, the Trump DOJ revealed in its new filing that it is reviewing Peters’ case as part of its larger campaign of retribution against those who prosecuted Jan. 6 cases and any other cases deemed anti-Trump – even though the Justice Department was not involved in the Peters’ prosecution.
“This review will include an evaluation of the State of Colorado’s prosecution of Ms. Peters and, in particular, whether the case was ‘oriented more toward inflicting political pain than toward pursuing actual justice or legitimate governmental objectives,’” the Justice Department said in a filing by Yaakov M. Roth, the acting assistant attorney general overseeing the Civil Division, quoting Trump’s so-called “Ending the Weaponization” executive order.
While serving as a local election official, Peters was involved in cockamamie scheme to break into a Dominion Voting Systems machine months after the 2020 election in hopes of finding evidence of manipulation that would bolster Trump’s claims that the election was stolen from him. Peters was sentenced last fall to nine years in prison for her role in the scheme.
Top FBI Agent In NYC Forced Out
James Dennehy, the top FBI agent in the NYC field office, was forced to retire, he told colleagues in a farewell email. It’s not clear who is directly responsible for pushing out the senior agent, but it comes after Dennehy urged colleagues in January to “dig in” and resist the DOJ’s purge of FBI agents involved in the Jan. 6 investigations.
More absurdly, Dennehy was told to file his retirement papers the day after Attorney General Pam Bondi complained that the FBI’s New York office had not been sufficiently eager to participate in her right-wing PR stunt of releasing the Jeffrey Epstein “file.”
Down The Memory Hole!
The U.S. Mint has removed from its website gold commemorative medals honoring the police officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6, bronze duplicates of which were previously available for purchase by the public.
Too Far Even For Trump DOJ?
Acting D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin has reportedly been stymied in his effort to launch a corrupt criminal investigation of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). Martin has been agitating to present evidence to a federal grand jury that Schumer’s 2020 remarks about Supreme Court justices amounted to a threat. Higher-ups at the Justice Department have rebuffed Martin, the NYT reports.
IMPORTANT
TPM’s Kate Riga: DOJ Pushes For Immediate Trump Takeover Of Agency Flooded With Fired Worker Appeals
Simply Insane
The Trump administration’s evisceration of NOAA and the National Weather Service is a singular example of the lawless madness of the purges, cuts, and eliminations currently underway:
- The Verge: The US faces ‘devastating’ losses for weather forecasts, federal workers say
- Axios: DOGE moves to cancel NOAA leases on key weather buildings
DOGE Watch
- CNBC: Former Social Security administrator warns that DOGE’s attack on systems and processes is going to result in the interruption of benefits within 30-90 days and recommends people start saving now in preparation.
- Politico: DOGE’s elimination of nearly 750 office leases is sowing confusion throughout the federal government.
- NYT: Struggling With Errors, DOGE Deletes Billions More From List of Savings
- WSJ: Treasury Department lawyers temporarily lost access Friday to PACER because the credit card used to pay for it was frozen.
- Kate Shaw: There Is No Musk Exception in the Constitution
RFK Jr’s Spox Quits In Protest
Politico: “The top spokesperson at the Health and Human Services Department has abruptly quit after clashing with Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his close aides over their management of the agency amid a growing measles outbreak, two people familiar with the matter told POLITICO.”
Senate Dems Block Anti-Trans Bill
Senate Democrats successfully filibustered a Republican ban on trans women in school sports.
Government Shutdown Watch
House Democrats are stiffening their resistance to rescuing Republicans from the looming government shutdown of their own making.
Trump’s Tonkin Gulf Incident
President Trump is now using his Oval Office ambush of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky as a pretext for cutting off military aid to the embattled U.S. ally, a move he had long wanted to make anyway.
Most of the news coverage of Trump’s decision to abandon Ukraine – though he’s styling it as a “pause” – is treating it not as pre-textual but as a result of the public Oval Office breach, playing right into the hands of those seeking to blame Ukraine for both Russia’s invasion and Trump’s pro-Russia tilt.
The reductive new coverage eagerly portrays this as a personality-driven conflict because that’s easier to see and understand than the age-old context of Russia’s grand imperial ambitions in eastern Europe, Ukraine’s tortured history with its more powerful neighbor, and Russia’s post-Cold War clamber to reclaim some vestige of its former superpower status.
The most credulous reporting continues to take at face value Trump’s preposterous claims that he is merely seeking peace and trying to drag Ukraine to the negotiating table with Russia. Ukraine is not fooled.
If the Tonkin Gulf incident was the pretext for greater direct U.S. involvement in Vietnam, the Oval Office ambush looks like a chance to shift the blame and the resulting press coverage from the historic abomination of taking Russia’s side against erstwhile U.S. ally Ukraine and to blame Zelensky for his own fate because he failed to show sufficient fealty to Trump.
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Happy Mardi Gras!
I went looking for the oldest photograph of New Orleans Mari Gras that I could find in our Getty photo archive, and this 1875 shot is what it yielded. Enjoy the day, even if only vicariously.
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