Executive privilege rejected for more than attorney Corcoran

These rejections by Judge Howell indicates she believes the DOJ has presented credible evidence that there are underlying crimes, forfeiting the claim of executive privilege.  Corcoran's testimony is for the classified documents case; these guys are for the insurrection case.

DONALD TRUMP’S CLAIMS of “executive privilege” will not block key administration deputies from testifying before the federal grand jury investigating the former president for his campaign to overturn the results of the 2020 election and his role in the bloody events of Jan. 6.

As reported by ABC and CNN, a federal judge has dismissed Trump’s bid to prevent Special Counsel Jack Smith from questioning White House witnesses about their former boss. Judge Beryl Howell issued the decision in a sealed order last week.

The judicial order, per the reports, paves the way for Smith to compel testimony from top Trump deputies and loyalists including:

- Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff
- Dan Scavino, Trump’s social media maven
- Stephen Miller, the far-right Trump adviser and speechwriter
- John Ratcliffe, the ex Director of National Intelligence
- Ken Cuccineli, a former top Homeland Security official

  Rolling Stone

All of them know where all the bodies are buried. I suppose they will most often take the 5th. I'll be interested in seeing where it all goes, particularly if any of them are then targeted for prosecution.

And, of course, we have to go through appeals first.

The former president is predictably pissed. “The DOJ is continuously stepping far outside the standard norms in attempting to destroy the long accepted, long held, Constitutionally based standards of attorney-client privilege and executive privilege,” a Trump spokesperson told ABC in a statement that also alleged: “There is no factual or legal basis or substance to any case against President Trump. The deranged Democrats and their comrades in the mainstream media are corrupting the legal process and weaponizing the justice system in order to manipulate public opinion, because they are clearly losing the political battle.”

Clearly they are not. 

....but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It just keeps getting worse

Missing text messages for top Trump administration Homeland Security officials in the days surrounding Jan. 6, 2021, are raising new questions about why the agency’s watchdog did not alert officials to the potential destruction of records.

According to a document obtained by the Project on Government Oversight, text messages for former acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf as well as his deputy, Ken Cuccinelli, were unable to be located.

[...]

Both Wolf and Cuccinelli met with Jan. 6 investigators to face questions about pressure from former President Trump for DHS to seize voting machines. Baseless allegations that the machines had been hacked are thought to be behind the pressure campaign.

But their texts from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6 could also shed light on how top national security advisors were reacting as the Capitol was stormed.

[...]

“I just don’t know why everybody’s texts and emails are suddenly disappearing all over the place. So I assume it’s not just a technological problem. But we’ll get to the bottom of it,” Rep Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said.

[...]

“Well, I’m concerned. First of all, if that information exists, what’s the format? If it’s missing, how did it end up being missed? These individuals are not connected to the Secret Service, although they are in the Department of Homeland Security. So obviously, we’ll have to look and see the connection, if any, between that,” [Jan 6 Committee Chair Bennnie] Thompson said.

  The Hill

First the Secret Service, now the DHS. 

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 8/2: And worse.

Whistleblower update

A Department of Homeland Security official said in a whistleblower complaint that the head of DHS told him to stop reporting on the Russian threat to the U.S. election because it "made President Trump look bad."

The White House and DHS denied the allegations.

[...]

The DHS official, Brian Murphy, made the accusation in a formal whistleblower complaint filed Tuesday with the department's inspector general.

Murphy ran the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at DHS until the end of July, when he was demoted to a lesser management job.

Murphy says the acting secretary of DHS, Chad Wolf, told him twice — once in May and again in July — to withhold reporting on potential Russian threats to the election because it cast the president in a bad light. Murphy says he was also told emphasize potential threats from China and Iran.

[...]

According to the document, Wolf and his deputy, Ken Cuccinelli, told Murphy to "modify intelligence assessments to ensure they matched up with the public comments by President Trump."

[...]

Murphy says Wolf told him these instructions came from White House national security adviser Robert O'Brien.

  NPR

Like so many others, Murphy didn't say anything when he was in the position where doing so would have the most impact.

Murphy has been called to testify before the [House Intelligence Committee] on Sept. 21.

[...]

The Washington Post reported [in July] that Murphy's office at DHS was compiling "intelligence reports" on journalists covering the protests in Portland, Ore., and what they were saying on social media.

At the end of July, Murphy was removed from his intelligence post and demoted.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Of course

One thing is cetain: if Trump isn't ousted, he'll have to be impeached again.

The GAO says Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli are in their positions illegally

This should provide some explosives.

The Vacancies Reform Act permits certain individuals to serve as acting officials in vacant presidentially appointed, Senate confirmed positions (PAS) for limited periods of time. 5 U.S.C. §§ 3345, 3346. The Vacancies Reform Act is generally the exclusive means for filling a vacancy in a PAS position unless another statute provides an exception.2 Pursuant to the Vacancies Reform Act, the first assistant to a PAS position automatically becomes the acting official in case of a vacancy unless the President designates another individual who meets the Vacancies Reform Act’s eligibility requirements.

[...]

Upon Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s resignation on April 10, 2019, the official who assumed the title of Acting Secretary [Kevin McAleenan] had not been designated in the order of succession to serve upon the Secretary’s resignation.

[...]

Mr. McAleenan did not have the authority to amend the Secretary’s existing designation.

[...]

Because the incorrect official assumed the title of Acting Secretary at that time, subsequent amendments to the order of succession made by that official were invalid and officials who assumed their positions under such amendments [...] were named by reference to an invalid order of succession.

[...]

[U]pon the resignation of Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, the express terms of the then existing designation required the Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to assume that title instead of the Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Kevin McAleenan. As such, the subsequent appointments of Under Secretary for Strategy, Policy, and Plans, Chad Wolf and Principal Deputy Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Ken Cuccinelli were also improper because they relied on an amended designation made by Mr. McAleenan.

[...]

We have not reviewed the legality of other actions taken by these officials; we are referring the matter to the Inspector General of DHS for review.

  Government Accountability Office

Let the fireworks begin.

Ooopsie

A D.C.-based federal judge ruled Sunday that President Donald Trump's appointment of Ken Cuccinelli as acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director violated the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, a decision that suspends two policies Cuccinelli implemented while leading the agency.

Cuccinelli, an immigration hard-liner who was previously attorney general in Virginia, became acting head of USCIS in June, assuming the newly created role of “principal deputy director." In November, Cuccinelli also assumed the position of "senior official performing the duties of the deputy secretary" at USCIS' parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.

[...]

The order strikes down directives from Cuccinelli that sped up asylum-seekers' initial screenings limited extensions of those hearings, on the grounds that Cuccinelli lacked authority to issue them.

[...]

Today, Cuccinelli's USCIS job title is "senior official performing the duties of the director," according to the agency's website.

[...]

Trump never nominated Cuccinelli to fill either of the two positions that he holds at USCIS and DHS, and he likely won't because of Cuccinelli's unpopularity with leading Senate Republicans due to his previous stewardship of the Senate Conservatives Fund, which ran primary campaigns against Republican incumbents, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

  Politico

How long will all the lawsuits last even after we get rid of this incompetent and law-breaking president? If we ever do.

Circumventing the Senate now

The point is to usurp all the power of Congress.  Loyalty only goes one way with Trump, and he intends for everyone to understand that.

The White House has found a way to bypass a federal statute that dictates who can fill secretary positions, potentially allowing President Trump to choose whomever he wants to lead the Department of Homeland Security, according to an administration official.

[...]

After Kevin K. McAleenan, the acting secretary who had a tumultuous relationship with the White House, announced this month that he would resign, it was widely believed in the administration that Mr. Trump would tap someone who would not question his more extreme policies.

[...]

But officials leading agencies in homeland security who echo Mr. Trump’s fiery language on immigration were initially deemed ineligible under the federal Vacancies Act. The law states that acting officials who take over cabinet-level positions must be next in the line of succession, have the approval of the Senate or have served 90 days under the previous secretary.

The White House, however, is exploring a loophole in the law, according to an administration official. Under this route, the White House would tap someone to be the assistant secretary of the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office, which is vacant, and then elevate that person to be the acting secretary of homeland security.

[...]

This year the Trump administration has purged, installed and transferred leaders in the department, sowing chaos among its ranks and creating a legal maze on personnel matters. The latest dubious workaround would mean that Mr. Trump has found a way to use the many holes in the department to fill a void.

[...]

Mark Morgan and Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, who both joined the department in recent months in an acting capacity, were thought to be out of the running for the job after the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel advised that their appointment would violate the Vacancies Act. Neither Mr. Morgan, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, nor Mr. Cuccinelli, the acting director of the agency overseeing legal immigration, was confirmed by the Senate or served for at least 90 days under the last Senate-confirmed homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen.

[...]

Mr. Cuccinelli has a tumultuous relationship with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader. [...] Mr. Cuccinelli endorsed an effort by hard-line conservatives to force Mr. McConnell to step down and backed Mr. McConnell’s primary challenger in 2014.

  NYT

They were doing this back in 2017.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Cuccinelli once headed the Senate Conservatives Fund, an organization critical of the establishment GOP that ran primary campaigns against incumbents. That past has not been forgotten: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said earlier this year that he has a "lack of enthusiasm" for Cuccinelli and warned in April about nominating Cuccinelli to the permanent position.

McConnell stood by those remarks in a brief interview on Wednesday: “I don’t think I have anything to add to what I said about that earlier."

[...]

“The White House would be well advised to consult with the Senate and senators before they take any decisive action that might be embarrassing to Mr. Cuccinelli or to the White House itself,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who called the attempt to fill the top role at the department without Senate confirmations a “concern.”

[...]

Cuccinelli, acting head of the relatively obscure U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, is one of the president’s top lieutenants because of his aggressive immigration agenda. But he is loathed by McConnell and other Republicans to the point that he probably could not be confirmed for a permanent job.

  Politico

Faster and faster

You read that right.

And if the GOP retain control of the presidency, there may well be an amendment to the sign. It will then have to stipulate "white" people from Europe.

Ken Cuccinelli, the acting head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said on Tuesday that the poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty welcoming immigrants to the United States was referring to “people coming from Europe.”

[...]

The original poem reads: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

[...]

“Well of course that poem referred back to people coming from Europe where they had class-based societies,” Cuccinelli said of the inscription on the statue during an appearance on CNN on Tuesday. “Where people were considered wretched if they weren't in the right class.”

“And it was introduced – it was written one year – one year after the first federal public charge rule was written that says – and I'll quote it, 'Any person unable to take care of himself without becoming a public charge,’ would be inadmissible or in the terms that my agency deals with, they can't do what's called adjusting status, getting a green card becoming legal permanent residence,” he continued.

[...]

"Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge," he said Tuesday morning while responding to a question in an interview with NPR on whether Emma Lazarus's poem, "The New Colossus," was part of the American ethos.

[...]

Speaking further about the "public charge" rule on Tuesday, Cuccinelli said that if an immigrant doesn’t “have future prospects of being legal permanent residents without welfare, that will be counted against them.”

“That is the point of the rule. It doesn’t seem too much to ask that we have Americans here who aren’t likely to go on welfare and become public charge,” he continued.

  The Hill

And then how long before American citizens on welfare are targeted? That one will be harder, because there are so many whites in that category. I'm sure they'll figure out something.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE: