"May be"

 

It wouldn't surprise me if Trump holds onto her simply because this was reported in the NYT.

And maybe, he's getting rid of all the women.

This one, I think, is quite likely.

I couldn't think why Bondi, though, because she sucks up to him constantly and is a hateful human being.

This is how the Times reports it:

President Trump has discussed firing Attorney General Pam Bondi in recent days as he grows frustrated with her leadership at the Justice Department and her handling of the Epstein files, according to four people familiar with the conversations.

Mr. Trump has floated the idea of replacing Ms. Bondi with Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, the people said.

[...]

Ms. Bondi’s allies pointed to photos of her and the president traveling to the Supreme Court on Wednesday to dispute the notion that the president is planning to fire her.

“Attorney General Pam Bondi is a wonderful person and she is doing a good job,” Mr. Trump said in a statement to The New York Times.

[...]

But the president has been souring on Ms. Bondi for months. Among his top complaints is Ms. Bondi’s handling of the Epstein files, which has become a political liability for Mr. Trump among his supporters.

  NYT

What does he want her to do with them? Destroy them?

He has also complained about her shortcomings as a communicator and vented about what he sees as the department’s lack of aggressiveness in going after his foes.

Is Stephen Miller available?

Pam is scheduled for House Oversight subpoenaed testimony April 14. We'll see if it happens, and if it does, whether she does anything other than she's done before: snipe and snarl.

UPDATE 03:26 pm:  D'oh!

Good riddance.  Who's next?  Some other asshole.  Lee Zeldin?

Nope.  At least for now:  Her awful assistant and ex-Trump personal attorney Todd Blanche.

Well, Bondi won't be having to testify again.  Update: Rep. Robert Garcia says, no, she will absolutely still have to testify.

UPDATE 04/03/2026:

Trump wants a toady at the Fed

The Justice Department has begun examining mortgage fraud allegations against Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve governor who is challenging a Trump administration effort to remove her from her job in a move she says is designed to erode the central bank’s independence.

Investigators have issued subpoenas as part of an inquiry into Cook that was spawned by a criminal referral from the country’s top housing regulator.

[...]

“Predictably and recognizing the flaws in challenging their illegal firing of Governor Cook, the administration is scrambling to invent new justifications for its overreach. This Justice Department — perhaps the most politicized in American history — will do whatever President Trump demands,” Cook’s lawyer, Abbe David Lowell, said in a statement.

[...]

Trump moved to fire Cook on Aug. 25 after one of his appointees alleged that she committed mortgage fraud related to two properties she purchased in 2021, before she joined the Fed.

Bill Pulte, who made the criminal referral in his capacity as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has asserted that Cook had claimed two primary residences, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Atlanta, in 2021 to get better mortgage terms. Mortgage rates are often higher on second homes or those purchased to rent.

  AP News

The Trump administration has vowed to go after anyone who got lower mortgage rates by claiming more than one primary residence on their loan papers.

[...]

In a flurry of interviews and rapid-fire posts on X, Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency director, has led the charge in accusing Trump opponents of mortgage fraud. “If somebody is claiming two primary residences, that is not appropriate, and we will refer it for criminal investigation,” Pulte said last month.

[...]

A political donor to the president and heir to a housing company fortune, Pulte’s posts online tease big developments and criminal referrals, drawing reposts from Trump himself and promises of swift consequences.

[...]

Trump has used it as a justification to target political foes, including a governor on the Federal Reserve Board, a Democratic U.S. senator and a state attorney general.

Real estate experts say claiming primary residences on different mortgages at the same time is often legal and rarely prosecuted.

But if administration officials continue the campaign, mortgage records show there’s another place they could look: Trump’s own Cabinet.

[...]

ProPublica found that at least three of Trump’s Cabinet members call multiple homes their primary residences on mortgages.

[...]

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer entered into two primary-residence mortgages in quick succession, including for a second home near a country club in Arizona, where she’s known to vacation. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has primary-residence mortgages in New Jersey and Washington, D.C. Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, has one primary-residence mortgage in Long Island and another in Washington, D.C.

[...]

[A] White House spokesperson said: “This is just another hit piece from a left-wing dark money group that constantly attempts to smear President Trump’s incredible Cabinet members. Unlike [Fed Gov.] Lisa ‘Corrupt’ Cook who blatantly and intentionally committed mortgage fraud, Secretary DeRemer, Secretary Duffy, and Administrator Zeldin own multiple residences, and they have followed the law and they are fully compliant with all ethical obligations.”

  ProPublica

Funny how that works.

Cook filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s firing of her, claiming the president violated her due process rights under the Constitution and federal law. The federal government said the firing was justified because the president determined there was sufficient cause, citing unproven allegations of mortgage fraud.

[...]

Cook requested that the court allow her to remain in her job while the litigation moves forward, but in an emergency hearing on August 29, US District Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee, asked for more written arguments to be submitted to her this week.

The court’s ruling on whether Cook will keep her job while the high-stakes case plays out is crucial, with a Fed policy meeting coming up on September 16-17. The Fed is widely expected to lower rates for the first time since December.

[...]

Sen. [Elizabeth] Warren called on her Republican colleagues to speak out about the president’s actions, and praised Sen. Thom Tillis for saying that he would not support any nominee to replace Cook until after the legal question of her firing is settled.

“I appreciate that, and that is a good first start,” she told CNN.

“We need Republicans. We need all the people in the Senate to stand up and say we’re not going to grease the skids for Donald Trump’s takeover of the Fed,” Warren said in the hearing.

  CNN

And who's this toady Trump wants to replace Cook?

Stephen Miran, President Trump’s pick for an open spot at the Federal Reserve, faced backlash on Thursday after revealing that he would only temporarily leave his position as a top economic adviser to Mr. Trump if confirmed as a Fed governor.

Mr. Miran’s comments, made during his confirmation hearing, amplified concerns about his willingness to uphold the longstanding independence of the central bank from political meddling.

[...]

Rather than resign from his position as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Mr. Miran told lawmakers on the powerful Senate Banking Committee that he would take an unpaid leave of absence to fill a term on the Fed’s Board of Governors that is set to expire at the end of January.

  NYT

Stephen Miran, the White House economist President Donald Trump nominated to the Federal Reserve’s top ranks, just got an earful about the importance of the central bank’s independence — just as the Trump administration actively defends removing Fed Governor Lisa Cook from her post.

[...]

Republican and Democratic senators were unequivocal that the Fed’s decisions on interest rates should remain free of political considerations.

[...]

Democrats questioned Miran’s ability to distance himself from Trump, should he be confirmed to become a Fed governor. Miran said Thursday he plans to technically remain an employee of the White House if he becomes Fed governor on a temporary basis.

  CNN

Republicans are willing to let Trump do anything he wants, except control the Fed. Their money is more important than pleasing the Orange God King.

Since the beginning of the year, the Fed has been subject to unprecedented attacks by the Trump administration because central bankers haven’t heeded the president’s demands to lower interest rates.

[...]

“You are going to be technically an employee of the President of United States, but an independent member of the board of the Federal Reserve. That’s ridiculous,” Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island said.

[...]

Before doing a complete 180 on his views about Fed independence, Miran, a Harvard-trained PhD economist, had challenged it in the recent past.

Last year, Miran co-authored a Manhattan Institute report that called the Fed’s independence an outdated “shibboleth,” and he called for shorter terms for Fed governors to give the president more power to hold sway over the agency.

[...]

Miran said his paper simply laid out proposals to reform the Fed and that “it’s important that we have democratic oversight.”

“I’m very independently minded, as shown by my willingness to stray from consensus and have out-of-consensus views, and I believe that I will continue to be as independent in my thinking process, if confirmed,” Miran said.

And everybody had a good laugh.

In response to a question posed by Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey, Miran said he hasn’t been asked by Trump or anyone in the administration to vote for lower interest rates if he’s confirmed.

Why would he have to be asked? Trump has made it clear that's what he wants.

For months, Trump has complained that the Fed not lowering interest rates is forcing the federal government to make massive interest payments on its debt and that it is hurting housing affordability for Americans.

[...]

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the committee’s Democratic ranking member, also criticized Miran for coming “from a highly political role to a non-political role.” At one point, she pressed him to state that Trump lost the 2020 election, which he refused to state outright.

[...]

When Miran’s nomination was announced, Trump said the appointment would last through January, aimed at filling the remainder of former Fed Governor Adriana Kugler’s term, who resigned in early August without citing a reason for her departure. Last week, Trump said he is considering a longer term for Miran.

“We might switch him to the other, it’s a longer term, and pick somebody else,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting on August 26, referring to Cook’s term, which is slated to last through 2038 and is currently in litigation. “We’ll have a majority very shortly. So that’ll be great. Once we have a majority, housing is going to swing, and it’s going to be great.”

[...]

According to Fed rules, the chair can be chosen only among current Fed governors; and Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whom Trump has attacked for months, has not revealed whether he plans to stay on the Board after his term as chair ends in May 2026. Powell’s term on the Board runs through 2028, so he could theoretically choose to stay as a Fed governor.

[...]

If confirmed, Miran would be in a position to be elevated as Fed chair.

UPDATE 09/06/2025:

UPDATE 09/12/2025:  Small detail...

UPDATE 09/17/2025:

And kudos to Lisa Cook for not bending the knee and stepping down.

Well, that went well

 

Why not destroy the planet while we're at it?

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

UPDATE 11/12/2024:

Stirring up the base - Part 2

Previously, on the Lee Zeldin Alarm Hour.



This hour's episode:

White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) official Mark Sandy, who testified in the impeachment inquiry Saturday, told congressional investigators that he did not know why aid to Ukraine was held up, The New York Times reported, citing two sources.

Sandy also said he had never come across a similar situation during his time with the OMB.

[...]

Sandy testified Saturday in the impeachment probe into President Trump after he was subpoenaed by House Democrats, making him the latest to defy the White House's attempt to prevent officials from testifying in the inquiry. He is the first budget official to testify.

  The Hill

Take it away New York Times...

Mark Sandy, a senior budget official, [...] told investigators that political appointees above him did not provide a rationale for the hold and that he had never encountered a similar situation in his time at the agency, according to two people familiar with his testimony.

Mr. Sandy also said that he had sought guidance on the legality of the move, echoing testimony from a Defense Department official who said that she had raised legal concerns.

  NYT

If I'm not mistaken, they're talking about taking their concerns to John Eisenberg, the top legal adviser to the National Security Council, assistant to the president and deputy counsel to the president for national security affairs. Eisenberg was subpoenaed to testify and refused. And  I still can't believe they let these people get away with refusing a Congressional subpoena.

Mr. Sandy was the first budget official to speak with impeachment investigators. At least three higher-profile Trump administration officials connected to the budget office have stiff-armed the inquiry: Russell T. Vought, the agency’s acting director; Michael Duffey, who helped carry out Mr. Trump’s directive to freeze the aid; and Mick Mulvaney, who retains the title of budget director and is the acting White House chief of staff.

He testified that he was directed to sign paperwork on July 25 enforcing the hold, but that Mr. Duffey, a political appointee, signed such paperwork going forward, a highly unusual intervention by his account.

Does any of that sound "bad for Schiff's fairy tale" to you?

Me either.

How about this...

Sandy is the first OMB official to testify, which he did for almost six hours under subpoena, according to an official working on the impeachment inquiry. OMB had instructed him not to cooperate.

[...]

The testimony from Mark Sandy, the first employee of OMB to testify in the House impeachment probe, appeared to confirm Democrats’ assertion that the decision to withhold nearly $400 million in congressionally approved funds for Ukraine, including millions in lethal aid, was a political one.

[...]

Other witnesses have testified that the letter Sandy signed was dated July 25 — the same day that President Trump spoke by phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and one week after OMB verbally informed interagency officials that they were withholding the funds on orders from the White House. The signature of Sandy’s boss, political appointee Michael Duffey, appears on subsequent letters.

  WaPo

Yeah, Duffey, former head of the Wisconsin Republican Party, skipped out on his scheduled hearing, too.

Does this whole thing stink enough yet? No? Okay, here's more...

Sandy testified that the change came about when Duffey told him he wanted to learn more about the budget apportionment process. Sandy thought this was odd, the people familiar with his testimony said — and he told investigators that he suggested to Duffey that if he wanted to learn more about the process, there were other ways to do it. But Duffey insisted.

Sandy testified that he had never in his career seen a senior political OMB official assume control of a portfolio in such a fashion [but] did not raise a fuss because he wanted to keep his job.

His testimony does not appear to shed any new light on whether the Trump administration’s decision to withhold Ukraine aid was leverage to pressure that country’s government to launch investigations against Trump’s political rivals. But it undermines acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney’s public assertion that the Ukraine aid was frozen in a routine manner that happened “all the time.”

Have you noticed that all the honest people are appearing under subpoena - as they are required by law to do? Well, Gordon Sondland appeared, as I assume he wasn't willing to break the law and defy his subpoena like the Trump loyalists Perry, Mulvaney and his adviser Robert Blair, Giuliani, Duffey, Eisenberg and his deputy Michael Ellis, and Brian McCormack from OMB. Sondland also wasn't smart enough to tell the truth, and he's up Schiff's creek now.

Dear Mr. Zeldin: Stop digging.

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

Stirring up the base

Lee Zeldin is a crackpot who has been spouting shit all along.

Here he was on October 24:

[A new Wall Street Journal editorial] quotes Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) claiming this about [ambassador Willian] Taylor: “Much of his leaked opening statement collapsed, but Schiff keeps the public in the dark on that!”

The “leaked” opening statement, of course, was the full opening statement, but put that aside. The Journal editorial then notes that “What we don’t know is how Mr. Taylor responded to questions” about what he knew firsthand, adding: “If the evidence against Mr. Trump is so damning, then why not make it all public now so the American people can judge for themselves?”

You see, Zeldin wants you to know that the withering cross-examination skills of Republicans like himself debunked what you think you learned from Taylor in his already-revealed opening statement. The point here isn’t just that the already-known and deeply damning details in Taylor’s testimony should be seen as suspect, simply because House Republicans say so. It’s also that the effectiveness of House Republicans unmasked this, and Democrats are trying to conceal it.

  WaPo

And on November 4:

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), a slavish Trump lickspittle, called for the release of the transcript of Taylor’s testimony, claiming: “Much of his leaked opening statement collapsed, but Schiff keeps the public in the dark on that!”

Zeldin then broadened his case. “The public is absolutely being misled about every single deposition that takes place,” Zeldin told the Washington Examiner.

  WaPo

And then...we saw that transcript, and heard his public testimony. The public was not misled.

Maybe there's something that benefits Trump in some way in the deposition, but even if it does, it can't possibly be anything that negates everything we already know, and the scare tactic of needing it to be released BEFORE the next public hearing is just that: a scare tactic.  He knows it's not likely to be released before that, because there are hours and hours worth of testimony that have to be passed before some agency (or agencies) to make sure there's nothing that needs to be redacted in the interest of national security.  And I think it's a pretty safe bet that there are things since this is the budget office and foreign aide is being discussed.

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

UPDATE:  Is THIS the urgent message?

Speaking of shades of Kavanaugh...

Trump's corruption includes multiple agencies and Congress

At this point, the broad contours of the Ukraine scandal are well understood. President Trump appears to have used hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money appropriated as military aid to extort a vulnerable ally into helping him rig the 2020 election on his behalf.

  WaPo

Succinctly and clearly, that's it.

But there are two other aspects of this scandal that need elaboration. The first is the degree to which this whole scheme is corrupting multiple government agencies and effectively placing them at the disposal of Trump’s reelection effort.

The second is that two of the scheme’s goals — getting Ukraine to validate a conspiracy theory absolving Russia of 2016 sabotage, and to manufacture smears of one of Trump’s leading 2020 rivals — are really part of the same story.

The New York Times has a remarkable piece detailing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s role in this whole scheme.

[...]

As the Times points out, newly released transcripts of witness testimony in the impeachment inquiry fill in that part of the story. It involves a disinformation campaign directed at Yovanovitch, which Pompeo didn’t defend her from, despite her being a senior diplomat.

[...]

Mr. McKinley said he personally urged Mr. Pompeo three times to issue a defense; the revelation of that detail in a transcript released on Monday undercut a declaration Mr. Pompeo made in an interview last month that he “never heard” Mr. McKinley “say a single thing” about Ms. Yovanovitch’s ouster.

[...]

As the Times concludes, Pompeo “had direct knowledge of Mr. Trump’s shadow policy, and seems to have enabled it.”

Crucially, Pompeo’s State Department has also sought to cover that project up. The department has tried to block the testimony of multiple officials.

[...]

Then there’s Attorney General William P. Barr. In an overlooked interview, the national spokesperson for the Republican National Committee claimed that when Trump pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to carry out the “investigations” Trump wanted, he wasn’t trying to help himself.

Instead, Trump was merely trying to get Zelensky to cooperate with the ongoing Justice Department review of the origins of the FBI investigation into Russian interference, the RNC spokesperson, Liz Harrington, said.

[...]

In other words, Trump and top officials at the GOP’s main national political committee are using Barr’s review to confer legitimacy on Trump’s extortion of Zelensky for his own corrupt purposes.

Trump himself instructed Zelensky on the July 25 call to enlist Barr to help carry out the scheme.

[...]

[T]he Justice Department denied that Trump had discussed with Barr any direct assistance to Zelensky, and distanced itself from any suggestion that military aid was withheld to pressure Ukraine into cooperating with Barr’s review.

But Barr keeps popping up in the middle of the plot. The Justice Department has announced that Barr’s review is vaguely examining Ukraine’s role in 2016. Barr is enlisting other foreign governments in this effort.

[...]

Barr’s Justice Department, like Pompeo’s State Department, has worked to keep the truth about all of this buried. It advised against transmitting the whistleblower complaint sounding the alarm about it to Congress and declined to criminally investigate the whistleblower’s charges.

All this comes at a time when new documents from the special counsel are underscoring just how eager Trumpworld was to profit from the Russian interference effort.

[...]

Multiple government agencies are actively helping Trump absolve Russia of sabotaging the last presidential election on his behalf — thus burying his own campaign’s eagerness to benefit from it — and helping him cover up his effort to solicit more foreign help in cheating his way to victory in the next one.

Flashback to November 3 (a week ago):

I can read that in no other way than that he is asking Republicans to lie for him.  Another test of their loyalty and willingness to perjure and debase themselves for his benefit. To place themselves and their careers under his thumb. Joseph Stalin II in the making.

I wondered how many Republicans would be willing to comply. Or maybe I should say - which Republicans would be willing to comply.

This is a straight-up command to Republicans that they produce transcripts that vindicate him. What would that look like? We know the answer to this because Republicans have already told it to us.

For weeks, numerous Republicans have claimed that the publicly confirmed and very damning revelations about Trump’s corruption aren’t actually damning, because behind closed doors, the witnesses’ stories have fallen apart.

Republicans tried this trick to discredit Ambassador William B. Taylor Jr.’s devastating testimony.

[...]

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), a slavish Trump lickspittle, called for the release of the transcript of Taylor’s testimony, claiming: “Much of his leaked opening statement collapsed, but Schiff keeps the public in the dark on that!”

Zeldin then broadened his case. “The public is absolutely being misled about every single deposition that takes place,” Zeldin told the Washington Examiner.

[...]

Another Republican, Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah, claimed it’s “extraordinarily frustrating” that he cannot yet share the closed-door details supposedly showing that witness testimony has been debunked.

This line has also been pushed by Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio).

[...]

Let’s point out how ridiculous this whole line really is. First, much of the “leaked” testimony actually consisted of complete opening statements documented in black-letter text.

  WaPo

How could they be so stupid?  Or why would they risk it?

And now we have the actual testimony transcripts. I wonder what these people are saying now. It turns out Chris Stewart, a member of the Intelligence Committee only even attended half of the hearings. He skipped the big ones: Bill Taylor, Kurt Volker, Fiona Hill and George Kent.

Trump and Republicans know they can right now inject the claim into the discussion that the revelations were secretly debunked, because the media coverage won’t return to this, once the transcripts show what nonsense it is. [...] [T]he Times simply allowed Turner to float that claim, without pointing out its core absurdities.

Indeed, Trump and Republicans also know that once the transcripts are released, they can simply change the subject by lying about what they actually do show. They’ll do this knowing that their propaganda network will amplify those lies, and that all-too-many mainstream outlets will launder them by treating them as merely one side in a legitimate good-faith dispute over the transcripts’ content and meaning.

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

Ivanka Trump for President

Responding to tweets from first daughter Ivanka Trump about “working alongside” newly sworn-in Chief of Staff John Kelly, Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) said he doesn’t think Ivanka Trump should have to work through Kelly to access her father.

[...]

Zeldin said he thinks Ivanka Trump could “in her own right” be a “great United States senator if she wanted to be.”

When pressed about what qualifies her for elected office, he said she is “super smart and highly capable” and cited her experience in business and “ability to understand our tax code” as rationale.

When asked about the fact that none of Ivanka Trump’s products are made in the U.S., he said she’s also a “great mom” and “a great wife.”

“She has great education. She has great ideas on important issues that help families, but I would say for anyone who is running for office, the President proved this, there is no one size fits all cookie-cutter way to become President of the United States.”

  TPM

Woe is us.

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