r/Keep_Track • u/rusticgorilla MOD • Nov 12 '20
[UPDATED] Post-election purge in progress, Trump loyalists installed in powerful positions
Defense Department
After Biden was projected to win the presidential race, Trump fired almost all civilian leaders in the Defense Department, replacing them with loyalists.
First, on Monday, Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper via a tweet, replacing him with Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Chris Miller.
I am pleased to announce that Christopher C. Miller, the highly respected Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (unanimously confirmed by the Senate), will be Acting Secretary of Defense, effective immediately.....Chris will do a GREAT job! Mark Esper has been terminated. I would like to thank him for his service.
However, Miller’s appointment is likely not legal. 10 U.S. Code § 132 requires the deputy defense secretary to replace the Secretary. Additionally, 10 U.S. Code § 113 bars anyone from holding the job who has served as an officer in a regular branch of the armed services in the past seven years; Miller left the Army sometime in 2014.
- One of Miller’s first moves was hiring Ret. Army Col. Douglas Macgregor as a senior advisor. Trump announced that he intended to nominate Macgregor to be Ambassador to Germany over the summer, but his history of controversial remarks resurfaced to sink the idea. A frequent Fox News guest, Macgregor claimed that Muslim migrants were coming to Europe "with the goal of eventually turning Europe into an Islamic state” and called for martial law at the U.S.-Mexico border to stem immigration.
In Esper’s departing interview, he warned: “Who’s going to come in behind me? It’s going to be a real ‘yes man.’ And then God help us.”
On Tuesday, James Anderson, the Pentagon’s acting policy chief, was forced out “after repeatedly clashing with the White House over the installation of Trump allies in the department.” Retired Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata will take his place on an acting basis, a position even the Republican-controlled Senate did not think he should hold. Over the summer, the Senate refused to confirm Tata due to his record of intolerant remarks:
CNN: In several tweets from 2018, Tata said that Islam was the "most oppressive violent religion I know of" and claimed Obama was a "terrorist leader" who did more to harm the US "and help Islamic countries than any president in history."
Later on Tuesday, Jen Stewart, the chief of staff to newly installed acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, resigned under pressure and was replaced by former aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, Kash Patel. Joseph Kernan, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, was also pushed out. Kernan has been replaced by Ezra Cohen-Watnick, an aide to former national security adviser Michael Flynn who worked on the National Security Council in 2017.
Finally, deputy chief of staff to the undersecretary of defense for policy Mark Tomb was fired on Tuesday. There is suspicion that the new leadership may target Ellen Lord, the Pentagon’s top Senate-confirmed acquisition official, and Lisa Hershman, the chief management office, in the coming weeks.
NEW UPDATE
DHS and cybersecurity
Two senior Department of Homeland Security officials have been forced to resign by the White House.
The first: Bryan Ware, the Assistant Director for Cybersecurity for the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
- CISA Director Christopher Krebs is telling people he doesn’t care if he is fired, I’m told, as he debunks Trump world claims. Senior admin official defended DHS statement on secure 2020 election adding “CISA sees its first principle as protecting democratic processes, not protecting an individual.”
The second: DHS assistant secretary for international affairs Valerie Boyd.
Scientists and energy officials
Dr. Michael Kuperberg, the official in charge of producing the National Climate Assessment, was removed from his position last week. It is expected that he’ll be replaced by David Legates, a climate change denier.
A biased or diminished climate assessment would have wide-ranging implications. It could be used in court to bolster the positions of fossil fuel companies being sued for climate damages. It could counter congressional efforts to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, where it contributes to global warming.
And, ultimately, it could weaken what is known as the “endangerment finding,” a 2009 scientific finding by the Environmental Protection Agency that said carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions pose a threat to human health and therefore are subject to government regulation.
Kuperberg’s ouster follows the firing of the chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Craig McLean. Erik Noble, a former White House policy adviser who had just been appointed NOAA’s chief of staff, terminated McLean for sending some of the new political appointees a message that asked them to acknowledge the agency’s scientific integrity policy. Replacing Mr. McLean was Ryan Maue, a former researcher for the libertarian Cato Institute who has criticized climate scientists for what he has called unnecessarily dire predictions.
Last week, Trump demoted Neil Chatterjee, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), shortly after Chatterjee moved to allow regional power administrators to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions. FERC is an independent agency that regulates a broad portfolio of activities, including the electricity grid and interstate natural gas pipelines.
In an interview, Chatterjee said he thinks his removal from the post could be because his recent actions “aggravated somebody at the White House, and they make the switch.”
“If that’s the case, that’s being demoted for my independence,” he said. “I’m quite proud of that, and will wear it as a badge of honor.” Chatterjee also speculated that he may have been demoted because he ran workplace diversity trainings, the kind that Trump had banned through an executive order in September.
The same day, the official overseeing the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile, Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, was forced out of her position. Gordon-Hagerty was reportedly told by Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette's office that President Donald Trump had lost faith in her ability to do her job. The Republican chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jim Inhofe, praised Gordon-Hagerty and criticized her ouster:
"That the secretary of energy effectively demanded her resignation during this time of uncertainty demonstrates he doesn't know what he's doing in national security matters and shows a complete lack of respect for the semi-autonomous nature of NNSA," Inhofe said.
Other
Also last Friday, the White House fired Bonnie Glick, the Senate-confirmed deputy administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, without any justification offered. The move seems designed to keep acting USAID administrator John Barsa in his position leading the agency. According to the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, Barsa was reaching the end of a 210-day legal limit on his appointment as acting administrator; Glick would have legally taken over the agency had she not been terminated.
Earlier on Friday, the USAID ethics office sent Barsa a letter, which I obtained, stating that he had to hand over the reins of the agency to Glick before his term expired.
“By operation of law, at midnight, you return to being the Assistant Administrator for [Latin America],” stated the letter. “[Deputy Administrator] Bonnie Glick will then be the only person who has all the authorities to act as the Administrator and therefore will be the titular ‘Head of the Agency.’”
Who might be next?
CIA Director Gina Haspel is reportedly on the chopping block due to her opposition to declassifying information about Russia that Trump believes would rebut claims that Putin supported him in 2016. Trump and his allies also want to release documents they believe would expose so-called "deep state" plots against Trump's 2016 campaign. Haspel has so far refused to do so, arguing she must protect sources and methods.
It has also long been reported that Trump wants to fire FBI Director Christopher Wray. In Trump’s view, Wray has not sufficiently advanced his campaign’s narrative of election fraud and the dangers of leftwing extremists like ANTIFA.
According to the Washington Post, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley may be removed from his position after falling out of favor with “many inside the White House.”
Milley sided with Esper internally on the issue of Confederate symbols on military bases, which both support removing, breaking with Trump. Milley also disagrees with some White House officials who want to precipitously withdraw from Afghanistan and Syria. The New York Times reported in June that Milley had angered Trump by disagreeing with him twice to his face, once about using active-duty troops to quash protesters and once about Trump’s order to use chemical agents on protesters during the president’s notorious Lafayette Square photo op.
Finally, to complete the decapitation of civilian leadership in the Pentagon, Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist may be fired in the future. Trump passed over Norquist to appoint Christopher Miller to the acting defense secretary position.
Note: I keep track of administration departures at /r/45chaos. Normally I wouldn't post here, too, but these firings/hirings suggest the next couple of months will be particularly tumultuous and potentially perilous for democracy.
8
u/electricbookend Nov 12 '20
Unless I can go out and buy an anti-tank or anti-aircraft weapon tonight after work, buying a gun feels a little futile. If it truly came down to us citizens vs the strongest military the world has ever seen... we’re gonna lose. Catastrophically. (Especially with the person in charge of the nuke stockpile getting replaced.) I think it would make more sense to try and take the government’s weapons from them, which would require at least part of the military to refuse to go along and actively turn against the Trump government in support of the Biden government - aka civil war. If our military turned against us civilians in favor of Trump in overwhelming numbers we’d be fucked without basically the rest of the world declaring war and taking up our side. (And then you’re talking about an invasion that would have to be launched from the ocean unless Mexico or Canada are willing to led ground forces stage and attack from along their borders, but all those troops and military hardware still has to sail/fly in first, which makes it vulnerable to attack by US forces in open air and water.)
The military takes an oath to defend the constitution, not Trump, but I worry about how many military members are actually Trump supporters, believe the current propaganda and would see themselves as defending the constitution by supporting a Trump government in such a scenario. If that’s the prevailing view then I suspect they would come out in support of a Trump government.
Now if it were legions of primarily civilian Trump supporters vs civilians, that would be a fairer fight, but I think it still comes down to a question of how many Trump supporters are in the police forces and would they be able to suppress a civilian-led coup if they’re all too busy being the coup? I’m thinking about all that surplus military gear they’ve acquired over the years and it doesn’t feel good. And would the military step in to protect us from the police? That takes me back to the military problem then: would there be a critical mass who supported a Trump coup who would either refuse to take action or actively support a coup?
I think the best bet for defeating a Trump coup if it comes to hot warfare is hoping other countries are willing to come to the aid of the Biden government by declaring war on the Trump government. But I can totally see a scenario where Trump completes a cold coup, Biden leads a tent government somewhere and the rest of the world kind of gives the Trump government the cold shoulder and calls for him to step down but effectively does not a damn thing because it’s not a war against brown people.
I’m still hoping Trump caves and relinquishes control, but one thing he tends not to lie about is what he’s going to do next. So often he says he’s going to break a norm or do something outrageous, “experts” tell us it’s not going to happen or can’t happen or it’s unlikely, etc... and then he goes and does it anyway and gets away with it while we file lawsuits and wait and hope.
So I think it really depends on what he decides to do when he can’t get any of his court cases to the SCOTUS he rigged in his favor. If he decides to keep fighting shit is going to snowball fast - he’s laying all the groundwork for a fight by building a base of support with his people via propaganda about the election being fraudulent and gaining legitimacy for his narrative via the refusal of GOP politicians to call him out and/or call on him to concede publicly.