Donald Trump Is The Worst Attorney General In History

The traditional journalistic approach to the dismissal also hyper-personalizes the emotional experience and career prospects of the ousted official in a way that seems disgusting in this day and age. Bondi decimated the historic foundations of the Justice Department, served as a willing cipher for President Trump’s campaign of retaliation against his political enemies, oversaw the purge of career prosecutors and investigators, placed hapless lawyers in impossible positions in court, and defied court orders to the point that the government’s hard-won presumption of due process evaporated during his tenure.

But tell us how hard this is for her:

• NYT: Bondi “became emotional…during conversations with friends and colleagues after realizing she was absent.”
• WSJ: “Even though Bondi was stung by the firing, she was encouraged by the support she received and a flood of job offers…”

“Everything is so positive,” Bondi herself emailed the WSJ.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, where palace intrigue completely misses the point, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the president’s criminal defense attorney who operationalized everything Bondi presided over, has been elevated to acting attorney general.

Much ink will be spilled over who permanently replaces Bondi, but as long as the DOJ is run out of the Trump White House, the attorney general will be nothing more than a front. And one thing remains sadly true: Over the course of two terms, each Trump attorney general has been worse than the last.

Trump wants to redo BAD documents?

In a lazy, sloppy and predetermined memo, Trump’s deeply compromised DOJ Office of Legal Counsel concluded that the post-Watergate Presidential Records Act of 1978 is unconstitutional and that Congress cannot force the president to turn over his records to the National Archives at the end of his term.

The memo was written by the head of the OLC: T. Elliot Gaiser, 36, former law clerk to Edith Jones of the 5th Circuit, Neomi Rao of the D.C. Circuit and Judge Samuel Alito.

Violations of the Presidential Records Act were at the heart of Mar-a-Lago’s criminal case against the president, although the charges concerned the sensitivity of the documents in question and Trump’s alleged obstruction of the investigation.

Tina Peters will be criticized

A Colorado appeals court overturned the nine-year prison sentence — but not the conviction of election denier Tina Peters — and ordered her to be resentenced, ruling that the trial judge improperly considered her repeated false claims about the election in violation of her First Amendment rights.

The purges: Pentagon edition

In his ongoing crusade to fill the Pentagon with white, male loyalists, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth:

• fired Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, whose tenure generally would not end until 2027. The new acting chief of staff will be Gen. Christopher LaNeve, who was Hegseth’s military aide before being named vice chief of staff, in a move seen as a prelude to George’s canning. During his year in office, Hegseth removed the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as the chiefs of staff of the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
• expelled two other Army generals: Gen. David Hodne, who became head of the service’s Training and Transformation Command in October, and Maj. Gen. William Green Jr., head of the Army chaplains.

George had tried to stand up to Hegseth over his decision to block the promotions of a one-star general made up of two black officers and two female officers, the New York Times reports:

Two weeks ago, General George asked Mr. Hegseth to meet with him to discuss the removal of the four officers from the one-star list, as well as the general’s view that Mr. Hegseth was unnecessarily interfering in overall Army personnel decisions, the officials said. Mr. Hegseth refused to meet with General George about the matter, they said.

In other Pentagon news: Hegseth ordered military commanders to allow troops to carry personal firearms on base.

Must read

A truly insightful analysis from Garrett Graff on how DEI became the stab-in-the-back excuse in the post-Global War on Terrorism era, that left-behind POWs were in the post-Vietnam era (and before that, Jews were in the post-WWI German era) – and how Pete Hegseth fully subscribes to this myth.

Monitoring mass deportations

• New York Times: ICE Arrests Leader of Wisconsin’s Largest Islamic Group
• WaPo: Despite reported change, ICE still arrests many immigrants without criminal records
• NYT: Lawsuit challenges ICE warrantless searches, forced entries
• WaPo: first group of 12 deportees from the United States dumped in Uganda

Quote of the day

Vali Nasr, former senior State Department official, now a professor at Johns Hopkins University:

For the Iranians, the Strait of Hormuz now matters more than the nuclear program. The nuclear program was symbolic, but had no deterrent effect. Today, the only reason they survive this war is the strait. The Iranian thinking is that ultimately the strait must remain under their control because it is their only deterrent and their only source of income.

Latest news from the Middle East…

• Politico: “Next bridges, then power plants!” » Trump threatens Iranian civilian infrastructure
• WSJ: Control of the Strait of Hormuz will determine who wins the war
• New York Times: How Israel Takes Control of South Lebanon

Happy reading

Philip Kennicott in the Washington Post: Trump’s presidential library is a gigantic tower of fraud

A special request

I hope to find you in some quiet time on Friday and especially ask you to take a minute to join TPM.

None of us here like to promote our own stories, let alone peddle the annual membership drive or tout the Journalism Fund. We all just prefer to do the job you expect of us. Refining our craft, getting closer to the truth, directing the national debate towards what really matters is infinitely rewarding.

But we have to take care of corporate business, and practical realities require us several times a year to make a concerted effort to entice readers who are not yet members to join TPM. If you’re a lurker – a regular Morning Memo reader who hasn’t yet taken the plunge – make today the day.

Artemis II in super slow motion

National Geographic used a special high-resolution slow-motion camera, the Ember s2.5k from Freefly Systems, to record Wednesday’s launch at 2,000 frames per second:

Any hot tips? A juicy scuttlebutt? Any interesting ideas? Let me know. For sensitive information, use encrypted methods here.