Erick Erickson has an appalling story concerning the Department of Homeland Security:
The Washington Post has a very interesting story about an American citizen who fired off a letter to Joseph Dernbach at the Department of Homeland Security. Dernbach’s contact information is easy to find on Google. Dernbach was the lead prosecutor on a DHS case against an Afghan citizen the Trump Administration was attempting to deport.
Jon, whose last name is not revealed by the Washington Post, is an American citizen who gave up his British citizenship for his love of America. Jon is very clearly a progressive.
Within hours of sending his letter to Joseph Dernbach, Google sent Jon notice that Google had “received legal process from a Law Enforcement authority compelling the release of information related to [Jon’s] Google Account.” The Department of Homeland Security retaliated against an American citizen for sending a letter to a Department of Homeland Security lawyer …
And if you want to see this letter, which is basically a reprimand of DHS for attempting to deport a former ally, follow the above link. The story does get worse:
Google did not tell Jon what information the government wanted, but told Jon he’d have to file a motion in court to stop it. But Google provided no information for Jon to do that and did not send Jon a copy of the subpoena for Jon to fight because the Department of Homeland Security also instructed Google not to tell Jon anything about their subpoena.
My bold, and I’m bolding prime evidence of corruption, I think. It’s certainly deeply disturbing, and Google’s failure to ignore that specific instruction is indicative of a company that is submitting to the instructions of a power-mad xenophobe rather than the American Constitution and body of law.
Erickson, though, goes off on a tangent where he claims the Democrats will do the same thing when they’re in power, so the Republicans should curtail such activities. Certainly, there’ll be a lot of howling, but how this is adjudicated will be up to judges moreso than lawmakers. Although “Oh For Some Republican Sanity on This” is a good title, the article might have benefited from a direct condemnation of this un-American behavior.
As a postscript, Steve Benen suggests DHS’s existence may be limited:
Miles Taylor, who served as the Department of Homeland Security’s chief of staff during Donald Trump’s first term, told MS NOW last week that he now believes the Republican president has done irreparable damage to the department. Taylor told Nicolle Wallace on “Deadline: White House” that he had resisted calling for the dismantling of DHS, but he’s recently “come around” to the idea that it’s necessary.
He’s not alone. The Atlantic recently published a good report on the debate over the department’s future. It quoted Seth Stodder, who worked for Customs and Border Protection under George W. Bush and the DHS under Barack Obama. After seeing Trump-era abuses, Stodder concluded, “It makes me think that maybe DHS was a bad idea.”
