{"id":43645,"date":"2026-01-22T17:09:26","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T23:09:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=43645"},"modified":"2026-01-22T17:09:26","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T23:09:26","slug":"some-more-failures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2026\/01\/22\/some-more-failures\/","title":{"rendered":"Some More Failures"},"content":{"rendered":"

I noticed another couple of failures yesterday for the Bondi DoJ<\/strong><\/em>:<\/p>\n

Lindsey Halligan, a Trump administration lawyer who was named head of a key U.S. attorney\u2019s office in Virginia last year with instructions to seek criminal charges against President Donald Trump\u2019s perceived political adversaries, left her post at the Justice Department on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Halligan\u2019s departure followed a pair of extraordinary moves by two federal judges who issued court orders hours earlier saying they intended to replace Halligan at the helm of the U.S. attorney\u2019s office for the Eastern District of Virginia and threatening disciplinary sanctions for any government lawyer who continued to refer to her as U.S. attorney in legal filings.<\/p>\n

The separate actions by Chief Judge M. Hannah Lauck and Judge David J. Novak, who were nominated by President Barack Obama and Trump, respectively, signaled a breaking point for the federal bench in the Eastern District of Virginia months after Halligan was disqualified from serving as U.S. attorney in the high-profile office.\u00a0[WaPo<\/strong><\/a>]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Having moves like this one successfully rebuffed makes Trump look not only weak, but not very bright. A Trump-nominated judge was a nice touch. Then along came this admission that letting the faux Federal department DOGE<\/em><\/strong>, or Department of Government Efficiency<\/em>, be invented and run wild has resulted in one of the biggest and potentially most damaging leaks of voter information in American history:<\/p>\n

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Two members of Elon Musk\u2019s DOGE team working at the Social Security Administration were secretly in touch with an advocacy group seeking to \u201coverturn election results in certain states,\u201d and one signed an agreement that may have involved using Social Security data to match state voter rolls, the Justice Department revealed in\u00a0newly disclosed court papers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Shapiro, a top Justice Department official, said SSA referred both DOGE employees for potential violations of the Hatch Act, which bars government employees from using their official positions for political purposes.<\/p>\n

Shapiro\u2019s previously unreported disclosure, dated Friday, came as part of a list of \u201ccorrections\u201d to testimony by top SSA officials during last year\u2019s legal battles over DOGE\u2019s access to Social Security data. They revealed that DOGE team members shared data on unapproved \u201cthird-party\u201d servers and may have accessed private information that had been ruled off-limits by a court at the time. [Politico<\/strong><\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

No one cares about the Hatch Act<\/em>, a toothless wonder that asks the executive sloth to take bites of itself, but never mind if it doesn’t. But this report that DOGE<\/strong><\/em> was, unsurprisingly to many, a large rip in the Zeppelin of State<\/em> is lose-lose for the President: He may be a grifter, or he’s the guy who presided over these completely avoidable and disastrous leaks, all in the name of fraud and waste that, apparently, didn’t exist.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, the picture of Elon Musk wearing a DOGE<\/strong><\/em> imprinted T-shirt that can be found at the Politico<\/strong><\/em> link cannot help but make one wonder if he’s showing it off to his competitors in the world’s richest oligarch race.<\/p>\n

But this may be small fry for President Trump, if I may roundly speculate on this:<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump said Wednesday he has agreed to a \u201cframework of a future deal\u201d concerning\u00a0Greenland<\/a>\u00a0and backed down from his threat to impose tariffs on European countries over the Danish territory.<\/p>\n

\u201cBased upon a very productive meeting that I have had with the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, we have formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region,\u201d Trump wrote on\u00a0Truth Social<\/a>. \u201cThis solution, if consummated, will be a great one for the United States of America, and all NATO Nations. Based upon this understanding, I will not be imposing the Tariffs that were scheduled to go into effect on February 1st.\u201d [MS NOW<\/strong><\/a>]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>With no inside knowledge, we still know President Trump is the Mendacity Machine, a purveyor of lies, and it’s quite possible he ran headfirst into the metaphorical brick wall of NATO<\/strong><\/em> members telling him no<\/strong>. Various members of Congress have already stated that the destruction of NATO<\/em><\/strong> would be a hanging offense<\/del> result in his impeachment<\/a>, and that from Republican members, so he knows he has to let his reputation down slowly. Throw in some American casualties in an invasion and Trump’s political survival becomes dubious – he might not even have the backing of the military if he throws away lives to satisfy his ego.<\/p>\n

So he claims a framework was accomplished. Maybe he was led on by NATO<\/strong><\/em> Secretary General Rutte, maybe he’s just making it up. It’s certainly little enough.<\/p>\n

And maybe this speculation is wheel-less. Maybe next week we’ll be the new owners of a glacier bound island and thirty thousand resentful occupants. Whee-howdy.<\/p>\n

But I think there’s a good chance this is all hollow and Trump, once again, has failed. This happens when your top employees are fourth-raters.<\/p>\n

The silver lining?<\/p>\n

Just 17% of Americans approve of President Donald Trump’s efforts to acquire Greenland, and substantial majorities of Democrats and Republicans oppose using military force to annex the island, a\u00a0Reuters\/Ipsos poll<\/a>\u00a0found. [Reuters<\/strong><\/a>]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But it still looks like lose-lose-lose to me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I noticed another couple of failures yesterday for the Bondi DoJ: Lindsey Halligan, a Trump administration lawyer who was named head of a key U.S. attorney\u2019s office in Virginia last year with instructions to seek criminal charges against President Donald Trump\u2019s perceived political adversaries, left her post at the Justice \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43645"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43649,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43645\/revisions\/43649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}