It has been reported by Josh Dawsey of Politico, (and no real fan of Donald Trump’s administration) that Dana Boente, an Obama appointee, will now be handling the investigation into the “Trump Administration and Russia” matter.
Didn’t Trump and his people learn anything with Sally Yates? That Jeff Sessions has not been able to fill those deputy-slots is the result of a strategy by the Democrats and Charlie Schumer, and it seems to be working out pretty well. So, as politics, today everyone seems to put this in the “all’s fair” category.
But the lines about legal, even criminal, matters have been blurred, so this is important.
On the Trump side there seems to be a fear of putting less-qualified people into those slots, if only on an interim basis, instead choosing to hold onto known goods, however damaged.
In my view, a serious mistake.
The country, and the overall mission of Donald Trump (and America’s) will be better served if those Obama hold-over desks are empty, starting today by 4:30 PM, rather than have someone remain at that desk who, by the company he/she keeps, may have placed our country beneath their own careers, and perhaps even a more treasonous ideology intent on displacing the very Constitutional legal structure they are all sworn to uphold.
This simply won’t do.
I know Jeff Sessions wants certain people in those positions, as do other agency heads, but it’s vitally important those slots be empty today of any foreign influences, which in light of the leaks and wrecking, seem to be more than latent risks. What Jeff may not know is a lesson virtually every military officer in the administration knows, for it is a lesson that made the American military the best fighting force in the history of warfare…all of it predicated on 1) a shared mission, from general down to private, and 2) the ability of any soldier in a company-sized command to assume the duties of his next-ranking superior should he be lost in battle.
Remember in the Battle of the Bulge when they passed out rifles to the cooks, reminding them of what they had been taught in basic training? World War II was the best example, but not the only one, but in an infantry platoon entering a battle, it was not uncommon for the lieutenant platoon leader to be killed or wounded, to then be replaced by a platoon sergeant, then a corporal, and even in some cases, after the smoke had cleared, a PFC. I knew many fine captains who had received battle-field appointments in Vietnam.
Using the Justice Department as an example today, and being an ex-Army lawyer who was thrown into criminal trial work my first week out of JAG School, I know that there are many fine lawyers in every department of the DOJ, with only a few years in-service, who can fill in admirably, tending to the routine duties of an Obama appointee’s desk, until a new boss is appointed.
It’s what America does best. Or used to.
All you have to know is whether they love their country and its mission more than they do the unwritten mission of the (any) bureaucracy, or worse, another ideology altogether… which we should by-now assume is held by all the Obama holdovers. Prudence dictates that we cannot afford not to make such an assumption.
By 4 PM today, let those people come into their office and find their personal belongings in tote-boxes, their computers and files seized and secured, and their name-plate transferred two floors down to a young 32 year old department attorney with five years time-in-service.
None Dare Call it Treason
And if you really want to scare the bejeezus out of the rest of the bureaucracy, let it leak out that Attorney General Sessions has been appointed to head a select committee, including Defense Secretary Mattis, Newt Gingrich, Mayor Giuliani, you know – patriots, to come up with a working definition of “treason” that will enable us to weed out the criminals from within government. Let them learn the true meaning of “due process.”
I cite, or course, Sen Ted Kennedy’s trip to Moscow in the 1980s, (there are others) offering a quid pro quo to Leonid Brezhnev if the USSR would help the Democrats defeat Reagan in 1984. It would be some years, and the fall of the USSR, before the actual communiques of that offer were made public (during the Clinton renaissance), so nothing was done. And besides, he was a Kennedy, albeit one who his big brothers would have been forever shamed, had they lived to witness it.
Still, it was treason.
And since that time there has been no envelope the Democrats haven’t been able to push and get away with it.
What I suggest here is only a “Legal Finding” such as the one Barack Obama requested from Attorney General Eric Holder, when he wanted “authority” to assassinate American citizens abroad, namely Anwar al-Awlaki, in Yemen, in 2011… but also his innocent 16-year old son two weeks later, apparently just for the hell of it.
Holder told him it was okay and that was all Obama needed
Simply by having that Finding in-hand should allow us to be able to redraw the four corners of just what the “service” part of “public service” really means, having a retarding effect on both the language and conduct of those who have made government service not only their career paths, but their reason for being.
