@davidkurtz.bsky.social
TPM editor at large + all things Morning Memo: https://morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.com/ Signal: davidkurtz.88 Proton: davidmkurtz@proton.me
That and much, much more in today's installment of Morning Memo:
morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.com
Monaco, as the No. 2 at DOJ during the Biden administration, oversaw the prosecutions of Trump, who last week demanded that Microsoft fire her as its president of global affairs.
03.10.2025 15:01 — 👍 4 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0Also, two longtime career EDVA prosecutors who both worked as advisers to then-Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco during the Biden administration have been fired since Trump lawyer Lindsey Halligan became the new U.S. attorney there.
03.10.2025 15:01 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
The hits just keep coming at the Justice Department, including the FBI, as new purges come to light. Among the latest moves: FBI Director Kash Patel fired a new agent trainee for displaying a gay pride flag on his desk last year when he was a FBI support staffer
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The shutdown isn’t an impasse over legislation. It’s not the old “gridlock” in Washington. It’s not even a partisan fight in the traditional sense. Trump and the MAGA hordes have laid siege to the gov't from inside its walls, much as they auto-couped on Jan. 6.
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Morning Memo, chronicling the Trump II depredations so you can stay informed, not overwhelmed:
morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.com
“The U.S. is engaged in a counterdrug-cartel operation, and any claim that we are coordinating with anyone on anything other than this targeted effort is completely false,” a State Department spokesperson told the NYT.
The new jingoism is the same as the old jingoism.
SoS Marco Rubio is leading a Trump admin push to turn Venezuela into a pariah state, including amping up military pressure to force out President Nicolás Maduro, the NYT reports. Semantic games are already being played to tout the operation not as regime change but as a “counternarcotics operation."
30.09.2025 14:50 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0While the recent lawless U.S. attacks on alleged drug-running boats on the high seas has serious legal implications, it’s part of a larger story of trying to turn Venezuela into a villain country in which Trump fancies himself as savior, local sheriff, and bad ’80s movie tough guy
30.09.2025 14:50 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0If history is any guide, it’ll be a return to paternalistic interference in internal affairs, destabilizing existing regimes, and generally creating a political, economic, and social mess before washing its hands of it all and walking away … before repeating the cycle.
30.09.2025 14:50 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
The last 30 years or so have been a relative retreat from more than a century of jingoistic U.S. interference in Latin America, but it increasingly appears that the Trump administration is eager to resurrect the old U.S. playbook.
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That and more in in today's Morning Memo:
morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.com
The purge of career people–in many cases in violation of laws meant to protect them from political influence–is important in its own right. But it also contributes to the larger scheme by removing guardrails that might impede even more radical abuses of office by Trump and his political appointees.
29.09.2025 15:01 — 👍 20 🔁 9 💬 1 📌 0
While the Trump DOJ has been hijacked to target Donald Trump’s perceived foes with criminal investigation and prosecution, it continues to undergo a slow-motion purge of career professionals that is flying a little bit under the radar.
talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo...
TPM's @davidkurtz.bsky.social joined @gregsargent.bsky.social to talk about the Comey indictment, Trump's corruption of the justice system, and why we need new language to capture what’s really happening here.
newrepublic.com/article/2009...
Morning Memo, chronicling the Trump II depredations, including the erosion of the rule of law, each weekday:
morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.com
It's all of a piece with Trump abusing his office to pursue a campaign of retribution against investigators, prosecutors, and political adversaries. The Trump DOJ no longer upholds the law without fear or favor, a loss of a vital democratic tradition for which Trump will forever bear responsibility.
26.09.2025 14:12 — 👍 17 🔁 3 💬 2 📌 0But the particulars of the indictment and the arduous process ahead of a criminal trial should not obscure the fundamental corruption of President Trump in firing his own U.S. attorney who wouldn’t seek an indictment and then siccing Halligan, his former personal lawyer, on Comey.
26.09.2025 14:12 — 👍 8 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
The original Count I (in an indictment misnumbered with two Count IIs) was an additional false statement to Congress charge.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Lindsey R. Vaala, to whom the indictment was presented in court, expressed puzzlement over the dueling documents, the WaPo reports:
Not A Clean Win With the Comey Grand Jury: The grand jury rejected the first count of the original three-count indictment it was presented, forcing prosecutors to present a revised two-count indictment for its consideration.
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News --> Steve Bannon tells me he fully expects Trump to use the Texas ICE office shooting as the hook to unleash law enforcement on liberal immigration groups by connecting political violence to anti-ICE rhetoric.
This is going to get ugly. 1/
(new piece)
newrepublic.com/article/2009...
Do not miss this from @davidkurtz.bsky.social, or @gregsargent.bsky.social’s interview with him.
26.09.2025 12:03 — 👍 9 🔁 5 💬 1 📌 0
In anticipation of the Comey indictment, @gregsargent.bsky.social and I get into a wide-ranging conversation on the challenges of covering politically corrupt prosecutions and the dangers of the current moment.
You can listen here: newrepublic.com/article/2009... via @newrepublic.com
Morning Memo, chronicling the depredations of the Trump II presidency each weekday:
morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.com
If federal judges, having dispensed with the presumption of regularity in the functioning of the govt, no longer give DOJ the benefit of the doubt in court, then we shouldn’t either.
The implications of that shift are enormous, yet too many editors and producers are not fully grappling w/ them yet.
I start from these premises not because they answer every question — they don’t — but because they begin to offer some clarity by framing up the right questions and avoiding the wrong ones.
The key thing to remember is that we’re already well beyond the event horizon in the corruption of DOJ.
(3) The traditional journalistic practices for covering criminal investigations and prosecutions are not up to the task of dealing squarely w/ a POTUS hijacking DOJ and using it to, variously, punish his political foes, reward his allies, and cover up his own corruption and that of those around him.
25.09.2025 15:16 — 👍 5 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0(2) Any prosecution of Trump foes is presumptively corrupt. In rare instances, that presumption might be overcome by overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing combined with elaborate demonstrations of good faith and proper procedure. But don’t hold your breath.
25.09.2025 15:16 — 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Starting w/ a few basics:
(1) Halligan was appointed USA specifically to prosecute Trump foes Comey and Letitia James. Trump didn’t force out the prior EDVA USA for failing to exact retribution against his adversaries only to turn around and appoint someone who would similarly demur.
Amid reports that newly appointed USA Lindsey Halligan will seek to indict James Comey on bogus charges of lying to Congress after her predecessor declined to, it’s a good time to do a reset ahead of the wave of Trump-driven political prosecutions.
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