Note that timeline: 18 months.
The Trump revenge tour is just this accelerated.
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Let’s not forget to include chief of staff Viraj Mirani…who was also ex-DNI’s chief of staff to Dan Coats.
chief of staff, Viraj Mirani, and DNI principal executive Andrew Hallman,
Maguire’s chief of staff, Viraj Mirani, and DNI principal executive Andrew Hallman, were also both told to leave their positions immediately on orders from the White House, said two former intelligence officials, despite offering to stay on board and help with Grenell’s transition.
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Trump has named his DNI nominee, and of course it’s another of his most rabidly fervent supporters during the impeachment process, Rep. John Ratcliffe. Like so many of his nominees, he is a political appointee and utterly unfit for the position.
Trump tried to push Ratcliffe through once before, announcing on July 28, 2019, that he intended to nominate Ratcliffe to replace Dan Coats as Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Ratcliffe withdrew his name five days after some senators raised concerns, former intelligence officials said he might politicize intelligence, and media reports criticized his prosecutorial experience in terrorism and immigration cases
From 2019:
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Jeez, that took a while…
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The deputy White House communications director is leaving his post. Adam Kennedy is resigning his position to go work in the private sector.
Thx WTFJHT early bird editions - Is Joe in the house??
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Trump Names Mark Meadows Chief of Staff, Ousting Mick Mulvaney
President Trump said Friday that Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina and a stalwart conservative ally, will become White House chief of staff, replacing Mick Mulvaney, who has served as the acting chief for more than a year.
Mr. Trump announced the change on Twitter. He said that Mr. Mulvaney, a former Republican lawmaker, will become the United States special envoy for Northern Ireland, shaking up his battle-weary team as he leaves impeachment behind him and faces a high-octane election campaign that will test whether he can defy the odds once again to win a second term.
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The head of the United States Agency for International Development will step down next month from the nation’s premier arm for humanitarian aid in the midst of a snowballing pandemic.
Mark Green said that his resignation, submitted to President Trump in a letter Sunday, does not stem from any dissatisfaction with the administration’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.
Green is expected to be replaced, at least temporarily, by Bonnie Glick, the deputy administrator. But his departure leaves the administration with one less experienced hand to help coordinate a worldwide response to what is the most serious crisis to confront the Trump White House. That could have broader implications if the hot spot shifts from Europe, where USAID is less active, to regions where it is more entrenched, such as Africa and Southeast Asia.
Early this month, USAID announced a $37 million donation to help groups like the World Health Organization cope with the outbreak. In its latest budget request, the Trump administration has proposed slashing funding for global health programs by more than $3 billion. But Congress is unlikely to go along, given broad bipartisan support for foreign aid meted out by USAID and the State Department.
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Is this the White House or a Frat House?
Elect a clown, get a circus – or maybe something more like Animal House…
Dale Cabaniss, the director of the government’s Office of Personnel Management, resigned abruptly on Tuesday, effective immediately.
Cabaniss stepped down because of, what two people familiar with the matter said, was poor treatment from the 29-year-old head of the Presidential Personnel Office, John McEntee, and a powerful appointee at OPM, Paul Dans, the new White House liaison and senior adviser to the director of OPM.
OPM Deputy Director Michael Rigas is now acting director of OPM, according to an OPM spokesperson.
Cabaniss had been at the agency only since September.
The departure casts a cloud of uncertainty over the federal workforce as it struggles to decide how to handle the coronavirus outbreak, with growing questions about the Trump administration’s decision to keep most government offices open and how it is handling remote work.
OPM is the human resources management policy shop for the federal government’s civil service, and it deals with health benefits and retirement, among other issues. Cabaniss is a former Republican staff director of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on financial services and general government and was chairman of the Federal Labor Relations Authority in the Bush administration. Cabaniss didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
McEntee’s return to the White House has roiled the administration with some officials criticizing the former Trump campaign staffer for what they see as an effort to stock the administration with his friends, including at least three college seniors. …
Within the past week, Jonathan Blyth is also no longer chief of staff at OPM and has moved back to OPM’s congressional affairs shop, which he now heads, according to two people familiar with his move, one of which said it reflects McEntee’s growing clout within the administration.
Adding to the tension: The White House has hired a third college senior to be an administration official in a sensitive post, according to four people familiar with the matter.
As some prominent Democrats call for the military to help out more with the response to the coronavirus crisis, John Troup Hemenway has been hired on a 30-day detail to help the deputy director of the Presidential Personnel Office, Michael Burley, with paperwork for Defense Department political appointees, according to one of the people. Hemenway is expected to graduate from the University of Virginia in December.
Hemenway, who is in his 20s and started last week, is the third college senior to be hired in short order by the White House. One administration official praised him by saying he’s “really good at what he does.”
James Bacon, 23 and a senior at George Washington University, was hired to be one of McEntee’s righthand men as he tries to fill the Trump administration with loyalists and fire anyone who they suspect of disloyalty.
Anthony Labruna, who is expected to graduate from Iowa State University in May but was dismissed from the Trump campaign in February, was also recently named deputy White House liaison at the Department of Commerce.
Hemenway, who worked on the Trump campaign in 2016, got his start in the Trump administration when he was on the “beachhead” transition team at the Department of Defense and then worked in Department of Defense’s White House liaison’s office, according to an administration official. At various points during his time at the Defense Department, Hemenway was working to finish his degree, according to two administration officials. …
Things have gotten so chaotic in this administration, it’s hard to even sort out what’s going on. And, as if this isn’t bad enough, Politico didn’t even mention McEntee’s shady background – covered here by Business Insider in February:
Trump just put a 29-year-old fired over allegations of financial crimes in charge of all personnel decisions
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So who is Trump’s Chief of Staff? Did Meadows actually get the job? I feel like I missed that storyline when I was out.
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I believe he did
Some of those guys were doing some quarantining…at the time. Mulvaney was out. Meadows had to quarantine…
It happened during CPAC…where someone from the administration was positive. Wonder who that was?
Looks like Meadows is transitioning in…
Meet Mark Meadows, The Incoming White House Chief Of Staff : NPR
The coronavirus crisis was gaining steam when President Trump announced via tweet on a Friday night that he was replacing his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, with North Carolina congressman and frequent confidante Mark Meadows.
Nearly three weeks later, Meadows is still transitioning into his new job and hasn’t yet resigned from Congress.
He may have been inside the room at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday for White House negotiations with senators on the $2 trillion coronavirus rescue package — but he still had one foot back in his old job.
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Ah-ha. The latest on meadows becoming chief of staff, he finally resigned from Congress. Best of luck on the first day. 
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Trump fires intelligence community inspector general who defied him on Ukraine
President Donald Trump has fired the intelligence community’s chief watchdog, Michael Atkinson, who was the first to sound the alarm to Congress last September about an “urgent” complaint he’d received from an intelligence official involving Trump’s communications with Ukraine’s president.
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Interesting and predictably awful insight on Atkinson’s firing:
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Note that this is from John Solomon, the asshole who created the false Ukraine meddling story. Just the News is his new venture, and you can bet it’s 100% propaganda.
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Hmmmm Very convenient to have a lapdog lawyer as your watchdog. Michael Cohen ring any bells?
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Atkinson: Trump fired me because I handled whistleblower complaint properly
https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/04/05/atkinson-trump-fired-whistleblower-complaint-167371
"It is hard not to think that the President’s loss of confidence in me derives from my having faithfully discharged my legal obligations as an independent and impartial Inspector General," Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community inspector general said in a statement Sunday, "and from my commitment to continue to do so."
Atkinson was the federal official who revealed to Congress in September the existence of a whistleblower complaint against Trump, which indicated that the president improperly pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rivals. When Atkinson sought to share that complaint with Congress under a federal whistleblower law, the White House and Justice Department intervened and blocked the transmission of the complaint for days.
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Grisham out as West Wing press secretary without having held a briefing
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/white-house-press-secretary-is-leaving-job-report-2020-04-07
Stephanie Grisham is out as White House press secretary, will rejoin first lady’s team
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Trump removes independent watchdog for coronavirus funds, upending oversight panel
President Donald Trump has upended the panel of federal watchdogs overseeing implementation of the $2 trillion coronavirus law, tapping a replacement for the Pentagon official who was supposed to lead the effort.
A panel of inspectors general had named Glenn Fine — the acting Pentagon watchdog — to lead the group charged with monitoring the coronavirus relief effort. But Trump on Monday removed Fine from his post, instead naming the EPA inspector general to serve as the temporary Pentagon watchdog in addition to his other responsibilities.
That decision, which began circulating on Capitol Hill Tuesday morning, effectively removed Fine from his role overseeing the coronavirus relief effort, since the new law permits only current inspectors general to fill the position.
“Mr. Fine is no longer on the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee," Dwrena Allen, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon inspector general’s office, confirmed. She added that Fine will return to his Senate-confirmed post as principal deputy inspector general of the Pentagon.
Fine’s removal is Trump’s latest incursion into the community of independent federal watchdogs — punctuated most dramatically by his late Friday ouster of the intelligence community’s inspector general, Michael Atkinson, whose handling of a whistleblower report ultimately led to Trump’s impeachment.
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More takes on this, none of them good:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-07/trump-ousts-inspector-general-poised-to-oversee-relief-spending
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-watchdog-glenn-fine.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-removes-acting-defense-department-inspector-general-11586277895
https://www.axios.com/trump-inspector-general-coronavirus-2b95e865-c8e4-4748-9672-ba844483d847.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-removes-inspector-general-who-was-to-oversee-2-trillion-stimulus-spending/2020/04/07/2f0c6cb8-78ea-11ea-9bee-c5bf9d2e3288_story.html
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/07/politics/trump-sidelines-pentagon-watchdog-coronavirus-funds/index.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twCNN&utm_content=2020-04-07T17:56:15
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