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Who The Fuck Has Left The Trump Administration

Glad they included Downey Magallanes, who, under the corrupt and disgraced Ryan Zinke, was responsible for drastically shrinking Bears Ears National Monument so BP could drill for oil on it. As soon as the ink was dry on that despicable act she resigned and went to work for BP as their “Senior Director of Federal Government Affairs” – everyone knows this means she’s a lobbyist, but (wink, wink) that’s OK since the word “lobbyist” isn’t actually in her title. She helped desecrate a national treasure and transfer millions of dollars of public resources (previously owned by you and me) to private coffers just so she could secure a lucrative corporate job. The shameful details are here.

P.S. @dragonfly9 – awesome catch – thank you for keeping us informed! And you’re so right when you say that part of Trump’s con is to “appear to be following the rules, but with no intention of even doing so.” When he made such a big deal about his “ethics pledge” shortly after taking office, we all knew it was a load of hogwash; nothing more than another of his reality-TV stunts and, surprise, surprise, here we are two years later with proof that we were right. :angry:

P.P.S. Remarkable reporting by ProPublica! They nailed this – and must have spent a massive amount of time on the research. I’ll say it again – we are so fortunate to have a free and dedicated press – they are a vital pillar of our democracy. :mag_right: :newspaper: :muscle:

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Never a surprise…and it would come down to Nauert having a Nanny who was not legally allowed to work and was not paying taxes. Hmm finding someone in your employment, who was working a ‘deal,’ with your family and more than likely an immigrant.

Heather Nauert was a spokesperson for Mike Pompeo but also a former Fox News Commentator did not pass into the committee hearings because she could not get vetted. And she was someone who spouted the Fox conspiracist BS…

Good riddance

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Saturday she has withdrawn from consideration as UN ambassador.

President Donald Trump had previously announced he was picking Nauert, but the formal nomination had not been sent to the Senate.

Before she joined the State Department, Nauert employed a nanny who was in the United States legally but was not legally allowed to work, a source familiar with the matter and an administration official told CNN. The nanny wasn’t paying taxes while she worked, the sources said. This was not known when Nauert became the State Department spokeswoman, but she did tell officials when she was offered the United Nations ambassadorship, the sources said.
Nauert disclosed the nanny when she filled out the paperwork for the UN position,

Trump also announced Nauert as his pick December 7, before the White House did a thorough vet of her, sources told CNN. Nauert’s Office of Government Ethics paperwork hadn’t even gotten through review until well after Trump tweeted that he would nominate her.

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She was uniquely unqualified. :smirk:

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FBI Departures

FBI Director James Comey

FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe

Senior Counterintelligence Agent Peter Strzok

FBI General Counsel Lisa Page

FBI General Counsel James Baker

Chief of Staff to Director Comey, James Rybicki

Assistant Director of Public Affairs at the FBI, Michael Kortan

Josh Campbell, a former special assistant to Comey

James Turgal, a former assistant director to the FBI

Michael Steinbach, the former head of the FBI’s national security division

John Giacalone, the former head of the FBI’s national security division, who proceeded Steinbach

Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, Bill Priestap

Scott Smith, the Assistant FBI Director of the Cyber Division

Howard Marshall, the deputy Assistant FBI Director of the Cyber Division

David Resch, executive assistant director of the FBI’s criminal, cyber, response and services branch

Carl Ghattas, executive assistant director of the FBI’s national security branch

Sources:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/obamas-fbi-brass-hollowed-out-after-latest-resignation-of-key-official

It’s weird that the most comprehensive sources on this are from conservative outlets because they’re trying to prove some crackpot deep state conspiracy theory, when in fact they outline a gutting of the senior FBI by the Trump administration. Did I miss anyone? Add them below.

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Trent Teyema, chief of cyber readiness and cyber division chief operating officer at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has left the FBI for a role in the private sector.

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From an article (2018) on FBI losing it’s top tier talent
(Who The Fuck Has Left The Trump Administration)

Also considering that the FBI was deeply affected and jostled during the 35-day shutdown, it would not surprise me, that perhaps job security is more in line for these departures.

Close to 20 top FBI cybersecurity leaders have left for high-paying corporate jobs over the past five years, one former veteran agent told POLITICO — a dramatic turnover in a handful of senior jobs. And news of the most recent retirements followed the abrupt departure of the co-head of the FBI’s newly formed election meddling task force.

The exodus — including departures from the FBI’s Cyber Division — worries current and former bureau officials. It’s also prompting concern from several top congressional Democrats, who asked their committees’ chairmen last week to get assurances from FBI Director Christopher Wray “that the agency has a plan to replace the departing staff, and that the safety of our elections will not suffer in the interim.”

The bureau has spent years losing highly trained specialists to the private sector, where salaries and benefits for senior cyber leaders can easily top $300,000, far above the government’s pay scale. But the recent decline in experienced cyber leaders comes as the country’s top law enforcement and intelligence officers warn that the nation’s critical infrastructure is under daily assault from hackers. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said last month that “the warning lights are blinking red” as “the digital infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack.”

Investigators will feel ripple effects from the departures as the former leaders are replaced with people who lack their institutional memory and credibility. “This type of change, if not properly managed, is highly disruptive,” said Leo Taddeo, who served in the bureau for 20 years and once led cyber operations at the FBI’s New York office.

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https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/02/18/politics/rod-rosenstein-mid-march/index.html?r=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is expected to leave the Justice Department in mid-March, according to a Justice Department official who spoke to CNN Monday.

The official disputed the idea that the timing of Rosenstein’s departure has anything to do with the latest revelations from former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, emphasizing that the plan was always that Rosenstein would help with the transition for his successor and then leave.

CNN has previously reported that Rosenstein was planning to leave his post after Barr was confirmed.
The new deputy attorney general could be announced as early as this week. As CNN has reported, Attorney General Bill Barr has selected Jeffrey Rosen as his deputy.

Same thing happened to McCabe, new boss appointed, deputy steps aside. Sort of a back-door firing… Trump has learned to clean house this way. That’s why the executive is such a disordered mess.

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From McCabe’s new book, The Threat. He details the moments of when FBI Director Wray asks him to step down.

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-19/white-house-spokeswoman-lindsay-walters-leaving-for-edelman-firm

White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters, who regularly defended the administration’s economic policies, plans to leave in April to work for Edelman Public Relations.

Walters is the only White House spokesman besides Press Secretary Sarah Sanders to remain on the job since the first day of Donald Trump’s presidency. She joined the White House staff after working with former press secretary Sean Spicer at the Republican National Committee and concentrated on economic issues, including the 2017 tax overhaul and trade negotiations with China.

Walters said it was “time for a change” and that she was excited by the opportunity at Edelman. “It has been an honor and a privilege to serve the president in this administration,” Walters said in a statement.

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New Rumor! People are worried Trump might fire Dan Coats?

President Trump has grown increasingly disenchanted with Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, who has served as the nation’s top intelligence official for nearly two years, leading some administration officials to worry he will soon be dismissed, according to people familiar with the matter.

The president has never seen Coats as a close or trusted adviser, the people said, but he has become more frustrated with him in recent weeks over public statements that Trump sees as undercutting his policy goals, particularly with respect to reaching a disarmament agreement with North Korea.

The people familiar with the matter, who like others interviewed for this report spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, did not believe that Coats would be fired immediately but said that Trump is considering removing him. They also noted that Trump sometimes grows angry with officials but stops short of dismissing them.

Trump is still “enraged” about Coats’s congressional testimony on national security threats last month, believing that the director undercut the president’s authority when he shared intelligence assessments about Iran, North Korea and the Islamic State that are at odds with many of Trump’s public statements, said one adviser who spoke with the president over the weekend.

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This is a must read!!!
Deep dive into the early days of Trump’s NSC.

A former NSC staffer came back during the first few months of the Trump administration for another person’s farewell party. When he asked people how they were, at least six individuals declined to say anything in front of others. Instead, each pulled him to a corner near a window. Of the Trump appointees, they would say, “‘These people are incompetent. They literally don’t know what they’re doing, and they don’t care to know what they’re doing,’” the person recalled, saying the despondent staffers would add, “‘I don’t know why I’m doing this. Nobody listens to professional advice.’”

(…)

Among NSC watchers, there’s a sense of relief that no major national security crisis occurred during those first several hectic weeks. The question now, many say, is whether America’s foreign policy machine under Bolton is functional enough to handle a major surprise.

“If you don’t have process, then when a crisis happens you’re not going to be able to pull the right people together for a coherent response,” said Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO who now leads the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “And in this administration, all the crises that we’ve had so far have been self-inflicted. We haven’t had one from the outside.”

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:clap::clap::clap:

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At the time, in 1993, the Princeton professor was taking a break from academia to direct scientific research at the U.S. Department of Energy. He turned a skeptical eye toward one of then-Vice President Al Gore’s favorite issues: the risks posed by chemicals eating away at ozone in the stratosphere and letting in dangerous ultraviolet radiation. As the story goes, Happer went to the White House and told Gore’s staff he saw no evidence that the ozone hole actually was hurting anyone.

Gore was annoyed, and Happer lost his job.

(…)

Bender says he wouldn’t do it now, though. It’s partly because of the scientific dispute, because he thinks Happer is misreading the evidence. But it’s also because of Happer’s style — he’s labeled climate science a cult and accused other scientists of whipping up climate fears to boost their own careers. Most offensive for Bender: Happer once said the "demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the Jews under Hitler."

:woman_shrugging:t2:

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If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Good advice and it looks like Whitaker is taking it. Maybe he’ll surface somewhere on Turks and Caicos.

Former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker has left the Department of Justice.

A Justice Department spokesman told The Hill that Whitaker’s last day was Saturday but did not expand on the circumstances surrounding his departure or his plans after leaving. It is unclear where Whitaker might go, including whether he might seek another role in the Trump administration. …

Whitaker’s departure comes less than three weeks after William Barr was confirmed as Trump’s next attorney general. Barr was widely expected to bring new blood to top leadership roles in the department, raising questions about Whitaker’s tenure.

Since Whitaker’s testimony, The New York Times reported that Trump at one point asked Whitaker whether the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman could be put in charge of an investigation there related to campaign finance violations stemming from a scheme to pay off women who alleged affairs with Trump before the 2016 election. Trump has denied doing so and the Justice Department said Whitaker stood by his testimony.

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Don’t hold your breath. Carson is giving two years’ notice. Say what? That’s a head scratcher. Maybe he’s just trying to distance himself from Trump.

One other question would be: If Trump resigns or is removed from office would you leave then?

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson says he intends to leave his post at the end of President Trump’s term.

Carson made his remarks in a segment airing Monday evening on Newsmax TV, a conservative news outlet. In his two years leading HUD, Carson has dialed back civil rights enforcement at the agency and suspended Obama-era rules that had been aimed at fighting housing segregation and discrimination.

“I will certainly finish out this term,” Carson said during his interview with Newsmax.

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another one bites the dust…

Bill Shine resigns from the White House to advise Trump’s 2020 campaign

http://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/08/bill-shine-resigns-from-the-white-house-to-advise-trumps-2020-campaign.html/

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Officials: Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson has resigned

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Just for the visual effect…

And Wilson

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Shine was the fifth communications director in Trump’s White House, a role the president has struggled to fill during his more than two turbulent years in office. The others were Sean Spicer, Mike Dubke, Anthony Scaramucci and Hope Hicks.

6th time’s the charm?

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Notice there’s always a spike in departures when things start to go badly off the rails? Does anybody know precisely why Scott Gottlieb took off? That one seemed to shock a LOT of people.

Slight Edit: I just noticed that Scott Gottlieb, head of the FDA, is not listed above. So, uh, now he is.

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