12 ms·

What's Going on at the FBI?

166 points by hkhn 2y ago

mmastrac 2y ago
Wild to see a bloodless coup in action.
- vizzier 2y ago
  The worst part is, how do you even counter the injected rot? If they demand loyalty tests and infest your institutions how is it countered? do the other side also have to do the same (assuming they have the opportunity)? All feels incredibly illiberal. I hope for the best that the oaths of office specific to these institutions hold.
  - bboygravity 2y ago
    How is this different from any previous president? Isn't the very reason that the puppets "need replacing" (according to the president) tell you that they are of the wrong (previous president's) political flavor? Honest question, I'm not from US, but on the surface it just looks like more of the same thing that has always been happening? Except with way more media attention?
    - frodo8sam 2y ago
      Depends on your perspective. Many people would consider someone like Fauci non-partisan and more of a competent career expert, but Trumps people think he is very political and purge people like that. At the FBI they purge people who are probably quite competent and not particularly partisan but happened to work on Trumps case, which is mostly about sending a message I think not do much about finding the right employees to work at the FBI. This is very un American in my view.
      - trhway 2y ago
        >Fauci non-partisan and more of a competent career expert Then why did Fauci lie to Congress and got the Biden's pre-emptive pardon?
        jimkleiber 2y ago
        I think this is the person's point. Many people in the past would see Fauci as a prime example of someone who is just a non-partisan career government servant, while others, which it seems you and many people in the current administration, see people like him as overtly partisan and borderline evil. NB: I really disliked the preemptively pardoning. Like really really disliked it and wish it were not legal.
        NekkoDroid 2y ago
        > NB: I really disliked the preemptively pardoning. Like really really disliked it and wish it were not legal. I also really hate it, but it's becoming more obvious with time that they to some degree were necessary in this case. Ideally they wouldn't be needed or possible, but Trump and his administration seem to have multiple axes to grind with anyone in the government not directly subserviant to him.
        jimkleiber 2y ago
        Not necessary, just out of fear. They capitulated to Trump's threats instead of standing up and fighting hard for principles.
        SauciestGNU 2y ago
        Sure, but Fauci should also not have to spend the twilight years of his very accomplished life defending himself from petulant fascists' revenge prosecutions.
        jimkleiber 2y ago
        Yes, emotionally I'd agree. However, legally, I think it's a very slippery slope. What if Don Jr shoots someone dead and then Trunp premptively pardons him so no one can investigate the shooting? I think the hard part of enforcing the law is enforcing it equally, even towards those we love the most.
    - jimkleiber 2y ago
      I think it's the emotional flavor of it. Things in the US government tend to move more slowly and filled with less apparent vitriol and vengeance. This seems like a slash and burn and to hell with people if they don't more outrightly pledge loyalty. To me, at least.
    - rightbyte 2y ago
      They are supposed to be manouvered out with slowpaced schemes and retire for family reason not be fired in the open. But ye it usually happens to some extent: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-trump-burrowing-federal/2021/01/24/a495ae76-5c02-11eb-b8bd-ee36b1cd18bf_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-trump-burrowin...
    - jackjeff 2y ago
      I think it’s unprecedented for every FBI agent to fill up a questionnaire to admit whether they worked on a case where the president himself was an active participant.
      - whatthesmack 2y ago
        It's also unprecedented that a current president's administration would collude to charge the primary opposition of it in a presidential election across multiple jurisdictions, including with an unlawful special counsel appointment, yet here we are. To note, the president was only an active participant insofar as he asked people to remain calm and peaceful.
    - qqqwerty 2y ago
      These organizations consist of political appointees and civil servants. It is customary to replace all of the political appointees. Civil servants however have a lot of job protections and can only be fired for a limited set of reasons. Typically, a new administration would appoint new political appointees to the various departments (many of whom need to be confirmed by the Senate) and those appointees would then exert their influence on the department by shifting priorities around and they could even alter the hiring process to target more "aligned" individuals for the open civil servant roles. But they cannot just do a wholesale house cleaning. The high level purpose and the budget/size of the organization is determined by Congress and the political appointees are constrained by that. So this is in fact very different from how things normally work.
  - jimkleiber 2y ago
    One way is for the people in the other branches of government—Congress (legislative) and Courts (judicial)—to stand up for their branches and fight against the executive. The challenge is that people are more loyal to their political parties than their political branches, and the Constitution is built to check and balance branches, not parties.
    - rob74 2y ago
      Well, the supreme representatives of the judicial branch have just last year given the executive (=Trump) a blank check to largely do anything it pleases (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States_(2024) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States_(2024)). So yes, the US is in big trouble...
      - cinquemb 2y ago
        Don't forget the repeal of the chevron deference too by the supreme court. Agencies have a lot less power now (at least from a judicial perspective). Big trouble indeed, but its clear that for certain actors, they are experiencing pain they haven't felt before under any administration...
        kragen 2y ago
        As I understand it, this means that many regulations (CFR) are much easier to repeal now than to re-enact; it will take an act of Congress to restore executive power that is thus relinquished. But I don't have a very clear idea of why I think this, so maybe I'm misremembering...
      - jimkleiber 2y ago
        Yes, it saddens me to see one of the three branches almost capitulate to another. If there's gonna be any in-fighting, let it be amongst the branches.
  - TrackerFF 2y ago
    Resist, resist, resist. If they want to go through with a coup like this, let them do it in the courtrooms. They're simply relying on a blitzkrieg of (often illegal) firing/purges, assuming that no-one will challenge them, or that any challenge will take so long that they're ineffective.
  - hoseja 2y ago
    [flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- bozhark 2y ago
  It won’t be.
  - maeil 2y ago
    You're right, it won't be. This is the only positive thing I can currently see. They could've easily pulled it off without resistance (i.e. bloodshed) in most of Europe, but in the US the indoctrination of US exceptionalism regarding "freedom" and "democracy" from an early age results in a non-negligible number of people who would actually put their lives on the line for this and willing to take part in active resistance. Purely anecdotally from seeing a small part of military-adjacent tech, while most definitely voted for Trump and some of them will be MAGA-converts, most of them actually belived in that mission and won't be aligned with a proper dictatorship. They'll have to play it very carefully, keep elections but rig them just enough to make the outcome inevitable, to keep these people able to convince themselves it's still a democracy, boiling the frog very slowly. It might be preferable for them to actually accelerate things and go full Putin, there'll be a lot more active resistance that way.
    - stavros 2y ago
      > They could've easily pulled it off without resistance (i.e. bloodshed) in most of Europe, but in the US the indoctrination of US exceptionalism regarding "freedom" and "democracy" from an early age results in a non-negligible number of people who would actually put their lives on the line for this and willing to take part in active resistance. All the Europeans who have died revolting against totalitarian governments are rolling in their graves.
    - TrackerFF 2y ago
      Have you even watched international news for the past few years?
- throwawaythekey 2y ago
  What makes it a coup? Trump was elected on a platform of government reform and that's what he is doing.
  - babyshake 2y ago
    If you are elected on a platform of a coup (illegal reform), it doesn't make what you do any more legal. Some of what Trump is doing is not illegal, but some of it appears to be illegal.
    - throwawaythekey 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - Juliate 2y ago
        Hu… no, it is not « normal ». It displays a wild disconnect from the duties of the position (to protect the Constitution, among which).
        throwawaythekey 2y ago
        > During his four years as president, Democrat Joe Biden experienced a sustained series of defeats at the U.S. Supreme Court... "I think it is the toughest series of defeats since Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s had many New Deal programs declared unconstitutional," said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley Law School https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-dealt-biden-historic-series-defeats-2025-01-18/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-dealt-bide... I'm not particularly trying to argue if it's good or bad, just that presidents often stretch the law to apply their agenda. I would tend to side more on the bad side, but it seems necessary due to senate dysfunction.
        Juliate 2y ago
        Doesn't make it more normal. Not sure what point you're trying to make.
kragen 2y ago
J. Edgar Hoover ran the US for decades and was more powerful than any president. His successor, far less powerful, is in a power struggle with the richest man in the world and a political party that controls all three official branches of government. The situation looks unpredictable. It may be worth rereading Mike Lofgren's essay from 11 years ago, before Trump's first campaign, in which he tries to apply the Turkish concept of the "derin devlet" to analyzing the workings of the US government, and why Obama's administration had accomplished so little of what it promised: https://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/ https://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/
- trhway 2y ago
  the guy predicted today's coup by the broligarchy against the Deep State (more precisely what happens isn't coup even though it looks like it, in the short time i think we'll see that it is really a takeover of the Deep State by the broligarchy): >That said, evidence is accumulating that Silicon Valley is losing billions in overseas business from companies, individuals and governments that want to maintain privacy. For high tech entrepreneurs, the cash nexus is ultimately more compelling than the Deep State’s demand for patriotic cooperation.
  - tmaly 2y ago
    Wasn't Marc A saying the last admin was basically preventing the ability of crypto and AI startups from thriving?
- cjameskeller 2y ago
  Who do you mean by "his successor"? Surely not the new, 'acting' FBI director, as they have comparatively little power?
  - kragen 2y ago
    I didn't realize Wray had already resigned, and would have assumed the same as you, but, much to my surprise, this article about acting director Driscoll came out yesterday: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/us/politics/fbi-director-brian-driscoll-trump-justice-department.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/us/politics/fbi-director-... By Adam Goldman Reporting from Washington Feb. 4, 2025 Brian Driscoll, the acting director of the F.B.I., has become an improbable symbol of quiet resistance toward the Justice Department’s campaign to single out F.B.I. employees who investigated the Jan. 6 riot. To start, Mr. Driscoll’s appointment was an accident. Shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, the White House identified the wrong agent as acting director on its website and never corrected the mistake. Even if he was not meant to be leading the agency, he has defended the rank-and-file. His refusal at the time to furnish the names of employees, as top Justice Department officials desired, and his insistence that a formal review process be put in place, has spurred widespread support for Mr. Driscoll. Former and current agents have traded memes and satirical clips celebrating him, offering a rare moment of levity as dismay and deep unease set in across the F.B.I. and as Mr. Driscoll navigates the political perils of Washington and a president who is deeply hostile to the agency. Known as “Drizz” among his friends, Mr. Driscoll, 45, does not possess the typical G-man bearing of his predecessors, with a bushy mustache and his face framed by long curls. It is a demeanor that has become the focal point of artificially generated memes. In one, he is depicted as a saint grasping the handbook for agents running investigations. In another, he glances upward, encircled by the words “What Would Drizz Do?” One video, a compilation of scenes from the movie “The Dark Knight Rises,” portrays Mr. Driscoll as Batman doing battle with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency in Los Angeles. Former agents jokingly called his appointment a providential mistake. A heated confrontation on Friday with top Justice Department officials left many wondering at the time whether Mr. Driscoll had been fired. Scrutinizing agents and others involved in the sprawling investigation into the Capitol riot would touch a startling number of people: The F.B.I. opened about 2,400 cases that involved about 6,000 intelligence analysts, agents and other employees. In a defiant email Friday night, James Dennehy, the top agent in the New York field office, warned his staff that the F.B.I. was “in the middle of a battle of our own.” Praising Mr. Driscoll and his deputy, Robert C. Kissane, as “warriors,” Mr. Dennehy asserted they were “fighting for this organization.” In fact, Mr. Kissane, the top counterterrorism agent in New York, had been widely believed to be in line to be acting director, several current and former agents said, with Mr. Driscoll as the No. 2 official. But when the White House unveiled its website to reflect its staff under the Trump administration, Mr. Driscoll was identified as the bureau’s chief. Rather than correct the error, the administration left it. Mr. Driscoll had been in charge of the Newark office for only about a week before he moved to the director’s suite on the seventh floor of F.B.I. headquarters in Washington, thrust into the middle of a political firestorm. Rumors of his dismissal continued to swirl on Friday until the bureau released a statement a day later to confirm that he was still in charge. Friends and colleagues describe Mr. Driscoll as unflappable. He was a special agent with the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service in San Diego before joining the F.B.I. in 2007. His first assignment was in the New York office, the largest outpost in the bureau, where agents form powerful alliances and deep connections. In 2011, he passed rigorous tryouts and was selected to the F.B.I.’s Hostage Rescue Team, a highly trained unit formed in the years after the massacre at the Munich Olympics in 1972. Many operators were once in the U.S. military and served in the Joint Special Operations Command. Rescue team operators, including Mr. Driscoll, have repeatedly deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq during the wars there, embedding with Navy SEAL and Delta Force commandos. Former members of the rescue team said that Mr. Driscoll was dispatched in 2013 to Alabama, where they successfully rescued a 5-year-old boy who had been taken hostage in a bunker. He was a gunfighter on the blue squadron. He also took part in a dangerous raid with U.S. commandos in May 2015 in Syria in the hopes of finding clues about Kayla Mueller, a young woman from Phoenix who was kidnapped by the Islamic State. (Ms. Mueller died in captivity.) During the operation, Delta Force commandos killed a top militant leader and captured his wife. Mr. Driscoll later testified in a criminal trial in Northern Virginia about the evidence he collected at the scene, including a red laptop that the Islamic State had used to force Ms. Mueller to watch jihadist videos. In 2020, Mr. Driscoll returned to New York, where he supervised terrorism cases in Africa, Western Europe and Canada. He then took over the Hostage Rescue Team in 2022, which handles the most dangerous missions inside the United States, like disabling a nuclear weapon or rescuing a hostage held by a terrorist. Chris O’Leary, a former top counterterrorism agent in New York who worked with Mr. Driscoll, pointed to his experience. “What the F.B.I. needs most is a principled leader, and we have one right now in Brian Driscoll,” Mr. O’Leary said. He added that Mr. Kissane, a West Point graduate, is of the same mold as Mr. Driscoll. On Friday, Mr. Driscoll notified staff about the Justice Department’s efforts to collect the names of all F.B.I. personnel who worked on the Jan. 6 cases. “I am one of those employees,” he wrote. Indeed, Mr. Driscoll took part in the arrest of Samuel Fisher, an adherent of the QAnon conspiracy theory, in Manhattan two weeks after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. F.B.I. agents found over a thousand rounds of ammunition and several weapons, including an illegally modified AR-15 rifle and machetes, in Mr. Fisher’s Upper East Side apartment and car. Among them was a “ghost gun,” which is unregistered and thus untraceable. In 2022, Mr. Fisher was sentenced to three and a half years in prison after he pleaded guilty to a gun possession charge in Manhattan Supreme Court. He also pleaded guilty in federal court to illegally entering the Capitol on Jan. 6. Mr. Fisher was pardoned by Mr. Trump.
deleted 2y ago
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arunabha 2y ago
It's wild to think I'd ever say this, but the next four years will be the stress test of the strength of US institutions against an authoritarian president. If they survive the next four years, they will likely survive pretty much anything.
- kennysoona 2y ago
  > but the next four years will be the stress test of the strength of US institutions against an authoritarian president. As well as a stress test against half the voting population that thinks an authoritarian president is peachy and somehow patriotic.
  - whatever1 2y ago
    Half of the voting population were so fed up with the economy that they went with the nuclear option. It’s just that most of them have not read history and none of them have lived through war or fascism to understand what they are signing up for. They will all learn their lesson.
    - phinnaeus 2y ago
      I have strong doubts they will learn anything, if they were capable of that you could expect them to have learned it already.
      - whatever1 2y ago
        We have been told that if you fall head down from high altitude you will hit your self badly and probably die, but what if it is different this time around?
        StefanBatory 2y ago
        "Heard about the guy who fell off a skyscraper? On his way down past each floor, he kept saying to reassure himself: So far so good… so far so good… How you fall doesn’t matter. It’s how you land!"
derektank 2y ago
Hypothetically, had FBI agents complied with completing the questionnaire and they had worked on the Jan 6th investigations, would it be legal for the administration to fire them based on that alone? Or would the agents be able to sue? My understanding is that they have limited collective bargaining rights compared to other federal employees, so presumably they'd only have whatever protections Congress provides all federal employees.
- lwansbrough 2y ago
  I think the question "is it legal" is only relevant in a state which respects laws. Which is, increasingly, not the United States.
  - derektank 2y ago
    We have a court system, it's just slower and draws far fewer headlines than the executive branch. The Trump administration EO banning birthright citizenship was put on hold. A U.S. District Court judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking the OMB payments freeze for grants and other programs, which actually forced the administration to rescind the order. Don't believe the Trump admin when they claim they have the power to do something, they quite often simply don't.
    - dakial1 2y ago
      Thats what happened in Brazil, when the local supreme court, one judge in particular, went to war against the Bolsonaro government. Don’t think the SCOTUS has this power no?
thih9 2y ago
I’m not from the US and news like this change my perception of that country - it seems unstable; just like I’m not considering a Wordpress blog, I’d think twice before any long term plans that involve the US. The comparison to the Wordpress drama works surprisingly well for me, complete with vendettas and an overzealous leader, just on an even larger scale and affecting more people.
- DyslexicAtheist 2y ago
  imagine being energy dependent on a regime that bullies you from Washington, and being asked to increase security spending to 5% of GDP by purchasing US weapons systems. while being told by the same regime they might take over Greenland or the Panama canal. when putting US foreign policy into perspective over the past 30 (or more depending where you are) years, then aligning with China suddenly looks a lot less awful all of a sudden.
  - SlightlyLeftPad 2y ago
    I think when you look holistically at the promises that China has made, and broken, it still doesn’t make sense to align with China. That could change in the future but the time isn’t now. An example; look at what they’ve been doing in the South China Sea, Hong Kong or Xinjiang. Some instability in the U.S. is definitely uncomfortable but the alternative is not better.
    - DyslexicAtheist 2y ago
      touché
    - monkeyfun 2y ago
      What are some of the broken promises? I'm not well informed on the subject and now you've got me really curious.
      - credit_guy 2y ago
        The promise that everything will be fine in Hong Kong?
notepad0x90 2y ago
I think a lot of people just want to give the current administration a chance. Half the country wanted him, and if it wasn't this, it would be an actual civil war eventually. However, isn't it a bit naive to presume the current administration would relinquish power and allow for a peaceful transfer of government in the end? I hope I'm wrong but all the evidence and data is pointing to a decline of America and the American-led world order. What's more concerning is, as the economy and social climate continues to decline, people will be far less tolerant and accepting of each other. I'm concerned a lot of the horrible historical trends of the past will repeat. A lot of things are happening that you just can't recover from, like at all. And some things, like relations with Canada and the EU may not recover for like a generation. I suspect, history will look at the past few months as the time when the cold war was really won. I mean, even on HN, the majority were against the tiktok ban, if that isn't defeat, what is? Imagine not banning propaganda radio from Russia and china during the cold war. The most crucial victory America's enemies achieved is convincing American voters they're no longer their enemies. American voters mostly think it's a fight between governments or politicians, they don't get that the hostility includes the day to day people of the nations involved. The question really (to me at least) is, is the war already lost and we just need time to process the loss? or can it still be fought? I don't know how, it will be decades of trying to avoid an actual civil war, can America really withstand being torn apart, when even something like banning tiktok is impossible? I can understand how looking at the greatness of this nation and its might it can be difficult to imagine it's fall and decimation. can congress and the supreme court put aside their own short-term gains to save their country? Will states continue to want to be part of the union, despite disaster aids being withheld and American citizens being deported (yes, this is happening)? And who would come after trump, now that trump has paved the way? it will take him his entire term fully gutting the government and lining up the military. I suspect his replacement won't need votes.
- blurbleblurble 2y ago
  Half the country did not. 1/3 of eligible voters. Which doesn't even count people under 18. And to say that everyone who voted for him "wanted him" is a stretch.
deleted 2y ago
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rob74 2y ago
What's most wild about this is that what's happening at the FBI, while plenty scandalous enough on its own, are mostly eclipsed by everything else that's going on - e.g. this editorial https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/03/the-guardian-view-on-donald-trumps-power-grab-a-coup-veiled-by-chaos https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/03/the-gu... doesn't even mention the FBI. It's like Trump is setting as many fires at once as he can, hoping that at least some of them will burn out of control...
- woodpanel 2y ago
  An editorial in the partisan Guardian citing the higly partisan Krugman as well as the highly partisan Nathan Tankus was hopefully not supposed to be representing facts, or was it?
kopirgan 2y ago
[flagged]
AndyMcConachie 2y ago
Live by the witch hunt, die by the witch hunt.
- guelo 2y ago
  Do you believe the j6 rioters breaking into the capitol were not acting illegally so that there prosecution was a witch hunt? Help me understand.
  - trealira 2y ago
    You literally cannot reason with such people. They will pretend to be mad about lies as their people lie more. They'll pretend to be mad about laws procedure as they break laws and procedure. They'll pretend to be mad about inflation as they cause inflation. Their disingenuous comments are not aimed at you, but at propagandizing to an audience to discredit you. Conservatives silently, collectively agreed long ago that they'd do this, understanding that politics to them is just how to seize power.
  - whatthesmack 2y ago
    Nobody broke in. Most people charged were outside the entire time. The few that went inside were literally waved in by smiling police officers and escorted around the building by police. Please learn more about what happened that day. The people that endured this persecution of a witch hunt deserve sainthood. They were abused in jail in unimaginable ways.
Animats 2y ago
Here's the actual letter from the FBI Agents' Association.[1] They're not a union, but they're close, and represent about 90% of FBI agents. The acting head of the FBI is strongly against this and is resisting.[2] So labor and management are both against this. It's the first real challenge to Trump's authoritarianism. Plus, most FBI agents have civil service appeals rights. They can fight back against arbitrary dismissal. Misc. item: the tariff deal between the US and Mexico has something that the Trump administration hasn't mentioned - the US agreed to help clamp down on shipments of guns to Mexico. Mexico does not have easy access to guns in the way that the US does.[3] [1] https://www.fbiaa.org/joint-letter-to-congress-on-the-fbi/ https://www.fbiaa.org/joint-letter-to-congress-on-the-fbi/ [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/senior-fbi-official-forcefully-resisted-trump-administration-firings-rcna190301 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/senior-fb... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_regulation_in_Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_regulation_in_Mexico
stefantalpalaru 2y ago
[dead]
2-3-7-43-1807 2y ago
seems like someone is finally cleaning up that mess.
from-nibly 2y ago
The FBI is not your friend, don't worry about them.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  The FBI is not my friend, therefore I worry about them.
  - from-nibly 2y ago
    Dang, I forgot about the other kind of worry.

166 points by hkhn 2y ago

mmastrac 2y ago

Wild to see a bloodless coup in action.

vizzier 2y ago
The worst part is, how do you even counter the injected rot? If they demand loyalty tests and infest your institutions how is it countered? do the other side also have to do the same (assuming they have the opportunity)? All feels incredibly illiberal. I hope for the best that the oaths of office specific to these institutions hold.
- bboygravity 2y ago
  How is this different from any previous president? Isn't the very reason that the puppets "need replacing" (according to the president) tell you that they are of the wrong (previous president's) political flavor? Honest question, I'm not from US, but on the surface it just looks like more of the same thing that has always been happening? Except with way more media attention?
  - frodo8sam 2y ago
    Depends on your perspective. Many people would consider someone like Fauci non-partisan and more of a competent career expert, but Trumps people think he is very political and purge people like that. At the FBI they purge people who are probably quite competent and not particularly partisan but happened to work on Trumps case, which is mostly about sending a message I think not do much about finding the right employees to work at the FBI. This is very un American in my view.
    - trhway 2y ago
      >Fauci non-partisan and more of a competent career expert Then why did Fauci lie to Congress and got the Biden's pre-emptive pardon?
      - jimkleiber 2y ago
        I think this is the person's point. Many people in the past would see Fauci as a prime example of someone who is just a non-partisan career government servant, while others, which it seems you and many people in the current administration, see people like him as overtly partisan and borderline evil. NB: I really disliked the preemptively pardoning. Like really really disliked it and wish it were not legal.
        NekkoDroid 2y ago
        > NB: I really disliked the preemptively pardoning. Like really really disliked it and wish it were not legal. I also really hate it, but it's becoming more obvious with time that they to some degree were necessary in this case. Ideally they wouldn't be needed or possible, but Trump and his administration seem to have multiple axes to grind with anyone in the government not directly subserviant to him.
        jimkleiber 2y ago
        Not necessary, just out of fear. They capitulated to Trump's threats instead of standing up and fighting hard for principles.
        SauciestGNU 2y ago
        Sure, but Fauci should also not have to spend the twilight years of his very accomplished life defending himself from petulant fascists' revenge prosecutions.
        jimkleiber 2y ago
        Yes, emotionally I'd agree. However, legally, I think it's a very slippery slope. What if Don Jr shoots someone dead and then Trunp premptively pardons him so no one can investigate the shooting? I think the hard part of enforcing the law is enforcing it equally, even towards those we love the most.
  - jimkleiber 2y ago
    I think it's the emotional flavor of it. Things in the US government tend to move more slowly and filled with less apparent vitriol and vengeance. This seems like a slash and burn and to hell with people if they don't more outrightly pledge loyalty. To me, at least.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    They are supposed to be manouvered out with slowpaced schemes and retire for family reason not be fired in the open. But ye it usually happens to some extent: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-trump-burrowing-federal/2021/01/24/a495ae76-5c02-11eb-b8bd-ee36b1cd18bf_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-trump-burrowin...
  - jackjeff 2y ago
    I think it’s unprecedented for every FBI agent to fill up a questionnaire to admit whether they worked on a case where the president himself was an active participant.
    - whatthesmack 2y ago
      It's also unprecedented that a current president's administration would collude to charge the primary opposition of it in a presidential election across multiple jurisdictions, including with an unlawful special counsel appointment, yet here we are. To note, the president was only an active participant insofar as he asked people to remain calm and peaceful.
  - qqqwerty 2y ago
    These organizations consist of political appointees and civil servants. It is customary to replace all of the political appointees. Civil servants however have a lot of job protections and can only be fired for a limited set of reasons. Typically, a new administration would appoint new political appointees to the various departments (many of whom need to be confirmed by the Senate) and those appointees would then exert their influence on the department by shifting priorities around and they could even alter the hiring process to target more "aligned" individuals for the open civil servant roles. But they cannot just do a wholesale house cleaning. The high level purpose and the budget/size of the organization is determined by Congress and the political appointees are constrained by that. So this is in fact very different from how things normally work.
- jimkleiber 2y ago
  One way is for the people in the other branches of government—Congress (legislative) and Courts (judicial)—to stand up for their branches and fight against the executive. The challenge is that people are more loyal to their political parties than their political branches, and the Constitution is built to check and balance branches, not parties.
  - rob74 2y ago
    Well, the supreme representatives of the judicial branch have just last year given the executive (=Trump) a blank check to largely do anything it pleases (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States_(2024) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States_(2024)). So yes, the US is in big trouble...
    - cinquemb 2y ago
      Don't forget the repeal of the chevron deference too by the supreme court. Agencies have a lot less power now (at least from a judicial perspective). Big trouble indeed, but its clear that for certain actors, they are experiencing pain they haven't felt before under any administration...
      - kragen 2y ago
        As I understand it, this means that many regulations (CFR) are much easier to repeal now than to re-enact; it will take an act of Congress to restore executive power that is thus relinquished. But I don't have a very clear idea of why I think this, so maybe I'm misremembering...
    - jimkleiber 2y ago
      Yes, it saddens me to see one of the three branches almost capitulate to another. If there's gonna be any in-fighting, let it be amongst the branches.
- TrackerFF 2y ago
  Resist, resist, resist. If they want to go through with a coup like this, let them do it in the courtrooms. They're simply relying on a blitzkrieg of (often illegal) firing/purges, assuming that no-one will challenge them, or that any challenge will take so long that they're ineffective.
- hoseja 2y ago
  [flagged]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
bozhark 2y ago
It won’t be.
- maeil 2y ago
  You're right, it won't be. This is the only positive thing I can currently see. They could've easily pulled it off without resistance (i.e. bloodshed) in most of Europe, but in the US the indoctrination of US exceptionalism regarding "freedom" and "democracy" from an early age results in a non-negligible number of people who would actually put their lives on the line for this and willing to take part in active resistance. Purely anecdotally from seeing a small part of military-adjacent tech, while most definitely voted for Trump and some of them will be MAGA-converts, most of them actually belived in that mission and won't be aligned with a proper dictatorship. They'll have to play it very carefully, keep elections but rig them just enough to make the outcome inevitable, to keep these people able to convince themselves it's still a democracy, boiling the frog very slowly. It might be preferable for them to actually accelerate things and go full Putin, there'll be a lot more active resistance that way.
  - stavros 2y ago
    > They could've easily pulled it off without resistance (i.e. bloodshed) in most of Europe, but in the US the indoctrination of US exceptionalism regarding "freedom" and "democracy" from an early age results in a non-negligible number of people who would actually put their lives on the line for this and willing to take part in active resistance. All the Europeans who have died revolting against totalitarian governments are rolling in their graves.
  - TrackerFF 2y ago
    Have you even watched international news for the past few years?
throwawaythekey 2y ago
What makes it a coup? Trump was elected on a platform of government reform and that's what he is doing.
- babyshake 2y ago
  If you are elected on a platform of a coup (illegal reform), it doesn't make what you do any more legal. Some of what Trump is doing is not illegal, but some of it appears to be illegal.
  - throwawaythekey 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - Juliate 2y ago
      Hu… no, it is not « normal ». It displays a wild disconnect from the duties of the position (to protect the Constitution, among which).
      - throwawaythekey 2y ago
        > During his four years as president, Democrat Joe Biden experienced a sustained series of defeats at the U.S. Supreme Court... "I think it is the toughest series of defeats since Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s had many New Deal programs declared unconstitutional," said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley Law School https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-dealt-biden-historic-series-defeats-2025-01-18/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-dealt-bide... I'm not particularly trying to argue if it's good or bad, just that presidents often stretch the law to apply their agenda. I would tend to side more on the bad side, but it seems necessary due to senate dysfunction.
        Juliate 2y ago
        Doesn't make it more normal. Not sure what point you're trying to make.

kragen 2y ago

J. Edgar Hoover ran the US for decades and was more powerful than any president. His successor, far less powerful, is in a power struggle with the richest man in the world and a political party that controls all three official branches of government. The situation looks unpredictable. It may be worth rereading Mike Lofgren's essay from 11 years ago, before Trump's first campaign, in which he tries to apply the Turkish concept of the "derin devlet" to analyzing the workings of the US government, and why Obama's administration had accomplished so little of what it promised: https://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/ https://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/

trhway 2y ago
the guy predicted today's coup by the broligarchy against the Deep State (more precisely what happens isn't coup even though it looks like it, in the short time i think we'll see that it is really a takeover of the Deep State by the broligarchy): >That said, evidence is accumulating that Silicon Valley is losing billions in overseas business from companies, individuals and governments that want to maintain privacy. For high tech entrepreneurs, the cash nexus is ultimately more compelling than the Deep State’s demand for patriotic cooperation.
- tmaly 2y ago
  Wasn't Marc A saying the last admin was basically preventing the ability of crypto and AI startups from thriving?
cjameskeller 2y ago
Who do you mean by "his successor"? Surely not the new, 'acting' FBI director, as they have comparatively little power?
- kragen 2y ago
  I didn't realize Wray had already resigned, and would have assumed the same as you, but, much to my surprise, this article about acting director Driscoll came out yesterday: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/us/politics/fbi-director-brian-driscoll-trump-justice-department.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/us/politics/fbi-director-... By Adam Goldman Reporting from Washington Feb. 4, 2025 Brian Driscoll, the acting director of the F.B.I., has become an improbable symbol of quiet resistance toward the Justice Department’s campaign to single out F.B.I. employees who investigated the Jan. 6 riot. To start, Mr. Driscoll’s appointment was an accident. Shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, the White House identified the wrong agent as acting director on its website and never corrected the mistake. Even if he was not meant to be leading the agency, he has defended the rank-and-file. His refusal at the time to furnish the names of employees, as top Justice Department officials desired, and his insistence that a formal review process be put in place, has spurred widespread support for Mr. Driscoll. Former and current agents have traded memes and satirical clips celebrating him, offering a rare moment of levity as dismay and deep unease set in across the F.B.I. and as Mr. Driscoll navigates the political perils of Washington and a president who is deeply hostile to the agency. Known as “Drizz” among his friends, Mr. Driscoll, 45, does not possess the typical G-man bearing of his predecessors, with a bushy mustache and his face framed by long curls. It is a demeanor that has become the focal point of artificially generated memes. In one, he is depicted as a saint grasping the handbook for agents running investigations. In another, he glances upward, encircled by the words “What Would Drizz Do?” One video, a compilation of scenes from the movie “The Dark Knight Rises,” portrays Mr. Driscoll as Batman doing battle with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency in Los Angeles. Former agents jokingly called his appointment a providential mistake. A heated confrontation on Friday with top Justice Department officials left many wondering at the time whether Mr. Driscoll had been fired. Scrutinizing agents and others involved in the sprawling investigation into the Capitol riot would touch a startling number of people: The F.B.I. opened about 2,400 cases that involved about 6,000 intelligence analysts, agents and other employees. In a defiant email Friday night, James Dennehy, the top agent in the New York field office, warned his staff that the F.B.I. was “in the middle of a battle of our own.” Praising Mr. Driscoll and his deputy, Robert C. Kissane, as “warriors,” Mr. Dennehy asserted they were “fighting for this organization.” In fact, Mr. Kissane, the top counterterrorism agent in New York, had been widely believed to be in line to be acting director, several current and former agents said, with Mr. Driscoll as the No. 2 official. But when the White House unveiled its website to reflect its staff under the Trump administration, Mr. Driscoll was identified as the bureau’s chief. Rather than correct the error, the administration left it. Mr. Driscoll had been in charge of the Newark office for only about a week before he moved to the director’s suite on the seventh floor of F.B.I. headquarters in Washington, thrust into the middle of a political firestorm. Rumors of his dismissal continued to swirl on Friday until the bureau released a statement a day later to confirm that he was still in charge. Friends and colleagues describe Mr. Driscoll as unflappable. He was a special agent with the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service in San Diego before joining the F.B.I. in 2007. His first assignment was in the New York office, the largest outpost in the bureau, where agents form powerful alliances and deep connections. In 2011, he passed rigorous tryouts and was selected to the F.B.I.’s Hostage Rescue Team, a highly trained unit formed in the years after the massacre at the Munich Olympics in 1972. Many operators were once in the U.S. military and served in the Joint Special Operations Command. Rescue team operators, including Mr. Driscoll, have repeatedly deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq during the wars there, embedding with Navy SEAL and Delta Force commandos. Former members of the rescue team said that Mr. Driscoll was dispatched in 2013 to Alabama, where they successfully rescued a 5-year-old boy who had been taken hostage in a bunker. He was a gunfighter on the blue squadron. He also took part in a dangerous raid with U.S. commandos in May 2015 in Syria in the hopes of finding clues about Kayla Mueller, a young woman from Phoenix who was kidnapped by the Islamic State. (Ms. Mueller died in captivity.) During the operation, Delta Force commandos killed a top militant leader and captured his wife. Mr. Driscoll later testified in a criminal trial in Northern Virginia about the evidence he collected at the scene, including a red laptop that the Islamic State had used to force Ms. Mueller to watch jihadist videos. In 2020, Mr. Driscoll returned to New York, where he supervised terrorism cases in Africa, Western Europe and Canada. He then took over the Hostage Rescue Team in 2022, which handles the most dangerous missions inside the United States, like disabling a nuclear weapon or rescuing a hostage held by a terrorist. Chris O’Leary, a former top counterterrorism agent in New York who worked with Mr. Driscoll, pointed to his experience. “What the F.B.I. needs most is a principled leader, and we have one right now in Brian Driscoll,” Mr. O’Leary said. He added that Mr. Kissane, a West Point graduate, is of the same mold as Mr. Driscoll. On Friday, Mr. Driscoll notified staff about the Justice Department’s efforts to collect the names of all F.B.I. personnel who worked on the Jan. 6 cases. “I am one of those employees,” he wrote. Indeed, Mr. Driscoll took part in the arrest of Samuel Fisher, an adherent of the QAnon conspiracy theory, in Manhattan two weeks after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. F.B.I. agents found over a thousand rounds of ammunition and several weapons, including an illegally modified AR-15 rifle and machetes, in Mr. Fisher’s Upper East Side apartment and car. Among them was a “ghost gun,” which is unregistered and thus untraceable. In 2022, Mr. Fisher was sentenced to three and a half years in prison after he pleaded guilty to a gun possession charge in Manhattan Supreme Court. He also pleaded guilty in federal court to illegally entering the Capitol on Jan. 6. Mr. Fisher was pardoned by Mr. Trump.

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arunabha 2y ago

It's wild to think I'd ever say this, but the next four years will be the stress test of the strength of US institutions against an authoritarian president. If they survive the next four years, they will likely survive pretty much anything.

kennysoona 2y ago
> but the next four years will be the stress test of the strength of US institutions against an authoritarian president. As well as a stress test against half the voting population that thinks an authoritarian president is peachy and somehow patriotic.
- whatever1 2y ago
  Half of the voting population were so fed up with the economy that they went with the nuclear option. It’s just that most of them have not read history and none of them have lived through war or fascism to understand what they are signing up for. They will all learn their lesson.
  - phinnaeus 2y ago
    I have strong doubts they will learn anything, if they were capable of that you could expect them to have learned it already.
    - whatever1 2y ago
      We have been told that if you fall head down from high altitude you will hit your self badly and probably die, but what if it is different this time around?
      - StefanBatory 2y ago
        "Heard about the guy who fell off a skyscraper? On his way down past each floor, he kept saying to reassure himself: So far so good… so far so good… How you fall doesn’t matter. It’s how you land!"

derektank 2y ago

Hypothetically, had FBI agents complied with completing the questionnaire and they had worked on the Jan 6th investigations, would it be legal for the administration to fire them based on that alone? Or would the agents be able to sue? My understanding is that they have limited collective bargaining rights compared to other federal employees, so presumably they'd only have whatever protections Congress provides all federal employees.

lwansbrough 2y ago
I think the question "is it legal" is only relevant in a state which respects laws. Which is, increasingly, not the United States.
- derektank 2y ago
  We have a court system, it's just slower and draws far fewer headlines than the executive branch. The Trump administration EO banning birthright citizenship was put on hold. A U.S. District Court judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking the OMB payments freeze for grants and other programs, which actually forced the administration to rescind the order. Don't believe the Trump admin when they claim they have the power to do something, they quite often simply don't.
  - dakial1 2y ago
    Thats what happened in Brazil, when the local supreme court, one judge in particular, went to war against the Bolsonaro government. Don’t think the SCOTUS has this power no?

thih9 2y ago

I’m not from the US and news like this change my perception of that country - it seems unstable; just like I’m not considering a Wordpress blog, I’d think twice before any long term plans that involve the US. The comparison to the Wordpress drama works surprisingly well for me, complete with vendettas and an overzealous leader, just on an even larger scale and affecting more people.

DyslexicAtheist 2y ago
imagine being energy dependent on a regime that bullies you from Washington, and being asked to increase security spending to 5% of GDP by purchasing US weapons systems. while being told by the same regime they might take over Greenland or the Panama canal. when putting US foreign policy into perspective over the past 30 (or more depending where you are) years, then aligning with China suddenly looks a lot less awful all of a sudden.
- SlightlyLeftPad 2y ago
  I think when you look holistically at the promises that China has made, and broken, it still doesn’t make sense to align with China. That could change in the future but the time isn’t now. An example; look at what they’ve been doing in the South China Sea, Hong Kong or Xinjiang. Some instability in the U.S. is definitely uncomfortable but the alternative is not better.
  - DyslexicAtheist 2y ago
    touché
  - monkeyfun 2y ago
    What are some of the broken promises? I'm not well informed on the subject and now you've got me really curious.
    - credit_guy 2y ago
      The promise that everything will be fine in Hong Kong?

notepad0x90 2y ago

I think a lot of people just want to give the current administration a chance. Half the country wanted him, and if it wasn't this, it would be an actual civil war eventually. However, isn't it a bit naive to presume the current administration would relinquish power and allow for a peaceful transfer of government in the end? I hope I'm wrong but all the evidence and data is pointing to a decline of America and the American-led world order. What's more concerning is, as the economy and social climate continues to decline, people will be far less tolerant and accepting of each other. I'm concerned a lot of the horrible historical trends of the past will repeat. A lot of things are happening that you just can't recover from, like at all. And some things, like relations with Canada and the EU may not recover for like a generation. I suspect, history will look at the past few months as the time when the cold war was really won. I mean, even on HN, the majority were against the tiktok ban, if that isn't defeat, what is? Imagine not banning propaganda radio from Russia and china during the cold war. The most crucial victory America's enemies achieved is convincing American voters they're no longer their enemies. American voters mostly think it's a fight between governments or politicians, they don't get that the hostility includes the day to day people of the nations involved. The question really (to me at least) is, is the war already lost and we just need time to process the loss? or can it still be fought? I don't know how, it will be decades of trying to avoid an actual civil war, can America really withstand being torn apart, when even something like banning tiktok is impossible? I can understand how looking at the greatness of this nation and its might it can be difficult to imagine it's fall and decimation. can congress and the supreme court put aside their own short-term gains to save their country? Will states continue to want to be part of the union, despite disaster aids being withheld and American citizens being deported (yes, this is happening)? And who would come after trump, now that trump has paved the way? it will take him his entire term fully gutting the government and lining up the military. I suspect his replacement won't need votes.

blurbleblurble 2y ago
Half the country did not. 1/3 of eligible voters. Which doesn't even count people under 18. And to say that everyone who voted for him "wanted him" is a stretch.

deleted 2y ago

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rob74 2y ago

What's most wild about this is that what's happening at the FBI, while plenty scandalous enough on its own, are mostly eclipsed by everything else that's going on - e.g. this editorial https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/03/the-guardian-view-on-donald-trumps-power-grab-a-coup-veiled-by-chaos https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/03/the-gu... doesn't even mention the FBI. It's like Trump is setting as many fires at once as he can, hoping that at least some of them will burn out of control...

woodpanel 2y ago
An editorial in the partisan Guardian citing the higly partisan Krugman as well as the highly partisan Nathan Tankus was hopefully not supposed to be representing facts, or was it?

kopirgan 2y ago

[flagged]

AndyMcConachie 2y ago

Live by the witch hunt, die by the witch hunt.

guelo 2y ago
Do you believe the j6 rioters breaking into the capitol were not acting illegally so that there prosecution was a witch hunt? Help me understand.
- trealira 2y ago
  You literally cannot reason with such people. They will pretend to be mad about lies as their people lie more. They'll pretend to be mad about laws procedure as they break laws and procedure. They'll pretend to be mad about inflation as they cause inflation. Their disingenuous comments are not aimed at you, but at propagandizing to an audience to discredit you. Conservatives silently, collectively agreed long ago that they'd do this, understanding that politics to them is just how to seize power.
- whatthesmack 2y ago
  Nobody broke in. Most people charged were outside the entire time. The few that went inside were literally waved in by smiling police officers and escorted around the building by police. Please learn more about what happened that day. The people that endured this persecution of a witch hunt deserve sainthood. They were abused in jail in unimaginable ways.

Animats 2y ago

Here's the actual letter from the FBI Agents' Association.[1] They're not a union, but they're close, and represent about 90% of FBI agents. The acting head of the FBI is strongly against this and is resisting.[2] So labor and management are both against this. It's the first real challenge to Trump's authoritarianism. Plus, most FBI agents have civil service appeals rights. They can fight back against arbitrary dismissal. Misc. item: the tariff deal between the US and Mexico has something that the Trump administration hasn't mentioned - the US agreed to help clamp down on shipments of guns to Mexico. Mexico does not have easy access to guns in the way that the US does.[3] [1] https://www.fbiaa.org/joint-letter-to-congress-on-the-fbi/ https://www.fbiaa.org/joint-letter-to-congress-on-the-fbi/ [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/senior-fbi-official-forcefully-resisted-trump-administration-firings-rcna190301 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/senior-fb... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_regulation_in_Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_regulation_in_Mexico

stefantalpalaru 2y ago

[dead]

2-3-7-43-1807 2y ago

seems like someone is finally cleaning up that mess.

from-nibly 2y ago

The FBI is not your friend, don't worry about them.

AnimalMuppet 2y ago
The FBI is not my friend, therefore I worry about them.
- from-nibly 2y ago
  Dang, I forgot about the other kind of worry.