I’ve been a little quiet on the Lawfare challenges to the DOGE mission in part because we’ve been sending CTH research files up through the silo to the legal eagles who need it.  Additionally, few -if any- of the outside legal filings against the administration are going to survive judicial review.

Quite simply, most of what the public is witnessing, almost entirely driven by funded media outlets, is simple Lawfare.  Remember, “Lawfare” in its purest form is not a legitimate legal challenge; it is a construct to create optics, frame narratives and fundraise for desperate leftists.

The underpinning of Lawfare is not designed to withstand legal scrutiny; it is a ruse, simply narrative and public opinion shaping. That’s it.

Interestingly a familiar name surfaced last night when District Judge John Bates essentially destroyed three of the legal challenges against Musk and DOGE when he determined that DOGE was acting as an “agency of government” appointed by President Trump.  Executive agencies have the ability to detail their employees to other agencies to conduct review and audits at the request of the executive, Trump.

“For the reasons explained above, on the record as it currently stands and with limited briefing on the issue, the case law defining agencies indicates that plaintiffs have not shown a substantial likelihood that [DOGE] is not an agency. If that is so, [DOGE] may detail its employees to other agencies consistent with the Economy Act,” Judge Bates wrote.

This ruling opens up the Labor Department, Health and Human Services and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to review by the DOGE employees.

This gets interesting because Judge John Bates was a previous presiding judge of the FISA court and has spoken at length about supporting the FISA-702 process.  Judge Bates has defended the FBI/DOJ/Contractor use of the NSA database.

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Fox News pundit Sean Hannity provides a short snippet of an interview with President Donald Trump and Dept of Govt Efficiency head, Elon Musk.

The snippet includes Hannity asking President Trump if he is aware of the media intention to drive a wedge between himself and Elon Musk as a strategy to block the goals of DOGE. WATCH:

For whatever reason, Fox is withholding the interview until next Tuesday when it will air.

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Earlier today President Trump and Elon Musk, head of the Dept of Government Efficiency, held a press conference in the oval office to answer questions about the ongoing DOGE review of government.

Elon Musk outlines examples of how the various government agencies spend money without any standard accounting principles that facilitate audits and reviews.  In material fact the system of government that Elon Musk and President Trump outline, appears fully designed to generate fraud.

In essence, “waste, fraud and abuse” within government, is a feature of how the government systems are organized, not a flaw. WATCH:

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It is amazing how the media reporters present the structure of their questions to support the waste, fraud and abusive systems within the administration of government as it is outlined.  We do not dislike the media enough.

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Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought is also the interim Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The CFPB is under review by DOGE and on Monday morning Russ Vought told CFPB staff not to come to work. {Background Here}

Vought sent an email to employees this morning saying they should “not perform any work tasks.” They were directed to contact the top lawyer for the Office of Management and Budget “to get approval in writing before performing any work task.”

Vought is also serving as the bureau’s acting director. The previous director, Rohit Chopra, was fired by Trump, a Republican, on Feb. 1. Vought’s message followed one on Saturday evening that ordered the bureau to “cease all supervision and examination activity.”

(Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s newly installed chief of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau told all of the agency’s staff on Monday to stay away from the office and do no work, according to an email reviewed by Reuters.

The move followed a weekend decision to shutter the CFPB’s Washington headquarters, idling a federal agency of nearly 2,000 workers tasked with enforcing consumer financial laws.

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Lawyers representing President Trump and the office of the presidency have filed an urgent response motion to remove a court order by U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer that blocked the Treasury Secretary and “political appointees” from accessing Treasury Department systems. [SEE ADMINISTRATION FILING HERE]

The filing is in response to District Judge Engelmayer’s blatant effort to engage in judicial activism and violate the Article II separation of power.  The Chief executive cannot be limited in scope or activity by the judicial branch, let alone a single circuit court judge within the regional judicial branch who is attempting to block the executive branch nationally.

[Source pdf]

“Basic democratic accountability requires that every executive agency’s work be supervised by politically accountable leadership, who ultimately answer to the president,” Justice Department attorneys wrote in the 11-page filing, calling the order “impermissible” and “anti-constitutional.”

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In this almost comically odd interview, CNN host Dana Bash tries her hardest to defend criminal aliens from holding facilities at Guantanamo Bay. Bash asks for the details of detainees, their names, their associations, their crimes, the housing standards and the transportation agreements of DHS that are now being executed.   One can easily imagine cartel leaders sitting on the other side of the interview taking notes and making plans thanks to Ms. Bash’s lines of inquiry.

Later in the interview with Secretary Noem, Dana Bash clutches her pearls at the possibility that DOGE would have access to “privacy data” held inside government databases.  It’s almost as if Ms Bash forgets that ¹DNC Lawyers at Perkins Coie have FBI workstations in their offices where DNC lawyers can access the NSA database and personal data of every American.  Odd that she would forget that reference point.  Seriously, WATCH:

¹Mainstream conservative defenders of the DOJ and FBI institutions, as a result of their prior tenure inside those same agencies, have long denied the Dept of Justice and FBI are corrupt political entities.  The revelation of the FBI and Perkins Coie working collaboratively to exploit this data portal is something that people like Margot Cleveland, Andrew McCarthy, Johnathan Turley and many others need to deny in order to retain the premise of institutional credibility.

However, the FBI and DNC law firm working collaboratively on issues of joint importance goes far beyond the ‘image of impropriety or conflicted interest‘ and extends to the actual corruption within the foundational institutions of government.  Transparently, if these reports are accurate all of the inexplicable dynamics within the “two tiers of justice” suddenly reconcile.  The FBI and Perkins Coie having the ability to conduct electronic surveillance of any target is a thermonuclear level of sunlight, that reconciles years of visible issues. [LEARN MORE]

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Back in 2023, when few were paying attention to the Defense Department’s inability to pass an audit, Jon Stewart highlighted exactly what happens when you start asking the right questions.

As the Dept of Govt Efficiency (DOGE) begins to engage the massive government agencies, it is well worth reminding ourselves of the institutional mindset that permeates these government silos.  The conversations between Jon Steward and Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks takes place at a symposium cohosted by the University of Chicago’s school of public policy.

Below is an excerpt of the larger conversation.  This small part shows the hubris of the DoD being questioned about the $850 billion in taxpayer funds that are given to the military.  WATCH:

The full interview is HERE on C-Span for review.

DOGE lead Elon Musk is highlighting this interview today to help people understand the mindset the DOGE team are encountering as they begin to question the spending of various agencies within the federal government.

Former Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks exemplifies the perspective and outlook of the bureaucrats within the federal government.  The arrogance and evasion on display are quite remarkable.  Now extend this attitude across the broad systems of government, and these are the people in direct opposition to President Trump and Elon Musk.

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Before getting to the announcement, let me first answer a repeated question. “Why is it so easy for DOGE to identify wasteful spending?” ..in simple form.

When the trillion-dollar American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was passed, those “shovel ready jobs” in fiscal year 2009, that was the last year of a full federal budget.  Every budget year thereafter has been a process of continuing resolutions and omnibus spending.  Within the CR process they use “baseline budgeting,” which essentially accepts all prior spending as the starting point for the next spending allotment within the Continuing Resolution process.

That means, the $1 trillion ARRA was not only spent in 2009 (Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi on behalf of Barack Obama), but it was also spent again in ever year thereafter.  Without a formally followed federal budget process, every year there is an extra trillion dollars (that’s a thousand billion) injected into federal spending.  That accounts for $16 trillion of the current debt.  Make sense now?

Elon Musk and DOGE announce the following:

To be clear, what the DOGE team and U.S Treasury have jointly agreed makes sense is the following:

– Require that all outgoing government payments have a payment categorization code, which is necessary in order to pass financial audits. This is frequently left blank, making audits almost impossible.

– All payments must also include a rationale for the payment in the comment field, which is currently left blank. Importantly, we are not yet applying ANY judgment to this rationale but simply requiring that SOME attempts be made to explain the payment more than NOTHING!

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If you thought the USAID revelations were alarming sunlight, just wait until you see the apoplectic fits of rage about to come out from the Democrats, the DNC affiliated community activist groups, and the professional leftists who all rely upon the financial mechanism of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

According to a Politico article (also funded by USAID money), written with stunning amount of anger and apoplexy itself, Elon Musk’s DOGE team has just entered the CFPB to do a review and audit.  This one is going to be beyond bananas.

Jumpin’ ju-ju bones, tell Ma, to fire up the coffee pot, we are in for a delicious treat.  There’s no way for the DC outrage machine to handle this dose of Trumpian nitrous oxide directly into the intake manifold.  The machine will explode.

BACKGROUND FIRST – The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CPFB) was originally created by congress (Elizabeth Warren lead) as a quasi-constitutional watchdog agency to reach into the banking and financial system, under the guise of oversight, and extract money by fining entities for CFPB defined regulatory and/or compliance violations

Essentially, the CFPB is a congressionally authorized far-left extortion scheme in the banking sector.  The CFPB levies fines; the fines generate income; however, unlike traditional fines that go to the U.S. treasury, the CFBP fines are then redistributed to left-wing organizations to help fund their political activism.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was the brainchild of Senator Elizabeth Warren as an outcome of the Dodd-Frank legislation. Within the CFPB Warren tried to set up the head of the agency, the Director, in a manner that that he/she would operate without oversight. Unfortunately, her dictatorial-fiat-design collapsed when challenged in court.  Backstory #1 – Backstory #2

A federal court found the CFPB Director position held too much power and deemed it unconstitutional. The court decision noted that giving the President power to fire the Director would fix the constitutional problem.  This issue was argued extensively after President Trump appointed Mick Mulvaney as interim Director.  Elizabeth Warren declaring the CFPB Director could not be fired by the executive.  The legal battle worked its way to the Supreme Court.

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The sub-heading tells the story. It is essentially, a predictable outcome, a conversation we began here several months ago.

...”At the Education Department, the [DOGE] team has turned to artificial intelligence to hunt for potential spending cuts — part of a broader plan to deploy the technology across the federal government.”… (link)

The tone of the Washington Post article is about Musk and DOGE potentially violating privacy rules by extracting data held within the U.S. Dept of Education. However, if you take out the narrative engineering political part, what you are left with is the core issue we have discussed. The tech team approach is to pull the govt data into their AI model and use the modeling to evaluate efficiency.

WASHINGTON DC – […] The DOGE team is using AI software accessed through Microsoft’s cloud computing service Azure to pore over every dollar of money the department disburses, from contracts to grants to work trip expenses, one of the people said. Lower-level department staffers were directed by agency leadership to let Musk’s teams access the sensitive financial data, the person said.

The use of AI inside the Education Department, which has not previously been reported, shows how Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which includes former employees from his tech empire, is tapping the favorite tool of Silicon Valley as part of its mission to drastically slash the size and functions of the federal government. {READ MORE}

I’m sure there is some value in this process. In fact, I am certain that utilization of enhanced algorithmic AI software to streamline government data systems does hold merit. However, that’s not the big picture issue that concerns CTH. {GO DEEP}

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