Tag: Trump Administration

Trump official slashed salary of newly hired virologist because he was jealous he was making more money

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At a time that Americans needed a smart and stable government, Donald Trump’s COVID-19 Task Force was overwhelmed with petty squabbles.

According to the new book by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, I, Alone Can Fix It, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar was preoccupied with the salaries of the people on the task force.

Dr Stephen Hahn, who joined as the FDA commissioner in Dec. 2019, had a morning call with the purpose of “navigating task-force personalities and political land mines.” The last thing anyone wanted was for the typical Trump White House drama to interfere with protecting the country from the impending pandemic. Continue reading.

Trump insiders blasted for ‘convenient Monday morning bravery’ after enabling the former president’s four years of chaos

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In a withering column for the Daily Beast, Erin Gloria Ryan tapped the brakes on the wave of adulation being lavished on former members of Donald Trump’s administrationwho waited to dish to reporters about how dangerous the former president was until after he lost the 2020 presidential election.

While Ryan focused on Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley for divulging some of the most frightening tales about the president — Trump’s desire to use the military to quell protests as well as launch a war with Iran to save his presidency — she wrote that the military man is not the only one wanting to whitewash their time in the administration.

Included in her rogue’s gallery of administration officials engaging in “Monday morning bravery” was former Attorney General Bill Barr and ex-senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway and even Jared Kushner — all of whom held their tongues while negotiating book deals. Continue reading.

Homeland Security Watchdog Delayed Inquiry, Complaint Says

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The department’s inspector general delayed looking into a retaliation complaint by a former intelligence chief until after the 2020 election, according to officials and a whistle-blower.

The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general blocked an inquiry into whether senior agency officials demoted an employee who criticized the Trump administration, according to people familiar with the matter and a whistle-blower complaint obtained by The New York Times.

The inspector general, Joseph V. Cuffari, ignored recommendations from his investigators and delayed the inquiry until after the 2020 election, according to officials familiar with the matter and a whistle-blower complaint filed in April.

At issue was whether Brian Murphy, a former intelligence chief at the department, was demoted by its leadership last summer for warning his superiors and Mr. Cuffari’s office that the Trump administration had deliberately withheld reports about the rising threat of domestic extremism — a warning that proved prescient after the Capitol riot on Jan. 6 — and Russia’s attempts to influence the election. Continue reading.

Why millions of the Pentagon’s dormant Internet addresses suddenly sprang to life

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During the final minutes of the Trump presidency, an obscure company in South Florida announced to the world’s computer networks that it would begin managing a massive swath of the Internet owned by the U.S. military.

In the months since, the company has claimed control of nearly 175 million IP addresses. Such huge chunks of traditional Internet real estate, amounting to almost six percent of usable addresses in the original addressing scheme of the Web, would be worth billions of dollars on the open market.

With no public explanation of what had taken place, the dramatic shift in IP address space allotment sparked impassioned speculation among network administrators and the Internet industry. That interest only increased when the Pentagon, after weeks of inquiries from The Washington Post, finally offered an explanation. Continue reading.

Minutes before Trump left office, millions of the Pentagon’s dormant IP addresses sprang to life

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After decades of not using a huge chunk of the Internet, the Pentagon has given control of millions of computer addresses to a previously unknown company in an effort to identify possible cyber vulnerabilities and threats

While the world was distracted with President Donald Trump leaving office on Jan. 20, an obscure Florida company discreetly announced to the world’s computer networks a startling development: It now was managing a huge unused swath of the Internet that, for several decades, had been owned by the U.S. military.

What happened next was stranger still.

The company, Global Resource Systems LLC, kept adding to its zone of control. Soon it had claimed 56 million IP addresses owned by the Pentagon. Three months later, the total was nearly 175 million. That’s almost 6 percent of a coveted traditional section of Internet real estate — called IPv4 — where such large chunks are worth billions of dollars on the open market. Continue reading.

Trump’s old ‘half-wit’ intelligence director ridiculed for not knowing where federal jobs are located

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If there’s one thing that former Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell has done since leaving office, it has called into question the “intelligence” portion of his previous job title.

Such was the case Wednesday when the long-time federal employee proclaimed that no state should have most of the federal jobs in it. He was talking about his reasons for opposing statehood for Washington, D.C., which comes up for a vote in the U.S. House Thursday.

DC statehood has always been a problem for those nearly 700,000 residents who live in its borders and pay taxes but aren’t given representation in Congress. It became an even greater point of contention during the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Mayor Murial Bowser requested help from the National Guard ahead of the rally, but when the violence began, it took several hours for the guard to be deployed to the Capitol. Bowser had to call Virginia and Maryland and beg for help from their governors because the federal government is in charge of the D.C. guard because D.C. isn’t a state.  Continue reading.

DHS watchdog declined to pursue investigations into Secret Service during Trump administration, documents show

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The chief federal watchdog for the Secret Service blocked investigations proposed by career staff last year to scrutinize the agency’s handling of the George Floydprotests in Lafayette Square and the spread of the coronavirus in its ranks, according to documents and people with knowledge of his decisions.

Both matters involved decisions by then-President Donald Trump that may have affected actions by the agency.

Joseph Cuffari, the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, rejected his staff’s recommendation to investigate what role the Secret Service played in the forcible clearing of protesters from Lafayette Square on June 1, according to internal documents and two people familiar with his decision, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the discussions. Continue reading.

Top Trump adviser warned then-president on virus supply shortage, then pursued controversial deals

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Democrats probe more than $1 billion in ‘haphazard’ supply contracts arranged by Peter Navarro, citing new documents

A top adviser privately urged President Donald Trump to acquire critical medical supplies in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak — and after the warning was ignored, pursued his own ad hoc strategy that committed more than $1 billion in federal funds and has since prompted multiple probes, according to newly released documents from congressional investigators.

Peter Navarro, who served as Trump’s trade adviser, warned the president on March 1, 2020, to “MOVE IN ‘TRUMP TIME’” to invest in ingredients for drugs, handheld coronavirus tests and other supplies to fight the virus, according to a memo obtained by the House’s select subcommittee on the coronavirus outbreak. Navarro also said that he’d been trying to acquire more protective gear like masks, critiquing the administration’s pace.

“There is NO downside risk to taking swift actions as an insurance policy against what may be a very serious public health emergency,” Navarro wrote to the president. “If the covid-19 crisis quickly recedes, the only thing we will have been guilty of is prudence.” At the time, there were about 100 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the United States and just two deaths linked to the outbreak. Continue reading.

Feuds, fibs and finger-pointing: Trump officials say coronavirus response was worse than known

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‘That’s what bothers me every day’: Birx and others admit failures that hampered the White House response

Several top doctors in the Trump administration offered their most pointed and direct criticism of the government response to the coronavirus last year, with one of them arguing that hundreds of thousands of covid-19 deaths could have been prevented.

They also admitted their own missteps as part of a CNN special that aired Sunday night, saying that some Trump administration statements the White House fiercely defended last year were misleading or outright falsehoods.

“When we said there were millions of tests available, there weren’t, right?” said Brett Giroir, who served as the nation’s coronavirus testing czar, referencing the administration’s repeated claims in March 2020 that anyone who sought a coronavirus test could get one. “There were components of the test available, but not the full meal deal.” Continue reading.

‘Sitting on their hands’: Biden transition officials say Trump officials delayed action on child migrant surge

Trump officials didn’t increase capacity for child migrants despite warnings, Biden transition officials say. “They were sitting on their hands,” one said.

WASHINGTON — In early December, the Biden transition team and career government officials began sounding an alarm on the need to increase shelter space for the large number of migrant children expected to soon be crossing the border, but the Trump administration didn’t take action until just days before the inauguration, according to two Biden transition officials and a U.S. official with knowledge of the discussions.

“They were sitting on their hands,” said one of the transition officials, who does not currently work for the Biden administration and spoke on the condition of anonymity. “It was incredibly frustrating.”

The Biden transition team made its concerns about the lack of shelter space known to Trump officials both at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security, laying out the need to open an influx shelter in Carrizo Springs, Texas, and to issue what’s known as a “request for assistance” that would start the process of surveying new sites for expanded shelters, according to the transition officials. Continue reading.