John Bolton says Trump removed his Secret Service detail
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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump has terminated Secret Service protection for his former national security adviser John Bolton, Bolton said in a post on X Tuesday afternoon.
“Notwithstanding my criticisms of President Biden’s national security policies, he nonetheless made the decision to extend that protection to me in 2021. The Justice Department filed criminal charges against an Iranian Revolutionary Guard official in 2022 for attempting to hire a hit man to target me. That threat remains today,” Bolton wrote. “The American people can judge for themselves which President made the right call.”
The White House has not commented on Bolton’s claims.
Bolton worked as Trump’s national security adviser from 2018 to 2019 and was frequently at odds with the president. After he left office, Bolton was vocal about his criticisms of Trump’s policies, including in a 2020 memoir in which he claimed the president was “stunningly uninformed,” ignorant of basic facts and easily manipulated by foreign adversaries.
At the time of the book’s release, Bolton told ABC News’ Martha Raddatz that Trump was “not fit for office” and didn’t have “the competence to carry out the job.”
Trump has lashed out at Bolton since leaving office in social media posts and interviews.
On Monday, he signed an executive order that called for Bolton to lose any security clearance he might still hold.
The executive order accused Bolton of publishing a memoir that “was rife with sensitive information drawn from his time in government,” with the order adding that the book’s publication “created a grave risk that classified material was publicly exposed.”
Bolton has denied disclosing any classified information in the book, and though a federal judge was skeptical of that, no charges were ever filed.
(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Homeland Security is allowing certain law enforcement components from the Department of Justice to carry out the “functions” of an immigration officer, according to a new memo sent by the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Benjamine Huffeman.
Huffeman’s memo, obtained by ABC News, said the order grants the agencies the “same authority already granted to the FBI.” It said that agents can enforce immigration law.
The agencies listed in the memo are the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, the US Marshals Service and the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
The DEA and ATF have had little experience historically in carrying out immigration enforcement. Historically, the US Marshals only get involved when there has been a migrant who has become a fugitive.
Earlier this week, it was announced federal immigration authorities will be permitted to target schools and churches after President Donald Trump revoked a directive barring arrests in “sensitive” areas.
DHS announced Tuesday it would roll back the policy to “thwart law enforcement in or near so-called sensitive areas.”
Schools and houses of worship were once deemed off-limits, as were hospitals, funerals, weddings and public demonstrations, but no longer after the announcement.
“Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest. The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense,” Huffeman said Tuesday.
(WASHINGTON) — A 25-year-old associate of Elon Musk and former Treasury Department employee was “mistakenly” given the ability to make changes to a sensitive federal payment system, officials with the Bureau of the Fiscal Service disclosed in a series of court filings late Tuesday.
Treasury Department officials said the “error” was quickly corrected, and a forensic investigation into the actions of Marko Elez — who resigned from his position last week after The Wall Street Journal unearthed a series of racist social media posts — remains ongoing.
“To the best of our knowledge, Mr. Elez never knew of the fact that he briefly had read/write permissions for the [Secure Payment System] database, and never took any action to exercise the ‘write’ privileges in order to modify anything within the SPS database — indeed, he never logged in during the time that he had read/write privileges, other than during the virtual walk-through — and forensic analysis is currently underway to confirm this,” wrote Joseph Gioeli III, a deputy commissioner at Bureau of the Fiscal Service.
The high-profile mistake at BFS — which effectively serves as the federal government’s checkbook by disbursing more than $5 trillion annually — comes as a federal judge in New York is weighing whether to continue to block individuals associated with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Treasury Department records.
Lawyers with the Department of Justice initially insisted that Elez was strictly given “read-only” access to sensitive records, but the affidavits submitted by BFS employees on Tuesday noted that the 25-year-old was inadvertently given the ability to “read/write” the sensitive system that agencies use to send “large dollar amount transactions” to the Treasury Department.
According to Gioeli, Treasury Department officials also provided Elez with copies of the “source code” for multiple payment systems that he could edit in a digital “sandbox.”
“Mr. Elez could review and make changes locally to copies of the source code in the cordoned-off code repository; however, he did not have the authority or capability to publish any code changes to the production system or underlying test environments,” the filing said.
Elez resigned from his role on Feb. 6, and Gioielli claimed that the 25-year-old former SpaceX and X employee was the “only individual on the Treasury DOGE Team” who was given direct access to payment systems or source code. A “preliminary review” of his digital activity suggests that Elez stayed within the permitted bounds of his role when accessing the payment systems.
“While forensic analysis is still ongoing, Bureau personnel have conducted preliminary reviews of logs of his activity both on his laptop and within the systems and at this time have found no indication of any unauthorized use, of any use outside the scope that was directed by Treasury leadership, or that Mr. Elez used his BFS laptop to share any BFS payment systems data outside the U.S. Government,” the filing said.
The filings also provided new insights into DOGE’s ongoing mission with the Treasury Department, including to identify fraud, better understand how the payments are fulfilled and to enforce Trump’s day-one executive order that significantly cut foreign aid.
According to Thomas Krause — a tech CEO and DOGE volunteer who is leading the cost-cutting effort at the Treasury Department — DOGE is engaged in 4-to-6-week assessment of the Treasury Department’s payment systems. He was placed at Treasury not only to identify potential fraud but also understand how to use the Department’s payment systems to potentially cut funding to other parts of the government, the filing said.
“BFS is well positioned to help agencies and the federal government holistically understand and take stock of the problems [Government Accountability Office] has reported on,” Krause wrote.
(WASHINGTON) — Following Vice President JD Vance’s comments Sunday arguing that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” some Republican lawmakers have pushed back and reiterated the power of the courts.
As President Donald Trump continues to try to remake the federal government through a flood of executive orders, the number of legal challenges to his efforts have piled up, with federal courts across the country siding with plaintiffs to pause his plans as judges sort out the legality of his actions.
On Tuesday, Trump lashed out on his Truth Social platform against “certain activists and highly political judges” who he says want to “slow down” or stop his administration’s efforts to investigate “FRAUD, WASTE, AND ABUSE.”
However, some Republican lawmakers are not completely on board with the administration’s strong stance criticizing the courts.
“We’ve got a system of checks and balances, and that’s what I see working,” Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley said Monday night. “I learned in eighth grade civics about checks and balances, and I just expect the process to work its way out.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he believes the courts have an “important role to play” in moderating power.
“The courts obviously are the sort of the branch of our government that calls balls and strikes and referees and I think that they’ve got an important role to play,” Thune said. “I mean we have three branches of our government in this country, coequal and independent branches, and the judiciary is the one that resolves some of the differences that often occur between executive and legislative branches.”
Thune said the judiciary has moderated a number executive and congressional decisions in recent years.
“I expect that to continue, and I expect the court to play the important role of ensuring that you know the laws of the country are followed,” he added.
Sen. Josh Hawley, who serves on the Judiciary Committee and is a former state attorney general and Supreme Court clerk, called Vance’s comments an “understandable reaction” to frustration about the court’s rulings. But, he said, the courts are independent, and their rulings need to be followed.
“You may think that’s not the right ruling, but you know, they’re still the law,” Hawley said, adding that he believes the administration should abide by court rulings.
Hawley said executives have a right to challenge and appeal and to follow orders but not apply them broadly.
During an interview on “The Mark Levin Show” Monday evening, Trump said the blocking of some of his executive actions by court order are “bad rulings.”
“Frankly, they want to sort of tell everybody how to run the country,” the president added during the interview, arguing that there are “very important people, smart people doing investigations of fraud,” and criticizing the courts for calling this “unconstitutional.”
“But judges should be ruling. They shouldn’t be dictating what you’re supposed to be doing,” Trump said.
However, some Republican leaders continue to back the administration.
During a press conference Tuesday morning, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson endorsed the vice president’s assertion by saying, “I agree wholeheartedly with Vice President JD Vance because he’s right.”
Though Johnson acknowledged “of course the branches have to respect our constitutional order,” he also said, “I think the courts should take a step back and allow these processes to play out.”
The speaker added that he does not feel uncomfortable with the president’s power and that the administration is doing “what’s right by the American people.”
