National Security Council staffers fired after Trump met with far-right activist Laura Loomer: Sources
Far-right activist Laura Loomer; Photo credit: Jacob M. Langston for The Washington Post via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The White House has fired a handful of National Security Council staffers following a Wednesday meeting with far-right political activist Laura Loomer, who made recommendations to President Donald Trump about who he should fire, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
Loomer met with Trump Wednesday, shortly before his tariff announcement in the Rose Garden, the sources said. Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles, Vice President JD Vance and the head of personnel Sergio Gor were involved in the meeting. Rep. Scott Perry was also present, but he was scheduled to meet with Trump about a variety of different topics, the sources added.
“NSC doesn’t comment on personnel matters,” NSC spokesman Brian Hughes said in a statement.
The New York Times was first to report on Trump’s meeting with Loomer.
“Out of respect for President Trump and the privacy of the Oval Office, I’m going to decline on divulging any details about my Oval Office meeting with President Trump. It was an honor to meet with President Trump and present him with my research findings, I will continue working hard to support his agenda, and I will continue reiterating the importance of strong vetting, for the sake of protecting the President and our national security,” Loomer told ABC News in a statement.
Loomer has frequently spread misinformation. In July, she falsely claimed in a social media post that President Joe Biden had a medical emergency after landing at Joint Base Andrews — a claim for which there was no evidence.
She had also started unsubstantiated claims about family members of Judge Juan Merchan in Trump’s New York hush money case, including that his daughter posted a fake photo of Trump in jail on social media, which the court has denied. It prompted Trump to share Loomer’s posts and spread the rumors.
Loomer accompanied Trump to several campaign events last fall — a move that prompted criticism from some Republicans at the time.
While it’s not clear whether any of the recent firings are directly related to national security adviser Mike Waltz and his staff’s use of the messaging app, Signal to communicate about sensitive topics, it comes as Waltz has had to privately defend himself and his staff to the president and other senior White House staffers.
The day after the inauguration, the Trump administration purged more than 150 NSC staffers because the new administration wanted to make sure the the goals of the NSC aligned with Trump’s agenda. Firing the nonpolitical staffers, who typically serve two-year stints on the council, has left the NSC severely understaffed and lacking subject matter experts from across government.
(WASHINGTON) — U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, the federal judge who blocked the Trump administration from deporting noncitizens — Venezuelan immigrants that it alleges are members of the gang Tren de Aragua — without due process accused the Justice Department of evading “its obligations” to comply with his order for more information on the deportation flights, per a new filing on Thursday.
Boasberg said in an order Thursday that after a noon deadline, Justice Department attorneys filed a written declaration from an acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field officer, which repeated general information about the deportation flights and that Cabinet secretaries were still weighing whether to invoke the states secret privilege, a move that allows the head of an executive department to refuse to produce evidence in a court case on the grounds that the evidence is secret information that would harm national security or foreign relation interests if disclosed, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights.
“This is woefully insufficient,” Boasberg said in response.
Boasberg ordered more information about the deportation flights, which the administration carried out under the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely used wartime authority. Boasberg ordered that they turn around two flights the administration said were deporting the alleged migrant gang members to El Salvador. Officials failed to turn those flights around.
The Trump administration has not yet released the names of the alleged gang members who were deported.
The Department of Justice initially refused to provide more information about the flights, citing national security concerns.
Boasberg said Thursday that he is requiring the government to show cause by March 25 on why its responses thus far and the failure to return the undocumented migrants to the U.S. did not violate his temporary restraining orders.
Additionally, he asked the government to file a sworn declaration by 10 a.m. Friday by an individual involved in Trump’s Cabinet discussions over the state secrets privilege — and to say by March 25 whether they plan to invoke the privilege.
On Thursday, ABC News’ Karen Travers asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt why the administration wasn’t turning over the information regarding the deportation flights if they are confident that they complied with the judge’s order.
“We are confident that we’ve complied, and as I’ve said from the podium, all of the flights that were subject to the written order of the judge took off before the written order was pushed in the courtroom,” Leavitt said. “And the president is all within his article, his Article II power and his authority under the Alien Enemies Act to make these decisions.”
Earlier this week, Trump and some House Republicans called to impeach Boasberg, with Trump calling the judge “radical left.”
Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts issued a rare statement on the impeachment threat, signaling a stark difference in opinion between the judicial and executive branches.
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said in the statement. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
(WASHINGTON) — In President Donald Trump’s escalating battle with the judiciary, he and his Republican allies have zeroed in on a similar message.
No single judge, they argue, should be able to use an injunction to block the powers of the country’s elected chief executive.
“That’s a presidential job. That’s not for a local judge to be making that determination,” Trump said on Fox News earlier this week as he railed against a judge who issued a limited injunction to stop deportation flights of alleged Venezuelan gang members to other countries after Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, peppered with questions after the administration did not turn the planes around, on Wednesday preemptively offered her own rebuke of judges who’ve recently ordered injunctions taking effect nationwide.
“The judges in this country are acting erroneously,” she said. “We have judges who are acting as partisan activists from the bench. They are trying to dictate policy from the president of the United States. They are trying to clearly slow walk this administration’s agenda, and it’s unacceptable.”
The White House argues that’s especially the case when it comes to immigration matters, foreign affairs, national security and the president exercising his constitutional powers as commander in chief.
Judges have, so far, temporarily blocked Trump’s efforts to ban transgender people from serving in the military, freeze federal funding and bring an end to birthright citizenship.
Supporters of nationwide injunctions say they serve as an essential check to potentially unlawful conduct and prevent widespread harm. Critics say they give too much authority to individual judges and incentivize plaintiffs to try to evade random assignment and file in jurisdictions with judges who may be sympathetic to their point of view.
In general, legal experts told ABC News an injunction is meant to preserve the status quo while judges consider the merits of the case. (Judges also issue temporary restraining orders — with similar impact — as short-term emergency measures to prevent irreparable harm until a hearing can be held.)
“Often the nationwide injunction, or universal injunction, is put in place right at the start of a litigation,” said Amanda Frost, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.
“All of these can be appealed, and they are,” Frost said. “It’s appealed to a three-judge court and then the Supreme Court after that. So, when people say one district court is controlling the law for the nation, well maybe for a few weeks. The system allows for appeals, and the Trump administration has appealed.”
Chief Justice John Roberts said the same in a rare statement after Trump attacked the federal judge in the deportation flight case as a “Radical Left Lunatic” and called for him to be impeached.
In fact, Trump was handed a win when an appeals court last week lifted an injunction on his executive orders seeking to end diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in the federal government.
Nationwide injunctions are also not new, though scholars agree they’ve been used far more in recent decades.
“We saw them with Obama, we saw them with the first Trump administration, and saw them with Biden,” Frost said. “And now we’re seeing them even more with President Trump but they go in lockstep with the sweeping executive orders that seek to change and upend vast swaths of our legal structure.”
According to a study by the Harvard Law Review, President Barack Obama faced 12 injunctions, the Trump administration faced 64 and President Joe Biden 14 injunctions.
Both Democrats and Republicans have either urged the judiciary to rein in injunctions or celebrated their outcomes, depending on whether they align with their political goals.
In 2023, when a federal judge in Missouri issued an injunction limiting contact between the Biden administration and social media sites, then-candidate Trump called it a “historic ruling” and the judge “brilliant.” The U.S. Supreme Court eventually sided with the Biden administration on the issue.
Now, the Trump administration is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court to curb injunctions after three different federal judges temporarily blocked the president’s birthright citizenship order, saying it likely violated the 14th Amendment.
“At a minimum, the Court should stay the injunctions to the extent they prohibit agencies from developing and issuing public guidance regarding the implementation of the Order. Only this Court’s intervention can prevent universal injunctions from becoming universally acceptable,” Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote in an application to the high court last week.
Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, said he understands the “frustration” that can stem from nationwide injunctions but ultimately “judges are there to make sure that the government doesn’t violate the Constitution.”
“Trump is really taking a sledgehammer to everything government related,” he said. “These norms have been around for decades, so you have to allow some time for the courts, particularly the Supreme Court, to weigh in and say whether this is appropriate or not.”
The White House has said Trump will comply with the courts, but his intensifying rebukes of judges and rulings have raised the question: What happens if he doesn’t?
“That would completely undermine the integrity of our system,” Rahmani said.
(WASHINGTON) — Jan. 6 rioters convicted for role in Capitol attack speak out against Trump’s pardons
On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump followed through on his pledge to pardon those convicted for participating in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, granting a sweeping unconditional pardon to more than 1,500 rioters and commutations for more than a dozen others.
Following the executive action, two people who pleaded guilty for their actions at the Capitol that day have spoken out against their pardons.
“This is a sad day,” Idaho resident Pamela Hemphill told Boise ABC affiliate KIVI. “The ramifications of this is going to be horrifying.”
Hemphill pleaded guilty to violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds and was sentenced in May 2022 to 60 days of incarceration. She told KIVI she doesn’t want to be pardoned.
“I broke the law. I pleaded guilty because I was guilty,” she told KIVI. “And we know all of them are guilty.”
New Hampshire resident Jason Riddle, who admitted to entering the Capitol on Jan. 6, drinking from an open bottle of wine and stealing a book from the Senate Parliamentarian office, pleaded guilty to theft of government property and illegally protesting inside the Capitol. He was sentenced in April 2022 to 90 days in prison.
Riddle was struggling with alcohol at the time, and part of his probation included mandatory alcoholic treatment. The Navy veteran said he is grateful for his arrest.
“I am guilty of the crimes I have committed and accept the consequences,” he told ABC News. “It is thanks to those consequences I now have a happy and fruitful existence.”
At the time of his arrest, Riddle said he was an “obsessor” of Trump’s.
“I don’t need to obsess over a narcissistic bully to feel better about myself,” Riddle said. “Trump can shove his pardon up his a–.” As of early January, more than 1,580 individuals had been charged criminally in federal court in connection with Jan. 6, with over 1,000 pleading guilty, according to the Department of Justice.
Of course, not all of those convicted for their role in the Jan. 6 attack questioned Trump’s executive action. Stewart Rhodes, the head of the Oath Keepers, is among the 14 people whose sentences were commuted by Trump. He was serving an 18-year sentence after being convicted of seditious conspiracy for leading members of the Oath Keepers in an attempt to use the violent Capitol attack to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
“That was a bunch of nonsense,” Rhodes told ABC News while standing at a protest outside the DC Central Detention Facility after being released on Tuesday.
Rhodes, who was not at the Capitol on Jan. 6, said he isn’t disappointed that he didn’t receive a full pardon, and believes Trump will ultimately issue him one.
Asked whether the Jan. 6 defendants who were charged with assaulting police officers deserved a pardon, he said yes.
“Like I said before, it’s about defense of innocence. Because they were not given a fair trial,” Rhodes said.
Riddle, though, worried about the message the executive action sends to those convicted of assaulting police officers.
“If I was one of the people who crossed the line into assaulting police officers that day, I’d probably believe I can get away with anything I want now,” he said.
Asked during a press briefing Tuesday about pardoning violent Jan. 6 convicts, including one who admitted to attacking an officer, Trump said he would look into it and repeated his claim that the rioters were unjustly prosecuted.
“The cases that we looked at, these were people that actually love our country, so we thought a pardon would be appropriate,” he said.
