Trump staffing issues are still a serious problem

[88m3]

Ian Millhiser
Justice Editor, ThinkProgress. Author of Injustices: SCOTUS’ History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted imillhiser@thinkprogress.org
Jun 6
Trump taps lawyer who left the Bush administration for being too authoritarian for top Navy job
This is how far respect for the rule of law has fallen.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File

Charles “Cully” Stimson left the Bush administration in disgrace. He’s now poised to become the Navy’s top lawyer.

In January of 2007, while serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, Stimson suggested that corporate clients should retaliate against law firms that represent Guantanamo Bay detainees —a statement that was widely viewed as an attempt to intimidate lawyers against representing detainees.

“When corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001,” Stimson said, “those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms.” He also named over a dozen firms as possible targets of a corporate boycott.

Many Guantanamo detainees turned out to be innocent.

Charles “Cully” Stimson
As a senior Pentagon official, Stimson was not simply expressing a political view when he suggested that corporate CEOs should choose law firms based on whether that firm represented certain clients who were adverse to the Bush administration. He was implying that this was the federal government’s stance on these firms — and that companies who did business with the wrong firms could potentially risk retaliation from the government itself.

In any event, Stimson’s remarks were swiftly disavowed by the Justice Department and the Pentagon. Then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said that “good lawyers representing the detainees is the best way to ensure that justice is done in these cases.” A Pentagon spokesperson said that Stimson’s remarks “do not represent the views of the Department of Defense or the thinking of its leadership.”

Stimson resigned from his position in the Bush administration a few weeks after his comment about law firms representing detainees.

Yet, despite the circumstances of his resignation and the fact that his comments were widely condemned even within the Bush administration, Donald Trump now wants to welcome Stimson back into government.


After resigning from the Pentagon, Stimson took a job at the conservative Heritage Foundation, where he has called for harsh enforcement of federal marijuana laws, pinned the Benghazi attacks on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and argued that the “real crime in the Michael Flynn saga” is the fact that news of the former national security adviser’s alleged wrongdoing was leaked to the press.

One of Stimson’s publications for Heritage actually begins with the sentence “despite the challenges of a growing terrorist threat, the Obama administration has decided now is the right time to allow illegal immigrants to join the military.”

Stimson’s nomination can be blocked by the Senate.

https://thinkprogress.org/trump-lawyer-navy-job-434547858e6f

 

[88m3]

Linda McMahon: 'We're not even staffed up to where we need to be'
BY MAX GREENWOOD - 06/06/17 10:06 AM EDT 42

© Victoria Sarno Jordan
Small Business Administrator Linda McMahon voiced frustration with the White House's slow pace in filling staff positions across several agencies, saying that in her office it has created "many more people working very long hours."

"We are understaffed at the moment," she said on Politico's "Off Message" podcast. "We're not even staffed up to where we need to be, or where we were."

"I think a lot of the staffing that I’m talking about does have to have White House approval," she said. "There’s been some bottleneck, you know. They’re trying to fill a lot of roles at one time. And it’s a lot of people to process."



Across the Trump administration, departments and agencies are waiting on President Trump to hire or appoint key officials and staffers, even those who do not require Senate confirmation.
McMahon told Politico that the slow pace hasn't slowed down her office's work, but has spurred employees to take on longer work hours. With budget cuts to her agency imminent, she said, the Small Business Administration has had to do "more with less."

"I don't know that it slows it down, so much as it requires that there are many more people working very long hours," she said. "We will operate much better more fully staffed. We won't operate to the staff levels that the prior administration did, simply because we do have some budget cuts. But we are doing more with less."


Linda McMahon: 'We're not even staffed up to where we need to be'

 

[88m3]

Pelosi: Trump throwing his staff 'overboard'
BY MIKE LILLIS - 06/06/17 11:32 AM EDT 313

© Victoria Sarno Jordan
White House staffers should expect no loyalty from their boss in the Oval Office, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) charged Tuesday, predicting that the tensions between President Trump and his team are only beginning.

“If you want a job at the White House, know your blood type because you're going to get thrown overboard at some point,” Pelosi said on CNN’s “New Day” program.

Pelosi suggested some staffers might reach a breaking point — “it will be interesting to see how he reacts to their reaction to him” — but quickly added that any pushback would have little effect on Trump’s management style.



“He doesn't care, as long as we're talking about him — good, bad or indifferent,” she said.
Disagreements between presidents and their staffs are hardly rare, but Trump’s tendency to take those fights public is highly unusual.

In the latest episode, Trump on Monday went after his own Justice Department over the administration’s proposal to bar foreign travelers from six predominately Muslim countries — a ban that’s been blocked by the courts. The proposal was revised after a tougher earlier version was similarly rejected. Trump signed off on both, but this week placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of the DOJ, suggesting the agency has been too timid on the issue.

“The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to [the Supreme Court],” he tweeted.

Trump’s emphasis on the “travel ban” language marks another shot at his own staff, which has rejected that blanket characterization and fought to frame the policy as a much more targeted effort to prevent would-be terrorists from entering the country — a notion Trump shattered on Monday.

“People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!” he tweeted.

On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that Trump was furious with Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the DOJ’s probe in Russia’s election meddling — an issue that already led the president to fire his FBI director, James Comey.

That followed numerous reports that Trump, frustrated that his communications team has failed to swing the public focus onto his policy agenda, is eying a staff shakeup.

Amid the turmoil, Michael Dubke, Trump’s communications director, resigned last week.

The turbulence inside the White House has increasingly frustrated Republicans on Capitol Hill, who are hoping this year to move an ambitious legislative agenda that includes sweeping tax reforms and an overhaul of the healthcare system.

Trump and GOP leaders are huddling in the White House Tuesday to hone their strategy. But Pelosi — who says she wants to shift the discussion to jobs, infrastructure and other legislative items — says major progress will be tough as long as the spotlight remains on Trump and his public venting.

“There's so many things we should be doing, job creation and all the rest, let's have that debate. … But he just keeps bringing attention to him,” she said.

“It's a tactic.”
Pelosi: Trump throwing his staff 'overboard'

 

[88m3]

Tracking how many key positions Trump has filled so far
TRUMP TRANSITIONCabinet rumors and nomineesExplore 559 key positions


See 3 updates in the last seven days

Updated June 6 at 10:14 a.m.

Of 559 key positions requiring Senate confirmation …
441
No nominee
15
Awaiting nomination
64
Formally nominated
39
Confirmed


Donald Trump nominations list – New White House administration

check out link, it's really well done and concerning