This is an adapted excerpt from the Jan. 28 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
The first time Donald Trump was president, his lawyers tried to dress up flatly unconstitutional orders with legal fig leaves. For example, when he implemented what many labeled a “Muslim travel ban,” the administration ultimately tweaked it to include non-Muslim countries like North Korea and Venezuela, as if to say, “See, we’re not discriminating against religion.”
The president wanted to purge them out of spite, even though their firings appear to be in violation of civil service law.
It was a pretense but one that nodded, at least, to First Amendment concerns — and one that the Supreme Court eventually got on board with. However, this time around, there are no such pretenses.
On Monday, Trump’s acting attorney general fired more than a dozen career civil servants in the Justice Department. These are attorneys with years of prosecuting experience, including going after public corruption in both parties.
They were fired because they had assisted special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations into Trump. The president wanted to purge them out of spite, even though their firings appear to be in violation of civil service law, which says employees can be fired for misconduct or poor performance, not simply for doing their jobs.
But it didn’t stop there. Those firings came on the heels of Trump’s very own Friday night massacre. Just three days before Trump fired those career civil servants, he purged 18 inspectors general from across the government.
These inspectors general were tasked with investigating allegations of waste, fraud and abuse of power everywhere from the Pentagon to the State Department. Congress created those posts after Watergate to prevent the damage a corrupt White House could do.
When Kristen Welker asked Sen. Lindsey Graham whether Trump violated the law, the Republican senator said, ‘Technically yeah. ‘
What Trump did was both an attempt to make corruption easier and also so blatantly in violation of civil service law that even one of his most loyal allies, a senator with a law degree, had to admit it.
When NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked Sen. Lindsey Graham whether Trump violated the law with those inspectors general firings, the Republican senator said, “Technically yeah. But he has the authority to do it. So I’m not, you know losing a whole lot of sleep that he wants to change the personnel out.” Graham says it was “technically” illegal — which is just another way of saying: “illegal.” On top of these firings, Trump has also ordered the Defense Department to straight up discriminate. Some of his executive actions thus far include banning transgender service members, abolishing programs and positions that promote anti-discrimination practices and revoking an order against discrimination for federal contractors that was signed six decades ago by President Lyndon B. Johnson. On all of these overreaches, the Trump administration is betting that the courts are on their side. But that’s not exactly a sure bet. A lot of what happens now in the judicial system is going to determine the ultimate outcome. Allison Detzel contributed.
Chris Hayes hosts “All In with Chris Hayes” at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday through Friday on MS NOW. He is the editor-at-large at The Nation. A former fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Hayes was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book is “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource” (Penguin Press).
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