A federal judge who actually follows the law has stopped the nonsense that President Trump can’t fire people once he ruled that Trump can fire pretty much whomever he wants as he ruled against CIA DEI hires. They sued to be reinstated but they did not get a Biden or Obama judge. Earlier this month, Judge Trenga, an appointee of George W. Bush, temporarily blocked President Trump’s attempt to clean the swamp inside the intelligence agency.
NBC News reported:
A federal judge ruled Thursday that the Trump administration can go ahead with plans to fire dozens of officers from the CIA and other intelligence agencies who had temporary jobs working on diversity programs.
U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga said if fairness and morals were the standard on which he had to rule, he might have delivered a different decision. But the law dictates otherwise, he said.
“They had the misfortune of being last assigned to a DEI program,” he said, calling it a “difficult situation.”
The ruling could open the way to wider firings at the CIA and across the intelligence community as the Trump administration presses ahead with plans to slash the federal workforce and the size of the federal government. At least 51 CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence officers now face imminent dismissal, according to Kevin Carroll, the lawyer representing some of the officers.
VISIT OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL
More firings at the CIA are said to be imminent.
The C.I.A. has moved to dismiss an unspecified number of officers who were working on recruiting and diversity issues, according to former officials, in what would be one of the largest mass firings in the agency’s history.
The possible purge of the officers comes as the agency moves to comply with the spirit of President Trump’s executive order banning efforts to diversify the federal work force.
The C.I.A. on Friday began calling in officers who had been put on administrative leave and telling them to resign or be fired, but a federal court soon halted that action. A judge in the Eastern District of Virginia is scheduled to hold a hearing on Monday to consider a temporary restraining order against the agency.
In a court filing on Thursday, the government lawyers said that John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, could seek to fire more people, following the White House executive order ending diversity hiring. A lawyer for the officers, Kevin Carroll, said the filing suggested the firings were only beginning.
While presidents often order policy changes at the agency, it is rare for career officers who carried out the priorities of a previous administration to be fired, the former officials said. Former President Barack Obama, for example, ended the C.I.A. interrogation program started under former President George W. Bush but did not fire the officers accused of torturing Al Qaeda prisoners.
#trump2024 #draintheswamp #deifail
