The problem of an unaccountable federal bureaucracy is nothing new, and it hardly began with Trump. As government grows, so do the number of federal employees. And the more civil servants there are, the harder it is to keep track of shenanigans.
Many of these civil servants work for the government because they believe in big government; they already lean left. And they were turbocharged by an Obama administration that ruled by regulation and executive order, thereby handing to the bureaucracy decisions that are supposed to be made by an elected legislature. The career bureaucracy was put in charge of vast new programs—regulating energy, transportation, water, health care, taxes, finance. And as the Obama administration had no interest in policing them, they were left to run the show. This is the bureaucracy Trump inherited—big, bold, overweening.
Bureaucratic rebellions are also not new. One of the more famous takedowns happened to Anne Gorsuch—mother of Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch. Reagan appointed Anne Gorsuch in 1981 to run the EPA. The bureaucracy resented that she was an attorney and a reformer, rather than a card-carrying environmentalist. She cut the agency’s budget and staff, hired people from industry in order get more diverse views, and pared back onerous regulations. EPA’s career civil servants revolted and began leaking documents and planting stories with the press to undermine Gorsuch. Their machinations ultimately helped inspire a congressional investigation into the handling of the Superfund program. She didn’t last even two years on the job.
But today’s “deep state” is more dangerous. Our left-leaning civil bureaucracy is always hostile to Republican presidents, though mostly because they dislike conservative policies. Today’s federal bureaucracy is motivated by more than ideological differences; they despise Trump the man. An analysis by The Hill newspaper in October 2016 that looked at employees at fourteen federal agencies concluded that 95 percent of their campaign donations had gone to Hillary Clinton. Imagine running a company where 95 percent of your workforce is opposed to your leadership.
Emboldened by modern federal employment rules that make it all but impossible to fire bad actors, civil servants have proved willing to take ever more outrageous actions to defy Trump—some potentially illegal. Our modern society meanwhile gives them more tools with which they can cause problems. They use technology to keep in real-time connection with fellow bureaucratic resisters, anti-Trump groups, and the press, and they use social media to transform their anti-Trump campaigns into overnight scandals.
These deep-staters are in fact a big reason why the initial warnings about Trump-as-dictator were overwrought. As the WSJ editorial page wrote in the run-up to the 2016 election: “The least convincing Never Trump argument is that he would rampage through government as an authoritarian. That ignores the checks and balances in Washington that constrain GOP Presidents in particular.” Among these, we wrote, was “the permanent bureaucracy [that] would resist his political appointees, working with the media to build public opposition.”
The bureaucratic resistance has used their power to delay and undermine Trump proposals, leak government information, team up with Trump opponents, and gin up controversies that helped to run Trump cabinet heads out of Washington on a rail. The deep-staters like to call themselves “whistleblowers,” but that’s a bastardization of an honorable word. Whistleblowers expose government fraud or corruption; the resisters are protesting the government policy they are paid to implement. In doing so, they are delegitimizing the very government they claim to serve and want to support. Government workers are a vital part of a civil society. Yet voters have become deeply suspicious of the federal bureaucracy and increasingly believe its members are hostile to democracy and the country’s well-being. Yet more fallout from the Resistance.
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Unfortunately for the country, government-employed resisters received a loud and ugly call to action within weeks of the new administration. Obama appointee Sally Yates became the acting attorney general upon Trump’s inauguration and Loretta Lynch’s departure. Yates was clearly gunning for the Trump administration, as she’d prove with her disingenuous Logan Act theories about National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. One week into his job, Trump signed his travel ban order. Almost immediately, Yates sent out a mind-bending memo to all Department of Justice staff, ordering lawyers not to defend any legal challenges to the order. Yates dramatically stated that it was her job to ensure “this institution’s solemn obligation to always seek justice and stand for what is right.” She went on to explain that she was not convinced the Trump order was “consistent with these responsibilities” or even “lawful.” “For as long as I am Acting Attorney General, the Department of Justice will not present arguments in defense of the Executive Order,” she decreed.
Trump took her at her word and fired her that same day. And it was outrageous that she forced him to do so. If Yates felt unable—legally or morally—to defend the executive order, she needed to resign. This is what every honorable prior cabinet secretary had done when faced with a similar situation. She had no business defying the chief executive, for whom she worked. The country elected Trump president, not Yates.
Yates’s memo served as the first official act of the Resistance, and it did more than just set a terrible precedent for future officials. It served as a rallying cry for the Resistance within the sweeping federal bureaucracy. Yates’s belligerence was greeted with fawning praise, as was exposed by e-mails obtained by Judicial Watch. “You are my new hero,” wrote one United States attorney. One DOJ colleague e-mailed: “Thank you AG Yates. I’ve been in civil/appellate for 30 years and have never seen an administration with such contempt for democratic values and the rule of law. The President’s order is an unconstitutional embarrassment and I applaud you for taking a principled stand against defending it.” And then there was Andrew Weissmann, the career DOJ head of the Criminal Fraud Division, who went on to work for Mueller. “I am so proud,” Weissmann e-mailed her. “And in awe. Thank you so much.” Bureaucrats across the government geared up: If Yates could use her post to defy the president, why shouldn’t they, too?
That rebel mentality helped feed the flood of leaks that accompanied the Trump presidency. While many of these undoubtedly came from departed Obama political appointees, media stories made clear that the leaks had also been corroborated by government employees working in the new administration. It’s almost impossible that the information was coming from newly installed Trump political appointees; they hadn’t been there long enough to even know what was going on and had no interest in undercutting their new boss. Career civil servants were behind the leaks. And those who leaked classified information committed felonies—all in aid of undermining Trump.
Resistance employees also started using social media to “resist” the administration. A National Park employee had already used an official NPS Twitter account to troll Trump, passing along a post that showed side-by-side pictures of the crowds at Trump’s inauguration versus Obama’s. A former NPS employee would a few days later hijack a government account to tweet about climate change. Around the time of the Yates firing, someone in the Defense Department set up a new Twitter handle called @Rogue_DOD, on which was posted a damaging opinion piece about Trump and internal documents about climate change. A former employee at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention set up @viralCDC, with the description: “The unofficial ‘Resistance’ page of the CDC.” Its pinned tweet read: “If they choose to make facts controversial, the purveyors of facts must step into the controversy. #ScienceMarch #resist.”
A January 31, 2017, Washington Post story reported those details, as well as that “180 federal employees have signed up for a workshop next weekend, where experts will offer advice on workers’ rights and how they can express civil disobedience.” It also reported that some “federal employees have set up social media accounts to anonymously leak word of [Trump administration] changes,” and that others were in “regular consultation with recently departed Obama-era political appoint
ees” about how to push back, and that yet others were planning to “slow” work if asked to focus on anything other than their policy “mission.” It quoted an anonymous employee: “You’re going to see the bureaucrats using time to their advantage…people here will resist and push back against orders they find unconscionable.”
At the State Department, resisters organized a “cable” protesting Trump’s travel ban, which worked its way through dozens of U.S. embassies and ultimately garnered at least 1,000 signatures. The cable was technically part of a “dissent channel” that Foggy Bottom maintains to allow officials to disagree with policy, and it is meant to be a confidential form of communication. The resisters nonetheless wasted no time in making the letter public, bragging about the numbers of signers and anonymously slamming Trump. The WSJ quoted an unnamed State Department official explaining the “overwhelming disgust and shock at this executive order. The general sense among career folks at State is that this is an affront to the values and interests we uphold every day on the world stage.” Imagine if an employee of a private company were to engage in such sabotage of his employer? Then consider how much more inappropriate it is for a federal worker funded by taxpayers to undercut a chief executive. It was left to then–White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer to remind this career staff that they could either “get with the program or they can go.” But like Yates, they lacked the integrity to do the right thing, and instead chose to abuse their posts for political gain.
A former Obama assistant secretary of state, Tom Malinowski, snarkily acknowledged to the Post that all this was an unprecedented, singular protest of Trump himself: “Is it unusual?…There’s nothing unusual about the entire national security bureaucracy of the United States feeling like their commander in chief is a threat to U.S. national security. That happens all the time. It’s totally usual. Nothing to worry about.” This gives a sense of the depth of loathing of the Obama team to their successors, a view mirrored by huge swathes of the civil servant ranks.
Newspapers reported on agency staffers who continued to defiantly put out reports that contradicted official White House positions—especially on the issue of climate change. Some departments scrambled to rename and relabel cherished programs that conflicted with administration goals, to spare them any cuts.
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In May 2017, I ran a column titled “Anatomy of a Deep State,” which profiled Francesca Grifo, who within the EPA holds the title of “Scientific Integrity Official” (and no, that is not a joke). Obama set up the office in hopes of squelching any more debate over liberal science like climate change. Ms. Grifo had been a longtime activist at the far-left Union of Concerned Scientists, where she liked to complain that EPA scientists were “under siege” by Republican “political appointees” and “industry lobbyists” who had “manipulated” science. When she was hired in 2013 to run the EPA post, Science magazine explained that her job would be to lead an entire Scientific Integrity Committee, write an annual report documenting science “incidents” at the agency, and even “investigate” science problems—alongside no less than the agency’s inspector general. And she was not a political appointee; her job came with “civil service protections.” Meaning, she could not easily be fired.
Within five months of Trump’s inauguration, Grifo reminded her EPA higher-ups of who was really in charge. In May, she sent out an invitation to a select group of about forty-five people to a June meeting in Washington. The invitation explained that they’d been asked to attend to develop “future plans for scientific integrity” at the EPA. Who was invited? Of the forty-five, only one invitee—the American Chemistry Council—was representative of the industries that the EPA regulates. A couple of academics also got invites. But the rest? Earthjustice. Public Citizen. The Natural Resources Defense Council. Center for Progressive Reform. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. Environmental Defense Fund. And a whopping three invites for Grifo’s former employer—the Union of Concerned Scientists. The meeting represented a government employee using taxpayer funds to gather political activists to government grounds to plot out ways to undermine the Trump administration. Pretty cheeky, right? This has been par for the course in the Trump civil service ranks.
Holdovers from the Obama administration actively worked to cause mayhem and, when they were called out, dramatically resigned. A case study was Walter Shaub, whom Barack Obama appointed in 2013 to run the Office of Government Ethics. The OGE isn’t a watchdog or an inspector general’s office. It doesn’t adjudicate complaints, investigate ethics violations, or prosecute. Rather, it was set up in 1978 to help the White House; its web page notes it is there to “advise” and to “assist” the executive branch in navigating complex ethical questions.
Trump came to office with more of those than most, and the OGE might have been an immensely valuable resource. Instead, within weeks of the election, Shaub was trolling the president-elect online, using the official OGE Twitter account to post tweets that mimicked Trump’s style. “@realDonaldTrump OGE is delighted that you’ve decided to divest your businesses. Right decision!” “@realDonaldTrump Brilliant! Divestiture is good for you, very good for America!” When Trump finally released his plan for his assets, Shaub blasted it at a public event with press in attendance. It made clear Shaub had no intention of “helping” the White House navigate anything.
The pious political operator would go on to ride herd on the Trump team, releasing public letters detailing his gripes. Shaub at one point sent one of his complaining missives to hundreds of government ethics officials, every inspector general, and the chairmen and ranking members of numerous congressional committees. When Trump administration officials finally began to call him out on his outrageous behavior, he resigned in July in high dudgeon—though not before taking a grandstanding tour of every TV show that would have him. He, of course, immediately took a job with the liberal Campaign Legal Center, where he proceeded to more openly express his hatred of the man he was supposed to have assisted in office.
Bureaucrats also began filing official internal complaints, demanding to get to define their own policies and programs. In July 2017, an Interior Department employee named Joel Clement published an article in the Washington Post under the headline: “I’m a Scientist. I’m Blowing the Whistle on the Trump Administration.” He began his piece: “I am not a member of the deep state,” before going on to explain the many ways he was. He explained that he had just filed a complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel—a federal body that both regulates and protects civil servants. Why? Clement had worked at Interior for seven years, in particular helping “endangered communities in Alaska prepare for and adapt to a changing climate.” But now he, along with more than two dozen other senior career Interior employees, had been reassigned to a different job, working in the fossil fuel arena. Clement claimed this reassignment was in retaliation against him, “for speaking out publicly about the danger that climate change poses to Alaska Native communities,” and called himself a “whistleblower.” He also officially complained to the government that leaving his post empty would “exacerbate the already significant threat to the health and safety” of Alaska Natives.
Departments have broad authority to reassign top career employees like Clement. And Clement didn’t get to decide what was a vital area of policy or not—that is left to a Congress that writes laws, and the elected and appointed officials of the executive branch that administers those laws. His complaint nonetheless inspired eight Senate Democrats to demand an Interior inspector general report. Notably, that 2018 report did not find evidence of Clement’s charges of retaliation; as then–Deputy Interior Secretary David Bernhardt noted, the department’s actions were entirely “lawful.” Clement in the fall of 2017 would resign, with a much-publicized letter to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke that made clear his complaint had always been about politics: “Secretary Zinke, your agenda profoundly undermines the [Department of Interior] mission and betrays the American people.”
Clement would go on to take a job—surprise—at the uber-left Union of Concerned Scientists.
In December, these acts of defiance led The Atlantic to declare 2017 the “Year of the Civil Servant.” The article hailed the bureaucracy for toiling through “the president’s chaotic first year in office,” and continuing “the essential work of administering federal programs.” It then congratulated those who had undercut or defied the administration’s agenda: “They’ve also influenced the direction of government in 2017 in subtle, but crucial, ways: by containing some of the excesses of a new administration and by pushing the White House toward sounder policy outcomes.” It saluted those who had fought against an administration that had made it “nearly impossible” for them to “do their jobs.”
There is nothing impossible about showing up for work and implementing the policy agenda of those the voters elected to office. What’s an impossible situation, for the future of the country, are huge swathes of a federal workforce that believe they get to call the shots. By the end of 2018, Resistance bureaucrats had grown so brazen that they didn’t even blink about anonymously trashing superiors, and in the vilest language. A November 2018 story in the Daily Beast about the appointment of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general quoted a “trial attorney inside the [DOJ]” on his new boss: “He’s a f—g tool.”
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Resistance deep-staters aren’t alone in their anti-Trump work. They have a new, thriving, and growing outside network to help spread their leaks and tie up the internal works. Together, this triad of internal resisters, outside activists, and left-leaning press have pioneered a new form of the political takedown. It piles manufactured scandal upon manufactured scandal to create the pressure necessary to drive Trump cabinet heads out of their jobs.
Resistance (At All Costs) Page 15
