Donald Trump’s last minute rearranging of the deck chairs

| 8:00 pm EST January 20, 2021
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In the waning days of this national carnage known as the Trump Administration, we saw a rash of last-minute personnel moves designed to embed political operatives in government positions. The latest example of this is the forced installment of Michael Ellis as the NSA General Counsel. Here’s why it doesn’t matter.

To work for Trump, one must have no principles and questionable intelligence. Michael Ellis proved he is all of this when he worked for toadie Devin Nunes, and again when he refused to appear before Congress to testify when he worked on the NSC.

People with no integrity are easy to remove from government. As a civil servant, Ellis must appear before Congress if he is summoned to testify about his work, or face the consequences. His testimony will either be damning or perjurous. Ellis is free to choose the form of his own destruction, and little more.

Whenever Trump claimed executive authority to remove federal officials at will, he also claimed the same authority for Biden to restore them. Where he has tried to embed thugs in career government positions, they will be bound by ethics rules or be terminated. And under the Biden administration, we fully expect these rules to be enforced.

The same holds for those miserable fools who accepted pardons. Future crimes cannot be pardoned. Are we to believe that this parade of career criminals is going to be able to keep their noses clean for even 15 minutes?

So have faith, good people. No matter how he rearranges the deck chairs in these final hours, the ship of fools is going down.