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Bill Barr Removes Career Justice Dept National Security Official Right Before Election
This is the biggest story of last week that ABSOLUTELY NO ONE COVERED:
Current and former national security officials are raising concerns over Attorney General William Barr's recent decision to remove the head of a Justice Department office that helps ensure federal counterterrorism and counterintelligence activities are legal – and replace him with a political appointee with relatively limited experience.
For much of the past decade, that little-known office has been led by Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brad Wiegmann, a 23-year career public servant, not a political appointee. But two weeks ago, Wiegmann, 54, was told he is being reassigned and replaced with a political appointee....
Replacing substantive expertise and exceptional public servants with partisan credentials right before an election is bad news for our Justice Department.
The office shapes government efforts by ensuring that new policies and executive actions don't violate federal law.
Though a relatively small unit of fewer than two dozen attorneys, the Office of Law and Policy participates in almost every National Security Council meeting, works with congressional staff to draft new legislation, and conducts oversight of the FBI's intelligence-gathering activities.
Now the office is being steered by a political appointee with power to potentially influence decisions over national security policy, especially debates over "what we will and won't do overseas and at home," including in terms of secret surveillance, and when "it is and isn't appropriate" for the Justice Department to tell the public about election interference.
That seems really bad. Hmmm... but why now? Oh.
The timing of the personnel change – coming just two months before the U.S. presidential election, and in the midst of a battle against domestic terrorism and foreign interference in the election – has worried current and former members of the national security community.
Past chiefs of the office have served as political appointees, while others – like Wiegmann – served as career officials, so, "It would not have been that unusual early in an administration to place a political [appointee] in that policy role, but to do that now is very unusual," one current U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.