'Suddenly exposed' DOGE employees fear prosecution after Musk abandoned them
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OTOH, in practical terms, you can't have big fish without little fish supporting them, so if you drive up the perceived cost of the actions of the former, you make it harder for future instances of the latter even without the (obviously preferable) direct accountability, so its better than nothing.
It's also galling as it seems to be the opposite of the Nuremberg defense - employees can knowingly do illegal acts as long as their boss/commander wants them to. A complete lack of personal responsibility.
If Trump actually pardons them, and their crimes were exclusively federal, then none.
If Trump doesn't pardon them, or any state crimes were committed, then potentially some (though, for federal crimes, unless the Trump Justice Department actively prosecutes them, which seems improbable even in the absence of a pardon, that requires the crime have a sufficiently long statute of limitations to be prosecutable in a subsequent administration, and even if that is in 2029 there is only a short window for most federal crimes, which have a five year statute of limitations, and I would suspect there is going to be a big investigative and prosecutorial backlog to address at that time.)
They just knowingly broke the law. They are not saying "omg, I thought I am doing fully legal thing". They are saying "omg, the mafia boss does not have interest or power to protect me anymore after I broke the law for him". And they are saying it very very literally here.
Literally here:
> the man who had a direct line to Trump, who they believed could pick up the phone and secure a presidential pardon if the worst came.
This is not about "narrative changing". This is them working for crime boss, knowingly and now finding out crime boss don't care anymore.
For example:
> All the cut contracts and purported savings were triumphantly (if at times misleadingly and inaccurately) itemized on a new DOGE.gov website.
Yeah, they lied openly and brazenly in those numbers. They were not "at times misleading and inaccurate", that is making it sound much better then it was.
As they say right at the start of their "About Us", "POLITICO illuminates the forces shaping global power".
They dont just softball. They defend and literally go out of their way to imply false things - all to protect republicans.
It is very much one sided defense too.
From the linked Politico story.
This is just sad. I cannot begin to understand what motivates someone to do this. Sending people to the moon, curing cancer, sure. But sacrificing so much to fire people from a social media company?
They were the result of the democratic process the left claims we need to protect. Trump ran on cutting waste and fraud and corruption in government and DOGE was intended to do that.
* Illegally firing federal employees
* Canceling government contracts without authority
* Grossly violating privacy laws by accessing sensitive federal data
Those are just the things they've boasted about. I shudder to think what further crimes they've committed behind closed doors.
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