Chicago FBI Head Ousted; Official Account Claims He Wasn’t ‘On Board’ With Trump

Good morning! For the next few months (at least), I’m going to be posting a few stories every morning that TPM reporters are closely tracking. We’ll still be doing Morning Memo, our flagship daily newsletter, too. While Morning Memo captures all the stories you need to know, the yet-to-be-named thing you’re reading here will focus in on a couple of stories that TPM reporters are following — and, likely, reporting on — closely (as well as a few other odds and ends that captured my attention). We hope to make this briefing an email at some point in August. For now we’re doing a kind of soft launch. Let me know what you think of these little dispatches. I’m very curious if they’re useful for TPM members — or for anyone else. (But hey, if you’re not a member, please become a member! We need those memberships to keep doing what we do.) Chicago Special Agent-in-Charge Ousted The head of the FBI’s field office is leaving his job under eyebrow-raising circumstances. “[O]ur recent past has challenged us in more ways than most of us could have ever imagined,” Special Agent-In-Charge Douglas DePodesta wrote in a farewell note to staff, obtained by various news outlets. “I’ve never backed down from a fight, as long as it meant our personnel could continue serving the FBI’s mission. “Unfortunately,” DePodesta continued, “that has proven unpopular over time and my departure is a consequence of that.” While it’s unclear exactly what DePodesta was referring to, an official FBI account had this to say: - DePodesta’s departure comes less than a year after a spectacular immigration crackdown, Operation Midway Blitz, in Chicago, which saw anti-ICE protesters being indicted in cases that quickly collapsed. One — the Broadview Six case — involved prosecutorial misconduct so egregious that the U.S. attorney for Illinois, Andrew Boutros, now claims to be reviewing more than 1,000 other cases. TPM is following that closely. - Boutros suggested Thursday he was surprised by DePodesta’s departure, and claimed they worked together to keep Operation Midway Blitz from being even worse. “We did a lot to de-escalate the situation and there’s a reason why Operation Midway Blitz, which I don’t want to really make this about, but the reason why in Chicago it didn’t turn into what happened, frankly, in a place like Minnesota and it was because of all the close work behind the scenes,” he told local outlets. - This also comes as the FBI, at Patel’s direction, is surging personnel to dig up anything in the wake of the raid on the Fulton County Election Hub that may substantiate Donald Trump’s baseless claims about his 2020 defeat. The Alito Thing So, will Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito be resigning at some point this summer? Speculation, of course, abounds. There are the things we’ve known for awhile now: he has a book release planned this fall; his wife has spoken about her hope that he will retire soon so the couple can fly even more provocative flags. At the same time, “sources close” to Alito have repeatedly insisted to friendly reporters: he is not retiring. Unfortunately for all involved, the Nina Totenberg fiasco on Tuesday turbocharged the rumor mill. As NPR tells it, Totenberg had left the Supreme Court building, then heard from a bystander that an announcement was being made that had to do with retirement(s). She immediately assumed said announcement must be about Alito and called her editor, who published a story they had ready to go in the event Alito retires. That the story was already waiting in draft form is not unusual. News outlets prewrite tons of things; we, too, have various retirement stories and obituaries filed away for the moment they are needed. The real question is: why did Totenberg assume it was Alito based on information she got second hand. Why not Thomas? Or any of the other justices? Or someone else who works at the Court? Not a terribly safe thing to just assume! Despite her explanation, her decision to jump to a conclusion seems so risky, it’s hard not to conclude that she, a notoriously well-sourced reporter, had advanced knowledge of what already seemed at least somewhat likely: Alito plans to soon grant his wife’s wish. That’s exactly where speculation has gone. He’d, of course, also be doing the ultimate favor for Trump, who, should any justice retire, will get to nominate a (presumably much younger) successor to be confirmed just as the possibility of a Democratic-controlled Senate closes in. We’ll of course be keeping an eye on all of this, for better or worse, through the holiday weekend. Tabs Trump owns expectant parents by announcing that the Social Security Administration will for the rest of this year be issuing cards to newborns with the logo of his grifty Freedom 250 organization on them. Republicans fear that if the party loses the House or Senate in November, Trump will have yet another reason to badger them about the SAVE Act, NBC News reports. Silver Lining New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani will give a speech on July 4th. Ahead of it, the Times interviewed him about his thoughts on the 4th and America’s 250th anniversary, and he had this to say: “Patriotism is not pretending our country has no flaws. It is loving our country enough to fight for the fulfillment of its ideals. The freedoms we enjoy were not handed down; they were won. And we have many more to win.” I’m a fan of any effort to reclaim patriotism from the reactionaries. The story of our country is one of an experiment that’s never been completed. It was born imperfect and remains imperfect. Still, we now have 250 years of attempts to improve it, which feels worthy of acknowledgement and reflection. I wrote a year ago about my time working for political aide-turned-muckraking journalist Bill Moyers, who had recently passed away. He did a lot to shape my idea of our project here in America. So as we go into this holiday weekend, I’ll end with some words from him. “The eight-hour day, the minimum wage, the conservation of natural resources and the protection of our air, water, and land, women’s rights and civil rights, free trade unions, Social Security and a civil service based on merit — all these were launched as citizen’s movements and won the endorsement of the political class only after long struggles and in the face of bitter opposition and sneering attacks.” “Civilization happens because we don’t leave things to other people. What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it — as if the cause depends on you, because it does.”