https://www.dailykos.com/stories/20...-to-State-Department-purge-of-Obama-holdovers
Department of State Iran expert Sahar Nowrouzzadeh committed one unrecoverable sin in the course of her work during the Obama administration: she helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal. That apparently put her on the radar of the incoming Trump team along with conservative activists. Nowrouzzadeh, who joined the agency during the George W. Bush administration, was soon smeared in an article on the Conservative Review website as being an Obama loyalist.
Shortly thereafter, conservative extremists and incoming Trump officials started exploring whether she could be purged from the agency, writes Politico:
According to emails obtained by POLITICO, the agitators included former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who sent the article to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s chief of staff; and an official who falsely claimed in an email to top Tillerson aides that Nowrouzzadeh “was born in Iran” and that she had wept after Trump’s election.
The emails show that State Department and White House officials repeatedly shared such misleading information about Nowrouzzadeh, deriding her as an Obama cheerleader and strong advocate for the nuclear deal with Iran, which Trump had repeatedly denounced. Later, after Nowrouzzadeh was reassigned to another job, some State Department officials tried to mislead a POLITICO reporter about whether she’d completed her full tenure in Hook’s policy shop.
Nowrouzzadeh was just one victim of a Trump-inspired fever swamp environment that swept through the State Department, leaving a trail of career civil service casualties in its wake.
In one email, a staffer was described as “a leaker and a troublemaker,” while another was branded a “turncoat.”
Although career staffers generally observe an ethos of nonpartisanship, many Trump officials saw them as constituting a “deep state” cabal determined to sabotage the new president’s agenda. The emails also suggest that Nowrouzzadeh may have been targeted in part because of her ethnicity, which would be a violation of federal employment law.
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/20...-snag-there-s-no-one-to-negotiate-the-details
Trump's meeting with Kim Jong-un has a snag—there's no one to negotiate the details
Donald Trump shocked the world by immediately agreeing to a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on conditions set by North Korea. Not only that, Trump said that the meeting would be held “by May,” providing only a few weeks to determine a US approach, set out goals and guidelines, prepare for negotiations, and take care of little details like where the meeting would be held, when it would occur, who else would attend, and how many slices of cake each leader receives.
Since that announcement, Trump’s surrogates have tried to walk his insta-agreement back considerably, suggesting that there were unstated prerequisites to the meeting—though not definitively enough to explain what those prerequisites might be. And there’s something else that could be pushing out that timeline.
Mr. Trump’s sudden ousting on Tuesday of Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson could delay critical elements of the planning until the Senate confirms his successor, Mike Pompeo.
It’s by no means evident that Mike Pompeo will sail right through the Senate confirmation. Pompeo was given rapid pass to the CIA just days after the inauguration, but he was a sitting congressman and those were the heady “maybe Trump won’t be that bad” days. The idea that Trump wants Pompeo at State so that he can destroy the agency even more quickly than Rex Tillerson may hold less appeal on this round.
Mr. Pompeo will not be able to establish contact with the South Korean foreign minister, let alone his North Korean counterpart, until the Senate approves his nomination — a process that officials on Capitol Hill said could take several weeks. The White House has not yet even completed the paperwork to begin that process, the officials said.
Department of State Iran expert Sahar Nowrouzzadeh committed one unrecoverable sin in the course of her work during the Obama administration: she helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal. That apparently put her on the radar of the incoming Trump team along with conservative activists. Nowrouzzadeh, who joined the agency during the George W. Bush administration, was soon smeared in an article on the Conservative Review website as being an Obama loyalist.
Shortly thereafter, conservative extremists and incoming Trump officials started exploring whether she could be purged from the agency, writes Politico:
According to emails obtained by POLITICO, the agitators included former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who sent the article to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s chief of staff; and an official who falsely claimed in an email to top Tillerson aides that Nowrouzzadeh “was born in Iran” and that she had wept after Trump’s election.
The emails show that State Department and White House officials repeatedly shared such misleading information about Nowrouzzadeh, deriding her as an Obama cheerleader and strong advocate for the nuclear deal with Iran, which Trump had repeatedly denounced. Later, after Nowrouzzadeh was reassigned to another job, some State Department officials tried to mislead a POLITICO reporter about whether she’d completed her full tenure in Hook’s policy shop.
Nowrouzzadeh was just one victim of a Trump-inspired fever swamp environment that swept through the State Department, leaving a trail of career civil service casualties in its wake.
In one email, a staffer was described as “a leaker and a troublemaker,” while another was branded a “turncoat.”
Although career staffers generally observe an ethos of nonpartisanship, many Trump officials saw them as constituting a “deep state” cabal determined to sabotage the new president’s agenda. The emails also suggest that Nowrouzzadeh may have been targeted in part because of her ethnicity, which would be a violation of federal employment law.
......................
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/20...-snag-there-s-no-one-to-negotiate-the-details
Trump's meeting with Kim Jong-un has a snag—there's no one to negotiate the details
Donald Trump shocked the world by immediately agreeing to a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on conditions set by North Korea. Not only that, Trump said that the meeting would be held “by May,” providing only a few weeks to determine a US approach, set out goals and guidelines, prepare for negotiations, and take care of little details like where the meeting would be held, when it would occur, who else would attend, and how many slices of cake each leader receives.
Since that announcement, Trump’s surrogates have tried to walk his insta-agreement back considerably, suggesting that there were unstated prerequisites to the meeting—though not definitively enough to explain what those prerequisites might be. And there’s something else that could be pushing out that timeline.
Mr. Trump’s sudden ousting on Tuesday of Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson could delay critical elements of the planning until the Senate confirms his successor, Mike Pompeo.
It’s by no means evident that Mike Pompeo will sail right through the Senate confirmation. Pompeo was given rapid pass to the CIA just days after the inauguration, but he was a sitting congressman and those were the heady “maybe Trump won’t be that bad” days. The idea that Trump wants Pompeo at State so that he can destroy the agency even more quickly than Rex Tillerson may hold less appeal on this round.
Mr. Pompeo will not be able to establish contact with the South Korean foreign minister, let alone his North Korean counterpart, until the Senate approves his nomination — a process that officials on Capitol Hill said could take several weeks. The White House has not yet even completed the paperwork to begin that process, the officials said.
