Henchmen violating privacy laws is just as illegal as of they were murdering people in the street. There's no "because your boss is a clown" exception.
Political appointees including the IRS commissioner have never had direct access to the system before given its sensitivity. There are likely legal ramifications that will be worked through the courts on this.
Do you have sources on leftist administrations doxing people in the last decade? If not, and it is just randos who are on the left, then you aren't making a valid comparison. Did those leftists have access to every person's information in the way that Musk does?
This is a false equivalency I've been seeing for a very long time: Someone on the right claims that the left is just as extreme as the right (usually they're claiming the left is more extreme), when the people they are referring to on the left are nobodies with little to no political influence or power, whereas on the right the extremists run the entire party and currently control the entire government. It isn't a valid comparison.
There will always be nuts in any large enough group, the difference is that the left doesn't give them outsized power, whereas the right elects them as congresspeople and president.
Nice "whataboutism". We also had right wingers doxxing and cancelling pro-palestine protestors very recently.
If it was wrong for "leftists" to do something, that makes it morally correct for right wingers to do it? Do no t right wingers have moral agency of their own?
Beyond all that, these "leftists" weren't the US government, they did not have historical employment and income and related data, and they didn't have the capability of organizing some kind of large scale smear campaign with other arms of the government.
This is inevitable. US attorneys are being given orders inconsistent with the law and DOJ rules. US attorneys are resigning instead, Democrat and Republican. Eventually the only people left are those willing to follow Trump's orders rather than the law.
The federal government is nearing a state of abeyance. It's run by a mafia. Why wouldn't they come for judges next?
That article says that they are talking about introducing articles of impeachment, which have almost zero chance of succeeding. So, no, not "already", and not in a way that is likely to do anything.
That's more "performative bloviation" than anything of substance.
The word "illegal" has no meaning in this context. It's like telling the fox it is not allowed to enter the henhouse after handing it over the keys and the deed.
So the White House (where doge sits) has direct access to anyone’s tax returns. I assume this can be used to blackmail or threaten anyone they don’t like?
Imagine the outcry if the Biden White House had tried to do this, especially because Trump has never (to this day!) posted his tax returns..
Musk could use this to get Trump's tax returns. That could be blackmail material on Trump. (And the Supreme Court, in the same way.) He could leverage that into getting an even freer hand to do whatever he wants.
Now who's ruling the country? People talked about "President Musk", but that was just sarcasm (we think). But he could use this to really be "the power behind the throne", with money, media clout, and blackmail material on all the office holders.
Is that just tinfoil-hat level paranoia? Or is it what's really going on? (Or, between the two, is it not necessarily what's going on, but still a real concern?)
When Trump illegally "paused" funding for electric vehicle charging networks, I wondered if it was (among other possibilities) an attempt to get some extortion leverage over Musk.
The inner dynamics must be fascinating, even without one of Musk's broodlings telling Trump to shush his mouth on TV.
Blackmailing someone who controls the DOJ is a very bad idea. That one. Secondly, you cannot blackmail Trump with this. His cult followers just shrug because, you know - her emails.
Musk... Has probably cooked his brain on a combination of stimulants and ketamine and Neo-Nazi Twitter. He's living on entirely frictionless life because of his money and thinks his scions will be the princes of Mars.
I do. I don't even fault Trump for lying anymore; he's famous for reneging on his word. I think the media in their quest for "objectiveness" seem to have given up on object permanence. "Surely the leopards with their history of eating faces and Eating Faces 2025 platform would never eat faces, they've given me, a very special boy, their word!"
Today is a very good time to file a tax return filing extension (Form 4068) giving the likely compromising of our taxpayer data and it's also a very good time to contact your state Attorney General and your members of Congress on this ongoing crisis.
>”A Trump administration official said DOGE personnel needed IDRS access because DOGE staff are working to “eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, and improve government performance to better serve the people.”
My bet is that these people think they can feed all this data to a magic AI and presto, out comes a list of “waste, fraud, and abuse.” Otherwise you’d need trained auditors, which the IRS already has.
What a shit show.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/former-i...