So… Trumplethinskin is apparently using his own private security force…

President-elect Donald Trump doesn’t seem to tire of setting new precedents. Despite being provided with a newly bolstered Secret Service detail after the election, the president-elect has retained his own private security and intelligence force, breaking with tradition and creating operational and potentially legal problems.

That article was written on January 20th. On February 3rd, we found out that Trumpligula fired Secret Service managers and had them escorted from White House grounds:

At least two manager level Secret Service officials were fired and escorted from the White House complex, according to a report by reporter Steve Clemons.

The Secret Service has been accused of slow-walking an investigation of an agent based in Denver who publicly stated she would not ‘take a bullet’ for President Donald Trump.

First off, let me just that I wholly and completely support that SS Agent who said she would not take a bullet for the Undead Tangerine. In her position, I wouldn’t take a bullet for him, either.

Now, to be entirely fair, that report saying that Secret Service managers have been fired, and the whole Secret Service program is being gutted, has been confirmed as inaccurate. Here’s the original report, with all updates, and below are the tweets correcting the inaccuracy, from the report…

I have confirmed that the Chief of Information Security at White House forced to resign. Was error in tagging him as Secret Service. 1/2

— Steve Clemons (@SCClemons) February 3, 2017

Others – not sure how many – attached to White House security/cyber security/info security – resigned last night & escorted out of EEOB

— Steve Clemons (@SCClemons) February 3, 2017

It is the CISO function, at minimum, in WH that saw forced resignations last night. These folks work w/@SecretService but not of Secret Svc

— Steve Clemons (@SCClemons) February 3, 2017

So what’s happening with the Secret Service is a tiny bit of a mystery at the moment, but the issue we have is Agent Orange’s insistence on using his own private security force. From the article I linked to and quoted from at the start of this post…

The retention of a private force, in any form, raises several operational and legal issues. A private security and intelligence force would not have to abide by the constraints and obligations of the Secret Service. There would be no transparency in how they were vetted, and there would be no committee overseeing them. If both Secret Service personnel and private bodyguards found themselves protecting the president at events outside the White House, it’s not clear how would they coordinate.

According to my sources, no previous president or president-elect has ever had private security. The last time a president tried to have a private, parallel intelligence staff was the case of Nixon’s plumbers. That did not end well. It was a major element in Nixon’s impeachment.

“The idea of Trump keeping his own private security force in some form, while being President, is both unprecedented and a bad idea,” says Peter Singer of the New America Foundation. Singer, who’s written extensively on privatization of national security functions, thinks a private force could be potentially used to bypass institutional and legal constraints. “These roles are best performed by law enforcement professionals responsible to the public and under public oversight.”

Trump’s private security and intelligence forces have been aggressive at sniffing out protesters at rallies and manhandling them in ways that the Secret Service simply does not do. In the CNN interview, Clancy made clear that that if a protester is removed, that’s a decision made by Trump’s security, not the Secret Service, who will only intervene when there is a direct physical threat to the president.

Trump’s security has a long record of forcefully ejecting protesters, sometimes responding to cues from Trump himself. With Schiller at its head, the private security force and the Trump campaign face three pending lawsuits for inciting violence and failing to provide adequate security. This is on top of allegations of undue force and racial profiling by protesters.

So… so far, they’ve been used as a way to bully and intimidate protesters. This is not okay. The first amendment guarantees us a right to protest. Sad Sack Trumpgee doesn’t seem to understand that he works for us. We can fire him, and everyone with him, if we want to. That’s what the Constitution guarantees…

Right?

Well… that’s the scary thing. As conspiratorial and overly-cynical and perhaps even unrealistic as it sounds, there’s a part of me that’s afraid that the electoral college just elected our last President… at least for a long time. The more I read about what he’s doing, the more scared I am. He’s rolling, or at least trying to roll, literally everything back. I’m already waiting for him to attack states where marijuana has been legalized, attack the rights LGBTQ people have gained, legally declare Black Lives Matter a terrorist group, and so on.

So…