Chad Wolf is stepping down w barely a week left in Trump’s term. For many months Wolf’s been dogged by legal questions (& court judgments) abt how he was serving illegitimately as acting DHS sec’y. How will he be remembered in the post? 1/
He’ll go down as a Trump shill who did the bidding of the White House at the very real cost of inflicting permanent damage on DHS as an institution. His handling of protests this past summer was militant and widely decried by his Republican & Democratic predecessors. 2/
DHS agents were deployed in DC to crack down on peaceable BLM protestors. They were sent to other major cities (NYC, Philly) to police crowds. In Portland, Wolf personally riled up his agents beforehand in what one former official described to me as a “pep rally.” 3/
As one former senior DHS official told me at the time, re: Wolf: “The nightly disturbances in Portland were not national news until now. Dept leadership is putting officers in a very difficult position by not explaining what they’re doing and why...4/
“...what are they doing pulling people into minivans rented from the Portland airport? How does protecting federal property become pepper-spraying and batoning people?” 5/
He sent DHS personnel into sanctuary cities as a show of force & intimidation. And all thru the Presidential campaign, DHS put up billboards with photos of “violent immigrant offenders” in swing states and senior personnel gave press conferences championing Trump’s toughness. 6/
The timing of his resignation is telling. It comes after an attack on the Capitol incited by Trump, whom Wolf *loyally* served during a time when most other people at DHS were jumping ship. And it comes before he could work on security for the Biden inauguration. End/
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