Trump Wants To Install His Personal Lawyers In Top DOJ Posts

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM's Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version .

DOJ's Darkest Era Matt Gaetz as attorney general.

Todd Blanche, Trump's personal attorney, as deputy attorney general , the second in command who runs the Justice Department on a day-to-day basis.

Emil Bove, another of Trump's personal lawyers, installed as No. 3.

It is a crippling mix of incompetence, disregard for the rule of law, conflicts of interest, and divided loyalties that would send the Justice Department down a flawed and uncertain course seen perhaps only once before, in the darkest days of Watergate.

What Will Become Of The Gaetz Ethics Report? The House Ethics Committee was supposed to meet privately this morning, but that meeting has reportedly now been cancelled . It leaves in further doubt whether the committee's completed report on now-former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and his alleged sexual misconduct will be released either publicly or to senators considering his nomination to be attorney general.

Meanwhile, ABC News reports that the underage woman with whom Gaetz allegedly had sex testified to the House Ethics Committee she was 17 years old when their encounter happened.

Hegseth Had Previous Sexual Assault Allegation The nomination of Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense already faced all kinds of problems , but Vanity Fair's Gabe Sherman reports that the Trump transition team was caught off guard by an allegation of sexual assault arising from a 2017 incident in Monterey, California:

According to the transition source, the allegation is serious enough that Wiles and Trump's lawyers spoke to Hegseth about it on Thursday. A source with knowledge of the meeting said that Hegseth said the allegation stemmed from a consensual encounter and characterized the episode as he-said, she-said.

On Thursday evening, Hegseth's lawyer Timothy Parlatore said: "This allegation was already investigated by the Monterey police department and they found no evidence for it."

The Trump II Clown Show Continues ... Robert F. Kennedy Jr : secretary of Health and Human Services, which includes the CDC, NIH, FDA,

Former SEC chairman Jay Clayton : U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York

Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND): Interior secretary

Fun Times TPM's Josh Kovensky : Friend of Don Jr.'s Who Hawks Trump Merch To Run White House Personnel Office

Don't Forget About Tulsi Gabbard WSJ : "President-elect Donald Trump's pick to lead powerful U.S. spy agencies has often seemed to embrace Washington's adversaries and questioned key American intelligence judgments, raising alarm among veteran intelligence officials and the wider national-security establishment."

Let's Not Fool Ourselves About Senate Republicans Is the Gaetz nomination in real trouble? Perhaps:

WSJ : Gaetz Nomination Seen as Doomed by Some Senate Republicans

WaPo : Republican senators say Matt Gaetz has 'steep' climb to nomination

But take this reporting from CBS News' Roberta Costa :

What I'm hearing privately from a few key GOP senators: yes, they'd prefer to not have a messy fight over Gaetz. Not their favorite. But they also don't have a lot of energy for pushing back. Trump runs the show, they say. If Gaetz can reassure them, they're open to backing him.

Low energy! It suggests that spending the next three months on pins and needles over whether the Republican-controlled Senate will block any of Donald Trump's nominees for his new administration seems like misspent energy on a fool's errand. That's true not only because GOP senators are not eager to have a showdown with Trump, but because there's no indication that Trump's replacements for any failed nominations will be much better.

Quote Of The Day Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), to fellow senators: "Vote with President Trump, this is the last chance we're going to have to save this country, and if you want to get in the way, fine, but we're going to try to get you out of the Senate, too, if you do that."

More Low Energy Deference To Trump In a first, two federal judges in DC delayed key deadlines in Jan. 6 cases in anticipation that Trump may pardon the defendants. The decisions amounted to declaring "Why bother?" even as other federal judges have declined to derail cases on the basis of speculation and conjecture about what Trump will do. How long will the two judges who ordered delays wait to see what Trump does?

This come against the back drop of attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz doing as much as anyone to rewrite the history of Jan. 6 .

Elon Musk Watch One of the most important stories to track in the Trump II presidency will be whether corporate America holds the line, which it largely did in his first term, or begins to collapse into crony capitalism. Even before Trump's win, Elon Musk foreshadowed an erosion into corruption, favoritism, and pay-to-play:

NYT : Elon Musk Met With Iran's U.N. Ambassador, Iranian Officials Say

Politico : Musk's sway over Trump could devastate electric vehicles — except his own

NYT: Elon Musk Helped Elect Trump. What Does He Expect in Return?

GREAT READ M. Gessen :

For those bewildered by why so many Americans apparently voted against the values of liberal democracy, Balint Magyar has a useful formulation. "Liberal democracy," he says, "offers moral constraints without problem-solving" — a lot of rules, not a lot of change — while "populism offers problem-solving without moral constraints." Magyar, a scholar of autocracy, isn't interested in calling Donald Trump a fascist. He sees the president-elect's appeal in terms of something more primal: "Trump promises that you don't have to think about other people."

No Joke WaPo : Go bags, passports, foreign assets: Preparing to be a target of Trump's revenge

Makes You Want To Weep The lead paragraph in this Politico story just flipped political journalism's script on the economy, without batting an eye: "Joe Biden and Kamala Harris could not sell voters on the strength of the economy. Now, Donald Trump is poised to enter the White House with booming markets and solid growth. Expect him to reap the political rewards."

PA-Sen: An automatic recount was triggered , with Sen. Bob Casey (D) trailing Dave McCormick (R) by fewer than 25,000 votes statewide.

AZ-Sen: GOP nominee Kari Lake is still not conceding that she lost to Rep. Ruben Gallego (D).

WI-Sen: GOP nominee Eric Hovde still hasn't conceded to Sen. Tammy Baldwin and is considering seeking a recount.

WaPo : Inside the Republican false-flag effort to turn off Kamala Harris voters

You Can't Make This Up The Onion bought Alex Jones' InfoWars out of bankruptcy and almost immediately shut down the conspiracist website. The proceeds of the auction sale go to the families of the Sandy Hook victims who to satisfy their $1.5 billion judgment against Jones for claiming the school shooting was a hoax.