03-22-2025, 12:35 PM
…and the Trump administration knew it too (duh!)
Propublica:
Anyone with a brain knew this was the case. A bunch of 19 year old computer-nerd dropouts can’t do a performance review of thousands and thousands of employees in days. It’s farcical on its face.
And it was untrue:
Two things: unless the court system completely collapses, even as probationary employees, these people seem to have a pretty slam-dunk case, which means they will either have to be rehired, or compensated for lost wages, or both. This brain-dead approach is going to cost us more tax money, not save it.
Secondly, we ought to consider sending some love (and maybe $, which I did) toward ProPublica (with which I have no connection). With the major networks news cowed (or actively cheering Trump), PP is one of a very few news/investigatory organizations I’ve seen that has the guts to find, and tell us, the truth.
Propublica:
On Feb. 20, nearly 7,000 probationary employees at the Internal Revenue Service began receiving an unsigned letter telling them that they had been fired for poor performance.
Trump administration lawyers insist that the IRS and other federal agencies have acted within their authority when they ordered waves of mass terminations since Trump took office. But according to previously unreported emails obtained by ProPublica, a top lawyer at the IRS warned administration officials that the performance-related language in his agency’s termination letter was “a false statement” that amounted to “fraud” if the agency kept the language in the letter.
…Joseph Rillotta, a senior IRS lawyer, wrote that “no one” at the IRS had taken into account the performance of the probationary workers set to be fired. Rillotta urged that the language be struck from the draft termination letter.
Anyone with a brain knew this was the case. A bunch of 19 year old computer-nerd dropouts can’t do a performance review of thousands and thousands of employees in days. It’s farcical on its face.
No one appeared to respond to Rillotta’s first email. In a follow-up email, he said he was “pleading with you to remove the clause,” adding: “It is not an immaterial false statement, because it is designed to improve the government’s posture in litigation (to the detriment of the employees that we are terminating today).”
Because it was not true, he wrote, “That renders it, as I see it, an anticipatory fraud…
Rillotta was again ignored.
And it was untrue:
In fact, many of the employees had received laudatory reviews with no hint of any concerns.
Two things: unless the court system completely collapses, even as probationary employees, these people seem to have a pretty slam-dunk case, which means they will either have to be rehired, or compensated for lost wages, or both. This brain-dead approach is going to cost us more tax money, not save it.
Secondly, we ought to consider sending some love (and maybe $, which I did) toward ProPublica (with which I have no connection). With the major networks news cowed (or actively cheering Trump), PP is one of a very few news/investigatory organizations I’ve seen that has the guts to find, and tell us, the truth.