Joe Yates
A judge has ruled in favor of a government watchdog whose job is to expose 'unethical and unlawful practises' federal employees, after President Donald Trump illegally fired him.
Hampton Dellinger was axed in his role as head of the Office of Special Counsel by Trump over email last month, as part of his and Elon Musk's ambition to streamline the US government through plans to axe thousands of jobs and drastically reduce the wage bill.
I should point out that the Tesla CEO, and Trump's 'first buddy', is heading up the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) - despite not being democratically voted in by the public.
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On Saturday (March 1) however, the pair hit a roadblock in the form of US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson who found that the president fired the well-respected attorney unlawfully.
“The Special Counsel’s job is to look into and expose unethical or unlawful practices directed at federal civil servants, and to help ensure that whistleblowers who disclose fraud, waste, and abuse on the part of government agencies can do so without suffering reprisals,” she wrote in her ruling.
“It would be ironic, to say the least, and inimical to the ends furthered by the statute if the Special Counsel himself could be chilled in his work by fear of arbitrary or partisan removal.”
Her decision is likely to set up a battle in front of the Supreme Court.
It comes as Musk's department sent an email last Saturday (February 22) to all federal workers asking for them to list five things they did last week or face the axe.
When thousands of staffers didn't comply, including FBI agents with the agency urging their workers to ignore the email, the SpaceX CEO fumed at their alleged 'incompetence' before setting another ultimatum.
"Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination," Musk tweeted.
However, according to specialist R. Scott Oswald, managing principal of The Employment Law Group, there are major issues with the tech-mogul's demands.
Explaining one of which, he said: "There are a number of different problems with the email itself. The primary problem with it is that it's coming from the Office of Personnel Management rather than the individual supervisory chain.
"So generally, federal government employees, like all employees, are required to follow instructions that their supervisors give, so long as those instructions are lawful and unequivocal, but they must come from somebody in the supervisory chain."