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Punch » Today, 2:49 am » wrote: ↑

Today, 2:49 am

A questionable move.

“The Intern in Charge”: Meet the 22-Year-Old Trump’s Team Picked to Lead Terrorism Prevention
(Full article at above link)

 When Thomas Fugate graduated from college last year with a degree in politics, he celebrated in a social media post about the exciting opportunities that lay beyond campus life in Texas. “Onward and upward!” he wrote, with an emoji of a rocket shooting into space. His career blastoff came quickly. A year after graduation, the 22-year-old with no apparent national security expertise is now a Department of Homeland Security official overseeing the government’s main hub for terrorism prevention, including an $18 million budget. The White House appointed Fugate, a former Trump campaign worker who interned at the hard-right Heritage Foundation, to a Homeland Security VP. Fugate’s appointment is the latest shock for an office that has been decimated since President Donald Trump returned to the White House and began remaking national security to give it a laser focus on immigration.
 
Typically, a candidate that green wouldn’t have gotten an interview for a junior position, much less be hired to run operations.  “Maybe he’s a wunderkind, or maybe he’s Doogie Howser" said one counterterrorism agent, clearly despondent about his new boss. In the past seven weeks, at least five high-profile targeted attacks have unfolded across the U.S., including a car bombing in California and the gunning down of two Israeli Embassy aides in Washington. Against this backdrop, current and former national security officials say, the Trump administration’s decision to shift counterterrorism resources to immigration and leave the violence-prevention portfolio to inexperienced appointees is “reckless.” “We’re entering very dangerous territory,” one longtime U.S. counterterrorism official said.

 ProPublica sent DHS a detailed list of questions about Fugate’s position, his lack of national security experience and the future of the department’s prevention work. A senior agency official replied with a statement saying only that Fugate’s duties were added to his role as an aide in an Immigration & Border Security office. ProPublica sought an interview with Fugate through DHS and the White House, but he was unavailable, because he was moving out of his parent's house.
A former Homeland Security official said the Fugate appointment “means that the department founded to prevent terrorism in the United States no longer prioritizes preventing terrorism in the United States.”