Fmr. Federal Prosecutor: It Is a ‘Constitutional Violation’ to Be Fired Because of Personal Political Patronage

EXCERPT:

DONOVAN: "Yeah. The gist of their argument, it sort of mischaracterizes our point and the points that we made in our filings, which are chiefly that the administration, through Patel and in a pattern through other administration officials, are basically submitting what should be a career FBI employees to loyalty tests. And those loyalty tests can take different forms. But when there is political influence and you are basically being judged for your personal political patronage, we are saying that it is a constitutional violation to be fired in that way. And by the way, that also interacts with the Article 2 argument that we just discussed. The way that the government is wielding it, it would be so in a way that would seem to supersede the rest of the Constitution, including Article 1, which allows Congress to create removal protection laws, and the First Amendment, as we just discussed, and the Fifth Amendment right to due process. So the Article 2 argument, we think, is also neutralized by our plaintiff's First Amendment rights."