Sep 21, 2023

He Didn't See It Coming

     From this blog on July 9, 2021:

President Fires Saul And Black

      With no fanfare, the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice issued an opinion yesterday that the President may remove the Commissioner of Social Security from office notwithstanding the statutory provisions limiting removal from office. An opinion had been requested by the Deputy Counsel for the President.

     Update: Senator Grassley has tweeted that he's hearing that the President may oust Andrew Saul from his position as Commissioner. Senator McConnell has retweeted this saying "httI agree with @ChuckGrassley. This removal would be an unprecedented and dangerous politicization of the Social Security Administration."

     Further update: I've received several reports that there was a blast e-mail to Social Security employees at 4:30 today from an Acting Commissioner of Social Security indicating that Saul and Black are gone.

     And another update: The Washington Post reports that Saul still believes he’s Commissioner and plans to report for work on Monday — remotely from his home in New York City. Who’s going to break it to him?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Still one of President Biden's finest moments. A true FAFO moment where the Lucia/Jarkesey and unitary executive crowd forgot that their asinine theories can be applied by Democratic presidents too (which is probably why they tried to overturn the election in the first place).

Anonymous said...

And things have improved so much since then, haven't they?

Anonymous said...

They most certainly have not.

Anonymous said...

Anyone else find it funny that he will just wfh? C'mon Man, that is just comedy gold right there.

Anonymous said...


Haven't heard much from ex commissioner Saul lately. . I did see a video of a talk he gave before some right wing group,
after his tenure was over.

He complained in his talk about SSA employees "abusing telework", He thinks employees who teleworked were "abusing" telework, , apparently just by not being in the office when they work.

He also said he could have legally fought his dismissal through the courts, but did not want to put his family through that.

Jim said...

Let's see, there was an outcry against the CFPB because the president could not fire the director outside of a limited set reasons that included “for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”.

Now there is an outcry that the president CAN fire the head of Social Security.

The common element is both these outcries are lead by Republicans. I am disgusted by them.

(Can't Republicans be similarly fired?)