Trump DOJ Caves to Elon Musk With Wild Punishment for Tesla Protester

Attorney General Pam Bondi is seeking 20 years for a Colorado man who allegedly firebombed one of Elon Musk’s Tesla dealerships—in a blatantly political stunt to chase down dissidents.

Bondi announced Monday that federal prosecutors were seeking the decades-long sentence for 24-year-old Cooper Jo Frederick, who was arrested earlier this month on suspicion of throwing an incendiary device between two vehicles outside of a Tesla dealership in Loveland, Colorado, on March 7.

“All of these cases are a serious threat to public safety, therefore, there will be no negotiating,” Bondi said in a video statement posted to X, clearly intended to have a chilling effect on the nationwide spate of vandalism.

Bondi claimed that justice was coming for those involved in the so-called “wave of domestic terrorism” against Tesla, owned by the Trump administration’s resident billionaire bureaucrat.

This appears to be an extreme sentencing for a federal firebombing case. In April 2024, a Wisconsin man was sentenced to 90 months, or about seven and a half years, for attacking a building with a Molotov cocktail in response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Another man was sentenced to nine years for firebombing a Planned Parenthood and plotting other attacks in grievance of a race war.

Clearly, Bondi is waging a political battle as much as a legal one, despite her promises that she would not act merely as an operative for Donald Trump.

Musk has continued to complain about how much money Tesla is losing while he serves as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, which intends to slash government spending through mass layoffs and the gutting of essential services and agencies. DOGE is currently sifting through the Social Security Administration, creating widespread access issues for the millions of Americans who rely on it.

Tesla shares were down more than 7 percent Monday and have plummeted 35 percent so far this year.

Organizers held a Tesla Takedown Global Day of Action Saturday, and held rallies at over 200 Tesla locations, including close to 50 in California.

At least some Republicans are eyeing a special election in Florida as their party’s getaway car from Elon Musk.

Across the country and around the world, people are protesting at Tesla dealerships and destroying Musk’s vehicles in rejection of his politics. The billionaire’s outsize influence over President Donald Trump and his cavalier approach to gutting the federal government—combined with some jarring losses for Republicans in deep-Trump territory—has made Musk an increasingly polarizing figure in Washington and has forced some Republicans to sour on the Musk connection.

At least one GOP lawmaker told Politico that an “April 1st massacre” would be a “beautiful thing,” and would awaken other Republican lawmakers to Musk’s damaging political affiliation.

“There will be 26 or so people watching Tuesday, and they’ll decide how they want to be part of the team going forward,” the unidentified House Republican said, referring to more than a couple dozen endangered GOP lawmakers.

That’s partly because Musk routinely distributes “wrong” information about government spending and forthcoming cuts, angering their local constituents.

“Elon’s work needs to wrap up, and he needs to exit stage left,” another House Republican told Politico.

The Republican candidate in one House race in deep-red Florida believes the election will be an indicator of Democratic rage against the federal administration, rather than a symbol of local conservative ire. State Senator Randy Fine is up against Josh Weil, an Orlando-area teacher.

“If you polled the district, you would find exactly the same sentiment about Donald Trump today as last November,” Fine—who is currently neck and neck with Weil in the Trump stronghold—told Politico Monday. “But what we need to take from it is the rage the Democrats feel.”

“We have to make our people understand that Donald Trump being president does not solve all of our problems, he needs a Congress to be behind him,” Fine said.

The Trump administration has admitted that it mistakenly deported a man to a notorious prison in El Salvador due to an “administrative error,” despite the government’s repeated insistence that there were no errors in their flight determinations.

A sworn statement filed late Tuesday from a top Immigration and Customs official said that the removal of Kilmer Armado Abrego Garcia, a Salvadorean national, had been the result of an “administrative error.”

In 2019, Abrego Garcia was arrested, and although he was not charged with anything, he was served a notice to appear at removal proceedings. At the time, Abrego Garcia was denied bond because a confidential informant advised that he was a member of MS-13, according to the filing. No actual evidence of Abrego Garcia’s gang membership was provided. He was not, as Vice President JD Vance suggested on X, a “convicted” member of MS-13.

Abrego Garcia then filed an I-589 application for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the United Nations Convention Against Torture. He had come to the U.S. in 2011, fleeing threats of gang violence at the age of 16, according to The Atlantic.

Although he was found to be removable, the immigration judge granted him a “withholding of removal,” a protected legal status meaning he could not be deported to El Salvador, where he would likely become a target for gang violence.

Abrego Garcia was released from custody and has been living in Maryland with his wife and 5-year-old child, who is disabled. He and his wife work full-time to support their family.

Robert Cerna, an acting field office director at the Harlingnen Field Office in Texas, where the flights ferrying 261 alleged gang members to El Salvador were staged, said in a statement that Abrego Garcia should not have been included in the flight manifest and that ICE was well aware of the hold on his removal, as it was referred to on internal forms.

Still, Abrego Garcia was included as an “alternate” for removal, Cerna said. “As others were removed from the flight for various reasons, he moved up the list and was assigned to the flight. The manifest did not indicate that Abrego Garcia should not be removed.”

“Through administrative error, Abrego-Garcia was removed from the United States to El Salvador. This was an oversight, and the removal was carried out in good faith based on the existence of a final order of removal and Abrego-Garcia’s purported membership in MS-13.”

A judge denied his family’s request for an injunction because the U.S. no longer has custody of Abrego Garcia, who now wrongfully sits in Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, a Salvadoran prison notorious for human rights abuses.

Vance went on the defensive Tuesday morning, repeatedly claiming in posts on X that an immigration judge had determined that Abrego Garcia was a gang member, but again he got his facts wrong.

“In 2019, an Immigration Judge (under the Biden administration) determined that the deported man was, in fact, a member of the MS-13 gang,” Vance wrote, apparently forgetting that Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, was president from 2016 to 2021.

“He also apparently had multiple traffic violations for which he failed to appear in court. A real winner,” Vance continued, as if that somehow made Abrego Garcia a worthy candidate for torture and gang violence.

Elon Musk and DOGE just soft-fired everyone at the federal agency that supports local libraries and museums nationwide. 

All 70 Institute of Museum and Library Services employees were sent an email on Monday placing them on an immediate paid administrative leave, according to the American Federation of Government Employees union. 

This comes just two weeks after President Trump signed an executive order calling for IMLS to be shut down, and days after DOGE operatives infiltrated the IMLS facility while purging its leadership. 

“Earlier today, the Institute of Museum and Library Services notified the entire staff that they are being placed on administrative leave immediately. The notification followed a brief meeting between DOGE staff and IMLS leadership,” a statement from AFGE  read. “Employees were required to turn in all government property prior to exiting the building, and email accounts are being disabled today. Museums and libraries will no longer be able to contact IMLS staff for updates about the funding they rely upon.”

The IMLS has a $313 million annual budget and distributes taxpayer money to museums and libraries across the country. Its stated goal is to “advance, support, and empower America’s museums, libraries, and related organizations through grantmaking, research, and policy development.”

“In the absence of staff, all work processing 2025 applications has ended,” AFGE noted. “The status of previously awarded grants is unclear. Without staff to administer the programs, it is likely that most grants will be terminated.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s reckless treatment of classified information has left the majority of voters thinking that he should resign, according to a poll published Monday.

A poll by J.L. Partners for the Daily Mail found that 54 percent of voters believed that Hegseth should resign over his involvement in the recent Signalgate scandal.

While all of the senior Trump officials who were members in the nonsecure group chat failed to notice the presence of Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, as they discussed a strike against the Houthis, it was Hegseth alone who sent details about the timing of the attacks—definitionally classified information.

Twenty-four percent of respondents said they weren’t sure what he should do, while only 22 percent said he should remain in his post.

Republicans were slightly more likely to back Hegseth, but not by much. Only 38 percent said he should stay, but 33 percent said he should go. The rest were not sure. Meanwhile, 54 percent of independents said he should resign, while 22 said he should remain in office.

Respondents seemed slightly aggressive about Mike Waltz, Donald Trump’s national security adviser who mistakenly added Goldberg to the group chat. Forty-seven percent of respondents wanted Walz to resign, while only 21 percent said he should stay. Waltz has struggled to explain the immense gaffe, and most recently claimed that the editor’s number had simply been “sucked in” to his phone.

Although the Trump administration seems interested in sweeping the national security slipup under the rug, Republicans are increasingly primed to paint Hegseth as the major culprit in Signalgate.

One senior Republican official told Politico after Signalgate that “privately, there is a lot of concern about his judgment, more than with Waltz,” in Washington. The former Fox & Friends co-host’s judgment was previously questioned when allegations of sexual assault and excessive drinking were brought to light after he was tapped to lead the Pentagon.