Maybe he’s going to say he got railroaded:
A top official charged with overseeing the safety of U.S. railroads has resigned “effective immediately,” the Department of Transportation said Saturday after POLITICO raised questions about whether he had been simultaneously working as a public relations consultant for a sheriff’s department in Mississippi.
Heath Hall became the Federal Railroad Administration’s acting administrator in June but subsequently appeared on at least two occasions in Mississippi media reports as a spokesman for the Madison County sheriff, in a community where Hall has long run a public relations and political consulting firm. The firm continued to receive payments from the county for its services from July to December, despite his pledge in a federal ethics form that it would remain “dormant” while he worked at DOT.
A former FRA employee also told POLITICO this week that she had fielded at least three requests from a Mississippi TV journalist seeking to speak with Hall last summer — a period when Hall was in charge of an agency that oversees a multibillion-dollar freight rail industry and the safety of millions of train passengers.
“We were unaware of the information that is being reported but those allegations, if they are true, are troubling,” DOT spokeswoman Marianne McInerney said in a statement Saturday. She added, “Heath Hall has resigned his position at the Department effective immediately.”
Ironic that Hall apparently decided to catch the last train out of D.C. the same day as this Trump tweet:
Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused – life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 10, 2018
As the old saying goes, it’s not a witch hunt if you actually catch a witch, and it’s laughable to see Trump–the man who wanted to see the falsely accused Central Park Five executed–whining about due process. At this point, it’s fair to assume that there are only two types of Trump appointees: those who have already engaged in criminality, corruption or chicanery, and those who inevitably will.
The pro-Trump evangelicals will continue to support this unholy administration, of course. They’ve been with him since the genesis of his campaign, and no revelation will break their faith in him, so long as they can rejoice in our lamentations.
