Losing My Perspicacity, December 2, 2025

One such apparent blunder occurred on Thursday when she was hit by an objection after attempting to question Carroll about her income from her Substack blog.

"Ms. Habba, this is Evidence 101," Kaplan told Habba.

Carroll's attorneys then had the next ten objections sustained as Habba tried to ask questions.

In its ruling, the three-judge panel, based in Philadelphia, affirmed an earlier ruling by a Federal District Court judge. The court said that the government’s tactics had violated the law as written and concluded that, overall, the Trump administration appeared to have become frustrated by legal and political barriers to placing its favored U.S. attorneys in charge.

The maneuvers undertaken to keep Ms. Habba in charge exemplified the difficulties the administration had faced, the judges wrote. And yet, they said, “the citizens of New Jersey and the loyal employees in the U.S. attorney’s office deserve some clarity and stability.”

At the White House on Monday, Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, read a statement that said Mr. Hegseth had authorized the Special Operations commander overseeing the attack, Adm. Frank M. Bradley, “to conduct these kinetic strikes.”

She said that Admiral Bradley had “worked well within his authority and the law directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated.”

According to five U.S. officials, who spoke separately and on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter that is under investigation, Mr. Hegseth, ahead of the Sept. 2 attack, ordered a strike that would kill the people on the boat and destroy the vessel and its purported cargo of drugs.

But, each official said, Mr. Hegseth’s directive did not specifically address what should happen if a first missile turned out not to fully accomplish all of those things. And, the officials said, his order was not a response to surveillance footage showing that at least two people on the boat survived the first blast.

Admiral Bradley ordered the initial missile strike and then several follow-up strikes that killed the initial survivors and sank the disabled boat. As that operation unfolded, they said, Mr. Hegseth did not give any further orders to him.

The halls of the Pentagon are apparently strewn with rakes these days, and Hegseth has managed to step on almost all of them, including security blunders, needless fights with the press, and envious, unmanly whining about the medals on the uniform of Senator Mark Kelly, a veteran of higher rank and far greater achievement than Hegseth himself. Like Trump, Hegseth thinks his job is to get even with people he views as enemies: When Hegseth pulled more than 800 senior officers into an auditorium to give them a long and pointless harangue, it was not only disrespectful; it was cringe-inducing, like watching the angriest kid in your high school come back 20 years later as the principal and unload his adolescent gripes on all the teachers in the staff lounge.

Now, however, Hegseth is in new and far more dangerous territory. The Washington Post reported last Friday that, back in September, Hegseth ordered the killing of the survivors of the first strike against what the administration says are terrorist-controlled drug boats. If this report is accurate, it means that Hegseth issued what is called a “no quarter” order, a crime in both American and international law.

According to emails obtained by the Associated Press, Rahmanullah Lakanwal’s mental health had been unravelling for years, leaving him unable to hold a job and flipping between long, dark stretches of isolation and taking sudden, weeks-long cross-country drives.

The emails reveal mounting warnings about Lakanwal, whose erratic conduct raised alarms long before last week’s attack. His behavior deteriorated so sharply that a community advocate reached out to a refugee organization for help, fearing he was becoming suicidal.

They did not, however, see any indication that Lakanwal would commit violence against another person.

The emails described a man who was unable to hold a steady job or commit to his English courses while he alternated between “periods of dark isolation and reckless travel”. Sometimes, he spent weeks in his “darkened room, not speaking to anyone, not even his wife or older kids”. At one point in 2023, the family faced eviction after months of not paying rent.

The FBI director, Kash Patel, is “in over his head” and leading a “chronically under-performing” agency paralyzed by fear and plummeting morale, according to a scathing 115-page report compiled by a national alliance of retired and active-duty FBI special agents and analysts.

The leaked assessment, obtained by the New York Post and prepared for both congressional Senate and House judiciary committees, is based on confidential accounts from 24 FBI sources.

They accuse Patel of lacking the experience to lead the FBI and that managers will not take initiative without explicit direction for fear of being fired. Patel’s first six months have produced a “troubling picture” of an organization described by insiders as a “rudderless ship”, with two sources independently characterizing the director as being “in over his head”. One stated he “lacks the requisite knowledge or deep understanding of all the FBI’s unique and complex investigative and intelligence programs”.

According to the assessment, on 11 September, the day after conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Patel arrived in Provo, Utah, but refused to leave the FBI jet without an appropriate raid jacket. A described “highly respected” source in the report explained that agents working the Kirk investigation had to stop their work to find a medium-sized jacket for Patel. When a female agent’s jacket was delivered, Patel complained about missing Velcro patches on the sleeves and refused to disembark until Swat team members removed patches from their own uniforms and attached them to the borrowed jacket.

The same source confirmed media reports that Patel “yelled” at the special agent-in-charge and directed “an expletive-laden tirade” over “perceived blunders” in the case. Dan Bongino, the deputy director, later telephoned to apologize, “saying that never should have happened”.