Elon Musk is using the whistleblower playbook

As a former Justice Department lawyer and whistleblower, I recognize the bizarre and retaliatory techniques currently being wielded against public servants. The over-the-top tactics that Donald Trump and Elon Musk are using — placing people on administrative leave without due process, leaning on career civil servants to resign, locking people out of offices, accusing them of “complete and utter incompetence” despite years of unblemished federal service — are very familiar to most federal whistleblowers. It is as though Musk and his cabal at the newly created Department of Government Efficiency have picked up a whistleblower retaliator’s playbook and are using it against the entire federal civil service. My clients have been unceremoniously banned from their workspaces or locked out of their email accounts; their telework arrangements have been suddenly and unpredictability changed; they have been told their well-documented disabilities are imaginary and denied reasonable accommodations ; they have been subjected to micro-management of their every move despite years of successful work; they have been reassigned to meaningless and degrading "paper cup-stacking" roles; they have been told not to discuss projects that were once centerpieces of their jobs; they have been given personally insulting letters of reprimand, censure, or undefined discipline; they have been subjected to baseless or pretextual investigations; they have been placed on administrative leave for undefined amounts of time in unclear pay statuses; and they have been eventually fired. Years after they were vindicated, “Insider Threat Programs" vilified lawful whistleblowers like former NSA senior executive Thomas Drake by putting their images on “WANTED”-style posters alongside actual spies and terrorists.