After eight years of constant government stonewalling and mistreatment, including an unexplained firing in a Denny's parking lot, Special Agent and whistleblower Vince Cefalu's trial against the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives for retaliation and unlawful termination is set to start Monday.
In 2005, Cefalu exposed ATF corruption and illegal wiretapping. Prior to becoming a whistleblower, he put dozens of hard criminals in prison and received promotions in addition to consistently positive evaluations. In 2009, he launched the website CleanUpATF.org in order for agents within ATF to blow the whistle on corrupt behavior anonymously due to the agency's history of retaliation against those who "jump their chain of command." His website is where bloggers and news reporters first saw allegations of gunwalking in Operation Fast and Furious. The site is heavily monitored by the Department of Justice.
In the February 2012 issue of Townhall Magazine, Cefalu detailed the ATF corruption leading up to Fast and Furious and his retaliation case from inside the bureau. When ATF managers fired him without explanation, again in a Denny's parking lot, the following was posted on CleanUpATF.org.
It's well-known that ATF management and their viciously corrupt counsel are, for the most part, brutally self-serving and mean-spirited. But this Cefalu termination is nevertheless surprising in its utter incomprehensibility under the circumstances, from purely legal and elemental federal labor law standpoints. If they had any prayer of making the action stick, they had to do it more than a year ago, before so many additional events have transpired that will render the termination plainly unlawful and inescapably untenable. It's just plain moronic no matter how you slice it.
It seems apparent that ATF's leadership at all levels has degenerated to a pathetic state of paroxysmal, shoot-from-the-hip incompetence. They can't even do the wrong thing right.
Cefalu's trial will take place in U.S. District Court Northern District of California in San Francisco.
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