MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Wednesday walked her audience through what she described as a “boring, scary story” – but one that she flagged as immensely important.“It is unrelentingly boring and unrelentingly scary in equal measure, and I have thought about this story every day since it broke and it is ...
Welcome to a core aspect of the lawsuits so far and under whose legal authority contracts can be canceled.
It’s not a liability issue, it’s about details of under what legal authority based on job roles things can happen, and who is or isn’t around to exercise those authorities.
A contracting officer doesn’t spring from the head of Zeus fully grown and convered in the armor of niche personal liability insurance. They are legally required to take specific trainings before they can have signing authority. That’s the law… Today at least. And the GOP has struggled with it because thinking and details are hard for them.
They will do whatever they want. Probably just fire all the Contracting Officers. Then invalidate the contracts and refuse payment. Then buy everything under some emergency authority and have the agency head approve everything.
That’s not how any of this works. The contracts are with the individual people, listed by name. They assumed they could do what you said, and the law proved them, and you, wrong.
Obviously that’s not how it works legally, but they are blatantly telling judges they won’t listen to them. So I don’t have a lot of faith in past practices and CFR protecting us.