As we’ve posted, a number of federal agencies are officially triggered by the Trump transition asking them what in the hell they are doing with taxpayer money.

Now the Secretary of Labor, the dim-bulbish Tom Perez, has weighed in by declaring the inquiry letters sent by the transition teams to be illegal.

Labor Secretary Tom Perez says President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team’s inquiries into government agencies are against the law.

“Those questions have no place in a transition. That is illegal,” Perez, who is running for chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), told CBS Radio News in an exclusive interview Friday.

“Will dedicated career people be targeted because they were doing the right work?”

Wait. Stop.

Just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean that it is illegal. Far from it. And you’ll note what is missing from Perez’s statement is any hint of where he got this numbskullery. For the very simple reason, his legal reasoning is as shallow as everything else about him. But if Mr. Perez wants examples of illegal acts he should read the court opinion smacking down his own department’s abuse of federal law and blatant arrogation of unconstitutional power to itself.

The Trump transition has every right to ask whatever questions it wants of the agencies they are working with. If the agency decides not to comply, which it the prerogative of the current agency leadership, the Trump Administration owns that information at 12:01 pm on January 20. And the career staff should think long and hard about whether they wish to start off the next four years by telling their boss to FOAD.

As to targeting, one doesn’t even know what that means. The Trump administration has near total authority to allocate resources within executive branch agencies and it they want to cut people out of decision loops there is no moral, legal, or ethical reason why they can’t do so.

What is actually going on here, of course, has nothing to do with Trump and everything to do with Perez trying to burnish his personal credentials as a Democrat hack for the upcoming fight with Keith Ellison to be the leader of the DNC. (I’m rooting for Ellison because I can’t imagine a better face for the DNC than a raging racialist bigot and anti-semite with close personal ties to terrorist sponsoring organizations.)