Several of you all have emailed to ask me about my take on John Schindler’s most recent column about the ongoing dispute between the new Administration and the US Intel Community. While counterintelligence is very, very far from my areas of expertise and experience, my impression is that Schindler has good sources and is accurately reflecting them in his columns and tweets. But as the news has dribbled out since the end of last week regarding LTG (ret) Flynn’s contacts with the Russian Ambassador to the US, there are only two real questions – the same two I brought up in comments to one of the maskirovka posts during the transition: what did the President know and when did he know it?
Josh Marshall has written a well thought out column about this, with a follow on here, and comes to the same conclusion that the real issue know is what, if anything, was the President’s involvement with LTG Flynn in regards to his contacts with the Russian Ambassador and how far back into the transition or the campaign might that involvement and knowledge go.
Josh Barro, in response to Congressman Mike Coffman’s (R-CO) statement on LTG Flynn, basically asks the same question:
@RepMikeCoffman what if he purposefully misled the Vice President and the President knew about it?
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) February 14, 2017
As a national security professional, what I would like to see is the President-elect address the now long standing and ongoing allegations regarding his connection to Russia. If the allegations are spurious, as he and his team have claimed every time they’ve come up, or if there is a straightforward and simple explanation that can be made, he needs to make it. I think a lot of the foreign, defense, and national security policy concerns that many across the political spectrum have with the President-elect’s longstanding policy preferences dating back to 1987 arise from all of the smoke around the claims of Russian connections and interference for Russia’s, not the US’s, not the President-elect’s, interests.
The sooner the President-elect and his team can either provide evidence for why the allegations and rumors are spurious or provide a simple and straightforward explanation for the seeming preference for Russia and the abandonment of the post WW II and post Cold War international order the better.
We are through the map and off the looking glass less than a month into a new Presidency.
Update at 11:05 PM EDT
Flynn resigns — live coverage on @CNN pic.twitter.com/3VOqXmIwLl
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) February 14, 2017
Full text of LTG Flynn’s resignation letter:
@TheRickWilson Full text Flynn resignation. pic.twitter.com/TGjf0t7Ac4
— Farther Along (@SGioe) February 14, 2017
efgoldman
Flynn will not even see the bus coming.
Per the comment near the bottom of previous thread, Dense is now saying Flynn lied to him.
:::beep beep:::
Corner Stone
First of all, let me be very clear. Fuck John Schindler. Fuck him up his stupid ass.
Also too. If you bring David Frum up at any point in a positive light I will be coming for you.
Spanky
As I’ve said before, Flynn’s not the kind of guy to phone up the Russian ambassador and lay out future policy on his own initiative. Somebody put him up to it. My bet is Trump, or equally likely, Bannon.
Timurid
It doesn’t matter what Trump knew and when. The Republican caucus has his back. They might impeach him after his handlers had to forcibly relieve him of the nuclear football when he told them he was going to nuke Pakistan because of an especially pointed 4 AM Twitter debate with Nawaz Sharif… but anything short of that? No. Fear of bad outcomes at the polls will not be a factor, because the 2018 map is a 99th percentile best case for Republicans. And because that election is going to be even more compromised than 2016.
Seth Owen
The most obvious reason why Trump cannot put this to bed is that he is, in fact, involved. Occam’s razor suggests that there is not, in fact, an innocent explanation to be had.
Now, I personally find it hard to believe that Trump is a deliberate traitor. But I find it easy to believe he has deluded himself into thinking that whatever help he got from his Russian ‘friends’ was deserved and no big deal.
The question is whether the IC has undeniable evidence that it can somehow get out into the public domain. There is a considerable gap between what the IC may ‘know’ and what would constitute irrefutable proof in the current polarized environment. All this is complicated by the reality that, if you are going to ‘kill the king,’ you had damn well make sure you ‘kill the king.’ The costs of failing are extremely high for all concerned.
Villago Delenda Est
Flynn might be the highest level mole ever to infiltrate the Executive Branch.
Oh, wait, strike that. Donald is. The Manchurian Candidate scenario in the real world, not fiction.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: So tell us how you really feel. I only started with it because I’ve gotten a 1/2 dozen emails from readers/commenters here asking me about it.
Corner Stone
Flynn may or may not have lied to Pence. But Pence has had access to the readouts of Flynn’s calls for weeks. Pence is not some poor victim here. He is too stupid to testify under oath and not perjure himself. So they are desperate to make this connection go the F away.
Mike in NC
There was an old saying (related to the movie star by that name): “In like Flynn”. Now maybe we’ll start hearing “Out like Flynn” if this doofus is gone in so short a time.
Jerzy Russian
Others have asked this before, but what was the rush to talk to Russia? Flynn could not wait a few extra days? Did he have some cell phone minutes that were set to expire?
Keith P.
David Gergen was asking “what/when did *Trump* know?” on CNN a while ago. They’re really zooming in on Trump’s role with a quickness. I’m actually surprised, as I was expecting them to focus solely on Flynn until he’s jettisoned, after which point they’d forget about the whole unpleasant affair.
Eric S.
Adam, reports say the IC are withholding security clearances to some officials that normally receive it. How far up the chain of command can they LEGALLY withhold clearance? Does Trump legally, automatically get clearance by virtue of being elected?
Mnemosyne
@Timurid:
If we start preparing now, 2018 could make 2006 look like a playground slapfight. And I’d rather prepare than throw up my hands and decide we’re alreadyl doomed in the election that happens 21 months from now when we’re not even one full month into the Trump regime.
efgoldman
@Villago Delenda Est:
C’mon! If you were HALF as smart as we claim the Russians are, would you choose THAT for a vehicle?
Adam L Silverman
@Jerzy Russian: From the reporting, the contacts started before the election.
Timurid
@Corner Stone:
Schindler’s kind of a weirdo, but at least he never told us that the main thing that’s wrong is that Americans aren’t scared enough. And he didn’t whine like a bitch after he found out what that much fear actually leads to in real life. David Frum can go fuck himself until he bleeds to death.
Jeffro
(from the last thread)
Yes, definitely (on the ‘what did Trumpov know, and when did he know it’? question). This is of course assuming that Trumpov is able to remember what he knew, and when, and to have that account be the same on any given day as it is the following day.
My bet is that Flynn won’t like it but takes the hit for the team. This is not Obama – some lily-livered-liberal who doesn’t get it about Radical. Islamic. Terrorism. – ordering him out, this is his boss taking heat (and possibly getting exposed for even more Russia-lovin’) because of Flynn’s sloppy jumping-the-gun/Russia knob-slobbing. Flynn strikes me as someone who could be persuaded to step out for the good of the (multiple) cause(s). If it hurts Trumpov’s “administration” or Putin’s investment or sets back the crusade to turn the Middle East into a sheet of glass…I can’t see Flynn digging in.
Plus it’s not like Trumpov won’t still be consulting with him on a regular basis…Flynn just won’t have the title. Isn’t the President entitled to consult with whomever he chooses?
The key to me is, how hard do Dems (and the media?) continue to press on what Flynn was doing all along, even before the R convention? The RT dinner? What’s been going on here? Who’s this Paul Manafort guy? Carter Page? Where are they, btw? Why can’t they answer if they’ve ever been paid by the Russian government, especially while they were also getting paid by the Trumpov campaign? And so on.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: well, there’s a reason I emailed you to ask what (if anything) was wrong with it.
Adam L Silverman
@Eric S.: Trump gets clearance by becoming President. As President he can override the clearance adjudicators in the Intel Community and demand a clearance for anyone he wants. This would be highly irregular and would not go unremarked.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: I know.
Lizzy L
@Eric S.: Yes.
Jeffro
@Spanky:
Respectfully disagree. Flynn went out on his own, but only because he knew it would please Trumpov & Co (possibly including Bannon). Flynn and Trump already knew that the Russians were behind them all the way (otherwise, why call?) But I doubt anyone actually told Flynn to call. They didn’t need to. Flynn is a primary connection to the Russians and everyone knew it.
The question is, will the Dems beat the drums louder to follow this wherever it goes, or just take their one lousy scalp and go home?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@efgoldman: Hey, saw your kid on my TV machine.
ETA: I’ve now met my quota for network news watching for the next 4 years.
Timurid
@efgoldman: The Russians chose him for the same reason that American elites chose him: He’s the only Republican with the balls to be King. Even if that is the only thing he has to offer. Everyone else just wanted to be President, and these people have decided that the time for Presidents has passed.
Corner Stone
@Timurid: Schindler wrote about 3000 “very serious” pieces about how HRC should be castrated for her reckless email handling. He is a piece of shit that has no credibility to reality that I am able to discern. Before the election the 20Comittee handle he posts on twitter under was a source of derision to people of any reasonable grasp of sanity.
Gin & Tonic
@Corner Stone: Guy may be an asshole, but he’s often right on the facts.
Millard Filmore
From Schindler’s column:
Why was the Russian ambassador not concerned about this? Is he unfamiliar with our laws concerning who has the legal power to discuss topics of this nature? Maybe he made a silly assumption about Flynn being careful. At any rate he has burned a friend and maybe sunk his assets in the White House.
Major Major Major Major
This is all part of Paul Ryan’s plan to accomplish all his goals and make it look like he was forced to do it for the good of the country.
Corner Stone
@Gin & Tonic: Facts like what? His joke of an Observer report has so many holes I could drive a russian tank through it.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jerzy Russian:
Okay, I admit that made me smile a bit through my terrified clenched teeth.
amk
Unless a few rethug cowardly cong critters pursue this diligently, I expect their ass kissing media will normalize this also.
dmsilev
@Mnemosyne: This afternoon, I spent a bit of time revisiting something I looked at back in 2006, the correlation between a President’s job approval rating and how their party does in the midterm. It’s not far off to being proportional (for the stats folks, a linear fit gives an R of about 0.75, using 1962-2014 results and Gallup polling), and if Trump just stays where he is (40 in Gallup), the expectation would be a shift of around 35-45 seats.
If I get a chance, I’ll upload an image of the graph and link it.
Gin & Tonic
@Millard Filmore:
There are no friends anywhere in this story. People have interests. “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.”
I’m quite certain the every Ambassador of the USSR/RF has known that the NSA records every conversation they have.
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: like such as? Perhaps you could enlighten us, and Adam.
p.a.
Is it possible to prove tRump knows anything about anything? He’s like a Stupid Singularity.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: So there’s two separate things here. The first is as @Gin & Tonic: states in his comment – he’s abrasively off putting (Schindler, not Gin & Tonic). This does not mean he isn’t right. And I had a very different read on HRC’s emails than he did, but, and the but here is important, I also wasn’t talking to former colleagues within the Intel Community about it and representing their views in my posts here. I don’t know him. I’ve never been in contact with him. But my informed take is he’s right on this. Moreover, it lines up with people I’m in far more agreement with on other things, such as Senior Chief Nance. If your hostility is because of how he presents himself, that’s understandable. If its because you disagree with his views on domestic politics and policy, that may not be the right reason to discount his analysis on areas within his expertise and experience.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
Alas, unlike ?BillinGlendaleCA, I did not. Is there any way you, or someone, could put up a link?
Villago Delenda Est
“What did the President know, and when did he know it?”
Howard Baker’s famous question.
It turns out that Nixon knew everything within days of the Watergate break-in, and he ordered the CIA to tell the FBI that it was a matter of national security and that the FBI was to halt its investigation.
The smoking gun that brought him down. He didn’t even tell his own lawyers about this. They were as gobsmacked as anyone on the House Judiciary Committee. In fact, every Republican on the HJC who voted against the articles of impeachment in committee announced that they would vote for them when they were brought before the House for a vote.
Gin & Tonic
@Corner Stone: He’s quite good on the former USSR.
Lizzy L
@Millard Filmore: The goal of the Russian ambassador — of any Russian diplomat — is Putin’s goal, which is to disrupt, degrade, and ultimately destroy the functioning of America’s democratic government. Maximum chaos, maximum confusion, maximum distrust: it’s all good, as far as Russia is concerned. Getting 45 to “fire” Flynn works; getting 45 to keep Flynn also works.
GregB
The other interesting tidbit is the report that reality show actor Omorossa Manigault threated April Ryan by telling her that Trumpists have dossiers on media folks.
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman:
Looks like I have to up my game.
Eric S.
@p.a.: I’ve asked this very question a couple of times. I think at least once here. C+ Augustus was incurious to a fault but while he wasn’t a rocket surgeon I never thought GWB was just dumb. I think Trump is. I think he has a natural salesman instinct to manipulate but I think he his quite dumb.
Mnemosyne
So I may or may not have had a realization tonight:
I’m not sure that younger and/or less racist white people really get how humiliated racist whites were to have Obama and his family representing the United States on the international stage. They genuinely felt it was embarrassing to have a Black family as the most visible symbol of our country.
That’s why they picked Trump. They wanted us (meaning everyone who’s not a racist white person) to be just as ashamed, humiliated, and embarrassed by Trump as they were by Obama. The fact that Obama was a competent adult who did a good job and Trump is an oversized toddler who is in way over his head doesn’t matter. All the WWC cares about is that we be as embarrassed as they were.
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman:
I would disagree that one should disregard his views/analysis on domestic politics and policy to get to his areas of expertise. From my reading of his hot takes over the last couple of years it seems fairly clear, IMO, that he has been unable to separate the jaundiced domestic take from his representation of the IC community.
He’s in the burn box for me, others YMMV.
Villago Delenda Est
@efgoldman: Remember how stupid Senator Iselin was? How his wife was the real mastermind of the plot to seize the Presidency? How the entire conspiracy was to get Iselin, the dullard he was, elected to the Presidency, so his wife would in effect be running the entire show? I’m not casting Melania as Eleanor Shaw Iselin, mind, but Bannon could be in that role.
? Martin
LOL. These guys are so fucked.
Corner Stone
@Gin & Tonic: Heighten it! Heighten those contradictions!
Jeffro
Would just like to point out that at this moment, while most major media are covering the Flynn coverup, Fox News (the website…I just can’t handle the cable TV channel) is leading with…a story about traffic cameras.
Also, this passes for Flynn-related news on their site: GOP MoC wants FBI to look into who’s leaking, how the IC came to have tapes with Flynn on them, and how they are just shocked, shocked that there’s gambling going on this establishment.
They’re going to defend this a little further than I thought…
sigaba
@Millard Filmore:
They probably have other sources. And all of the chaos works to their benefit.
And who the hell needs a mole on the inside of the Trump White House when 1. Trump conducts his Situation Room briefings in the Shoshone Room of Mar-A-Lago and 2. Trump has no deliberative process to spy ON?
sharl
@Corner Stone: Haha, that sounds like the Schindler I’m familiar with via Twitter. He may be getting legitimate information from someone in this case; I have no way of knowing. I assume there is basic subject matter expertise on his part, but given his raging ego, it is possible someone has found him to be a willing conduit for spin. I suspect a few well chosen complimentary sentences aimed in his direction by someone reasonably high up in the natsec bureaucracy would have him eating out of their hands.
Before the rather unfortunate incident that led to him leaving his faculty position at the Naval War College, he had become well known as a thin-skinned egomaniac; for example, he seemed to think an argument should prevail because he had more followers than someone who was in a dispute with him. A number of tweets illustrating such behavior were collected in this Tumblr account.
He blocked a bunch of us back then. In my case, I merely favorited someone who was giving him a richly deserved mocking (I regret nothing). I thought he had kinda gotten away from such behavior, but he reverted to his old ways with this Flynn business, doing the I-have-more-followers-than-you shtick to at least one other respectable person in the natsec community who cautioned against accepting his Observer piece without question.
Right or wrong, the dude’s a trip…
scav
Practically speaking, the sheer uncertainty of just who knew what when and what (if anything) was authorized just adds to the growing Himalayas of evidence that nobody’s in clear control of this administration. Which should not be comforting. (The usual authoritarians will no doubt rush to defend this as desired SOP, the baffling and contradictory essence of their belief system being the new normal). Better still, it should just really get up the Orange twit’s nose because He’s in Charge, Him Him Him! God King and Emperor and he might not be able to keep his lust for the limelight and gilded “#1 Boss” coffee cup from fueling his tweets which should provide amusement if not still more confusing evidence.
But then again, I’m largely baffled by large chunks of this as I took a large mental health break and lost the early episodes.
Keith P.
Two predictions – 1) about half of Congress are shitting their pants right now, and 2) Trump will start bringing up how corrupt Hillary is in a pathetic attempt to change the subject. I almost want to watch Kellyanne Conway to see how she tries to spin this.
MomSense
I’m seeing stories that Yates warned 45 and dense last month about Flynn and much speculation that that’s the real reason for her firing.
Timurid
@Mnemosyne: With a better map they’d be in trouble. They’ll take some damage, but I can’t imagine it turning into a 2006 wave. Absolute train wreck worst case (for them) is the Democrats getting a tiny Senate majority. Impeachment would still not be a real option. 2020 is more favorable, and even with the inevitable tampering, Congressional elections have many more moving parts. But who knows what’s going on after 3+ years of Trump.
kindness
Meh. Flynn in any responsible Administration would be history just for the plausible deniability it offers Trump as a screen. Of course Trump knew about the calls. It doesn’t matter. Congressional Republicans refuse to manner Trump. They certainly won’t go after he or Pence in ANY legal capacity. Democrats can’t force an Independent Prosecutor and Republicans won’t allow anything they can’t control & bury.
In a different vein so what there will be more Democrats up for election in 2018. Who thinks Trump is helping Republicans? He isn’t and will continue to won’t. Stop acting like it’s a foregone conclusion. It isn’t.
Adam L Silverman
@sharl: Yeah, that was Nada Bakos, a retired, senior CIA counter-terrorism officer that he decided to get in a pissing match with.
Major Major Major Major
STOP THE PRESSES
Slate tracked down the origin of ‘shitgibbon’!
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/02/13/the_origin_of_the_trump_insult_shitgibbon_revealed.html
boatboy_srq
@Corner Stone:
Doesn’t that go for half the tRumpery?
efgoldman
@SiubhanDuinne:
This is the link to the whole newscast (~20 minutes). The Verizon story is the end of the first segment, maybe ~10-12 minutes in.
Unlike CBS, which is a real network, NBC doesn’t break out the individual stories on line. CBS posts all of the audio and video AND a transcript of each story, separately, and leaves it up for much longer.
Wag
In politics, three weeks is the opposite of slow motion. Watergate, which stretched over a couple of years was slow motion. Whitewater, same thing. Russiagate may dismantle the trump administration in a matter of months. It is a battering ram, not a slow ooze.
sharl
@Adam L Silverman: Yep, and there was also Erin (Charlie) Simpson, who is more on the military logistics analysis side (as opposed to intelligence work). He blocked her.
patroclus
@Corner Stone: That David Frum guy sure has been dreamy lately!
Adam L Silverman
@scav: The early episodes are available On Demand.
aimai
@Eric S.: I think that Trump is far more cunning than Bush ever dreamed of being. That doesn’t mean that he isn’t also “dumb” in some very real senses: incurious, easily swayed, easily deceived, unable to retain information. But he knows what he needs to know to get what he wants (money, adulation, attention).
Gravenstone
@MomSense: Plausibly contributed to her firing, I would say. Trump likely saw her as trying to undermine “his” guy Flynn. Then when she refused to defend his disastrous EO, that was the last straw and out she went.
Kay
@MomSense:
It’s from the WaPo, which is the only newspaper worth a shit on Trump, IMO:
Oh, and look who is running interference for Trump again! Our old friend James Comey:
The Agency’s investigation? What investigation? The FBI is where Trump investigations go to die.
scav
@Adam L Silverman: May have to binge watch, although I’m still worried about the mental health.
Thru the Looking Glass...
I’m sure I’m not the only one who saw Trump on the teebee machine say he didn’t know much about all of this just a couple of nights ago…
Give. Me. A. Break.
Just look at the people Trump surrounded himself w/ all thru the election and now in the WH…
Paul Manafort
Carter Paige
Gen Flynn
Rex Tillerson
All of them have their heads so far up Putin’s rear end they could almost peek out his mouth…
How US intelligence people said the Russians were the ones doing the hacking on the DNC and trying to push things in Donald’s direction?
The question isn’t “What did Trump know?”…
The question s/b “What DIDN’T Trump know?”
Mnemosyne
@Timurid:
We need 24 seats to flip the House. In California alone, there are 14 House districts that are currently Republican. If we flip only Republican House seats in blue states, we win a huge majority in the House.
The map doesn’t look great for the Senate, but even being able to do House investigations will help a lot.
Major Major Major Major
@Wag: my dad, quite conservative about these things in temperament, texted me today saying, You know, i really thought trump would make it a whole month.
Villago Delenda Est
@? Martin: The “Freedom Caucus” makes your average idiot look like a Mensa member.
efgoldman
@Mnemosyne:
Nope. You’re giving them way too much credit for having that convoluted, sort of rational (in that B flows from A) thought process,
They didn’t think about it at all, didn’t “consider” it or have “reasons.” They saw another asshole who said the same shit they were thinking, and pulled the lever.
Timurid
@Kay: Comey is bucking for Hero of the Soviet Union.
sukabi
@Corner Stone: wasn’t Pence sitting in on the Intel briefings for drumpf after the election but prior to the inauguration…and wouldn’t he have already known from being briefed what Flynn’s calls consisted of? If so, his indignation at Flynn is purely for show, and to save his own ass.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
I seriously am starting to wonder if Comey has been compromised by the Russians this whole time, only he got further than Robert Hanssen.
It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Adam L Silverman
@sharl: I’m not on twitter, I just use it as necessary as resource material. I was originally trained to do a very niche type of intelligence work, which fused collection and analysis. The Army went to great pains to not call it intelligence. The intention was to create necessary space for us to go out, engage with the host country population, and collect socio-cultural information to represent their wants, needs, and expectations to the Commander and staff. And to use this context to better qualify and deconflict the information collected and analyzed by the Military Intel folks who’s concern was the bad guys. So I understand intel, how it works, the rules for classification, the different types, but my experience and expertise is within a niche area that the Army doesn’t even call Intel. In this case, given his experience with counterintelligence, he knows far more than I do of how that works. I have a textbook, so to speak, understanding. He’s actually done it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@efgoldman: I think it was later here on the west coast due to some dam up in NorCal.
efgoldman
@Jeffro:
Because they ALWAYS forget the first rule of holes.
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
It wasn’t a rational thought process, by definition. It was an emotional reaction. They felt humiliated and they lashed out.
Kay
If they told Comey about it while Obama was still President and he knew all this time why did the FBI tell the Washington Post this, three days ago?
They volunteer the information that there was “nothing untoward” in the phone calls yet telling Trump Flynn was lying would “impede their investigation”? They’re impeding their own investigation.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@sharl: He is a raging asshole if his online persona is even 25% accurate. He seems to have NYC FBI level hate for Sec. Clinton, and he clearly doesn’t take criticism well. But he may know some things we don’t based on the connections he has in the IC, and he seems to know lots about Russia (if G&T says he’s good on it, I’m persuaded right there). He has teased some things that panned out. He may also be a conduit for IC spin, and manipulated plus blind to being so by his raging ego.
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: “Military Intelligence” is very narrowly defined. You were doing something that the CIA is supposed to do…gauge the winds, so to speak, of the target country. Socio-cultural stuff is far beyond the expertise of an MI officer, who’s concerned with “what unit are we facing, what is its capability, what are its intentions.”
Major Major Major Major
@efgoldman: it’s not “loudly pretend your opponent has a much bigger hole”??
Adam L Silverman
@Kay: I’m going to explain this again. The active, ongoing counterintelligence investigation into connections between the Trump campaign, transition, and now Administration is conducted by a Joint, Interagency Counterintelligence Task Force. Ultimately it is under the command and control of the Director of National Intelligence as he’s in charge of overseeing all US intelligence activities. Within the FBI and the DOJ there is a dedicated group of Special Agents that do nothing but counterintelligence. They report jointly to the DNI and the Director of the FBI. They work with a dedicated group of DOJ prosecutors who also do nothing but provide inputs and guidance on these investigations and then take the investigatory material, determine if a case can be made and assess the likelihood of success, and then bring that to the DNI and the Director of the FBI. We’re not talking the NY Field Office.
sigaba
@Mnemosyne: Stop trying to flip Merced and Redding when there are perfectly gettable districts in Wisconsin. I think Cali is saturated.
Adam L Silverman
@Kay: Because the folks that work counterintelligence investigations don’t discuss them. We only know that one is ongoing because of FOIA requests regarding FISA warrants and leaks from other parts of the Intel Community. You want these folks running silent and deep and not surfacing until its time to launch. This isn’t a defense of Director Comey’s statements and actions in July and October, just a description of how this stuff works.
Kay
@Timurid:
Comey is a disaster. Is there a person in this country who is following this who has the slightest bit of faith in him?
A decent person would resign. Go away. Stop helping us. His reputation gets worse with every revelation. He has no credibility. Once a week he says he can’t comment and once a week someone in the FBI preemptively exonerates someone involved with Trump.
This is an exact replay of October. They did the exact same thing in the NYTimes. Twice. In 4 months.
Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire
I can see Drumpf, Pence, and Flynn going down in this, if it’s really and fully investigated. I think one person in particular isn’t just waiting for the Congressional Repubs to get all that they want, and then WHAMO! Impeachment for both Drumpf and Pence.
Paul Ryan is practicing writing “President Paul Ryan” in his TrapperKeeper as we speak.
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
If it walks like a duck….
Alain the site fixer
@Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire: ugh but in many, many ways an improvement!
Gin & Tonic
CNN says he’s gone.
Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire
@Kay:
One Ms. Maxine Waters said those exact words herself, and I believe her, and you.
tobie
@Mnemosyne: I read the passage in the Post a little differently. Or better put: I thought the passage permitted a second interpretation, which was that Comey didn’t want to compromise an investigation that might involve Trump. There’s at least a slim possibility that he didn’t want to warn Trump about the investigation into Flynn’s phone calls with the Russian Ambassador because he didn’t trust Trump. Nothing about the way Comey has acted inspires confidence, and I really have no reason to give him the benefit of the doubt, but the passage regarding him in the article is opaque and could be saying one thing (Comey’s helping Trump) or the exact opposite.
Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire
@Alain the site fixer: lol, I’ll have to disagree, friend. Paul Ryan is just as bad as these jokers. Smarmy fuck.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: Actually we were doing non-lethal stuff that the Green Berets did until the folks who knew how to do it were run out post Vietnam. This is largely why I was trained by, and my ASO was, Green Beret Vietnam Vets. As well as retired Civil Affairs guys who understood the historic military support to governance concept that they’re only now working to bring back (full disclosure: I was temporarily assigned to help the Chief of CA Branch on that for about a year or so), as well as retired Information Ops and PSYOPS folks. What I was trained to do really fit into what the British used to call cultural intelligence, but we started out calling human terrain research and analysis (terrible euphemism – you go to war with the euphemisms you have, not the euphemisms you want), then was doctrinally identified as civil considerations, and what I have always called cultural operations. And I’m really the only person to do it from the tactical to the national strategic levels.
Kay
@Adam L Silverman:
But Adam Comey is named as the person who stopped it getting to Trump. A person. James Comey. If they had told Trump then Trump couldn’t have pulled this BS he’s now pulling where he’s pretending he didn’t know.
If Comey hadn’t have interfered there wouldn’t be any “what did he know and when did he know it”. He gave Trump plausible deniability.
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
Who now report to a corrupt, racist shitbag of an AG.
Lizzy L
@Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire: Nah. They’ll sacrifice Flynn, that’s all.
Gin & Tonic
@Lizzy L: Apparently already have.
Tokyokie
@efgoldman: As I said a couple of days ago, Trump is too mentally unstable for Putin to consider him an asset, unless he had mole high in the administration to act as his minder. And I’ve thought for a while that Flynn must be the mole.
Major Major Major Major
@Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire: no he’s not.
Suppose they would all sign the same policies–because they would. Ryan would do the least additional damage.
amk
don lemon is now parsing donnie dick’s ‘smile’? wtf?
sigaba
@Gin & Tonic: By Thursday he’ll be lurking the transit zone of Sheremetyevo…
J R in WV
@sharl: So, can you tell us about the incident that forced him to leave the faculty at the Naval War College?
Cause that seems relevant and important!!
Omnes Omnibus
@amk: Trumpology.
skerry
CNN is reporting that Flynn has resigned.
Alain the site fixer
Oh yeah, Majorx4 helped make the awesome buttons. I forgot, now I can just tap to bottom of comments when I’m on the iPad. Props to him! ?
rikyrah
@Kay:
keep on telling the truth, Kay.
Alain the site fixer
@skerry: woot
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Actually I was pigeon toed as a kid.
Corner Stone
MSNBC and BriWi still going with….wait, wait.
Gone.
patroclus
MSNBC says the traitor resigned. (I’m looking forward to what that dreamy David Frum writes about it. )
? Martin
Yep. He’s resigned. How many more leaks before Congress calls him in?
Adam L Silverman
I’ll put this up top, but here’s the latest info:
khead
Flynn out. Lol.
Keith P.
@patroclus: It still boggles my mind that this is not even a month into Trump’s term, and the wheels are already falling off the wagon.
amk
winning bigly. and not even a month.
wwclowns must be so ‘appy.
Feebog
MSNBC now reporting Flynn has resigned. Just announced on the Brian Williams segment.
Bill Arnold
@Thru the Looking Glass…:
FWIW the “dossier” says quite explicitly that the Trump team paid (in part) the DNC hackers. If there is anything to this, and there is any sort of trail exposed (e.g. released recordings or talking/leaking hackers)…[implosion], even if they were paid in a hard-to-trace fashion, e.g. in bitcoin.
This would be consistent with Trump’s comments that he knew more about hacking than most people [I forget the actual language], but then later in the week when he saw that the CIA et al were convinced that it was a Russian operation he agreed with them.
All this is obvious and perhaps specious speculation. (There are more exotic theories available, if you do a broad search through possible-theory space. Not all of them have been floated.)
Wag
@Major Major Major Major:
I was a kid during watergate and spent evenings glued to Walter Cronkite and worshipping Sam Ervin Exciting times for a political nerd.
Jeffro
@Jeffro:Just for the bragging rights, here’s me, an hour ago:
EBT
@Keith P.: I was hoping deadbeat donnie would be out faster than WH Harrison, looks like I won’t get my hope but at least it’s obvious the administration is hemorrhaging.
Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire
@Keith P.: The wagon was made in China?
Not really fair to Chinese workers. They’re only working with what they are given.
rikyrah
@Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire:
not only did she say it, it was her tone. her facial expression, and the hand gesture.
efgoldman
@Major Major Major Major:
I dunno’. He at least knows how congress works. Dense should, because he served, but he is, umm… Dense, so….
Adam L Silverman
@Kay: I think you misunderstand. If Trump is a subject of the CI investigation, which we don’t know, though the leaks and FOIA request indicate that the Trump Organization’s connection with Alfa Bank is, then it has to be kept compartmented even from him. Hence not wanting to do or say anything to give anything away.
Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire
@rikyrah: oh yeah. I saw that clip. It was EPIC.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I’m trying to get my head around the fact that a large portion of the US government seem to be working with/for/on behalf of Russia.
It seems almost archaic. All those decades of warnings about The Bolsheviks and – surprise! It’s the far Right in the US who are infiltrated! You would have predicted Lefties, right? Wrong.
Villago Delenda Est
This is not going to stop the Army from continuing its investigation of his 2015 trip.
He’s still subject to the UCMJ and Army regulations.
efgoldman
@Wag:
I was well into work world, but I had my own office and a radio, which I tuned to the hearings all day.
scav
@khead: Read that as Flynn Flout. Ok, amused by little.
Wonder how far they’ll attempt to hang the entire USS Mar A Lago runs into Security Iceberg Wedge incident on him.
Lizzy L
https://twitter.com/ZekeJMiller/status/831353443059118082
Here’s his resignation letter.
Major Major Major Major
@efgoldman: Ryan has not shown himself to be a very skilled parliamentarian.
p.a.
Great American hounded out by liar media. SAD! Just hired Flynn as my personal valet. Take That Fake News pervey purrvay pushers!
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: No, the CI folks report to the DNI. The AG does not control the Intelligence Community.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay: Scenario straight out of The Manchurian Candidate.
Mnemosyne
@sigaba:
Let the Wisconsinites flip Wisconsin. I’m going for Palmdale (CA-25).
ETA: According to Wikipedia, the Republican won by about 16,000 votes, and he’s a freshman in a district that went for Hillary. He can be had.
Cheryl Rofer
My two cents, late as usual.
I tend more toward @sharl’s evaluation of Schindler than Adam’s. I have been blocked by him on Twitter, and I can’t recall any significant interaction that might have provoked it. I tend to stay away from direct interactions with obviously thin-skinned people, but I may have had one or two direct interactions with him. I definitely did with one of his buddies, which may account for the block.
That said, I have some substantive issues with what he says. He is much too vocal about his experience in counterterrorism. My experience is that people who speak the loudest about their classified experience are usually exaggerating it. There is a lot of classified stuff that is actually rather boring, although it’s easy to visualize it as romantic spy stuff. That probably accounts for 0.0001% of intelligence work.
He does seem to understand procedures; I don’t recall his getting anything obviously wrong there. But when pressed, he will claim he can’t give an answer because it’s classified, a common dodge of people who are exaggerating their own importance.
He says interesting stuff that plausibly could come from people in the CI community, but I would like to see some accounting of what he’s actually gotten right. If someone is talking to him, it’s because they think someone else has got something wrong. That kind of disagreement happens all the time in a slippery field like intelligence, but most people keep it inside the community.
So I take him with a grain of salt and don’t share his stuff around. Being blocked, I can’t RT him.
I also agree with @Thru the Looking Glass… that we need to keep our eyes on the bigger picture of ALL the Russian connections in the Trump camp. So many.
Villago Delenda Est
@efgoldman: I was still in HS, and the Watergate hearings were must see TV.
Cacti
Flynn has resigned.
The fun has just started.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Comey is not to be trusted. Period.His behavior during the election proves that.
Adam L Silverman
@Lizzy L: @Gin & Tonic: The issue is going to be whether or not LTG Flynn keeps quiet here. Rick Wilson was speculating about this and I think he’s right based on what we’ve seen from LTG Flynn in the past:
Mnemosyne
@Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire:
If we flip the House in 2018, then it’s hello President Pelosi.
Jeffro
@Kay:
They drifted so far into stupid, knee-jerk opposition of anything progressives might be for, for so long, that they left any & all other principles behind and nominated a 70-year-old Fox News addict with the management skills of a turnip and intellectual development of a nine-year-old. To say nothing of his being someone who’d sell his soul (to the Russians or anyone else) to show the world he too could be president.
He’s going to go down as not just our worst president, but one of our biggest traitors ever. Ashes and ruin.
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: It’s certainly plausible that he’s going to start singing like a canary.
Adam L Silverman
@J R in WV: It was alleged that he sent an unsolicited picture of his genitalia to a woman over twitter.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/12/john-schindler-edward-snowden-naval-war-college_n_5672946.html
http://blackbag.gawker.com/the-crazy-emails-that-took-down-nsa-spook-john-schindle-1610203101
rikyrah
@Kay:
which is why the Democrats should never allow the GOP to utter the word PATRIOTISM.
PERIOD.
Don’t allow it to slip from their lips.
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman: Kay does not misunderstand, you misunderstand! She’s only using your words! They are your words! You said them and now she is using them! When she says them she is quoting you! They are your words! Your words!
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: @Villago Delenda Est:
Have to disagree…Flynn is not going to give up anyone on Team Trump, possibly not even under oath.
Cacti
Flynn better hire a food taster.
He might be getting an order of polonium pancakes with his next breakfast special.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: yep
sharl
@J R in WV: Explanation here; note that there is a NSFW image about halfway down the piece. [Hint: a new nickname assigned to him by critics after this incident was Prof. Soft.]
He disappeared for awhile after this incident, but came back a few months later, and as far as I can tell he is doing fine, with plenty of twitter followers who hang on to his every word, and a high self-regard that I assume contributed to his relatively quick rebound. And this incident was so public that it would be worthless for blackmail purposes, so I don’t think think there is any issue there.
It certainly helped that Schindler’s résumé and work experience are legitimate, his extracurricular behavior notwithstanding. He knows his stuff, as far as I can tell (and ignoring the occasional exaggerations he seems unable to resist). That’s not always the case, especially when big military budgets attract the wrong kind of folks.
efgoldman
@Major Major Major Major:
Weeping Cheetoh was, though, and neither of them (nor anyone else supposed to “lead” in the house) can control the kkkrazy kkkaukus.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Why do I find myself wanting this guy beaten silly by the army?
Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire
@Major Major Major Major: You….might have a point there.
Still can’t stand him, though. ;-)
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
I was speaking strictly of the US Attorneys.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: I don’t disagree with a lot of this. However, my take is he’s serving as the conduit for one group of IC folks who want to get this info out. There are several other folks who are also serving this purpose. Again, I only brought it up because a number of folks emailed me about it. And I do agree he plays the “I can’t talk about that’ card a bit much and a bit conspicuously.
Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire
@Mnemosyne: Damn it, now I have to go practice writing “President Nancy Pelosi” in MY TrapperKeeper. Great- another chore I have to do!
I’ll take one for the team, I guess. ?
Adam L Silverman
@sharl:
Don’t get me started on this.
PS – the guy who dimed Wayne Simmons out was my former boss. As a result of Simmons I got asked to vet prospective personnel packets when I got back from Iraq because my boss trusted me and knew I knew what to look for.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: You’re a professional and internalized the profession’s culture. As I’ve worried all along, especially once we got confirmation of my fears when it was reported that the Russians had hacked both the Democrats and the Republicans, I think this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: I agree that he may be getting stuff out from a particular group. The question is whether they’ve got it right. Disagreement is common on analysis of intelligence, as in the runup to the Iraq War. But one or more sides of those disagreements will have it wrong.
Seth Owen
Here’s the scoop on the Schindler NWC episode:
http://blackbag.gawker.com/the-crazy-emails-that-took-down-nsa-spook-john-schindle-1610203101
https://www.stripes.com/news/us/navy-professor-resigns-after-racy-photo-inquiry-1.297789
Jean
@Adam L Silverman: So the continual leaking, the increased pressure, and one is out: Flynn. Who’s next? Who flips? Given who surrounds Trump, and whom Trump talks to, listens to, and “trusts,” how much plausible deniability can Trump have? Seems to me the dominos will fall. Hard to believe any of this slows, but proceeds apace.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: I’m aware of the disagreements. And how acrimonious they get.
Only time is going to tell if he’s accurate, but given that his take tracks with Malcolm Nance’s, and they’ve got very different takes on most other things, I think that what we’re seeing is more accurate rather than less.
This is all aside from the persona he projects/his personality or anything else he may have done or said.
From Nance:
Omnes Omnibus
@Jean: Everyone in his inner circle is a shitty person without a sense of loyalty. Trump is incapable of inspiring loyalty. The rest follows apace.
Adam L Silverman
@Jean: I have no idea.
sharl
@Adam L Silverman: Ah, Wayne Simmons – I was trying to remember that name when I was composing my comment.
To this day the one guy who most pisses me off is the proprietor of DHB Industries, who shipped out umpteen thousand units of defective body armor. No matter what badness happens to that guy, it wouldn’t be enough; he should have been forced to eat his $100,000 jewel-encrusted belt buckle.
Debbie1
So, how do you suppose those weasle-ly senators who just recently voted to confirm Flynn feel right about now? These accusations did not come out of thin air. People were saying Flynn posed a national security risk, people called Congress to convey that message. They ought to be ashamed. Now, I hear them talking about former Gen. Petreaus as a possible replacement for Flynn. You know, the guy who actually gave confidential materials to a woman he was trying to bed – as if telling her you’re a general is not enough. Out of the frying pan, huh?
I know what you’re all thinking… but her emails.
dmsilev
@Debbie1: I don’t think National Security Adviser is a Senate-confirmed post. Not that the GOP Senators aren’t weasels of course, but this one is all on Trump.
Ha Nguyen
I don’t think that Flynn needed to be confirmed. As National Security Advisor, he was part of the Executive branch and thus not subject to Congressional approval. Which was too bad because I wanted the Senators grilling the man and hanging him around the Republican’s neck.
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
ROTFLOL!!! So, like Weiner, then.
Not really funny, but times like these you gotta laugh or cry.
Thanks!
Adam L Silverman
@Ha Nguyen: I realize this is going to sound strange, but are you the Ha Nguyen I went to high school with? If so, how you doing?
Adam L Silverman
@sharl: Yep, that guy has a special place in some religion’s hell reserved for him.
Ruckus
@Major Major Major Major:
What has Ryan shown himself to be good at?
Just asking for a country….
BBA
Here’s what I don’t get: Schindler’s column is in the Kushner Observer. Was this a palace coup to force Flynn out, or is this an effort to show “journalistic independence”, or is the Observer actually independent of its owner and his father-in-law’s administration?
Ruckus
@Jeffro:
If he is on his own then I agree 100% that he will have a case of laryngitis for a rather long time. But if any of the stories come home to roost I’m not so sure that Flynn will stay quiet. As Adam and VDE have said the military protects it’s own with great vigor, right up until the time they don’t and then it can get very ugly. Now the Republican president is the CIC but I’m not sure he can shut this down all that easy.
sharl
@BBA: Schindler addressed that in one of his classic testy exchanges on twitter, claiming that Kushner turned over control of The Observer while he is working at the White House. But like so many things connected to the Trump family businesses, things seem a bit murky on that score, as far as I can tell.
Jean
@Adam L Silverman: Didn’t expect answers to all those questions, but they’re the ones I have.
Bill Arnold
@BBA:
Was this a palace coup to force Flynn out,
I vote for palace coup, deniable. Principle of maximum amusement value. Plus, if true, then it might happen again.
Applejinx
@Tokyokie:
Melania. And he hates hates hates it.