A while back, epistemic closure of the Republican mind was all the rage. It’s worth remembering that whatever bubble the GOP lived in, the Trump team exists in an even tighter bubble, so when I read this in the Politico, it makes sense to me that Sanders is not lying:
It’s entirely possible that they heard from a lot of agents that were disgruntled with Comey. The very same agents in the rogue NY office:
Back in August, during a contentious CNN interview about Comey’s July announcement clearing Hillary Clinton of criminal charges, Giuliani advertised his illicit FBI sources, who circumvented bureau guidelines to discuss a case with a public partisan. “The decision perplexes me. It perplexes Jim Kallstrom, who worked for him. It perplexes numerous FBI agents who talk to me all the time. And it embarrasses some FBI agents.”
Kallstrom is the former head of the New York FBI office, installed in that post in the ’90s by then-FBI director Louis Freeh, one of Giuliani’s longtime friends. Kallstrom has, like Giuliani, been on an anti-Comey romp for months, most often on Fox, where he’s called the Clintons as a “crime family.” He has been invoking unnamed FBI agents who contact him to complain about Comey’s exoneration of Clinton in one interview after another, positioning himself as an apolitical champion of FBI values.
Last October, after President Obama told 60 Minutes that the Clinton emails weren’t a national security issue, Megyn Kelly interviewed Kallstrom on Fox. “You know a lot of the agents involved in this investigation,” she said. “How angry must they be tonight?”
“I know some of the agents,” said Kallstrom. “I know some of the supervisors and I know the senior staff. And they’re P.O.’d, I mean no question. This is like someone driving another nail in the coffin of the criminal justice system.”
Remember, Giuliani was in DC at Trump’s request. It’s entirely possible and plausible that team Trump has little or no contact with agents in DC, but have an entire pipeline of communication from the NY sleeper cell. And it is going to get worse with McCabe going to the hill to day and crapping all over Trump’s lies.
Expect McCabe to be the recipient of a vicious smear job over the next couple of weeks and be dismissed once Trump has his crony installed to replace Comey.
Bobby Thomson
But she said in the same conversation that she didn’t know a lot of agents. Countless agents because you can’t count them because they don’t exist. Not just a liar, but an incompetent liar.
Smitty
Interim director to be Alice Fisher. Let a woman take the heat while Trump & Sessions find a suitably odius nominee to face confirmation hearing.
efgoldman
@Bobby Thomson:
Not true. She has released a list of the agents, by name. Look upon it in wonder, you cynic.
jacy
I have no doubts that there’s some type of “cell,” for lack of a better term, of agents who are kind of rogue and suffering from Clinton Derangement Syndrome. What I do not believe is they called up creepy Sarah Huckabee Sanders and told her their most intimate feelings.
jl
@jacy: Maybe Rudy has told them it’s all true. Rudy is their oracle.
seaboogie
@Bobby Thomson: yeah – that whole “countless” comment to me meant *zero* – a number not possible to count – and plausible cover for another lie. They make shit up – it’s just what they do.
And Trump can fire McCabe, but that just adds fuel to the fire of his admin….
Redshift
@jacy: No, but I’d believe that she got it third-hand via Giuliani and decided it would be more convincing if she claimed she’d talked to them herself, rather than making it all up. But it also wouldn’t surprise me if she was just BSing
Oldgold
Interesting timing.
Laura Rozen: “So, 1 day after Sally Yates tells WH FBI interviewed Flynn abt what he discussed w Russia, Trump asks Comey if he’s being investigated.” twitter.com/lrozen/status/…
R.Porrofatto
Okay, imagine Nixon said this after firing Archibald Cox: “In fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this coverup thing with Nixon and Watergate is a made up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.'”
Is there anyone who would not have seen this as an explicit confession to a crime?
efgoldman
@R.Porrofatto:
Tricksie Dicksie, as we know, was unfit in a lot of ways. But intellectual weakness and being unskilled at politics weren’t among them. I can’t imagine him saying that any more than I can imagine Peach Pustule explaining the effect of quantum mechanics on White House security.
danielx
Way I understand it, which could be way off, there are three groups of agents in the FBI –
– those at the field offices out in the provinces
– those in the New York field office, who I would wager are probably feeling some heat at the moment
– those in DC, who should probably be subdivided into those in the DC field office and those at the Hoover building – the former (probably) more involved in counterintelligence and the like
In the case of the NY field office ‘rogues’, if what has been alleged about them is true, the most charitable interpretation of their actions and sentiments is that they let their political feelings about HRC overwhelm their professionalism. Along with a little cheerleading from Rudy Guiliani – come on boys, have i ever led you wrong? You want to stick it to Hillary, keep at it and you’ll be farting through silk.
danielx
Yeah, me too.
efgoldman
@danielx:
From whom?
At some point, one hopes, someone appoints an FBI director or AG who makes it his/her specific task to clean out the office. Transfer this one to Fargo, that one to Nome, the other one to Lubbock, this one over here to West Bumfuck. Much easier than making an administrative discipline action stick.
chopper
@efgoldman:
wot, no Dale Cooper?
GregB
UK’s Corbyn vows ‘no hand holding with Trump’.
Shorter Corbyn: Shut the fuck up Donnie!
? ?? Goku ? ?
I want these asshole spooks at the NY Field Office to be named and I want faces to these names. These people helped fuck us all over royally. They violated my voting rights as well as millions more with this bullshit. They’re Enemies of the Republic as far as I’m concerned.
Any way to unmask and charge them with a crime?
jl
@? ?? Goku ? ?: I don’t think we really know the truth about how many ‘rogue’ agents are in the NY office, or whether a cell of them actually exists. Remember that the named sources for most of the speculation are almost entirely Rudy G and some ex-FBI agent cronies he hangs out with. I don’t think the reporting on it has much info actually sourced to people (named or unnamed) currently in the FBI, but rather ‘people familiar with’, which may well be Rudy and his little circle of retired and superannuated reactionary ex-FBI agents.
And we have McCabe’s testimony that Comey had overwhelming support in the agency in Congressional testimony.
I’ll take McCabe’s word for it over unnamed sources who are probably Rudy and his dipshit cronies.
Shalimar
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/10/politics/james-comey-replacements/
McCabe won’t last the weekend, but he doesn’t have to be fired. Just replaced as temporary Acting Director by a more permanent Acting Director chosen by Sessions.
jmw
@Smitty:
Source on that? Nothing on Google News about her.
Smitty
@jmw: Try Wikipedia. You don’t need Google.
Sloane Ranger
CNN Europe carried this briefing live so I watched it. When there was push back she said she’d received phone calls and emails. My first though was even if what you’re saying is true, how can you be sure these self identified FBI employees actually are? Unless they’re using their work email or phone, anyone can claim to be anything.
After reading comments above, however, I tend to believe she was just repeating something St. Rudy of 9/11 told her but thought that if she said so that would just open up more questions.
NorthLeft12
Countless. In this context, I believe Ms. Huckabee means she could not count them because they don’t exist.
Also, is that pretty normal in the US bureaucracy? That is, disgruntled FBI agents call the White House Deputy Spokesperson to complain about their boss? Asking as a Canadian who is not 100% clear on the lines of reporting in the US government.
TenguPhule
@GregB:
And yet he’s supposed to be the loser.
Not Hand in hand may.