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Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

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You are here: Home / Politics / Goddamned Traitors / Clown Under (Open Thread)

Clown Under (Open Thread)

by Betty Cracker|  December 30, 201712:57 pm| 160 Comments

This post is in: Goddamned Traitors, Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Russiagate, Trump-Russia, General Stupidity

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Will Coffee Boy’s loose lips sink Trump’s ship? Via The New York Times:

How the Russia Inquiry Began: A Campaign Aide, Drinks and Talk of Political Dirt
By SHARON LaFRANIERE, MARK MAZZETTI and MATT APUZZO DEC. 30, 2017

WASHINGTON — During a night of heavy drinking at an upscale London bar in May 2016, George Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, made a startling revelation to Australia’s top diplomat in Britain: Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton.

About three weeks earlier, Mr. Papadopoulos had been told that Moscow had thousands of emails that would embarrass Mrs. Clinton, apparently stolen in an effort to try to damage her campaign.

Exactly how much Mr. Papadopoulos said that night at the Kensington Wine Rooms with the Australian, Alexander Downer, is unclear. But two months later, when leaked Democratic emails began appearing online, Australian officials passed the information about Mr. Papadopoulos to their American counterparts, according to four current and former American and foreign officials with direct knowledge of the Australians’ role.

The hacking and the revelation that a member of the Trump campaign may have had inside information about it were driving factors that led the F.B.I. to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump’s associates conspired.

It would be kinda perfect if a low-quality hire like Papadopoulos, puffing himself up by bragging drunkenly to an Australian diplomat, ends up being the block that brings down the whole Jenga treason tower.

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Reader Interactions

160Comments

  1. 1.

    Joey Maloney

    December 30, 2017 at 12:59 pm

    the block that brings down the whole Jenga treason tower.

    You have such a way with words.

  2. 2.

    DCrefugee

    December 30, 2017 at 1:01 pm

    They only hire the best people. The best.

  3. 3.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    December 30, 2017 at 1:07 pm

    This would be too perfect. Does God love us that much, and does He have that good a sense of humor?

  4. 4.

    Yarrow

    December 30, 2017 at 1:07 pm

    Thank goodness for Five Eyes and the rest of our allies.

  5. 5.

    Tom Levenson

    December 30, 2017 at 1:09 pm

    May Trump’s chooks become emus and kick his dunny door down.

  6. 6.

    germy

    December 30, 2017 at 1:12 pm

    It would be kinda perfect if a low-quality hire like Papadopoulos, puffing himself up by bragging drunkenly to an Australian diplomat, ends up being the block that brings down the whole Jenga treason tower.

    It would be amusing if Omarosa got a book deal and spilled all the beans. She’s made hints about stuff she saw.

    Probably nothing involving coffee boy, but very ugly I’m sure.

  7. 7.

    jonas

    December 30, 2017 at 1:13 pm

    IIRC a big break for Bletchley Park during WWII came when a German general used his mistress’s name as a key for an Enigma transition or something. Or possibly used the name in a transmission that allowed the key to be discovered. So small slips often have big consequences.

  8. 8.

    Cheryl Rofer

    December 30, 2017 at 1:15 pm

    I am fascinated by Papadopoulos and Carter Page, along with their mentor, Sam Clovis. Nobodies in the foreign policy community. And yet they made Trump’s first list of foreign-policy advisors. Now, Trump had a problem. Most of the Republican experts in foreign policy were revolted by his ignorance and even signed a letter against him as Never-Trumpers. So he didn’t have a lot to pick from. The Stevens Bannon and Miller probably didn’t want anyone who was likely to show them up, meaning anyone who had creditably completed a political science major for a bachelor’s degree, or maybe less than that. Or they just didn’t know what foreign policy expertise looked like and were recruiting on a different basis.

    But where did these people, all with Russian connections, come from? And how did they surface to the campaign? Jeff Sessions, another person not known for his expertise in foreign relations, is part of it. We haven’t seen the whole story yet.

    Another question is why this story came out today and who are the sources. It’s clearly pushback to the Republican argument that Hillary supplied the Steele dossier in order to destroy the Trump campaign. But it turns out that Devin Nunes’s funders were the ones who got it going. And there’s another fellow that we need to know more about – that mystery trip to the White House, among other things.

  9. 9.

    jonas

    December 30, 2017 at 1:15 pm

    @germy: Omarosa burning Trump in a tell-all memoire would be amazing, but I wouldn’t count on it. She was on board with the Trump campaign early and is probably compromised herself. If she has a lawyer, he/she should be telling her to stfu.

  10. 10.

    Jay S

    December 30, 2017 at 1:15 pm

    @germy: I doubt Omarosa is going to dump dirt on Trump. All the hints point to a backstabbing theory. It might include wifey and those meddlesome kids though.

  11. 11.

    chopper

    December 30, 2017 at 1:16 pm

    australia australia australia australia we love you, amen!

  12. 12.

    Gvg

    December 30, 2017 at 1:16 pm

    Hmm, I think he isn’t the only one. Trump has a lot of boastful wannabe’s around him. I think I have already read different stories of the same type of dumbness. Trump Jr, Flynn Jr, Rodger Stone, the campaign guy that died(Smith?). None of them know how to keep their mouth shut either. For that matter Trump himself keeps admitting stuff. And honestly so much was known about Trump before he ran that it always seemed impossible that he could actually be nominated. I seriously expect to find there was a lot of blackmail in the beginning.

  13. 13.

    hitchhiker

    December 30, 2017 at 1:18 pm

    28 years old, and his resume was that he’d worked a few months on some other campaign. I can’t get over that this mook is who they went to for heft on their foreign policy team.

    And I’m never going to get over having to witness these fools in charge of our government, or the knowledge that 1/7th of the country is actively cheering them on while another 1/7th thinks they just need more time.

    We have to win everywhere, on every ballot, next fall.

  14. 14.

    Gvg

    December 30, 2017 at 1:20 pm

    @Jay S: yeah, I think she is going to have credibility problems. Her motives would seem to be revenge without credibility. Not expecting much except confusion for her.

  15. 15.

    Cheryl Rofer

    December 30, 2017 at 1:21 pm

    The level of stupidity here is pretty high, too.

    It would seem to me that most of us would have questions if someone came up to us and said, “Have I got a deal for you.” Maybe it’s just that I’ve had a job where we kept being reminded that friendly Russians (or others) didn’t have our best interests at heart and had some of the gambits explained to us. The Mifsud approach is classic recruitment. It may be just me, but if I had a Russian offer something like that to me, I’d contact the FBI.

    All those Russian connections with all those people in the Trump campaign are suspicious in and of themselves. Think about the Clintons or the Obamas. If they were trying to do deals with the Russians, we’d hear about it.

  16. 16.

    germy

    December 30, 2017 at 1:22 pm

    State Dept. releases Huma Abedin emails found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop

    US news Yesterday
    The release of redacted emails dated from 2010 to 2012 follows a Freedom of Information Act request by the conservative group Judicial Watch.

  17. 17.

    JPL

    December 30, 2017 at 1:23 pm

    @Cheryl Rofer: Trump as the president has a right to know this information. Sarah needs to be asked why he continues to say it was the dossier.

  18. 18.

    Frankensteinbeck

    December 30, 2017 at 1:26 pm

    It is just possible that Trump is so senile and bumbling that he is not directly involved beyond “Russia did what? Awesome!” Kushner is in this up to his neck. He’s the kind of MBA egotistical that couldn’t resist, in fact would demand to be involved in something as duplicitous as Russian collusion, and the kind of stupid that would be not remotely subtle. I look forward to the fireworks when Mueller is ready to lower the boom. The only people I could imagine Mueller wanting more would be Trump, McConnell, and Ryan, and I bet Kushner is too idiotic to be useful flipping anyway. But damn, he will try to drag everyone down with him.

  19. 19.

    Chip Daniels

    December 30, 2017 at 1:27 pm

    @germy:
    So what’s on those emails?
    The Whitey Tape?
    Video of Seth Rich’s assassination?

    I keep seeing the breathless announcements about EMAILS! but no hint of what they contain.

  20. 20.

    Frankensteinbeck

    December 30, 2017 at 1:28 pm

    @Chip Daniels:
    Yep. There’s gonna be squadoo. If there was anything actually juicy in them, they’d have leaked thanks to there being some truly virulent Hillary haters in the FBI.

    EDIT – On second thought, the Hillary hate in the national press is also so virulent that I could see that absolute nothing turn into three months of ‘Ooh, emails! Okay, it says nothing, but where we imagine smoke, there must be fire!’

  21. 21.

    germy

    December 30, 2017 at 1:29 pm

    @Chip Daniels: They’re desperate to find something, ANYTHING to distract from what we’re learning about the current regime.

  22. 22.

    tobie

    December 30, 2017 at 1:29 pm

    IIRC, Trump’s first call with a foreign head of state was with the Australian PM Turnbull. The call ended badly when Trump refused to honor the US’s commitment to taking in a certain number of refugees. Now I have to wonder if he wasn’t ticked off when he picked up the phone to talk to Turnbull because of Australia’s role in warning US intelligence about the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. Compared to other points, this is a minor one. Just wondering how far and deep the rot spreads.

  23. 23.

    Jay S

    December 30, 2017 at 1:31 pm

    @JPL: Even Sarah could deflect that question without breaking a sweat. “The president has more and better sources than the failing NYT.”

  24. 24.

    trollhattan

    December 30, 2017 at 1:32 pm

    @germy:
    Biggest issue I see is…Omarosa. How does she fashion credibility out of thin air, given she has none.

  25. 25.

    JPL

    December 30, 2017 at 1:33 pm

    @Jay S: lol good job! You can now be press secretary for the chief.

  26. 26.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    December 30, 2017 at 1:33 pm

    @germy:

    Ugly, yes, but probably mostly self-serving, snarky mean girl material: Kushner has bad breath, Melania is stupid, Ivanka has smelly feet….

  27. 27.

    germy

    December 30, 2017 at 1:34 pm

    @trollhattan: She’s been offered ten million bucks for a tell-all book. She has no credibility, but it’d be fun to see the administration admit that. “Then why’d you hire her in the first place?”

  28. 28.

    Frankensteinbeck

    December 30, 2017 at 1:36 pm

    @tobie:
    More entertaining. It STARTED badly with Trump’s refusal to honor the commitment. It ended with him accepting it and whining about that.

  29. 29.

    tobie

    December 30, 2017 at 1:38 pm

    @germy: @West of the Rockies (been a while): I think Omarosa’s biggest tell will be that John Kelly is racist and sexist. No doubt some in the news media will be shocked, shocked that she would say this about a decorated general.

  30. 30.

    Gretchen

    December 30, 2017 at 1:38 pm

    Just read and article in the Columbia Jouralism Review. Summary: of 150 front page articles in the NYT over the last months of the campaign, only 5 compared the policies of both candidates, and another 10 described the policies of one or the other in any detail. The rest were scandals and horse race. No wonder Maggie Haberman is feeling defensive in her twitter slap-fight with Nate Silver over the Trump interview.

  31. 31.

    Cheryl Rofer

    December 30, 2017 at 1:39 pm

    Low-level foreign policy staffers don’t set up head of state meetings. Trust me I was one. https://t.co/vfnyj60G5H

    — Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) December 30, 2017

  32. 32.

    germy

    December 30, 2017 at 1:41 pm

    Here’s Weiner’s current home:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Medical_Center,_Devens

  33. 33.

    JMG

    December 30, 2017 at 1:41 pm

    The emails in question are 1, Briefing on a meeting with Saudi ambassador. 2. Update and Palestinian Authority relations with Hamas. 3. I forget it was such hot stuff. In short, could’ve been page 3 of the Post or Times, classified because secrecy makes people in government feel important.
    PS: Ms. Cracker, you write great tabloid headlines. Wish you had worked at mine back when I was in newspapers.

  34. 34.

    trollhattan

    December 30, 2017 at 1:42 pm

    @germy:
    Yeah, guess I’m mostly appalled someone as vile as she is cashing in. Her public persona may in part be schtick but after her “All will kneel before Zod” moment during the campaign I can only wish livelong poverty and obscurity upon her. Instead she gets a ginormous sack of cash and the attention of a hundred cameras–another Trump miracle.

  35. 35.

    NCSteve

    December 30, 2017 at 1:43 pm

    The information that Mr. Papadopoulos gave to the Australians answers one of the lingering mysteries of the past year: What so alarmed American officials to provoke the F.B.I. to open a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign months before the presidential election?

    Um, would that be this investigation, you self-congratulatory asswipes? The one you assured on the eve of the election, on the same day David Corn was finally moved to share the existence of the Steele Dossier, had found no clear links between Russia and Trump based on your impeccable contacts in the FBI even as your coverage of the Comey Coup was reaching a feverish level of concern over the Clouds and Shadows Dogging Hillary’s Campaign?

    Hell will freeze over before I ever subscribe to that fucking paper again.

    @Chip Daniels
    @germy
    @trollhattan
    Still waiting for the Kitty Dukakis flag burning tape.

  36. 36.

    mike in dc

    December 30, 2017 at 1:46 pm

    There are three “buckets” of criminal charges in this investigation:
    1) The Obstruction bucket–obstruction, perjury, lying to the FBI, witness tampering, suborning perjury–everything related to post-election conduct by Trump et al
    2) The Financial Shenanigans bucket–money laundering, bribery, tax evasion–conduct which may or may not be related to bucket #3
    3) The Russia conspiracy bucket–conspiracy, aiding and abetting, accessory after the fact, accepting foreign in kind contributions, hacking, espionage, the Logan Act–conduct regarding what happened between the campaign and Russia during the campaign, and afterwards

    Papadopoulos’ plea is significant precisely because it doesn’t speak to the first two “buckets” at all, only the third one. Manafort and Gates are charged with bucket 2, but every legal expert thinks it’s to get them to cooperate with Mueller with regard to bucket 3. Flynn can speak to both 1 and 3, potentially, so his plea isn’t dispositive in this regard. But Papadop’s plea seems to be, on first impression.
    So now we will have a maddening wait until the first conspiracy charge/bucket 3 charge is filed, and the subsequent (partial) narrative/prosecution theory is disclosed. It’s a given that such an event will transform the public debate and discussion about this.

  37. 37.

    Amir Khalid

    December 30, 2017 at 1:47 pm

    Interesting story in The New York Times: It substantiates what’s already known and fills in some details, even if there’s nothing really new.
    I’m curious about one thing, though: Australia’s ranking diplomat in London has a formal title, the same as his Commonwealth counterparts: High Commissioner. It’s the equivalent of Ambassador from a non-Commonwealth country. Why does the NYT story not use this title?

  38. 38.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 30, 2017 at 1:47 pm

    @germy: @Chip Daniels: There are between 5 and 8 marked State Department Confidential. That’s it. Everyone on the right is howling about treason or sedition or espionage, but this is the type of thing that at best gets one slapped on the wrist and forced to redo the infosec powerpoint training.

  39. 39.

    debbie

    December 30, 2017 at 1:48 pm

    @jonas:

    True, but there is Kelly, Bannon, etc.

  40. 40.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 30, 2017 at 1:51 pm

    @tobie: According to the reporting the Trump campaign was not notified of this. in fact it was so compartmented as a special access program (SAP) that it wasn’t even briefed in summary at the daily senior staff updates with the FBI director.

  41. 41.

    Amir Khalid

    December 30, 2017 at 1:56 pm

    @tobie:
    Ahem. Australia’s head of state is not the Prime Minister or even the Governor-General, but the British monarch — currently Queen Elizabeth II. The PM is head of government.

  42. 42.

    David Anderson

    December 30, 2017 at 1:58 pm

    @Adam L Silverman: not the PowerPoint anything but that

  43. 43.

    Lapassionara

    December 30, 2017 at 2:02 pm

    @mike in dc: Thanks. What I don’t understand is why Trump, and some in the press, keep using the word “collusion”and saying collusion is not a crime. I have never practiced criminal law, but I believe conspiracy is a crime. And to me, “collusion” is just another word for conspiracy.

  44. 44.

    B.B.A.

    December 30, 2017 at 2:04 pm

    @Adam L Silverman: The impression I get, from the differences between how you describe it and how certain others do, is that there’s a difference in culture between State and DoD. State is more likely to forgive these de minimis errors if no actual harm is done, while the DoD is much stricter, hence “I know an E-3 who got court-martialed for less,” etc. But the letter of the law is the same in both departments. Am I getting this right?

  45. 45.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 30, 2017 at 2:04 pm

    @Amir Khalid: The NY Times style guide is brutal regarding titles, credentials, and the correct/appropriate appellations that result from them. They basically don’t use them.

  46. 46.

    Ruckus

    December 30, 2017 at 2:04 pm

    @tobie:

    Just wondering how far and deep the rot spreads.

    All the way, end to end, top to bottom.
    Easiest question I’ve ever answered.

  47. 47.

    buckeye666

    December 30, 2017 at 2:06 pm

    @NCSteve:

    Still waiting for the Kitty Dukakis flag burning tape.

    I’m still waiting for the Michelle Obama Whitey tape from Larry Johnson. Who last summer claimed that the CIA hacked the DNC. While his counterparts at Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) claim that it was an inside job. And Jackson Lears thinks that VIPS’s report is believable.

  48. 48.

    Sandia Blanca

    December 30, 2017 at 2:07 pm

    @Cheryl Rofer: Taking this opportunity to thank John Cole, Betty Cracker, Cheryl Rofer, and Adam Silverman especially for providing this platform for such excellent discussions of this monumental issue. Would not have made it through 2017 without you.

  49. 49.

    Redshift

    December 30, 2017 at 2:08 pm

    @Adam L Silverman: Yeah, convicted felon Bernie Kerik was in Twitter yesterday loudly insisting that this breach of classified material was something that would instantly get anyone in the DOJ or military thrown in jail!

    Shades of Micheal Flynn’s “if I had done a tenth of what she did…”

  50. 50.

    Amir Khalid

    December 30, 2017 at 2:08 pm

    @Adam L Silverman:
    I know. Their style guide even has a rule specific to Malaysian titles: do not use, ever. But if they call ambassadors Ambassador, and I think they do, surely they should likewise call high commissioners High Commissioner.

  51. 51.

    hellslittlestangel

    December 30, 2017 at 2:10 pm

    Seems quite appropriate to me, since I’ve come to see America personified as an obnoxious drunk shooting off his mouth in a bar.

  52. 52.

    Felanius Kootea

    December 30, 2017 at 2:11 pm

    OT, not sure if anyone has posted this yet, but Erica Garner, activist daughter of Eric Garner (choked to death by Staten Island Police) has died at the too young age of 27. It appears to be from a heart attack triggered by asthma. My heart grieves for that family. So many tragedies in the last four years. I can’t imagine what her mother is going through.

  53. 53.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 30, 2017 at 2:12 pm

    @David Anderson: You have no idea…

  54. 54.

    Vhh

    December 30, 2017 at 2:13 pm

    @Tom Levenson: Well said. Emus at the wildlife refuge near Canberra come up to cars and stick ther heads in to ask for treats. Jhh

  55. 55.

    Faithful Lurker

    December 30, 2017 at 2:13 pm

    @Sandia Blanca: Amen

  56. 56.

    patrick II

    December 30, 2017 at 2:17 pm

    @NCSteve:
    “on the same day David Corn was finally moved to share the existence of the Steele Dossier,”

    Unfair swipe at Corn. He had just received it from Steele because the F.B.I. had done nothing with the information Steele had already given them. Steele had given the F.B.I. the dossier much earlier, but thought the F.B.I. was anti-Hillary because they did not act on it and only then (in early Oct) gave the dossier to Corn to publish. It was the F.B.I. stalling an investigation into Trump that’s the story here. They also had more generalized warnings from Western European intelligence agencies as early as Jan of 2015, there were links from this very blog to private security firms early in the summer of 2016 claiming Russian involvement in Hillary’s emails, and a private server communication with a Russian bank. The FBI did nothing until the end of July, and when they finally did something kept it to themselves while talking about Hillary’s email, and ,along with Mitch McConnell, refused to support Obama’s desire to tell more about the investigation. Comey should be shot as a traitor. Comey (from his own testimony in congress) finally acted because his own reputation in regards to his leadership at the F.B.I. had been questioned. Patriotism was only an afterthought.

  57. 57.

    Redshift

    December 30, 2017 at 2:19 pm

    @Gretchen:

    Just read and article in the Columbia Jouralism Review. Summary: of 150 front page articles in the NYT over the last months of the campaign, only 5 compared the policies of both candidates, and another 10 described the policies of one or the other in any detail.

    The most mind-boggling statement I heard from a journalist the entire campaign was someone on an NPR panel matter-of-factly saying that they couldn’t cover Hillary’s policy proposals because Trump didn’t have any, so it wouldn’t be “balanced”. I knew the cult of “balance” was pernicious, but how can any same person not get that the way to be balanced in that situation is to say “the Trump campaign has released no policy proposals in this area”?

  58. 58.

    mike in dc

    December 30, 2017 at 2:20 pm

    @Lapassionara: Well, I think you just answered your own question. See, if they keep using collusion in the commonly understood non-legal sense, then when evidence of same pops up, they can fall back to “but collusion isn’t a crime”. They can stick to this talking point spin defense right up until the first conspiracy charge is filed.

  59. 59.

    Amir Khalid

    December 30, 2017 at 2:22 pm

    @Redshift:
    I guess some editors use a quantitative measure of journalistic balance: counting the column-inches devoted to each side.

  60. 60.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 30, 2017 at 2:25 pm

    @Lapassionara: Collusion isn’t in the Federal criminal code. So because that is the popular term used, that is what they’re hanging their hats on as part of the rebuttal.

  61. 61.

    Gravenstone

    December 30, 2017 at 2:29 pm

    @germy: The fine* folks at Judicial Watch all need to be fed into a wood chipper. Slowly.

  62. 62.

    germy

    December 30, 2017 at 2:30 pm

    The gall of Rick Gates. Should be grateful his white privilege allows him to be home with his family. Thinking of all of my clients separated from their families altogether. Caged on Rikers. Charged with far less. https://t.co/FE14w2OTg5— Scott Hechinger (@ScottHech) December 29, 2017

  63. 63.

    germy

    December 30, 2017 at 2:32 pm

    @Gravenstone:

    The fine* folks at Judicial Watch all need to be fed into a wood chipper. Slowly.

    But then who will watch the judicial?

    check and mate, lib!

  64. 64.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    December 30, 2017 at 2:32 pm

    @Lapassionara: I’ve wondered about this for a long time. I don’t like the word collusion, and I choose conspiracy instead, because this seems to me to so clearly have been a crime, and as everybody says, collusion isn’t against the law. I wonder when we reach the point where people begin to talk about conspiracy instead of collusion. It seems like that might mark some kind of threshold or something.

  65. 65.

    Jay S

    December 30, 2017 at 2:33 pm

    @mike in dc: checking online dictionaries, collusion and conspiracy are near synonyms, both allow for coordination in things that might be legal, but most often are illegal or not in the public interest. The working theory from Trump is that nobody did anything illegal even if they colluded so it can’t be criminal conspiracy. Using collusion is just a softer way of saying it. IANAL but this theory probably fails from a legal prospective, however it might have some traction in public opinion. It’s a peg for Trump supporters to hang on to.

  66. 66.

    Lapassionara

    December 30, 2017 at 2:35 pm

    @mike in dc: I can see why Trump would do it, but the press does it too. I recall Watergate. We were just horrified at the actions taken by Nixon and his advisors. Today, people just shrug at the actions we know for a fact that the Trump campaign engaged in. These actions, in my opinion, are even worse than Watergate. We were attacked by a foreign power, and Trump asked for those attacks. and nothing is being done to defend us the next time. I think we have, as a society, lost our capacity to be shocked at the criminal conduct and corruption of our elected officials.

  67. 67.

    Cheryl Rofer

    December 30, 2017 at 2:36 pm

    @Sandia Blanca: That’s very kind of you. You’re welcome. I enjoy the feedback.

  68. 68.

    Jay S

    December 30, 2017 at 2:40 pm

    @Lapassionara: I suspect the press is gun shy about using conspiracy, since it is clearly fixed in the public mind as criminal conspiracy. Collusion is safer, in part because Trump has adopted it himself. Using conspiracy or alleged conspiracy opens them up to challenges to support the implied legal claim.

  69. 69.

    Lapassionara

    December 30, 2017 at 2:41 pm

    @Jay S: That is my concern. There is now an orchestrated campaign to diminish Mueller and his investigation, and to lay the ground work for saying “nothing to see here folks, just move along” when the charges start dropping and Trump begins issuing pardons.

  70. 70.

    Jay S

    December 30, 2017 at 2:44 pm

    @Lapassionara: Of course, this is a propaganda campaign.

  71. 71.

    mai naem mobile

    December 30, 2017 at 2:48 pm

    Devin Nunes is up to his eyeballs in the Russian scandal. He just comes across as a sleazy scummy traitor who would give up his mother’s birth date for $10. Same goes for Ron DeSantis. Florida would be so stupid to vote this asshole in as governator and that would be following Ricky Scott,also a bigly crook .

  72. 72.

    Mnemosyne

    December 30, 2017 at 2:48 pm

    @Lapassionara:

    Honestly, I don’t think the anti-Mueller campaign is working outside of the Trump bubble. Fox News and Breitbart are frantically spinning it, but they’re going in circles and not getting any traction in the MSM.

  73. 73.

    Kay (not the front pager& from my phone)

    December 30, 2017 at 2:50 pm

    @germy: Omarosa said she wants to write a tell-all book, but also that she would take ambassadorship to Nigeria. I think she’s just dangling a blackmail threat in order to get the ambassadorship.

  74. 74.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 30, 2017 at 2:57 pm

    @B.B.A.: Yes and no. My understanding is that State Confidential is sort of like DOD For Official Use Only. As in you don’t sent it to anyone/show it to anyone who doesn’t need to know and isn’t working for the government or authorized by the government to see it. I had a senior NCO try to yell at me once at a professional meeting for having my presentation slides marked UNCLASSIFIED: FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY because I was showing them to non Army/DOD/government folks. I explained that my attendance at the conference had been ordered by the Army program I was on the senior staff of, that the specific presentation was a required part of my official duties, and therefore there was no problem. The NCO wandered off grumbling.

    The biggest three sets of issues with this whole thing were:
    1) The political viability, should she decide to run for office again, of using a non government email/server system.
    2) The reality that almost every email determined to be classified as a result of the FOIA request by Judicial Watch and others were up classified. As in they were not classified at the time they were sent, but when the DOJ who had to adjudicate this meshugas between State and the Intel Community, asked the Intel Community for comment, they requested a couple of thousand up classifications for various reasons (stuff that wasn’t then classified, as a result of new information should now be classified, the Intel Community classifies things differently than State does, a combination). Some of this stuff that was up classified was in fact material sent to her or her staff to be passed to her. For instance, this is what happened with a lot of the Sidney Blumenthal emails sent to Secretary Clinton. The Intel Community demanded they be up classified even though they originated with a non-government employee passing along newspaper cut and paste material or material he’d been told by his professional and personal contacts that he thought she should know about. As we know from the Congressional hearings when Congressman Cummings asked Director Comey about it, there were only three emails that at the time they were either sent to, received by, or sent by – and they were sent to her, not by her – that had any classification markings. These three had (C) for confidential paragraph markings, but no headers and footers denoting classification, thereby obscuring the classification. There was, apparently, one email where Secretary Clinton or one of her senior staff ordered someone to try to air gap and declassify something so it could be sent over unclassified systems, but it is unclear if that actually happened.
    3) Just how out of date and inadequate the Department of State’s, and pretty much everyone else’s in the US government’s, information technology systems are. The actual tech is out of date. The software is out of date. The protocols for even the newest stuff is out of date. The inability and/or unwillingness of the tech folks to actually provide timely and adequate solutions, and here I’m referring to the leadership, not the rank and file folks within the tech departments. I could tell horror stories of the idiot retired colonel who was the Human Terrain System Tech Director I had to deal with. Because he controlled all the systems, he thought he controlled everything. And since he didn’t want to do much of anything that didn’t somehow benefit him, he and his people largely didn’t. As a result the US Army still has a cultural knowledge data base that isn’t keyword searchable.

    What we really were seeing with Secretary Clinton’s emails and email handling were a combination of the latter two issues then being leveraged to hit the first one. Her requests for a solution that would allow her to have modern, up to date devices to allow her to access her email while traveling for official business, whether to the White House, foreign states, around the US for official reasons, as well as while on leave were rebuffed by the tech leadership gatekeepers at State. This led her to look for a workaround, which she found, given existing laws and regulations.

    Once Judicial Watch, other outside conservative/GOP groups decided they needed to make her look bad for her upcoming presidential campaign and started issuing FOIA requests for her correspondence to prove she’d been acting against America’s best interests, this then allowed the Intel Community to make a point. Specifically, it allowed the Intel Community to let the potential next president, as well as the State Department know exactly who really held the power in DC: the Intel Community.

    The up classification fight that resulted from the FOIA requests was the Intel Community’s way of sending a message to Secretary Clinton and State. Finally, once that happened it allowed Judicial Watch, other GOP/conservative groups, the GOP members of the House Oversight Committee and the Select Benghazi Committee, and all the GOP primary candidates and their proxies, including Fox News, right wing talk radio, social media, online and print reporting, to latch on to the private email address, server, and handling issues and turn it into the US’s gravest Federal offense. You may have noticed that no one has been able to find anything in any of the emails to actually show she is the greatest threat to the Republic that ever lived. Rather it is all about that she used a private email address and server and of the hundreds of thousands to millions of emails she received while Secretary of State, some of them were up classified at the request of the Intel Community two to three years after she left office. Since there was and is no there there in the actual specifics of the emails – as in what is in them – the scandal became how she sent and received emails.

    This is what this has all been about. A perfect storm resulting from conservative and GOP efforts to turn Hillary Clinton into the worst person who ever lived for their political purposes combining with and being fed by the Intel Community’s attempt to make a point to its Interagency rival the State Department about who is really in charge in DC. That’s it.

  75. 75.

    Jay S

    December 30, 2017 at 2:58 pm

    @Kay (not the front pager& from my phone): What’s in Nigeria for Omarosa? Has she been emailing the Prince?

  76. 76.

    Lapassionara

    December 30, 2017 at 2:59 pm

    @Mnemosyne: I hope you are right.

  77. 77.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 30, 2017 at 3:00 pm

    @Redshift: Kerik’s a scumbag. He was always a scumbag. And he’s neither very smart nor very good in a professional sense. He got where he got to because of how law enforcement promotions are set up in NY City and by getting in with Giuliani.

  78. 78.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 30, 2017 at 3:00 pm

    @Amir Khalid: Nope, they don’t want the High Commissioner to get too full of himself or a big head, so just ambassador for him.

  79. 79.

    germy

    December 30, 2017 at 3:02 pm

    They finally found the Nigerian Prince:
    https://www.theroot.com/white-nigerian-prince-email-scammer-arrested-in-louis-1821658205

    Following an 18-month investigation, a man said to have served as the go-between for an international team of scammers running an elaborate “Nigerian prince” email scheme has been arrested in Slidell, La.

  80. 80.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 30, 2017 at 3:02 pm

    @Sandia Blanca: Thank you for the kind words.

  81. 81.

    Felanius Kootea

    December 30, 2017 at 3:06 pm

    @Kay (not the front pager& from my phone): She claims to have Nigerian heritage, had elements of a Nigerian traditional wedding and wore traditional Nigerian attire for that. There are Nigerians in the second photo (traditional wedding) at that Today link. However, most sane Nigerians/Nigerian-Americans, myself included, want nothing to do with her. And from what I can tell, both her parents are from Ohio.

  82. 82.

    Mike G

    December 30, 2017 at 3:07 pm

    @buckeye666:

    Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

    Apparently a personal status they aspire to, but are far from achieving.

  83. 83.

    Jay S

    December 30, 2017 at 3:08 pm

    @Adam L Silverman: They don’t use ambassador at all in the article.

    Australia’s top diplomat in Britain:

    seems pretty big headed to me.

  84. 84.

    Felanius Kootea

    December 30, 2017 at 3:09 pm

    @germy: Who knew the Nigerian prince would turn out to be a white guy from Louisiana? I am very disappointed. Wonder if he’d met his Nigerian partners in person.

  85. 85.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 30, 2017 at 3:13 pm

    @mai naem mobile: Unless the relocation of Puerto Ricans to Florida as a result of Maria creates a huge Democratic wave, Adam Putnam will be the next governor. Putnam has been in elected office in Florida as a Republican since he was 22 and was involved even before that when he was an undergrad at UF. Given that the two declared Democratic candidates are better than the usual ones (think people with the charisma and personality of wallpaper paste), but still largely unelectable statewide, barring a huge wave up and down the ballot the governor’s mansion will remain Republican. Bob Graham’s daughter is running, but she’s already lost statewide once. And the Tallahassee mayor is running. He’s young, African American, telegenic, good on TV. He held a kickoff fundraiser last month and raised less than $500. Good, bad, or otherwise his campaign is already over.

    Could Bannon and the Mercers knock Putnam out by backing DeSantis in the primary? Sure, anything is possible. But given Putnam’s deep, deep connections and statewide name recognition I expect him to be the GOP nominee.

  86. 86.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 30, 2017 at 3:15 pm

    @Jay S: You have to watch these diplomatic types and keep them in their place.

  87. 87.

    Schlemazel

    December 30, 2017 at 3:18 pm

    @jonas:
    Encryption is a big part of my world. I have heard several good stories about how enigma was broken, I think none of them are really true. The real truth is that it was a lot of incredibly hard work done mostly my women “computers”. But the General, the field guy that always used German curse words as his code name and the weather watcher who always sent the exact same message every time the weather was clear all made the daily task a whole lot easier.

  88. 88.

    Jay S

    December 30, 2017 at 3:20 pm

    @Adam L Silverman: So the appellation pecking order is High Commissioner > Ambassador > Top diplomat? That’ll show em!

  89. 89.

    Immanentize

    December 30, 2017 at 3:20 pm

    @germy: @Felanius Kootea:
    And Slidell, LA is one hotbed of white supremacy. So classic!

    ETA spelling!

  90. 90.

    Sandia Blanca

    December 30, 2017 at 3:22 pm

    @Cheryl Rofer: I read a lot of people on Twitter, but I always come here for the sanity check you and the other experts provide.

  91. 91.

    patrick II

    December 30, 2017 at 3:23 pm

    @Adam L Silverman: @Adam L Silverman:

    When Cheney was being threatened with legal consequences during the Valerie Plame incident, they just declassified the material. If the president says its not classified, its not classified was their sole justification. Which is an argument I didn’t like, but I think not always untrue, except in the furtherance of a crime.
    Since the Hillary’s material was upclassified only after the fact, it seems that Obama had a similar option with stronger justification. Is that totally incorrect? If the information was already in the papers there would be no “new” data coming out. The mystery of what the secrets might be while still classified added to the republican politicians ammunition (they might be atomic secrets! They could kill us all!) and thus the republican proles fears. Obama should have Declassified them. Why not?

  92. 92.

    JPL

    December 30, 2017 at 3:28 pm

    @Felanius Kootea: Would she have to live in a hut?

  93. 93.

    Betty Cracker

    December 30, 2017 at 3:34 pm

    @patrick II:

    Comey (from his own testimony in congress) finally acted because his own reputation in regards to his leadership at the F.B.I. had been questioned. Patriotism was only an afterthought.

    I think that’s a fair statement. It’s telling that Comey and the FBI were able to keep the information about Papadopoulos under wraps until now, but Comey felt duty bound to announce the reopening of the Clinton email investigation in the final days of the campaign — knowing as he did that it was almost certainly a nothingburger (which it was).

    I’m grateful that Comey arranged the appointment of a special counselor. Trump’s firing of Comey was certainly obstruction of justice, as he confessed to Lester Holt. But history won’t be kind to Mr. Comey.

  94. 94.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    December 30, 2017 at 3:37 pm

    @B.B.A.: That may depend on the DoD agency or your local command. In the organization I worked in (as a civilian) a “data spillage” incident would result in computers being seized and wiped, which would make everyone angry at the spiller. But nobody was ever idiotic enough to scream “lock em up” or suggest criminal charges.

    It is a known administrative issue with defined administrative remedies.

  95. 95.

    Felanius Kootea

    December 30, 2017 at 3:41 pm

    @JPL: She’ll have a really big hut, bigger than the Nigerian president’s hut at Aso Rock Villa. Almost as big as the Transcorp Hilton hut, which could have been Trump Tower Abuja, but oh well, you know Trump don’t do huts.

  96. 96.

    Betty Cracker

    December 30, 2017 at 3:45 pm

    @Adam L Silverman: What statewide office did Gwen Graham run for and lose? I thought she won the only office she ran for, as a US House rep, and then got redistricted out of her seat last year, but maybe I missed something.

    I don’t think Graham is necessarily unelectable statewide, though I agree Andrew Gillum is. I hope Bannon and the Mercers go on an anti-establishment jihad against Putnam and knock him out. DeSantis is a kook, so he’d be easier to beat.

  97. 97.

    germy

    December 30, 2017 at 3:46 pm

    Would love to know who in the FBI's NYC field office threw @nytimes off the scent SIX DAYS BEFORE ELECTION DAY (reminder: the FBI had an active and open investigation into Trump team's at the time) cc @chrislhayes pic.twitter.com/E97sG8Bb8F— scary lawyerguy (@scarylawyerguy) December 30, 2017

  98. 98.

    Jay S

    December 30, 2017 at 3:51 pm

    @Adam L Silverman: @Betty Cracker:

    It’s telling that Comey and the FBI were able to keep the information about Papadopoulos under wraps until now

    in fact it was so compartmented as a special access program (SAP) that it wasn’t even briefed in summary at the daily senior staff updates with the FBI director

    I inferred (perhaps incorrectly) from Adam’s statement that Comey had limited access to the Papadopolis inquiry.

  99. 99.

    Betty Cracker

    December 30, 2017 at 4:03 pm

    @Jay S: I don’t have any insider knowledge. But I’d be astonished if the director wasn’t informed about something that big — an ally’s report that a party nominee’s adviser had access to dirt on a presidential candidate via Russian hackers.

  100. 100.

    The Dangerman

    December 30, 2017 at 4:04 pm

    More correctly, loose lips sink shits.

    Which reminds me of one of my favorite Amazon “Reviews” (may have already linked this one here)

  101. 101.

    sukabi

    December 30, 2017 at 4:04 pm

    @Kay (not the front pager& from my phone): why would she want an ambassadorship to Nigeria? She already found her Prince.

  102. 102.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 30, 2017 at 4:15 pm

    @patrick II: Yes and no. The rules for classification are somewhat arcane. And some of the applications are equally arcane because what, when, and where to apply are made by people. My understanding is that the justification for one of the emails they up classified was that it contained a copy and paste from a NY Time article about something that happened somewhere in the world. From the Intel Community’s perspective, that information is classified. In reality it obviously isn’t because we have independent reporting of it in multiple news platforms. But as far as the Intel Community is concerned the details in the news reports fit the criteria for classifying the information.

  103. 103.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 30, 2017 at 4:19 pm

    @Betty Cracker: I think that what people are forgetting is that Comey testified to the Senate in the spring, before he was fired, that part of the counterintelligence investigation had turned up disinformation/provocation information aimed at him regarding this. Apparently one of the documents that they knew Wikileaks had, but that Wikileaks had not yet posted, had been dummied up to look like a memo between Comey and AG Lynch with inaccurate fabricated information in it mixed with actual information pertaining to the email review and investigation. As such, in combination with suspecting/expecting a leak from the NY Field Office, he felt compelled to act. You all will have to make your own determinations as to whether this is a compelling argument.

  104. 104.

    frosty

    December 30, 2017 at 4:21 pm

    @The Dangerman: What the hell was that, that I just read???

  105. 105.

    moeman

    December 30, 2017 at 4:21 pm

    I’d like to see an honest journo ask the incredibly intelligent trump, say at his next presser, what the differences between criminal conspiracy and collusion are.

  106. 106.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 30, 2017 at 4:23 pm

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: Yep. And, of course, it depended on the spillage. For instance, at USAWC I was trying to find the reporting on Rumsfeld’s use of bible quotes in his briefings to President Bush in an attempt to manipulate the President based on his religiosity. I specifically wanted a screengrab of one of the slides. This was for one of the seminar blocks I was running on the Interagency. I clicked on one of the reports, found a link in the news report, and it brought up the slides. Unfortunately, despite the slide decks being ultimately unclassified as a result of the reporting, the ones I found that day were marked SECRET. I was at my office workstation, which was UNCLASSIFIED. So we had unintentional spillage. I reported it to the G2/SSO, who referred me to the information security officer, who took the report, and that was that. Fortunately.

  107. 107.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 30, 2017 at 4:25 pm

    @Betty Cracker: I may be remembering incorrectly, but I thought she had made a previous attempt for something. Either senate or something at the state level. I’d like to see her do well, but it is Florida…

  108. 108.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 30, 2017 at 4:27 pm

    @germy: Most likely no one. As the NY Times piece this morning indicated, this investigation was completely compartmented as a special access program. Moreover, Comey testified in the spring that he knew he had a problem in the NY Field Office and they were therefore kept from access. Because it was a special access program, due to the counterintelligence investigation component, it would have been pro forma for the FBI to have denied it existed.

  109. 109.

    patrick II

    December 30, 2017 at 4:30 pm

    @Adam L Silverman: @Adam L Silverman:

    He might have testified, or come out and stated, that some of the wikileaks emails had been changed by the Russians and to not believe everything that you read — but with the republican attack dog mindset they would have attacked him and that might have cast doubt on him or his reputation which was his primary concern. He was intimidated, so instead he threw Hillary under the bus. So, no, I hadn’t forgotten about it, I am just angry at a man who prioritized saving his own reputation above exposing Russian attacks and Trump collusion. He suppressed possible Russian involvement for a long time before the last Hillary email episode.

  110. 110.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 30, 2017 at 4:31 pm

    @Jay S: @Betty Cracker: It is unclear in the reporting. What I expect is that Comey was read on as he would be needed to authorize the counterintelligence investigation. But aside from him, his senior deputies (this includes McCabe), his senior counsel, the head of the National Security Division and his senior deputies and counsel, and the actual agents and analysts working on the investigation, no one else knew other than the Directors of National Intelligence and Central Intelligence, their senior deputies and counsel. So the actual folks working the investigation who wouldn’t talk because it was special access compartmented, and a handful of senior leaders at FBI, ODNI, and CIA. That’s why it was briefed at the FBI senior leaders update briefings. The small handful of senior leaders read on already knew and the rest didn’t need to know, so were not informed.

  111. 111.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 30, 2017 at 4:33 pm

    @patrick II: I’m not saying you shouldn’t be angry. I have a slightly more sympathetic take than you and BettyC and most other’s do. In my case I attribute it to having a more fully informed understanding of how all the moving pieces fit because of the work I do. It didn’t make it right, I just think it makes it a bit more understandable. It is what it is.

  112. 112.

    patrick II

    December 30, 2017 at 4:42 pm

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I would add that Hillary has been in favor of showing them all of the email for awhile, Obama did not back her. The unknown quality of the “secrets” in her emails has allowed for exaggeration of their danger from the other side. I get that there are norms and rules which should not be overruled lightly. But this reminds me of Scalia’s position on death penalty cases before the Supreme Court. The process had been followed, the man found guilty, and his actual innocence was irrelevant. In Hillary’s email case there is a process that was followed, but clearly one can follow a process with ill intentions as seems to have been done in the upclassification, and sometimes, when it is clear and as important as a presidential election, you overrule the process — and in this case Obama should have declassified the emails.

  113. 113.

    Betty Cracker

    December 30, 2017 at 4:44 pm

    @Adam L Silverman: None of the rationales offered [ETA: by Comey] hold water in my book, not the original excuse that Comey owed congress a heads-up because he’d previously testified on the matter, nor the explanation that he allowed himself to be goaded by Russian threats and his own out-of-control agents in NY into sandbagging Clinton.

  114. 114.

    Frankensteinbeck

    December 30, 2017 at 4:49 pm

    @Betty Cracker:
    When you take into account Comey’s ludicrous ‘Hillary is guilty, but l recommend not prosecuting her’ speech earlier in the year, arguments about his good faith collapse. No matter what he convinced himself his motives were, no explanation fits without a heaping helping of him personally wanting to defame her.

  115. 115.

    mike in dc

    December 30, 2017 at 4:50 pm

    9 people affiliated with the Trump campaign had contact with Russians during the campaign or just after. 3 of them are cooperating or under indictment. Kushner, Sessions and Don Jr are all under scrutiny, as are Carter Page and Michael Cohen. JD Gordon has not been subject to the same media coverage, but he is the other one known to have contact with Russia. Then you have people like Roger Stone and possibly the people in Cambridge Analytica who had contact with Russian cutouts like Guccifer and WikiLeaks. Generally, if there is a conspiracy prosecution, this is the universe of people able to provide the information necessary for indictments.

  116. 116.

    rikyrah

    December 30, 2017 at 4:52 pm

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Another question is why this story came out today and who are the sources. It’s clearly pushback to the Republican argument that Hillary supplied the Steele dossier in order to destroy the Trump campaign. But it turns out that Devin Nunes’s funders were the ones who got it going. And there’s another fellow that we need to know more about – that mystery trip to the White House, among other things.

    Never point out Nunes without pointing out

    HIS BUSINESS PARTNERS ARE RUSSIANS WITH TIES TO PUTIN

  117. 117.

    Betty Cracker

    December 30, 2017 at 4:54 pm

    @Frankensteinbeck: Agreed. And clearly Clinton herself blames Comey’s last-minute sandbagging with the decline in her support right before the election, and she’s probably got greater insight into how it all went down than we do.

  118. 118.

    patrick II

    December 30, 2017 at 4:56 pm

    @Adam L Silverman:

    In my case I attribute it to having a more fully informed understanding of how all the moving pieces fit because of the work I do.

    I read that that like Scalia you are locked into process and don’t pay enough attention to results. Reality is always more complex that the laws, rules, norms and process in try to put them in order with. Sometimes a deeper truth means a using little creativity and sense of proportion. We had a presidential candidate undercut by the Russians and a conscienceless agent of Russia, with at least the incompetence and at worst complicity of our intelligence agency. It has changed the course of this country’s and the western alliance’s history, possibly for the extreme worse. We could at least have thrown a couple of elbows then, or be a little less sanguine about it now.

  119. 119.

    Sab

    December 30, 2017 at 5:05 pm

    @patrick II: If you don’t respect process you just up end up slamming through things, like the Trumpsters. May work short term but probably won’t last in a democracy.

    Obama and his people respect process, which is why they chose to construct the ACA in such a way that it is surviving assault.

  120. 120.

    patrick II

    December 30, 2017 at 5:13 pm

    @Sab:
    I didn’t say don’t respect process — it is an accumulation of things we have learned in the past that aids us in managing the present. But new things happen — like a Russian collaborator who keeps Hitler’s speeches by his bedside running for president — and if you are absolutely tied to process you cannot deal with some things that don’t fit anymore.
    Plus, more specifically, I advocated both Comey warning of the misinformation added to the Clinton emails and backing Obama in warning the public, and in Obama declassifying Hillary’s email which I believe he had the right to do legally if not according to past norms, neither of which is acting totally outside of what is allowed to do. I am not saying be a cowboy, I am saying act with respect for due process but not fealty to it during new and potentially dire circumstances.

    Or you could be like Judge Gorsich and advocate following the company rules and staying with the truck even if you froze to death. At least the frozen corpse would be in good shape for family viewing.

  121. 121.

    Dave

    December 30, 2017 at 5:19 pm

    @Sab: There is balance there though. Respecting process is important. Sometimes the outcome is egregious enough though that you find a way around the process. When you do I think it’s advisable to at least look like you went through the motions or lay out why process was ignored in this case. No process, rule, law, behavioral norm, heurisitic, etc will be able to cover every situation.

    Edit: or what Patrick II just did a better job of saying.

  122. 122.

    Stephen

    December 30, 2017 at 5:32 pm

    I’ll note that it took 2 months for the Australians to pass on Papa’s claims to the FBI. I expect ASIS & the ASD were busy verifying it.

  123. 123.

    Chet Murthy

    December 30, 2017 at 5:34 pm

    @patrick II: It seems to me, if President Obama had declassified those emails, there’d have been a shitstorm. I think he probably (rightly) concluded that trying to wait out the idiocy was the only smart move.

  124. 124.

    patrick II

    December 30, 2017 at 5:41 pm

    @Chet Murthy:

    Obama assumed Hillary was going to win. He could not believe someone as crass as Donald had a chance — if Obama has a fault he underestimates the worst in us so he was tragically and deeply wrong. And yes there would have been a shitstorm, but I can’t tell you how tired I am of democrats not doing or saying true things or advocating not saying true things because they are intimidated by the shitstorm the republicans raise when the truth is told. In the old days I would have said get some f*$king balls. I don’t know the new sexist free term.

  125. 125.

    Ruckus

    December 30, 2017 at 5:42 pm

    @Dave:

    No process, rule, law, behavioral norm, heurisitic, etc will be able to cover every situation.

    All of the policies, rules, laws, norms, expectations are there with hindsight. When those things have not anticipated the strange or totally unusual, one can not be surprised that they don’t/didn’t work as intended. But those things still have to be respected and changing/overruling will be a judgement call at best, a huge risk at worse. President Obama, in my mind at least, weighed the evidence and made a judgement call. In the long run it may have been incorrect judgement, but it was his to make, given the info that he had, which is a lot more than 99.9% of us have. And in the short term doing it might have done the same amount of harm that not doing it did. How’s that go, “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”
    We are where we are, is not based on President Obama, but based upon a conspiracy between the republican powers that be and a foreign government. That the republican PTB may not have initiated this (with the exception of a few, like Nunns, who has business dealings at with people in very high levels in the Russian government) is not an issue. It’s pretty damn obvious that it has happened, it’s pretty damned obvious that it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better, and really all any of us can do out of the ordinary is hang on.

  126. 126.

    Jay S

    December 30, 2017 at 5:44 pm

    @Stephen: I wonder if they didn’t consider them (Papadopoulus’s claims) all that credible given it was sourced to a drunk braggart who apparently inflated his credentials. The the emails were leaked and provided corroboration, so then they took him more seriously.

  127. 127.

    Scotian

    December 30, 2017 at 5:45 pm

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I am going out shortly for the night so this will be very brief. I simply wanted to say this was an EXCELLENT piece of analysis from you, which given your high standards in such to begin with makes this really top notch in my view. Your work and your seeing the same signs I was was one of the things that kept me from wondering if I was caught in hall of mirrors fog in the first half of 2016. You have done excellent service in your analysis of intelligence matters and thinking styes/structures for those not so familiar with them. Coming from that world via my own family, I do, and I so rarely see it demonstrated on political blogs with the clarity, comprehensiveness, and most importantly to me, COMPETENCY that you consistently bring. You more than any other FPer are why I went from lurking to contributing from time to time, and I thank you for it.

    Have a great News Year’s Eve and day, and that is extended to all here. I just wanted to leave this in a thread with the comment before the thread died, which when I get back in 8 to 9 hours I was willing to assume.

    Again, thank you for an excellent analytical perspective and an informed one. It is valued and appreciated by me and so many others here.

  128. 128.

    patrick II

    December 30, 2017 at 5:48 pm

    @Betty Cracker:

    But history won’t be kind to Mr. Comey.

    Depends who writes it.

  129. 129.

    Ruckus

    December 30, 2017 at 5:52 pm

    @Jay S:
    How many times have we heard things like if anyone shopped this around as a movie script, they would be laughed out of the office. Nothing about this entire clown car fuck up of a campaign or presidency has been something that could be imagined as true. Look at the people that have gathered around drumpf. Fucking losers, idiots and morons. They are getting their day in the sun because they benefited from a most unlikely series of events that could only be imagined by someone on a massive acid trip or so powerful that they thought the risk was minimal to try and pull off. Vlad is one of the few people in the world who might have thought that someone could take a very racist and divided nation and screw it into the ground using that racism and rank stupidity of the political party in question to pull it off.

  130. 130.

    terben

    December 30, 2017 at 6:05 pm

    One of the diplomatic subtleties of ambassador vs high commissioner at the Court of St James’s. New ambassadors are sent a coach with two horses to take them to the palace to present themselves to the Queen. High commissioners are sent a coach with four horses. If an ambassador and a high commissioner happened to turn up at the palace on the same day, the HC would be seen first.

  131. 131.

    patrick II

    December 30, 2017 at 6:05 pm

    Thanks everyone for putting up with me on this thread. I am not in a good mood and may be a bit strident.

  132. 132.

    Another Scott

    December 30, 2017 at 6:14 pm

    @trollhattan: Wait. I thought Donnie made everyone sign some sort of iron clad (with fake gold lettering) NDA before they could work for him. Wasn’t that the RUMINT back in the day?

    I wouldn’t believe any of the rumors about these people. Everything they say is a lie.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  133. 133.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    December 30, 2017 at 6:23 pm

    I was watching this pod cast of three lectures by historians on the myths of WWII. One of them was talking about Tom Brokaws Greatest Generation nonsense and was pointing out both GW Bush and Trump was use things doing their presidency as another WWII rally the nation moment, but they both are ignoring that WWII everyone was involved in the war effort in someway and making sacrifices. Not the poor do the fighting while the rich gets tax cuts.

    So no surprised Trump get brought down but some second tier chump taking in by a bunch Russian lies,because sucking your own wedding tackle is just the conservative way.

  134. 134.

    patrick II

    December 30, 2017 at 6:29 pm

    @patrick II:

    Just an added note to my apparent antipathy to strictly following process. I am glad Mueller is dotting every i and crossing every t.. In this legal indictment and prosecution context he needs to follow every rule.

  135. 135.

    Bill Arnold

    December 30, 2017 at 6:30 pm

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Another question is why this story came out today and who are the sources. It’s clearly pushback to the Republican argument that Hillary supplied the Steele dossier in order to destroy the Trump campaign.

    Been wondering about this as well. Please feel free to break your personal rules and informed-speculate (with clear labeling). :-) Another aspect is a not-subtle reminder that there are non-US but friendly national intelligence agencies, and in particular that there are four other Eyes in the Five Eyes. (Yarrow’s point at #4, I think.)

    It was not, as Mr. Trump and other politicians have alleged, a dossier compiled by a former British spy hired by a rival campaign. Instead, it was firsthand information from one of America’s closest intelligence allies.

    Doesn’t get more clear than that, at least in the NYTimes.

  136. 136.

    Betty Cracker

    December 30, 2017 at 6:53 pm

    @Jay S: Bingo, I suspect!

    @patrick II: He looks like an incompetent, sanctimonious jackass through every prism to me, but he’d hardly be the first who was undeservedly lionized!

  137. 137.

    Sab

    December 30, 2017 at 6:55 pm

    @patrick II: Comey didn’t respect process. There was a process in place, which required him to keep his phucking mouth shut and let his people do their work. Instead he decided to go around the norms, placate his Republican friends and allies, and now his reputation is in tatters, the FBI ‘s reputation is damaged, and we have a narcissist with dementia in the White House. Comey stomped on all kinds of norms and processes. Don’t tell me that worked out well for him, the FBI or the country.

  138. 138.

    Adrift

    December 30, 2017 at 6:59 pm

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Unless the relocation of Puerto Ricans to Florida as a result of Maria creates a huge Democratic wave, Adam Putnam will be the next governor.

    Also, too, having a county named after you doesn’t hurt.

  139. 139.

    Adrift

    December 30, 2017 at 7:05 pm

    @Ruckus:

    We are where we are, is not based on President Obama, but based upon a conspiracy between the republican powers that be and a foreign government.

    This. Absolutely, unequivocally this.

    Edited for spelling, duh.

  140. 140.

    Another Scott

    December 30, 2017 at 7:08 pm

    @Sab: This.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  141. 141.

    Bill Arnold

    December 30, 2017 at 7:08 pm

    @Adam L Silverman:
    Related, buried in paragraphs 11-12 of Hillary Clinton’s Email Was Probably Hacked, Experts Say (2016/07/07)

    Mrs. Clinton’s best defense, and one she cannot utter in public, is that whatever the risks of keeping her own email server, that server was certainly no more vulnerable than the State Department’s. Had she held an unclassified account in the State Department’s official system, as the rules required, she certainly would have been hacked.
    Russian intruders were thoroughly inside that system for years — since at least 2007 — before the State Department shut its system down several times to perform a digital exorcism in late 2014, nearly two years after Mrs. Clinton left office.

    (Bold mine) As a civilian with no experience working within the (any) government, I do not understand why that did not become part of the conversation.

  142. 142.

    patrick II

    December 30, 2017 at 7:09 pm

    @Sab:

    You are right there. Nor did the republicans respect congressional process with eight investigations of bogus email charges for political purpose, nor do they respect the process of allowing americans to vote when endorsing voting suppression tactics, nor does McConnell support senate norms and processes when he holds up judicial nominations during a democratic incubancy, nor do republicans respect the use of charities not doing political work when they subvert them and use them to launder their political money, nor does trump follow norms when ignoring the emoluments clause of the constitution, nor did he follow norms or laws when colluding with and being bribed by russians to win a presidential election. Plus many others to long to list. So, here we are, with our democracy teetering on the edge, the planet about to overheat, Donald picking a fight with a guy with nuclear missiles and damaging our relationships with our closest allies. I have said that as a legal matter, Mueller should dot every i, but in political matters it really is time for democrats to face what is at stake.

  143. 143.

    Cheryl Rofer

    December 30, 2017 at 7:11 pm

    @Bill Arnold: I honestly don’t know who the source is and don’t have many good guesses. It’s tempting to believe that it’s from the intelligence community, not necessarily the US, but they are pretty good at keeping quiet. Their motive would be to show that they are not dumb enough to base a case on what’s in the Steele dossier. It’s pretty obvious that that information could have provided leads that might have paid off, although the intel community already had some of what the dossier might have led to.

    Another tempting guess is that it’s from Mueller’s shop, and they’re trying to squeeze someone, most likely Jared or Don Jr. But Mueller’s shop has been very measured and very tight to leaks. All they need is some of the Trumpies (and I include all Republican congresscritters in that) to find they’ve been leaking. So probably not them either.

    Benjamin Wittes had a good article a while back at Lawfare about the kinds of people likely to leak. One of the things he said was that leaks often come from defense attorneys. But I don’t see an obvious reason for Papadopoulos or his lawyers to say “No, it’s not the dossier, it’s us.” He’s seemingly already made his bargain with Mueller, although there could be more there that we don’t know about. I don’t see any reason for any of the uncharged to leak this, although Don Jr. might say “See, the coffee boy did it, so I’m not culpable.” Not a great defense, but we’ve seen some massive stupidity and can expect more.

    I know it’s heresy around here, but the New York Times has been getting some of these things out. No way will I defend them for Clinton’s emails or the story a week or so before the election saying “no Russian ties to Trump.” They still haven’t explained that one. And no excuse for Maggie Haberman. But the Times is a mixed bag.

  144. 144.

    Adrift

    December 30, 2017 at 7:13 pm

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    “See, the coffee boy did it, so I’m not culpable.”

    Sounds plausible to me, coming from a Trump.

  145. 145.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    December 30, 2017 at 7:16 pm

    Interesting observations from Josh Marshall

    Josh Marshall‏Verified account @ joshtpm
    One thing increasingly clear is that F.B.I., DC generally saw Clinton probe as a sort of typical DC dance, of great political moment, basically meaningless in terms of substance or nat sec concerns. The Russia stuff was seen quite differently: genuine concern in CI circles …
    2/ and thus intense disagreements abt how hard to push, consequences of probe becoming public, etc. Probe 1 was a show piece; probe 2 was a serious nat sec situation. Paradoxically, precisely because of this probe 1 was treated as essentially a public matter …
    3/ with grave political consequences for Clinton while probe 2 was treated with the most intense secrecy EVEN WITHIN THE BUREAU, thus shielding Trump through the election. We know separately that there were Trump aligned ex-FBI figures in NY (Kalstrom, et al …
    4/ and Rudy along with allies in NYC field office) who were more actively covering for Trump. Indeed, these same individuals in many case had extensive knowledge of Trumps reliance on a Russian money laundering. But these two things were I think happening at once. Both true.

    also, too (he states this as a fact but I’m guessing he’s speculating…?)

    -Whole deeper issue here. Agents in nyc field office as well as in NJ had relationship w Trump, deep informant relationship, also managed Felix Salter. There are many unclean hands there. Maybe a Whitey Bulger type sitch.
    -Josh’s Assignment Desk: Did DJT have longstanding informant relationship relationship w FBI, perhaps managed by one agent over many years? What accommodations did he receive in return?

  146. 146.

    Cheryl Rofer

    December 30, 2017 at 7:18 pm

    That “coffee boy” appelation reminds me that former White House aides on Twitter, like James Fallows, are pointing out that junior staffers don’t arrange meetings with heads of state. Papadopoulos arranged a meeting between Trump (not head of state at that time, but going for it) and Egypt’s Sisi. And, of course, he was promising Putin. There are still things we don’t know about PapaD and his role.

  147. 147.

    Adrift

    December 30, 2017 at 7:18 pm

    Meanwhile, in off topic feel good news, Harriet is tending her two new hatchlings in Ft. Meyers….

    http://www.dickpritchettrealestate.com/eagle-feed.html#

  148. 148.

    Another Scott

    December 30, 2017 at 7:18 pm

    @Bill Arnold: Yeah, funny how that worked. And funny how Powell didn’t use State e-mail servers either, but IOKIYAR – Sorry. I understand we shouldn’t use that anymore – let’s see… EHDIAWEIJCDIB (everything Hillary does is always wrong, even if Jesus Christ did it before).

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  149. 149.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    December 30, 2017 at 7:21 pm

    @Cheryl Rofer: The Times has a weird case of institutional Clinton Derangement Syndrome, especially wrt Hillary, that goes back to well before Haberman worked there. Hell, she was probably in middle school when they contracted it, but it took root quickly. Most of the media share it (Andrea Mitchell, Matt Fucking Lauer), but it seems particularly bad at the Times.

  150. 150.

    Betty Cracker

    December 30, 2017 at 7:22 pm

    @Cheryl Rofer: You are right; the Times absolutely IS a mixed bag. I’ll never subscribe again as long as Baquet is at the helm and refusing to engage in even pro forma introspection. But there’s no denying that they have some excellent reporters and have busted important stories wide open!

  151. 151.

    Betty Cracker

    December 30, 2017 at 7:26 pm

    @Adrift: Thank you for that reminder! I watched little E9 obsessively last year and kept thinking it was time to check the nest again!

  152. 152.

    Bill Arnold

    December 30, 2017 at 7:28 pm

    @David Anderson:
    I’m always amused (shallow, I know) by this classic pic, which could well be about infosec training:
    Every time you make a powerpoint, Edward Tufte kills a kitten

  153. 153.

    Gretchen

    December 30, 2017 at 8:11 pm

    @Cheryl Rofer: Tommy Viettor, from the Obama White House, said the same thing.

  154. 154.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 30, 2017 at 10:13 pm

    @Scotian: Thank you for the kind words. I have just gotten back myself, but wanted to make sure to say thank you.

  155. 155.

    Adam L Silverman

    December 30, 2017 at 10:14 pm

    @Bill Arnold: No one cared enough to make it a part of the conversation.

  156. 156.

    J R in WV

    December 31, 2017 at 12:21 am

    @Amir Khalid:

    Don’t you suppose it’s a simple answer: Stone Ignorance???

    We here in the former colonies aren’t very familiar with the tricky nomenclature of a former world spanning Empire!!

    Especially a political reporter for the NYTimes! Why for ever would they need to know how international relations work????

    Must ETA: I have heard the term High Commissioner with regard to British international relations while in the Caribbean, but did not actually know it was Ambassador between Commonwealth nations. The High Commissioner we saw was appointed leader of the Turks and Caicos island nation after a graft scandal in the elected government, and may have been Canadian.

    He wore a fancy coat and tie, and shorts, on a small boat, met by a British Land Rover being polished while it waited for his boat. Flags
    were raised and lowered as he moved from boat to auto.

  157. 157.

    jc

    December 31, 2017 at 12:41 am

    @hitchhiker: What you said. The election a year ago made me lose faith in this country’s basic competence and ability to save itself. Trump is a shockingly poor political leader, but the Dem who takes him on in 2020 had better be packing a shiv and brass knuckles. And nunchucks.

  158. 158.

    J R in WV

    December 31, 2017 at 12:44 am

    @Adam L Silverman:

    What we really were seeing with Secretary Clinton’s emails and email handling were a combination of the latter two issues then being leveraged to hit the first one. Her requests for a solution that would allow her to have modern, up to date devices to allow her to access her email while traveling for official business, whether to the White House, foreign states, around the US for official reasons, as well as while on leave were rebuffed by the tech leadership gatekeepers at State. This led her to look for a workaround, which she found, given existing laws and regulations.

    I have to say that this was a failure on her part to demand to be obeyed. The memo in reply to her requirements being rebuffed should have informed the tech gatekeepers that their response was a failure to perform and unless they met her requirements by (date certain, like end of the week) their employment would be terminated for cause, failure to perform the job as defined. And it should have been pushed up their ass by someone else with power, like an additional note from the Oval Office.

    Those guys could have been put in charge of tech at an embassy in one of the ‘stans with no electric at night, for example, if not just fired for cause. These federal folks not providing the services they are hired to provide is not acceptable, and she should have refused to accept it. The retired colonel you mention should have been fired long ago if he can’t get his staff to provide universal search tools into his data.

    Having provided data to people for decades makes me get huffy right off. Having said that, we built tools time after time to allow staff to search for information, at some large cost for Oracle tools for example. They would have had to learn a little bit, like how to pick up the handout and look at it. The preferred to write a note asking that a report be run for them… grrrr.

  159. 159.

    slightly_peeved

    December 31, 2017 at 6:00 am

    @J R in WV:

    It should be noted that the “High Commissioner” or “Diplomat” these stories refer to is Alexander Downer AC, who previous to being appointed High Commissioner was the longest-serving Foreign Minister (the Australian equivalent to the Secretary of State) in the history of Australia. In addition, he was briefly the head of the Australian Liberal Party (the conservatives – yes, its weird) and as such the Leader of the Opposition. The current US equivalent of that role is Nancy Pelosi.

  160. 160.

    NCSteve

    December 31, 2017 at 1:47 pm

    @patrick II: No swipe at Corn intended. He did what no one else would. And I get it. Everyone thought she had it in the bag, so why bother? Her Justice Department would ferret it all out and turn it into news in due time, right? And then, when the Comey Coup happened, telling the rest of the nation about the thing that was an open secret in D.C. would have exposed the entire MSM to that knee-weakening charge of bias.

    Corn reported on it obliquely to no effect and was the only person in the whole MSM to say boo about it, albeit too late to have any impact.

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