Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

I was promised a recession.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Let’s finish the job.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

Ah, the different things are different argument.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

This really is a full service blog.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Let there be snark.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Russiagate Open Thread: Tonight’s Roundup

Russiagate Open Thread: Tonight’s Roundup

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I for one will be interested in hearing what Cheryl or Adam have to say about these various stories, but here’s some quick hits to start the weekend:

… Members of Congress are granted no special power to send criminal referrals to the Justice Department. Anyone can make one. But a referral by lawmakers would draw public notice and perhaps extra attention in Mueller’s office…

Committee Democrats have no specific timeline for issuing referrals, Schiff notes. Because Republicans did not force many witnesses to turn over banking, phone, and other records that might support or contradict their claims, he says, “we can’t tell who is telling the truth in many cases.”

But new reports that contradict the truthfulness of witnesses testimony could result in referrals down the road. “As additional things come to light, if there are reports of witnesses saying things that are inconsistent with what has been said to the committee, that list could grow,” Schiff says.

Democrats say they remain open to Republicans joining them in referrals to Mueller, though Republicans would likely oppose such efforts. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), a senior committee member, dismissed Democrats’ potential efforts to refer witnesses for prosecution: “Those guys just keep trying.”

.

And further…

…The muddled messaging was the subject of a closed-door meeting of committee Republicans on Wednesday. According to three sources briefed on the discussion, a frustrated Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) raised pointed concerns about why critiquing intelligence agencies was even mentioned at Monday’s rollout. The finding, after all, won’t be included in the committee’s official Russia report — it will be the subject of a second report issued later in the spring. But the decision to link it to the committee’s Russia findings scrambled the release.

Speaker Paul Ryan’s office also felt compelled to intervene as Republicans offered increasingly scattershot responses in interviews, with some more eager to criticize the agencies than others.

Ryan’s aides convened a meeting with members of the Intelligence Committee’s communications staff on Tuesday, according to two sources familiar with the gathering. The message: Make sure your bosses stick to facts about the intelligence agencies’ findings — and stay focused on the broader point that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and must be stopped from doing it again.

Ryan’s office declined to comment on the meeting…

.

Meanwhile…


.

And on the “Trump Family Crime Cartel” beat…

Finally, Eric Garland has an intriguing essay-in-short-bursts up on Twitter, but then Eric Garland is reputed to get ahead of his thesis sometimes, so I would definitely want a ruling from Adam or Cheryl or another expert on that one!

Reader Interactions

135Comments

  6. 6.

    poleaxedbyboatwork

    Speaking of perjury …

    Suggest making Jefferson Beauregard Sessions the Thoid, top law enforcement officer in the goddamn country, account for his dignity and his honor.

    Might be inneresting to hear what a weasel who cracks under pressure might have to sez.

  7. 7.

    Corner Stone

    Oh, who could’ve guessed? House R’s getting over their skis and then getting major clap back from the US IC.

  8. 8.

    Adam L Silverman

    Garland is not wrong in his analysis, however… He misunderstands what he is looking at. It is not that Russia is a failed state, rather Russia is the first fully functional organized crime state. Call it Mobocracy if you like.

    As for the House Democratic minority HPSCI members intending to make referrals to DOJ, doesn’t surprise me in the least. I think it is more likely that you’ll see them next year if the Democrats retake the House and Congressman Schiff has the ability to 1) compel production of a variety of records – financial, communication, etc, 2) compel testimony, and 3) challenge claims of executive privilege that can’t be because the claims are for things that happened well before the President was sworn in to office.

    That the GOP majority in the House, let alone on HPSCI, has begun to realize that it has once again shot itself in a tender portion of its anatomy over prematurely ending the investigation and issuing a poorly worded executive summary of their forthcoming majority report authored by a former Flynn staffer (Derek Harvey) is not surprising at all. The issue is that only a couple of the Republicans on that committee actually have any real business being on that committee based on experience and expertise. Which largely goes to the entire GOP caucus in the House. These are not high speed, low drag professionals. They are, however, rabid ideologues, which is how they got elected.

    Finally, that they’re considering releasing the entire FISA app is not surprising. The merry band of morons at The Federalist (funding source never divulged) have started pushing a whacked argument without any evidence that somehow FBI Supervisory Special Agent in Charge Strzok suborned the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Judge who issued the FISA warrant for Page. It is, of course, bullshit. But DOJ has to be able to brush this stuff back or it’ll be eaten alive by right wing TV (Hannity, Tucker, Pirro), radio (Rush, Hewitt, Savage, etc), and Internet and social media (all the usual suspects).

  11. 11.

    Chyron HR

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Serious mistake at Fox News. A draft story has accidentally been published and is live online saying Andrew McCabe has been fired.

    Well, how’s it going to happen if Fox doesn’t tell Trump to do it?

  13. 13.

    Corner Stone

    @Baud: I personally enjoyed how easily he dismissed the prison sentence for cutting up a dude in a bar with a shattered glass.

  21. 21.

    TenguPhule

    @poleaxedbyboatwork:

    Suggest making Jefferson Beauregard Sessions the Thoid, top law enforcement officer in the goddamn country, account for his dignity and his honor.

    The audit finds serious deficiencies in his account.

  22. 22.

    hellslittlestangel

    Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), a senior committee member, dismissed Democrats’ potential efforts to refer witnesses for prosecution: “Those guys just keep trying.”

    Yeah. You might say that nevertheless, they persisted.

    Peter King: not quite as stupid as Steve King, but the guy just keeps trying.

  25. 25.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Quinerly: I don’t think that’s going to go how either Navarro or Flynn think it will. Flynn is likely to go completely off the rails.

  32. 32.

    Roger Moore

    The muddled messaging was the subject of a closed-door meeting of committee Republicans on Wednesday. According to three sources briefed on the discussion, a frustrated Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) raised pointed concerns about why critiquing intelligence agencies was even mentioned at Monday’s rollout. The finding, after all, won’t be included in the committee’s official Russia report — it will be the subject of a second report issued later in the spring. But the decision to link it to the committee’s Russia findings scrambled the release.

    It seems to me their underlying problem is Nunes is just making shit up as he goes along and not talking to the rest of the team. It’s way easier to get your messaging in order if everyone knows about the message before it goes out. My radical suggestion would be to write the report first as a group. That way everyone on the committee would know what was in the report and be able to discuss it intelligently. Then they could write the summary based on the report and be sure everything it talks about is discussed in more detail in the final report. It wouldn’t stop their messaging from being a pack of lies, but it would help to ensure everyone on the committee was telling the same lies.

  33. 33.

    Adam L Silverman

    @TenguPhule: For all we know he’s been getting counseling, so hope for the best, expect the worst.

    Alexa!!!! Order all the popcorn! And the whiskey!!!

  36. 36.

    Corner Stone

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Alexa!!!! Order all the popcorn! And the whiskey!!!

    I already have my popcorn stash. It’s butter flavored and I am not sharing. Unless you wear the Spiderman jammies.

  39. 39.

    Cheryl Rofer

    This has been a slow week for Russiagate. (Thank heavens!) The most interesting thing to me was Buzzfeed’s long piece on Felix Sater, who seems to have been an FBI informant for a long time. I have a hard time, though, believing everything that’s in that article, even though the reporters say they verified everything with other parties. The bulleted list toward the beginning is particularly credulity-straining. I take most of what I read on the subject, outside of Mueller’s documents, with a grain of salt or more, though, so this goes in that pile of stuff in my head.

    However, if Sater was informing for the FBI when he was working with Trump (the dates match), and this is some of the more probable material in that article, then that is another rich source of material for Mueller. It could also explain why Mueller has not yet called some witnesses, like Sater.

    The Republican House Committee on Intelligence report did indeed fall on its face, owing to the other confusion that Trump was generating with his personnel changes. There was a report from the Democrats on the committee that I haven’t seen yet. Might be worth digging out for the aficionados of such things. It’s good that the Democrats are keeping tabs on the potential perjurers, but I think that’s a small part of what Mueller will eventually do.

    The Eric Garland thing is about what I expected. I find his stuff pretty near unreadable, and this tweet stream is no exception. tl;dr: Russia is a mafia state, and Garland hates them and thinks they should be … what? Nuking them seems unworkable. Shunning is very limited, not useful when Putin grabs a piece of his neighbors or sends a goody bag with Novichok in it to his enemies. Putin is acting as a spoiler, which undercuts his desire to be taken seriously as a major player. Russia can’t be a major player because its economy stinks and has no future. What should be Putin’s last election comes up on Sunday. Voter participation has been declining over the last few elections, and this one looks like it will be no exception. Russia is fundamentally weak, Putin is a bully, and what we see flows from that. One of my perpetually unfinished posts is about such things. I look forward to Adam’s on the election.

  40. 40.

    TenguPhule

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Russia is fundamentally weak, Putin is a bully, and what we see flows from that.

    They punch above their weight and employ force multipliers to kick us where it hurts.

  41. 41.

    Roger Moore

    @Adam L Silverman:

    The merry band of morons at The Federalist (funding source never divulged) have started pushing a whacked argument without any evidence that somehow FBI Supervisory Special Agent in Charge Strzok suborned the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Judge who issued the FISA warrant for Page.

    That would be a lot more convincing if it hadn’t been renewed by other judges. It might be possible, if a bit implausible, to believe a FBI agent successfully suborned a federal judge. It is beyond tinfoil hat territory to believe he managed to suborn several of them.

  42. 42.

    TenguPhule

    @Roger Moore:

    It is beyond tinfoil hat territory to believe he managed to suborn several of them.

    Naturally, this will be Republican common wisdom within hours.

  45. 45.

    poleaxedbyboatwork

    @TenguPhule:

    As do I. As do you.

    Howz’about we compel this revanchist shitbird to testify, under oath, with the threat of penalty?

    Expect it’d be inneresting, as the saccharrine high of Trumpism dissolves for the fan-boys, to hear what the despicable Keebler Elf hadda say.

    Being a ass-covering coward by nature, I expect it’s significant.

  47. 47.

    Cheryl Rofer

  48. 48.

    Adam L Silverman

    @raven: Here’s my understanding:

    The can fire him based on a referral from the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility. However, that involves a process that usually takes about 60 days and there’s almost always an appeal (I don’t remember if the appeal is automatically built in). So there is no way to do this according to the existing DOJ guidelines rooted in Federal law by Sunday. The only way to do it is to just wing it and ignore the actual regs (rules). Given that his retirement goes into effect Sunday, and other than normal watch standing and emergency response operations by DOJ/FBI that occur every weekend, the Federal government is now closed until Monday I think he’s likely okay.

    Regardless of what the President may want, or a bunch of whackadoodles on the Internet, social media, the radio, and Fox News, doing this would be tremendously detrimental to the President and Attorney General Sessions. McCabe would sue. The attorney’s he would use are folks like Mark Zaid and Brad Moss who are experts at handling these types of things. And they’ll go hard at the OPR investigator’s determination that McCabe lied or shaded the truth. And they’d also go hard at all the President’s tweets about McCabe. Discovery will be a nightmare for Sessions, as well as for the President.

    Here’s Moss’s take on what McCabe is alleged to have done:

  53. 53.

    mike in dc

    @Cheryl Rofer: Garry Kasparov in a recent essay points out that Putin’s “campaign” has registered domain names for Putin24.ru, Putin30.ru and Putin36.ru. Which would mean he plans on retiring when he’s 90, or dead, whichever comes first, I suppose.

  56. 56.

    TenguPhule

    Breaking: Trump attorney threatening to sue Stormy Daniels for $20 million.

    Hilarity predicted to ensue.

  59. 59.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Adam L Silverman:

    It is not that Russia is a failed state, rather Russia is the first fully functional organized crime state.

    Isn’t that basically what old-time empires were?

  60. 60.

    TenguPhule

    @poleaxedbyboatwork:

    Howz’about we compel this revanchist shitbird to testify, under oath, with the threat of penalty?

    Expect it’d be inneresting, as the saccharrine high of Trumpism dissolves for the fan-boys, to hear what the despicable Keebler Elf hadda say.

    Being a ass-covering coward by nature, I expect it’s significant.

    8 hours of “I canna recall upon my honou, suh!”

    I say we just hang him and save ourselves the time and trouble.

  62. 62.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: I don’t actually have an Alexa module so I cannot say. I also have Siri turned off on all my Apple devices.

  69. 69.

    Corner Stone

    I swear to the FSM and blessed Ceiling Cat…if anyone associated with Trump has filed suit against Stormy I may…there’s really no way to finish this sentence that could adequately describe my level of sheer joy.

  71. 71.

    Miss Bianca

    @NotMax: wow, I have never made that connection before. Makes me wonder how many Amazon developers are Lexx fans! Didn’t Alexa the spaceship also have creepy laughing fit at least once? Would explain a lot!

  72. 72.

    Baud

    Jesus H. Christ

    Already under scrutiny about a dog dying in an overhead bin and another dog being accidentally sent to Japan, United Airlines on Friday acknowledged its third animal-related mistake in a week.

    A flight was diverted to Akron, Ohio, on Thursday after the airline realized a pet had been loaded onto the flight in error, airline spokeswoman Maggie Schmerin told CNN.

    CNN

  77. 77.

    Roger Moore

    @mike in dc:

    Garry Kasparov in a recent essay points out that Putin’s “campaign” has registered domain names for Putin24.ru, Putin30.ru and Putin36.ru. Which would mean he plans on retiring when he’s 90, or dead, whichever comes first, I suppose.

    It would help ever so much if somebody would push forward the “dead” date. Tomorrow would be an excellent choice.

  78. 78.

    Gin & Tonic

    Another open thread? Today’s anniversary commemoration went swimmingly. I returned home in essentially the same condition as I left early this morning, except for some muscle soreness. Conditions were superlative. And I popped in to the first aid clinic to thank the people who work there for their help and kindness. It seemed like they don’t get that very often, so we chatted a bit. It was nice, kind of closing the loop on an unfortunate chapter. Now I’m enjoying a cocktail.

  80. 80.

    Steeplejack

    @Corner Stone:

    I had to fast-forward through Chris Matthews’s whole interview with Sater after Matthews opened by gushing: “I have never met anyone with that résumé [heavy on heroic Sater fightin’ crime undercover for Uncle Sam]. . . . I mean, here’s my takeaway from that résumé: what kind of man are you, Felix Sater?”

    Sater: “I guess complex, to say the least. Um, I’m an immigrant who came to this country at the age of seven, grew up here, went to school . . .” yadda, yadda, yadda.

    Blerg. I’ll catch any juicy details when recapped later. Matthew is such a creampuff interviewer that I bet he gets rolled by the deli guy every day when they’re ordering lunch. And Sater looks like a straight-up villain. Maybe Chris should interview that guy whose face Sater slashed in the barroom fight.

  82. 82.

    poleaxedbyboatwork

    @TenguPhule:

    Speaking of perjury …

    Suggest making Jefferson Beauregard Sessions the Thoid, top law enforcement officer in the goddamn country, account for his dignity and his honor.

    Realize that Jeffbo epitomizes the Emersonian caution ’bout the guy who came to dinner worried ’bout his honor, i.e. in paraphrase, the more this worm talkt ’bout his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

    But: Expendable as JeffyJeff is, I’ma thinkin might be inneresting to hear what a weasel who cracks under pressure n who acts like Paul Reiser in Alien might have to sez.

    To save his (flipped) honor, course.

  84. 84.

    NotMax

    @Steeplejack

    Matthew is such a creampuff interviewer that I bet he gets rolled by the deli guy

    “I’ll have the Tip O’Neill. A slab of tongue and a schooner of whiskey.”

  86. 86.

    Feebog

    @Steeplejack:

    As pointed out by Baud above, you have your Chris’ mixed up. I listened to the interview on radio and thought Chris Hayes did a pretty decent job. He followed up with an excellent panel who pointed out where Sater was likely full of shit.

  95. 95.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Matt McIrvin: No they were just civilizing the natives, shouldering the white man’s burden, yada yada yada.
    Running drugs, starving peasants, conducting genocides, Putin only wishes he could do half the things that were done with Queen Vicky’s blessings.
    ETA: If Putin is as successful he will get a PBS hagiography too in the distant future.

  98. 98.

    Quinerly

    @Baud: I’m assuming. Bloomberg article didn’t mention that Trump’s atty is Charles Harder (or if it I did, I didn’t catch the connection). I guess if you are watching Rachel you caught that little tidbit. Hulk Hogan’s old atty who sued Gawker into the ground.

  99. 99.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Running drugs, starving peasants, conducting genocides, Putin only wishes he could do half the things that were done with Queen Vicky’s blessings.

    Putin doesn’t have to go that far back for genocide envy. There was a new empire that came after Vicky’s.

  100. 100.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Steeplejack:

    We are committed to vigorously enforcing our policies to protect people’s information such that only we can profit from it, and nobody else.

  101. 101.

    efgoldman

    @Roger Moore:

    It is beyond tinfoil hat territory to believe he managed to suborn several of them.

    But where did the judges buy their pizza? Riddle me that. Huh. HUH!

  102. 102.

    NotMax

    @Quinerly

    Will never convince me there aren’t snickers in the judge’s chambers that the attorney of record in an action to stick it to a porn star is named Harder.

  103. 103.

    Mary G

    Politico Magazine has a long read on Tim Scott from South Carolina, who is the only Republican I’m scared of, because he’s good. Fortunately his party base would never vote for him.

    The senator is running behind. It’s a Wednesday morning in late January, and he is scheduled to join a colleague in addressing the United States Conference of Mayors. When Scott enters the room, searching for his seat at the roundtable, he stops to slap hands with Cory Booker. “You’re looking at the Big Bald Black Man Caucus of the United States Senate,” his colleague from New Jersey announces. “We’re looking for a third!” Scott bellows out, the room breaking up in laughter.

    There is truth in jest: Despite ideological differences, Scott and Booker have become good friends in no small part due to shared expectations, if not shared experiences. (“Cory graduated cum laude,” Scott tells the crowd of his Ivy-educated colleague. “I graduated thank you law-dy!”) Along with Democrat Kamala Harris of California, they are the only three African-Americans in the Senate, and feel the obligation of growing that number. The burden is especially heavy for Scott, given his party’s dearth of nonwhite voters and the pressure on him to engage the black community without alienating the GOP’s white base. “I get fewer chances to mess up than other people,” he tells me. “Therefore, realizing that my reaction is something that will either create more opportunities for people like me or reduce opportunities for people like me, I have to be very aware of how [it] will be taken by a larger audience.”

    This is why, as much as Scott loathes being seen as the token black Republican, his only hope is serving well enough, long enough, to see the day reinforcements arrive and stereotypes fade.

  106. 106.

    Feebog

    @Corner Stone:

    Agreed, and I think Hayes called him on it several times. For instance, at one point towards the end of the interview Hayes told Sater he had not answered the question and pressed him. He also asked Sater if he was cooperating with Mueller’s investigation, and Sater’s answer pretty much confirmed he was, at least as I heard it. YMMV.

  107. 107.

    TenguPhule

    @NotMax:

    Will never convince me there aren’t snickers in the judge’s chambers that the attorney of record in an action to stick it to a porn star is named Harder.

    The adult film parody of this is going to be completely meta.

  112. 112.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Quinerly: Actually he was Peter Thiel’s attorney, but that wasn’t divulged to the court. Hogan’s actual attorney is someone I went to high school with.

  113. 113.

    Gravenstone

    @NotMax: Such an underrated series, albeit with serious hit and miss contributions at times. Particularly later in the series.

  115. 115.

    NotMax

    @Gravenstone

    Recommend skipping the movies and sticking with the series. But yeah, when it periodically went into the weeds it did so with gusto.

    Trivia: It was absolutely verboten for Stanley Tweedle to be shown without his hat.

  116. 116.

    Quinerly

    @Adam L Silverman: I’m obviously not up on my high profile CA attys.? Just repeating what Rachel said on her show tonight. She had the pleadings. I only read the Bloomberg article. Rachel also said Harder was Melania’s atty when she sued the Daily Mail and that blogger who said she was an escort.

  118. 118.

    Gravenstone

    @Corner Stone: Maddow touched briefly on it. Lawyer who signed off on it was the same hired gun who sued Gawker into oblivion over the Hulk Hogan tape, as well as representing Melania against claims she was an escort. So the $20M amount sounds like his tactic.

  124. 124.

    Steve in the ATL

    Breaking: Trump attorney threatening to sue Stormy Daniels for $20 million.

    Free legal advice for lawyers: don’t do this.

  126. 126.

    Steve in the ATL

    Attorney General Jeff Sessions late Friday night fired former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, a little more than 24 hours before McCabe was set to retire.

    More free legal advice: don’t do this either.

  129. 129.

    NotMax

    @Gravenstone

    My mix-up. Thought you were speaking of Lexx. My comment was entirely Lexx-oriented.

    As for Thieves’ World, the board game Sanctuary that came out in the early 1980s is a pretty darn good one which kind of got lost in the deluge of games hitting the market around the same time. Also a not bad at all six volume graphic novel adaptation around the same time.

  132. 132.

    NotMax

    @Steve in the ATL

    A lesser effort from Starblaze, yes. Nowhere near as enjoyable as the MythAdventures graphic novels (which collected in color the previous WaRP Graphics comics series).

  135. 135.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Adam L Silverman: yes, I was thinking that since this is past close of business for the last work day of the pay period, that nobody at FBI HR will be able to process the firing paperwork until Monday morning, and oops, Mr. McCabe’s retirement was already effective as of 12:01 am on Sunday 19 March 2018. Work to rule.

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