These fucking guys:
President Trump on Friday walked back his order earlier this week to declassify information in the ongoing probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, saying Justice Department officials and others had persuaded him not to do so for the time being.
The retreat from his declassification decree issued just four days ago underscores the ongoing tensions between the White House and the Justice Department over the probe by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who is examining whether any Trump associates may have conspired with the Kremlin to interfere in the election.
In a pair of Friday morning tweets, Trump said: “I met with the DOJ concerning the declassification of various UNREDACTED documents. They agreed to release them but stated that so doing may have a perceived negative impact on the Russia probe. Also, key Allies’ called to ask not to release. Therefore, the Inspector General has been asked to review these documents on an expedited basis. I believe he will move quickly on this (and hopefully other things which he is looking at). In the end I can always declassify if it proves necessary. Speed is very important to me – and everyone!”
Someone at the WH actually got around to investigating what Jeane Pirro and Hannity were blathering about and realized that the information was, as Trump asserted, really damning. But not to the FBI or the Russia investigation.
Cheryl Rofer
Another bullet dodged.
Elizabelle
Last paragraph of the WaPost story:
It is a sin that we have an addled Fox-News watching, sundowning grandfather in the White House. Who is very likely illegitimately there.
Fox News is a poison on our democracy. I’d like to see Hannity and Pirro perp-walked.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
Add Murdoch to the queue. This is his doing and since he has citizenship, is certainly fair game.
Adam L Silverman
No one in the White House read the documents. What most likely happened is that the Director of National Intelligence, the Director of Central Intelligence, and the FBI director told the President this couldn’t just be declassified without a proper review because much of the redacted material is from our 5 Eyes allies and other allies and partners. We don’t have the right to declassify their intel. And Coats, Haspel, and Wray told the President that he would be very unhappy if our allied and partner intel services decided to leak anything they have on him or his associates in response. That’s what got his attention.
Gin & Tonic
@Elizabelle: Jeanine Pirro, who got away with only a $393 fine for getting popped doing 119 mph in upstate NY. You would have had your license suspended.
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: This sounds much too rational. It might work for a president who was serious about his job. It’s hard to speculate on the process, but my guess would be that whatever people told him, it had a strong measure of “This will hurt your image and upset your base” to it. Or they just said “In a pig’s ear. Make me do it.”
Jager
I get up early every morning, 5AM,, I look at the news and everyday I sip my coffee and mutter, “Oh for Christ’s sake!”
LAO
@Cheryl Rofer: @Adam L Silverman: Or, this will cost you money. That’s about the only thing I think works on Trump.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: I think they told him that their counterparts were pissed and had indicated they’d leak what they’ve got on him. That’s the type of thing he responds to.
schrodingers_cat
BUT HER EMAILZ.
Aleta
He did succeed in diverting some news coverage away from this week’s stories about Mueller’s investigation, Cohen’s talks with Mueller, the Trump Org and family charity, and the opposition to Kavanaugh.
rp
So now he’s managed to enrage normal people by threatening to do this, and likely pissing off his base by wimping out.
NonyNony
I doubt that anyone telling Trump “you don’t have the right to do that” would penetrate his skull – the man seems to think he was elected God-Emperor rather than President.
This, on the other hand, I would believe would penetrate his skull.
Hunter Gathers
How much more Trump could things get?
The answer: None.
None more Trump.
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: Our 5 Eyes partners have everything, some of the most concerning intel was hand carried by the head of MI6 to DCI Brennan himself in 2016. Our Baltic allies have a lot of material as there collection on Russia and Russian assets and Russian connected elites and notables throughout Europe and the US and NATO is necessary to their survival.
TaMara (HFG)
@Elizabelle: My hope is, like everything the orange circus peanut touches, Faux News will soon know the Shit-Stain touch themselves and slither back into the sewer from with they emerged 30 years ago.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Hunter Gathers: We are at Peak Trump? The Deplorable Maximum, if you will?
Well at lest Trump distracted the news with this act of buffoonery from him blowing it while talking to Hurricane victims in North Carolina.
JPL
The Washington Post has a book excerpt written by one of their reporters
‘The Apprentice’ book excerpt: At CIA’s ‘Russia House,’ growing alarm about 2016 election interference
The excerpt itself is a compelling read about Trump and the intelligence agencies. I think there is more of a back story to Trump’s change of mind. Maybe Wray prepared his resignation papers.
Cheryl Rofer
@LAO: Good point.
@Adam L Silverman: That would work.
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: It’s gonna get worse.
JPL
@Adam L Silverman: That’s a real possibility. They should declassify the info now, so we can rid ourselves of the traitor.
p.a.
@Adam L Silverman: How do our allies benefit by allowing a Russian asset to remain as President? Simply to avoid a US constitutional crisis? Protect intel sources? What would be a tripwire to go public? What actions would they expect from those non-compromised in the US executive? ????????
ruemara
@NonyNony: Well aren’t republicans and his base acting like he was?
Adam L Silverman
@JPL: Our allied and partner intel communities will leak, just as ours will leak, when it is to their strategic advantage.
p.a.
Comment 20.5 in moderation: autocorrect effed up my email.
dmsilev
@Aleta:
This Infrastructure Week has been amazing.
Elizabelle
@Adam L Silverman: I would like to see some devastating Trump and Republican leaks shortly before the midterms.
Trump and the GOP are a serious threat to the US and its allies. Both dangerously tainted by prion disease, Russian-borne and homegrown wingnut variety.
trollhattan
@Gin & Tonic:
It’s more than that for a red light violation in many parts of California. Get popped for 2x the highway speed limit will get you jail time.
Haroldo
@TaMara (HFG):
We should be so lucky. Murdoch is playing a much longer game than Trump, and, I think, would and could dump a lot of money into keeping Fox alive in the face of the Trumpocolypse.
Gin & Tonic
@trollhattan: I have occasion to go to Toronto at least once a year, and always marvel at the big signs on the 401. 50km/h over the limit and they impound your car on the spot and the fine is $10,000.
James E Powell
@Elizabelle:
I’d like to see them now. It’s already almost two years too late.
Gin & Tonic
@Haroldo: Murdoch is also 87 years old, so his “long game” isn’t so long after all.
Calouste
@p.a.: The problem is that no one knows what will happen if they try to get rid of the shitgibbon in a hard way, by dumping a massive amount of intel or such. So the approach is to deflate things rather than let them explode. There are still too many shitgibbon supporters to do something drastic.
J R in WV
I’m hoping for a Friday dump of new indictments from the past few weeks of Mueller’s team working their Grand Jury(ies) in DC and the Eastern District of Virginia. Or new guilty pleas, that would do as well.
We have heard that Mike Cohen has spent a lot of time with the Special Prosecutor’s team lately… perhaps he has also talked in front of a Grand Jury? So many possibilities. Although it would be a shame to distract from the pool of vile the Senate Republicans have made of their “Judge” Kavanaugh hearings.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Cheryl Rofer:
Yes, but from who? That idiot who sold out his fellow Dude Bro over the rape accusations shows the dumb wrecking ball mentality is spreading.
JPL
Who has a subscription to the NYTimes? It appears that an article has dropped stating that Rosenstein wanted to wear a wire when meeting with Trump.
ugh.. The odds of him being around til Monday are slim.
raven
@JPL: I do
raven
raven
<blockquoteThe president’s allies have seized on Mr. McCabe’s lack of candor to paint a damning picture of the F.B.I. under Mr. Comey and assert the Russia investigation is tainted.
The Justice Department denied a request in late July from Mr. Trump’s congressional allies to release Mr. McCabe’s memos, citing an ongoing investigation that the lawmakers believed to be Mr. Mueller’s. Mr. Rosenstein not only supervises that investigation but is considered by the president’s lawyers as a witness for their defense because he also sought the dismissal of Mr. Comey, which is being investigated as possible obstruction of justice.
TenguPhule
Kavanaugh will be on the U.S. Supreme Court’: McConnell just erased any doubt about Republicans’ intentions to hear Ford out
Brace yourselves, folks.
West of the Rockies
@Gin & Tonic:
She is vile. Just another wealthy rage pig who thinks she is far more talented and important than she is.
Hannity, however, is far worse. He always looks like a fat bird peeping for another worm to be stuffed into his little birdy mouth.
Haroldo
@Gin & Tonic:
There is a thing called ‘Lachlan. You may have heard of him. His politics are as nasty as his old man’s.
Quaker in a Basement
No way Trump wrote those tweets.
“but stated that so doing may have a perceived negative impact on the Russia probe”
There is no “perceived impact” for Trump. He deals in absolutes. It’s good or it’s bad, positive or negative. “Perceived” doesn’t exist. And when was the last time he said “the Russia probe”? It’s always the “rigged Witch Hunt.”
“asked to review these documents on an expedited basis”
“Expedited basis?” Those aren’t Trump. Again, he speaks in absolutes and superlatives. And he never asks, he orders. If this was Trump this would say “ordered to review the documents immediately.”
Somebody is operating secretly under the president’s name to try to keep him out of (more) trouble.
Quaker in a Basement
@Gin & Tonic: Somewhere in the neighborhood of the time it takes a green banana to ripen.
JPL
@raven: Thanks Betty just put up a post also.
Elizabelle
@TenguPhule: Oh bullshit, Amber Phillips. I really don’t like her. You really have to read between the lines, and why not just be a big girl and spell it out a little more clearly? She’s press corpse, junior [league] variety.
Grassley is just trying to promote the appearance of an unbiased hearing.
If that ancient goat wanted to try to ascertain what really happened, he would request an FBI investigation. Since all the conservatives in Washington are developing their own theories and googling wildly, why not let the FBI have at it? It’s their job, isn’t it? They’re supposed to be good at that stuff.
Aleta
@dmsilev:
Your tax dollars at work. (link: wikipedia)
Doug R
@Gin & Tonic:
Around here, if you’re doing 40km/h (about 25 mph) over the limit, the police can throw you in jail and impound your car.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-speeders-risk-losing-vehicles-1.944076
MomSense
@Adam L Silverman:
I was going to say that the DNI head of CIA and the other letters went into the oval and slid a Manila envelope full of photos from 5 eyes across the desk. He peaked in and decided not to declassify for now.
Doug R
@Adam L Silverman:
Is this why Putin doesn’t roll into the Baltic states or move further than the Donbass region of Ukraine?
Mandalay
@MomSense:
That’s an appealing thought, but a simple comment on the WaPo article seemed highly plausible to me:
There has to be some point at which our allies decide that there is more downside than upside to sharing intelligence with someone who cannot be trusted, and I suspect Trump has nudged them pretty close to that point.
Bill Arnold
@Quaker in a Basement:
There are multiple such people. Bunches of people regularly attempt to guess the authorship of each tweet. Thinking of it as Kremlinology (Kremlin-East is the joke). Early morning, it’s probably Trump.
There have been some weird ones, including a series that did not look like it was written by somebody who (a) was not DJ Trump (must be said:) (b) who’s first language did not appear to be English.
Bill Arnold
@Mandalay:
This may be true, but I suspect it’s a two-fer (or >2fer). He may have been talked into planning to release a carefully redacted and carefully cherry-picked (almost no cherries to pick, probably) document microdump oh maybe 10 days prior to the midterms. Not sure he understands that the press, excepting Fox and etc, is much faster now at identifying bullshit; Nunes and others gave them a lot of practice. Such a microdump is likely to backfire, IMO. And if it’s small, it can be thoroughly read and reread in a few hours.
Ken
@MomSense: There’s an urban legend that since 1964, the director of the CIA shows each new President a film of the Kennedy assassination – not the Zapruder one, the one shot over the gunman’s shoulder…
Ken
@Bill Arnold:
Is Trump still using that unsecured, ten-year-old phone with a dozen known exploits? Maybe some of these posts are coming from China, or Venezuela.