Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

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

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

So many bastards, so little time.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Dolt 45 / Looks Like Someone at the WH Read the Documents

Looks Like Someone at the WH Read the Documents

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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.

Reader Interactions

54Comments

  2. 2.

    Elizabelle

    Last paragraph of the WaPost story:

    “Thankfully it seems that saner minds have prevailed, at least for the time being,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.). “This underscores why the President should be relying on the expertise and advice of intelligence and law enforcement professionals, not cable news hosts.”

    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.

  4. 4.

    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.

  5. 5.

    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.

  6. 6.

    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.”

  7. 7.

    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!”

  9. 9.

    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.

  11. 11.

    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.

  12. 12.

    rp

    So now he’s managed to enrage normal people by threatening to do this, and likely pissing off his base by wimping out.

  13. 13.

    NonyNony

    We don’t have the right to declassify their intel.

    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.

    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

    This, on the other hand, I would believe would penetrate his skull.

  15. 15.

    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.

  17. 17.

    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.

  21. 21.

    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? ????????

  23. 23.

    Adam L Silverman

    @JPL: Our allied and partner intel communities will leak, just as ours will leak, when it is to their strategic advantage.

  25. 25.

    dmsilev

    @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.

    This Infrastructure Week has been amazing.

  26. 26.

    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.

  27. 27.

    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.

  28. 28.

    Haroldo

    @TaMara (HFG):

    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.

    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.

  29. 29.

    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.

  30. 30.

    James E Powell

    @Elizabelle:

    I would like to see some devastating Trump and Republican leaks shortly before the midterms.

    I’d like to see them now. It’s already almost two years too late.

  32. 32.

    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.

  33. 33.

    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.

  34. 34.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    It’s gonna get worse.

    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.

  35. 35.

    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.

  37. 37.

    raven

    WASHINGTON — The deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, suggested last year that he secretly record President Trump in the White House to expose the chaos consuming the administration, and he discussed recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office for being unfit.

    Mr. Rosenstein made these suggestions in the spring of 2017 when Mr. Trump’s firing of James B. Comey as F.B.I. director plunged the White House into turmoil. Over the ensuing days, the president divulged classified intelligence to Russians in the Oval Office, and revelations emerged that Mr. Trump had asked Mr. Comey to pledge loyalty and end an investigation into a senior aide.

    Mr. Rosenstein was just two weeks into his job. He had begun overseeing the Russia investigation and played a key role in the president’s dismissal of Mr. Comey by writing a memo critical of his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. But Mr. Rosenstein was caught off guard when Mr. Trump cited the memo in the firing, and he began telling people that he feared he had been used.

    Mr. Rosenstein made the remarks about secretly recording Mr. Trump and about the 25th Amendment in meetings and conversations with other Justice Department and F.B.I. officials. Several people described the episodes, insisting on anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The people were briefed either on the events themselves or on memos written by F.B.I. officials, including Andrew G. McCabe, then the acting bureau director, that documented Mr. Rosenstein’s actions and comments.

  38. 38.

    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.

  39. 39.

    TenguPhule

    Kavanaugh will be on the U.S. Supreme Court’: McConnell just erased any doubt about Republicans’ intentions to hear Ford out

    A big reason Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh’s accuser says she doesn’t want to testify in the Senate without first having her claims investigated by the FBI is she doesn’t think she’ll be treated objectively and fairly by politicians.

    Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) just thoroughly justified Christine Blasey Ford’s concerns. In comments Friday, he laid plain his intention to put Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, apparently no matter what Ford has to share.

    “Here’s what I want to tell you,” McConnell said Friday morning at a summit for social conservatives. “In the very near future, Judge Kavanaugh will be on the U.S. Supreme Court. So, my friends, keep the faith. Don’t get rattled by all this. We’re going to plow right through it and do our job.”

    Brace yourselves, folks.

  40. 40.

    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.

  41. 41.

    Haroldo

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Murdoch is also 87 years old, so his “long game” isn’t so long after all.

    There is a thing called ‘Lachlan. You may have heard of him. His politics are as nasty as his old man’s.

  42. 42.

    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.

  45. 45.

    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.

    … Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) is in charge of setting up such a hearing. It’s politically fraught by its very nature. But Grassley has taken pains to make it appear that he’s putting together a balanced hearing. [Well, reading between the lines, maybe she does get it.] He has offered to send staffers to California to interview Ford. He seems open to pushing back Monday’s hearing date, as Ford’s lawyers say she’s busy coping with death threats. [He has no choice in the matter. She will not be there Monday, and she’s credible.] Republicans on his committee have been considering bringing in some kind of outside counsel, preferably a woman, to question Ford to avoid the optics of 11 men on the Republican side asking her questions. [In other words, hiding behind a woman to do their dirty, nasty work.]

    But Grassley’s Republican colleagues continue to undermine those efforts to appear to take Ford’s allegations seriously.

    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.

  47. 47.

    Doug R

    @Gin & Tonic:

    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.

    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.

    drivers caught going more than 40 km/h over the posted speed limit will have their vehicle impounded for seven days, the provincial government announced

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-speeders-risk-losing-vehicles-1.944076

  48. 48.

    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.

  49. 49.

    Doug R

    @Adam L Silverman:

    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.

    Is this why Putin doesn’t roll into the Baltic states or move further than the Donbass region of Ukraine?

  50. 50.

    Mandalay

    @MomSense:

    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.

    That’s an appealing thought, but a simple comment on the WaPo article seemed highly plausible to me:

    America’s allies have quietly informed the idiot Trump that if he declassifies these documents and risks assets all intelligence sharing will stop immediately.

    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.

  51. 51.

    Bill Arnold

    @Quaker in a Basement:

    Somebody is operating secretly under the president’s name to try to keep him out of (more) trouble.

    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.

  52. 52.

    Bill Arnold

    @Mandalay:

    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.

    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.

  53. 53.

    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…

  54. 54.

    Ken

    @Bill Arnold:

    who’s first language did not appear to be English

    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.

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