Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

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

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

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Election 2016

Foreign Intrigue Open Thread: Friday *Russian* Doc Drop

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There are others who will have much more useful opinions about all this, but just to make sure the whole mess doesn’t get overlooked in the general news tsunami…

… As alleged in the indictment, from at least December 2014 until March 2022, Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, a resident of Moscow, together with at least three Russian officials, engaged in a years-long foreign malign influence campaign targeting the United States. Ionov is the founder and president of the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia (AGMR), an organization headquartered in Moscow and funded by the Russian government. Ionov utilized AGMR to carry out Russia’s influence campaign.

“Ionov allegedly orchestrated a brazen influence campaign, turning U.S. political groups and U.S. citizens into instruments of the Russian government,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “The Department of Justice will not allow Russia to unlawfully sow division and spread misinformation inside the United States.”

According to the indictment, Ionov — working under the supervision of the FSB and with the Russian government’s support — recruited political groups within the United States, including U.S. Political Group 1 in Florida, U.S. Political Group 2 in Georgia, and U.S. Political Group 3 in California, and exercised direction or control over them on behalf of the FSB. Specifically, Ionov provided financial support to these groups, directed them to publish pro-Russian propaganda, coordinated and funded direct action by these groups within the United States intended to further Russian interests, and coordinated coverage of this activity in Russian media outlets. Ionov also relayed detailed information about this influence campaign to three FSB officials…

Early in the conspiracy, senior members of U.S. Political Group 1, UIC-1, UIC-2, and UIC-3 exchanged emails about the fact that Ionov was working on behalf of the Russian government. For example, in September 2015, Ionov paid for UIC-1 to attend an AGMR-sponsored “Dialogue of Nations” conference in Moscow. Upon his return to Florida, UIC-1 reported to the leadership of U.S. Political Group 1 that AGMR is “a solid institution of Russian politic,” and that it was “clear” that AGMR was “an instrument of [the] Russian government,” which, UIC-1 wrote, did not “disturb us.” The following week, in an email discussion, U.S. Political Group 1 leaders observed that it was “more than likely” that the Russian government was using AGMR “to utilize forces inside of the U.S. to sew [sic] division inside the United States.”…

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A Sunday Night True Story

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Once upon a time, between 2016 and 2018, I got it wrong. On the front page and in the comments. Over and over and over again. While I recognized that Trump had around a 30% chance of winning in 2016, I thought it unlikely to happen. Unfortunately, the antiquated relic know as the Electoral College went off as it is occasionally wont to do.

What I really got wrong, however, is just how little resiliency our political systems and structures actually had to withstand what we all lived through. I made that mistake because I fell back on what I learned in my education and training as a political scientist, as well as my experience with career civil servants during my time serving on civilian mobilization orders with the Army and DOD. Specifically, that it is exceedingly difficult to overcome then inertia that is a career civil servant.

As a result, I convinced myself that our system was stronger than it was and would hold more firmly against Trump, his appointees, and their agenda. I overestimated what Robert Mueller would do, underestimated what Trump’s appointees, employees, family members, campaign officials, Republican elected and party officials, and surrogates would do to undermine Mueller’s investigation. And I told that to all of you in front page posts and in the comments. I was wrong. And a lot of you suffered as a result of my incorrect assurances.

I won’t make the same mistake twice.

I failed as a front pager between 20-6 and 2018. Instead of helping to make you all better informed and smarter, I made you dumber. I gave you false hope. I helped to make things worse.

Maybe we’ll get really, really lucky and everything will break just right and we’ll thread the needle again in November 2022 and November 2024 the way we did in November 2020. But right n0w Republican controlled state legislatures are doing everything they can to ensure that does not happen. That it doesn’t matter how many voters are registered or mobilized through changing the law to suppress the votes or make them irrelevant by allowing state legislatures to substitute their preferences for the actual will of the voters. That through even more extreme gerrymanders, these elected officials will even more precisely pick their voters rather than allowing the voters to pick their elected representatives. We are quickly regressing to how the US functioned at the state level prior to the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act passed and the Supreme Court took the Reconstruction amendments seriously.

I was not sufficiently skeptical and paranoid in 2016, 2017, and into 2018. I won’t make that mistake again.

I have no idea how this story ends, though as you all know, I’m not particularly bullish about the potential outcomes, so to be continued…

Open thread!

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The Durham Investigation, the Steele Dossier, & Misusing the Department of Justice For Partisan Political Purposes

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Cole asked me to do a post on the Durham investigation and how the usual suspects – Greenwald, Taibbi, the Fox News/OAN/NewsMax/Breitbart/Shapiro/other conservative news and digital news sites, and other Trump world axis of shitbirds – and now CNN with their coverage of it yesterday, are using Durham’s indictments. Specifically, that they are using it to scream and yell that 1) Putin was meddling in US politics in the 2016 election, 2) that the initial meddling eventually became focused on harming HRC and helping Trump, and 3) that Trump, his family members, his senior employees (I know family members and employees are the same category), and his campaign people – senior and junior – were all trying to figure out how to leverage Russia’s ops for Trump’s gain was all completely made up oppo. That this then demonstrates a real conspiracy between the law firm HRC’s campaign and the DNC used. And which is now being used to further try to discredit Marc Elias, the FBI, the Obama administration, especially his DCI and DNI, John McCain, and the mainstream news media to try to prevent a Trump presidency and then destroy it once Trump was elected. NONE OF THAT IS TRUE OR FACTUALLY ACCURATE!!!

The reality is really much simpler. What Durham is doing is exactly what Barr intended him to do when he appointed Durham as a special counsel in addition to his regular duties as a US Attorney. Barr intended Durham and his investigation to discredit every connection that has been made between Trump, his family, his business, his campaign, his administration, and his impeachment defenses with Putin, Russian intelligence, and the Russian and post-Soviet oligarchs working for Putin to achieve his objectives regarding the US. Barr, for all intents and purposes, established Durham as a special counsel so that Durham could run his own active measures campaign of disinformation, misinformation, and agitprop against the US from within the DOJ. Specifically:

  1. Use the investigation to continue to launder the disinformation, misinformation, and agitprop that the entire investigation into and that all the allegations of Trump’s business and financial connections to Russia, Russian oligarchs, and other post-Soviet oligarchs aligned with Russia
  2. Putin’s operation to interfere in the 2016 elections and American politics beyond 2016 first to hurt the chances of anyone who might take a hard line against him as president, then to damage Clinton’s chances, and finally to boost Trump’s
  3. Trump’s, his family member’s, his campaigns, and a number of outside supporters attempts to actually get help from Putin’s assets – both inside and outside of the Russian government
  4. To promote the idea that the real conspiracy against American in the 2016 election – to falsely allege and implicate the Trump-Putin connection – was that of the Democratic Party, the large white shoe law firms that work for them, MI6 via Steele, the Clinton campaign, the Obama administration, and senior appointed and career officials at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA, the DOJ, the FBI, select Republican senators like John McCain, and the Ukrainian government

Again; NONE OF THIS IS TRUE OR FACTUALLY ACCURATE!!!!

To do this, Durham has produced three indictments. The first is sort of a throw away. He caught a junior attorney at the FBI who prepared one of the FISA warrants for one of the lower level Trump campaign stooges. The FBI attorney had embellished some of the information included to get the warrant. He ultimately attorney pled out. Everyone reasonably thought that this was a face saver for Durham because he didn’t have anything because there was no way to actually accomplish what he was tasked with doing because what he was tasked with doing was in direct opposition to well documented facts and events. Durham, however, has other ideas.

He has now indicted a very senior attorney – Michael Sussman – who brought the Steele dossier to the attention of senior FBI and DOJ officials. The indictment is for lying to the FBI for not explicitly telling them that the large white shoe law firm he works for was also, through other attorneys, representing the Clinton campaign with the implication that he concealed who else his firm represented – Clinton – in an attempt to induce the FBI to investigate Trump. The indictment is considered to be weak. It is clear from the interview notes that the senior FBI official, James Baker, did not ask him where he worked because he knew where he worked. Here’s Ken White’s, better known as Popehat, take:

/8 However, there are distinctly odd things about this indictment that take it outside the norm. First: it’s based on a face-to-face oral statement with one government witness, Baker. I don’t recall seeing another 1001 case like that.

/9 FBI agents travel in pairs, like Jedi or geese. Baker wasn’t an agent, but it’s super-unusual in my experience for an executive-level law enforcement like this to have a meeting like this with no witnesses for their support and protection. Weirder to hang a charge on it.

/10 On the one hand, Baker has expressed uncertainty about the details of the conversation, on the other hand, there is some corroboration about the conversation. But just the fact of a 1001 based on that scenario isn’t anything I recall seeing before.

/11 Next: the 27-page indictment is, to my reading, performative and seemingly focused on delivering a narrative of Trump-as-victim rather than a necessary exposition about Sussman’s alleged crime. It’s a one-count 1001; that usually doesn’t require so much verbiage.

/12 In evaluating whether my take is reasonable or partisan or a mixture, you could compare it to the indictment of Trump ally and indie cartoon character Roger Stone, 24 pages for obstruction and 5 1001 counts. justice.gov/file/1124706/d

/13 To my read Stone’s is more focused on providing context for his statements and Sussman’s seems more political narrative driven, but that’s why you should read primary documents — to decide for yourself.

/14 If Sussman did what he’s accused of, I think it’s a clear 1001 violation. Whether it would “normally” be charged, whether it’s charged in a way designed to promote a political narrative, and whether it’s politically motived are vastly more complicated questions.

His third indictment is of the researcher – Igor Danchenko – that Steele hired to act as his investigator with a variety of Russian, post Soviet, and Russian aligned actors to get the opposition research for him. Here, again, is Ken White’s take:

A few comments on the Danchenko indictment. /1 storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco

/2 First, it’s on firmer footing than Durham’s Sussman indictment, which relies on a single person-to-person conversation. It lacks the questionable evidentiary issues of that charge.

/3 second, to an even greater extent than the Sussman indictment, it reads like a justification for Durham’s investigation. 39 pages of exposition for five simple 1001 counts is not normal. It reads like a vehicle for a narrative.

4 Third, like the Sussman indictment, this indictment is about distorting or withholding information that might have helped the FBI assess the credibility of the claims being made. But that’s enough to meet the materiality standard, which is extremely lax.

The key take aways are point 11 in the first set of tweets and point 3 in the second. Durham is using these indictments to launder the Black PSYOP that we covered from October 2019 through the spring of 2020. It is entirely possible that Durham will be able to make his cases against Sussman, Danchenko, or both. Marcy Wheeler has a full breakdown and deep textual dives of exactly what Durham is doing and how it is being laundered in both the conservative news, digital, and social media and what is called the mainstream media like CNN did yesterday.

The question is whether reality will intrude on what Durham is doing regardless of whether he can get convictions or plea agreements from Sussman and/or Danchenko. We know from both the Mueller investigative report sent to Congress, as well as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s (SSCI) report on the 2016 campaign, election, and allegations of Putin interfering on behalf of Trump that the reason Mueller never brought charges of a direct conspiracy between Trump, his family members, his employees, his campaign officials, select outside campaign advisors and actors like Roger Stone and the Russian governmental and non-governmental actors carrying out Putin’s operation is because Trump, his family members, his employees, his campaign officials, select outside campaign advisors and actors were obstructing the Mueller investigation. The section on obstruction in the Mueller Report starts on p. 191 of the linked pdf and on p. 14 of the fifth volume of the linked SSCI report. In some cases these folks were obstructing the investigation in more than one way. For instance, Rudy Giuliani who was an outside advisor and surrogate for Trump during the campaign worked hard to ensure he’d be Trump’s pro-bono outside legal advisor and counsel during the Mueller investigation.

What the Durham investigation and indictments are doing is what former AG Barr intended them to do: use the DOJ to launder misinformation, disinformation, and agitprop about how Christopher Steele collected his opposition information, the actual information he collected, and how that information was used once it got brought to the attention of elected officials like the late Senator McCain and counterintelligence and law enforcement officials at the DOJ and FBI. Barr started trying to discredit Mueller and his investigation before he was ever appointed attorney general. In fact the lengthy memo he sent Trump delineating why Mueller’s investigation wasn’t properly predicated served as his application for becoming attorney general. Durham is the last part, that we know of, of Barr’s attempts to cover up what happened in 2016.

The usual suspects, such as Greenwald, who are now using what Durham is producing to push their own agendas are largely covering their own asses. Wikileaks has now been fully exposed as what we always knew it to be. Not a truth telling, stalwart, information must be free group seeking to hold governments and the powerful accountable, but an asset of the Russian intelligence services run by a paranoid, megalomaniacal authoritarian with delusions of grandeur. What Greenwald, and Greenwald’s partners in these endeavors – Taibbi, Tracey, Mate, and others – are hoping t0o obscure is just how tightly connected to Assange and Wikileaks Greenwald is. Promoting what Durham is alleging as the real, actual truth is necessary for Greenwald to cover his own ass. Not for being involved in Wikileaks 2016 operations against the US, but in regard to his work with Wikileaks prior to that.

This is different than what the Breitbrats, Ben Shapiro, dim Jim Hoft, OANN, NewsMax, the evening talking heads at Fox, and others on the pro-Trump/MAGA right are promoting. They are promoting it because it is part of their grift.

Bannon and Stone are sort of in the middle. They have connections to Wikileaks from the 2016 campaign, but they also want to promote their grifts.

CNN just wants people to tune in so they have better ratings and can sell more advertising.

Durham’s investigation is using the Department of Justice to provide them with the disinformation, misinformation, and agitprop to provide all of them with what they need.

Open thread!

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At last, Beltway introspection!

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I remember the first time it occurred to me that the mainstream media’s political coverage is hot garbage. I can’t even remember what occasioned the thought, but it was during the single term of the first George Bush. I’m sure it was egregiously bad before that, but that’s when I noticed.

So, as a reader/viewer who’s long believed that a Beltway reckoning for the terrible, awful, no-good political coverage is desperately needed, my eyes were drawn to a linked title from Axios, one of the worst current offenders: Epic Media Fail. Introspection? Please and thank you! Oh wait…

A reckoning is hitting news organizations for years-old coverage of the 2017 Steele dossier, after the document’s primary source was charged with lying to the FBI.

Why it matters: It’s one of the most egregious journalistic errors in modern history, and the media’s response to its own mistakes has so far been tepid.

You know what’s been motherfucking tepid — or actually nonexistent in most cases? Any introspection about mainstream media outlets’ collaboration with known right-wing extremists to kneecap Hillary Clinton and elevate a walking collection of untreated personality disorders to the Oval Office. The New York Times was an especially irresponsible party in that shameful enterprise.

For example, it was distinctly unhelpful for that outlet to allow nitwit political reporters to project their personal psychodramas onto candidates and build brands by squirreling away tidbits for books to be published in the catastrophic aftermath. It was and remains nauseating. But back to the current “reckoning.”

Outsized coverage of the unvetted document drove a media frenzy at the start of Donald Trump’s presidency that helped drive a narrative of collusion between former President Trump and Russia.

Oh for fuck’s sweet sake, for real? The “narrative of collusion” got a big assist early in the campaign when then-candidate Trump went on national television and asked the Russians to hack Clinton’s email, which they promptly did. It was further established when Trump’s idiot namesake fail-son gushed, “If it’s what you say, I love it!” in response to an offer of oppo dirt from Russia. And it was etched in stone and then plated with gold when Trump busted out the shine box and polished Putin’s wingtips before a worldwide audience in Helsinki. Also:

It also helped drive an even bigger wedge between former President Trump and the press at the very beginning of his presidency.

I’m just a humble reader/viewer, but I think the “wedge between former President Trump and the press” might have first formed when the demagogue directed a Two Minutes Hate at the press pen at every pre-presidential rally. It may have hardened on Trump’s first day in office when his press secretary angrily and aggressively lied to assembled reporters about the poorly attended inauguration.

It’s so perversely in character — when the shittiest Villagers finally embrace introspection, they conclude they were too skeptical of and critical toward Donald Fucking Trump. Open thread.

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Thanks for nothing, Mitch

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Thanks to sky-high political polarization and geographic distribution combined with the anti-democratic slaver vestige known as the Electoral College, a dwindling voter bloc comprising the least-informed and most noncommittal motherfuckers on the continent increasingly determine the outcome of U.S. presidential elections: swing voters.

Is that assessment harsh? Yes. But I stand by the description for anyone who would vote for President Obama in 2012 and then turnaround and vote for Donald Fucking Trump in 2016.

Trump’s nutso base gets all the attention because they are loud and stupid, make ghastly fashion choices and dabble in armed insurrection on behalf of an angry, bloated Circus Peanut. That rabble grew in number between 2016 and 2020, which is worrisome for all kinds of reasons.

But so did the share of Democratic voters who participated in the 2020 election, giving President Biden an enormous popular vote victory. Still, it wouldn’t have mattered if swing voters in key states hadn’t swung Biden’s way, according to analysis from the UVA Center for Politics.

So, why did those voters swing? Because Trump went hard-right in office after running as an angry, bloated Circus Peanut of less definitive political provenance:

Many political observers have argued that Donald Trump transformed the Republican Party during his four years in the White House. That is clearly true. Trump moved issues that he cared about — especially xenophobia — from the periphery to the center of the party.

What is not recognized nearly as often is that during his four years in office, the Republican Party transformed Donald Trump. The Donald Trump of 2016 lacked a clear ideological identity. While he was generally seen as some sort of conservative, he frequently took positions at odds with conservative orthodoxy including pledging to oppose cuts to Medicare and Social Security and to replace the Affordable Care Act with something providing more generous benefits at lower cost…

A variety of factors undoubtedly contributed to Donald Trump’s defeat in 2020, including his gross mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. However, the growing perception of Trump as a far-right president, along with the nomination of the relatively moderate Joe Biden by the Democrats, very likely cost him enough support among swing voters in key states such as Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona to shift those states and their crucial electoral votes into the Democratic column.

I’ve sort of viewed Trump as a Frankenstein’s monster who escaped the Republican Party lab and rampaged beyond their control, but if this theory is true, politically speaking, it was the monster who was ill-served by the mad scientists. They drove him further right than the tiny portion of the electorate that counts in America could bear.

Interesting theory, and if true, it might have implications for a certain goobernatorial person here in Florida who aspires to be the next angry Circus Peanut. What do y’all think?

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Senator Whitehouse Is Surprised By Something He Should Not Be Surprised About: That the Secondary Kavanaugh Background Investigation Was Rigged

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Germy, in the comments to Mistermix’s post, has brought breaking, though previously known, news to our attention via Senator Whitehouse:

AFTER NEW DETAILS ON KAVANAUGH INVESTIGATION SURFACE, SENATORS CALL ON FBI FOR ANSWERS ON HANDLING OF ‘TIP LINE’

4,500 tips to FBI went uninvestigated following supplemental investigation, newly released FBI letter shows

Washington, DC – Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chris Coons (D-DE), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), and Cory Booker (D-NJ) wrote to FBI Director Christopher Wray last evening requesting additional information on the FBI’s 2018 supplemental background investigation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The senators’ request follows a letter from the Bureau to Whitehouse and Coons revealing new details on the Kavanaugh background investigation, including that the FBI gathered over 4,500 tips in relation to the investigation without any apparent further action by FBI investigators. The Bureau also confirmed that tips from the tip line were instead provided to the Trump White House Counsel’s office, where their fate is unknown.

“The admissions in your letter corroborate and explain numerous credible accounts by individuals and firms that they had contacted the FBI with information ‘highly relevant to . . . allegations’ of sexual misconduct by Justice Kavanaugh, only to be ignored,” the senators write in their letter sent today. “If the FBI was not authorized to or did not follow up on any of the tips that it received from the tip line, it is difficult to understand the point of having a tip line at all.”

Whitehouse and Coons initially raised the lackluster supplemental background investigation in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with Director Wray in July 2019. Whitehouse observed during the hearing the clear lack of process through which the public or members of Congress could relay information to the FBI after the troubling allegations against Kavanaugh made headlines nationwide. Coons likewise pressed Wray for a clear procedure. As both senators noted, the only conduit for information potentially relevant to the allegations was a “tip line,” the product of which was apparently never pursued by the Bureau. During the hearing, Wray echoed Republican claims that the FBI conducted the investigation “by the book,” while asserting that supplemental background investigations are less rigorous than criminal and counterintelligence investigations.

On August 1, 2019, Coons and Whitehouse wrote to Wray asking for a complete picture of how the FBI handled the supplemental background investigation of Kavanaugh. They asked why the FBI failed to contact witnesses whose names were provided to the FBI as possessing “highly relevant” information; how involved the Trump White House was in narrowing the scope of the investigation; whether the FBI had used a tip line in previous background investigations to manage incoming allegations and information regarding a nominee; and more.

Nearly two years later and after repeated follow-up requests, the FBI finally responded to Whitehouse and Coons’s questions. The June 30, 2021 letter from the FBI Office of Congressional Affairs revealed new information on the Kavanaugh investigation: that Justice Kavanaugh’s nomination “was the first time that the FBI set-up a tip line for a nominee undergoing Senate confirmation,” and that tip line received “over 4,500 tips, including phone calls and electronic submissions.” The FBI apparently pursued none of these tips. Instead, by the FBI’s own account, it merely “provided all relevant tips” to Trump’s Office of White House Counsel, the very office that had constrained and directed the limited investigation.

Whitehouse, Coons, Durbin, Leahy, Blumenthal, Hirono, and Booker call on the FBI to answer a range of outstanding questions surrounding the Bureau’s use of the tip line and the relevant information it yielded. The senators press the Bureau for any records and communications related to the tip line investigation, including “all relevant tips” described in Wray’s letter that the FBI “provided . . . to the Office of White House Counsel.”

Full text of the senators’ letter yesterday is available below. Also available as PDFs are:

• Senators’ letter sent yesterday;

• June 30 FBI letter to Whitehouse and Coons;

• Whitehouse and Coons August 2019 letter to Wray.

There’s also a long tweet thread by Senator Whitehouse:

I explained during the Kavanaugh hearings, in comments and on the front page, that what Senator Whitehouse is now rightfully angry over today was what was in fact going on. What is amazing here isn’t that Senator Whitehouse is upset, he is and should be. What is amazing here is that he seems to not understand the process that the FBI adheres to when conducting background investigations for judicial and political nominees, which, as a senator, he should know.

As I explained at the time, background investigations conducted by the FBI for judicial and political appointments are NOT criminal investigations. They are done by special agents and investigators and analysts detailed for that duty and the client is not the DOJ, nor is it the Senate committee of jurisdiction. The client for these background investigations is the White House Counsel’s Office and the White House Counsel is in ultimate charge and provides the ultimate direction of the inquiry. Only information that the White House Counsel wants released is released to the Senate committee of jurisdiction for their review. This whole secondary/reopened investigation, just like a game of chance in a casino, was rigged for the White House by the White House through the White House Counsel and his office. The FBI was only ever going to respond to Don McGahn’s instructions and work within the parameters he gave them because that’s the process.

It is important to remember that the only reason Don McGahn was first the Trump 2016 campaign counsel and then the White House Counsel is because his real boss is Mitch McConnell. Whenever Senator McConnell needs a trusted agent – to make a Federal agency dysfunctional and break it or to babysit a temperamental candidate/president – McConnell places McGahn into that position. McGahn controlled this secondary, supplementary investigation into Kavanaugh, just as he controlled the first one, not anyone at the FBI or the DOJ. And McGahn controlled it for McConnell. My guess is McConnell was thrilled when Senator Flake came to him with this compromise proposal for a secondary FBI investigation because it allowed McConnell to play Flake for the chump he is while getting what he wanted – Kavanaugh confirmed and the ability to leverage the contentious confirmation process for political gain – all while allowing it to seem that a rigged game was really an honest process.

No one who was paying attention should be surprised at all at what happened then or at what is being reported now. Not least a Democratic senator. That seven members of the Senate Judiciary Committee do not seem to understand the process for FBI background investigations for judicial and political nominees, including who controls them, is a bit concerning. They’re right to be asking for details and Senate Judiciary Committee investigation now, but it would have been better if they all had known how the process works and been hammering this over and over and over again during the confirmation. Especially Senator Coons who is the one who cut the deal with Senator Flake for the supplemental FBI background investigation.

If these seven senators did not realize this was how the process for FBI background investigations into judicial and political nominees until today, then, quite frankly, shame on them. This process is neither a state secret that is highly classified and compartmented, nor is it rocket science. It was reported on and commented on in real time. And it was their job to know and act on that knowledge. If they knew and didn’t act then, then shame on them. If they didn’t know until now, it’s still shame on them. While I doubt it would have made much of a difference, it was their job to know and to act on that knowledge, which they didn’t. They failed then and are angry now. The time to have been angry was then, because it might have prevented failure.

The reason that Senator McConnell and his caucus have been embarrassing Democratic senators and frustrating their, as well as Democratic president’s, efforts since January 2009 is that Senator McConnell pays attention to every possible process that could be useful to him or could be used against him. Senate Democrats are not going to beat him if they are constantly surprised by how the government they are supposed to be overseeing as part of their jobs works.

DO BETTER SENATE DEMOCRATS!

Edited to add:

I realize this is most likely performative surprise. It would have been nice if there’d been some performative surprise at the time when it might have made even a little bit of difference.

Open thread!

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The Wilderness of Mirrors & The Guardian’s Scoop Regarding Putin’s & Russia’s Planning To Make Trump President: It Is Almost Certainly Disinformation & Agitprop, But It May Still Be True

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Several of you asked in comments yesterday morning what I thought about The Guardian‘s big scoop based on purported leaked Kremlin documents from January 2016 that supposedly reveal the formal planning by Putin and his intelligence and nat-sec leadership to make Trump president. As I was typing this up last night, Cheryl was doing her post and we agreed that I’d just finish drafting mine and save it for later as we are in almost complete agreement about The Guardian‘s reporting.

Since it’s now later, I figured I’d freshen it a wee bit and hit publish. Everything up to the Updated on 16 July at 2:00 PM EDT was written yesterday.

My initial response as a comment yesterday was:

This is certainly disinformation agitprop, in that what leaked is accurate in its contents, but not the real thing. Which allows Putin to both finally take credit for the op he’s been running informally since 2014 and formally since 2016 and also further that operations objectives of sowing socio-political discord in the US.

To clarify and be more specific, this is almost certainly disinformation and agitprop. While it is also most likely accurate in the contents in terms of the underlying facts of 2016 – as in Putin did have a preference for Trump and was utilizing his resources to elevate his candidacy and his chances – there is no way that this leaked Kremlin document is legitimately documenting whatever planning was going on in 2016.

The reporting in The Guardian Luke Harding, Julian Borger, and Dan Sabbagh is interesting, but… The report that the document:

“No 32-04 \ vd” – is classified as secret.

I have a lot of trouble believing that it wasn’t classified, according to the classification that the Kremlin uses, at the equivalent of what we would refer to as a fully compartmented classification at the highest level of classification.

Another issue I have is they don’t post the entire document, only two screen grabs extracts. Nor do they indicate the chain of transmission to them. They sort of intimate or suggest they got it from a western intelligence source, but the way they write the article, it could also be inferred it came from a Kremlin source.

One thing that is clear, is that if a western intelligence agency, one of our Five Eyes partners or one of our other intelligence partners, has had this for a while, they certainly did not share it with the US prior to, at least, late 2019. As both Matt Tait aka Pwn All The Things and Marcy Wheeler note.

I would also like to know which, if any, other major news organizations were offered this and refused to run it because they couldn’t vet it to their satisfaction.

Finally, Ivan Tchakev, who is the economics editor at RBC and writes as an expert at Riddle, is asserting that language errors indicate this is most certainly a forgery.

Since I don’t speak Russian other than the names of some foods, some place names, several curses, and the names of hockey players and some authors, composers, and dancers, I asked our own in house Russian language and Russian studies subject matter expert about Tchakev’s analysis and got this reply:

I don’t think you can really draw conclusions based on a linguistic analysis. Bureaucratic language is terrible everywhere, including in Russia.

Based on the language, it kind of looks fake to me but I could not swear to that in court! I’m not all that familiar with these kinds of documents. I just get a whiff of somebody playacting.

So hopefully everything is now clear as mud!

Updated at 2:00 PM EDT on 16 July 2021:

Marcy Wheeler makes the excellent, and if you’ve been following along as Cheryl and I have covered this stuff here and as Wheeler and others have covered it on their sites and feeds, obvious point that Putin’s active measures and low intensity political warfare operation precedes January 2016.

Click across and read the whole thread.

As we’ve discussed here numerous times, we can actually see the disinformation and agitprop operation begin in the spring of 2014. It was at this point in May of 2014 that the first story intended to dirty up potential presidential candidates was placed in Russian state news RIA Novosti. That disinformation and agitprop drop was targeted at President Biden, Ambassador Kerry, and Vice President Cheney by targeting their children as engaged in unethical and potentially illegal activities in Ukraine and other places. All three of them were being touted in 2014 as potential presidential candidates for 2016, though none of them ultimately ran.

The Jade Helm conspiracy theory of 2015, intended to stir up discontent among Texas against both the Obama administration and US Special Operations Forces, was also part of Russia’s active measures campaign. It was tied to Russia’s promotion of the Texas secessionist movement during President Obama’s second term, as well as support for a variety of American neo-NAZI and white supremacist groups. The plot to infiltrate and influence the National Rifle Association actually begins even father back. Torshin attended his first NRA national convention in 2012 and by 2014 he had Maria Butina in place and active in the US. Similarly, Russia has targeted the National Prayer Breakfast for years as a line of entry into the Republican Party and conservative organizations. Russia has also targeted a number of American evangelical groups. One of the key players in this is Jay Sekulow, who just happened to be Trump’s personal attorney for the Mueller investigation and both impeachments. This much coincidence takes a lot of work. The idea that suddenly, in January 2016, Putin convenes the equivalent of a National Security Council Principal’s meeting to plan and coordinate efforts in his active measures and low intensity political war against the US just doesn’t line up.

As I wrote yesterday, what I want to know now is where the document came from, which, if any of our ally’s intelligence services had it and provided it to The Guardian‘s reporting team. Or, if it wasn’t provided, what’s the chain of transmission in it leaking to them. And I want to see the whole document, with the appropriate redactions that would be necessary to protect anyone who leaked it out. Without all of that, this is interesting. It rings true. But it is clearly disinformation and agitprop intended to further wreak havoc on American society and politics.

Open thread!

The Wilderness of Mirrors & The Guardian’s Scoop Regarding Putin’s & Russia’s Planning To Make Trump President: It Is Almost Certainly Disinformation & Agitprop, But It May Still Be TruePost + Comments (122)