Here’s the live feed for former FBI Director Comey’s testimony.
Update at 10:34 AM EDT
I switched the live stream below to PBS’s.
by Adam L Silverman| 370 Comments
This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, Not Normal
Here’s the live feed for former FBI Director Comey’s testimony.
Update at 10:34 AM EDT
I switched the live stream below to PBS’s.
This post is in: Don't Mourn, Organize, Politics, Russiagate, Trump Crime Cartel, Assholes, General Stupidity, Seriously
While gathering kettle corn and assembling beer bingo supplies for the Comey Show, let’s keep in mind that the spectacle means jack and shit, aside from its entertainment value. Trump essentially confessed to Lester Holt that he shit-canned Comey because of the RussiaGate investigation. At least one Republican operative has admitted he used information from Russian hackers to tailor campaign outreach to win a tight House race — and said he’d do it again.
On the strength of what are acknowledged facts right now, Republicans in congress who wanted to act in the interests of the American people rather than their donors could work with Democrats to rid us of the manifestly incompetent and embarrassing buffoon in the Oval Office. They could work with Democrats to get to the bottom of Putin’s meddling in our election and force the resignation of anyone who benefited from collusion with a hostile foreign power (looking at you, Brian Mast [R-FL]). But they aren’t, and they won’t.
Valued commenter Ruemara eloquently described this reality in a thread yesterday:
Let’s get honest. There isn’t a damned thing that would get the GOP to impeach this American fascist regime. They could (and are) very much implicated in colluding with a foreign power, they’ve already been shown to be undermining fair & free elections in America and every newspaper could have bombshell testimony that Trump gave the nuclear codes, and the NSA wifi password to Russia and Saudi Arabia and all the GOP would do is justify it. Not to mention that fuckheaded base of craven peasants that are key.
They are going to crack down on voting in the black, latino and young communities. Meanwhile, Dems and progressives are still humping Wilmer’s leg. We need your help to get us our votes. There is no savior coming out of these hearings. We need to know, but the work is not about knowing this. It was obvious from last May. Systemic voter suppression is why Clinton lost. Illegal voter tampering aided, but it wouldn’t have worked without the blind eye to local seats endemic to liberal & progressive voters and failure to act with full force on getting people registered, and out to vote.
If I sound angry, you’re goddamned right. Watching yet another person of color get choked to near death on video because the husband(!) of an off-duty sheriff felt he had a right to chokehold him until he stopped moving, while white people blocked access to the pair and tried to block them from taping the assault, it fucking makes me all the more aware of how the results of the 2016 election are affecting my communities. We pay first in our blood while everyone else gets to be “tired” and waiting for someone to say just the right goddamned thing to move people who’ve been proven to have the ethics of a worm.
Nothing coming out of this week will save this country from a party in control who have abandoned the principles of democracy. They’ve been showing that’s who they are for years. Yes, pay attention to what’s going on in the hearing, but don’t look for some grand denouement of criminality brought to justice. That’s movies and tv. This is real life and the people in charge will glad break this country down to its evil roots of terror, disease and poverty for everyone except a bare few. And enough voters are stupid enough to believe that they’re part of the few.
Ruemara is right; the Republicans aren’t going to do the right thing — they’re corrupt shitweasels who will countenance any attack on democracy, any loss of national credibility, any destruction of our institutions to hang onto power. The brain-dead morons who are sticking with Trump even as he schemes to take away their healthcare so he can give himself and the billionaires in his cabinet tax cuts aren’t going to suddenly gain 50 IQ points, lose their racism/sexism/xenophobia and stop punching themselves in the nuts.
So it’s up to us to turn the collaborators out of congress, and one of the best ways to do that is to counter voter suppression and gerrymandering efforts. Ruemara mentioned voteriders.org and flippable.org. Those organizations focus on getting IDs to folks the GOP deliberately disenfranchises and swinging state-level races so that statehouses reflect the political will of the voters rather than the Koch Bros.
Got any other ideas about how to make this happen? Here’s mine: Go to your local Democratic Party meetings and advocate for this approach. Volunteer to register voters, and when there’s an election — any election — volunteer to get out the vote. Donate to organizations that are taking on the vote thieves and gerrymanderers.
Meanwhile, enjoy the show.
by Adam L Silverman| 206 Comments
This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Election 2017, Election 2018, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, Not Normal
Benjamin Wittes is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and the editor in chief of Lawfare. He is also a friend of James Comey. Earlier this evening he shared his initial thoughts after reading the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s release of former FBI Director Comey’s prepared opening statement tomorrow. While I highly recommend the whole thing, here are the final three paragraphs that tie Wittes’ thoughts together.
But I will make three general observations based on this document alone.
First, Comey is describing here conduct that a society committed to the rule of law simply cannot accept in a president. We have spent a lot of time on this site over seven years now debating the marginal exertions of presidential power and their capacity for abuse. Should the president have the authority to detain people at Guantanamo? Incinerate suspected terrorists with flying robots? Use robust intelligence authorities directed at overseas non-citizens? These questions are all important, but this document is about a far more important question to the preservation of liberty in a society based on legal norms and rules: the abuse of the core functions of the presidency. It’s about whether we can trust the President—not the President in the abstract, but the particular embodiment of the presidency in the person of Donald J. Trump—to supervise the law enforcement apparatus of the United States in fashion consistent with his oath of office. I challenge anyone to read this document and come away with a confidently affirmative answer to that question.
Second, we are about to see a full-court press against Comey. I don’t know what it will look like. But the attack instinct always kicks in when a presidency is under siege. And Trump has the attack instinct in spades even when he’s not under siege. It is important to remember what the stakes are here. They are not about whether Comey was treated fairly. They are not about whether you like him. They are not about whether he handled the Clinton email investigation in the highest traditions of the FBI or the Justice Department. They are not about leaks. The stakes here are about whether what Comey is reporting in this document are true facts and, if so, what we need as a political society to do about the reality that we have a president who behaves this way and seeks to use the FBI in this fashion. It is critical, in other words, that people not change the subject or get distracted when others try to do so.
Finally, it is also critical—though probably fruitless to say—that we eschew partisanship in the conversation. Tomorrow, this document will be the discussion text when Comey faces a committee that, warts and all, has handled the Russia matter to date in a respectable and honorably bipartisan fashion. It is not too much to ask that members put aside party and respond as patriots to the fact that the former FBI director will swear an oath that these facts are true—and was fired after these interactions allegedly took place by a man who then told Lester Holt that “when I decided to just do it [fire Comey], I said to myself … this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story,” and boasted to the Russians the day after dismissing Comey that “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
An Informed Expert’s Initial Views on James Comey’s Testimony TomorrowPost + Comments (206)
This post is in: Dolt 45, Open Threads, Republican Stupidity
The FAKE MSM is working so hard trying to get me not to use Social Media. They hate that I can get the honest and unfiltered message out.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017
Here at the ACLU, we think you should keep using social media. https://t.co/KjM62aKGuL
— ACLU National (@ACLU) June 6, 2017
.
Apart from picking at sworn testimony, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Please Proceed, Mr. “President”Post + Comments (105)
This post is in: Domestic Politics, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome
Getting a lot of play on Twitter:
The President began by asking me whether I wanted to stay on as FBI Director, which I found strange because he had already told me twice in earlier conversations that he hoped I would stay, and I had assured him that I intended to. He said that lots of people wanted my job and, given the abuse I had taken during the previous year, he would understand if I wanted to walk away.
My instincts told me that the one-on-one setting, and the pretense that this was our first discussion about my position, meant the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some sort of patronage relationship. That concerned me greatly, given the FBI’s traditionally independent status in the executive branch.
I replied that I loved my work and intended to stay and serve out my tenyear term as Director. And then, because the set-up made me uneasy, I added that I was not “reliable” in the way politicians use that word, but he could always count on me to tell him the truth. I added that I was not on anybody’s side politically and could not be counted on in the traditional political sense, a stance I said was in his best interest as the President.
A few moments later, the President said, “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.” I didn’t move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence. The conversation then moved on, but he returned to the subject near the end of our dinner.
I’m going to get lunch now. Will be back in a bit.
James Comey’s Prepared Statement to CongressPost + Comments (266)
by Adam L Silverman| 171 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Religious Nuts 2, Silverman on Security, War, Not Normal
Earlier today ISIL conducted two attacks in Iran with a third being thwarted. The first was at the Iranian majlis or parliament. The second was a suicide bombing at the shrine to Ayatullah Uzma Khomeini. The BBC has the details:
Twin attacks on the Iranian parliament and Ayatollah Khomeini’s mausoleum in the capital, Tehran, have killed at least 12 people and injured many more.
The assault on the parliament appears to be over, after hours of intermittent gunfire there. A suicide bomber detonated a device at the mausoleum.
Iranian officials say they managed to foil a third attack.
The Islamic State (IS) group has claimed it carried out the attacks, which would be a first in Iran.
Unlike the attacks we’ve seen throughout Europe, ISIL quickly claimed responsibility.
BREAKING: Islamic State group claims attacks on Iranian parliament, Khomeini shrine.
— The Associated Press (@AP) June 7, 2017
This is significant as it indicates a directly coordinated attack, rather than actions taken by self radicalized actors on behalf of/in the name of the Islamic State. The New York Times‘ Rukmini Callimachi, who has done a magnificent job in her reporting on ISIL, breaks this down on her twitter feed:
4. What is significant here is unlike recent attacks in Europe, ISIS has released a video allegedly showing attackers going room by room: pic.twitter.com/vb7oNwFGvE
— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) June 7, 2017
6. Again if video is proved legit, it shows the attackers had a direct line to ISIS. We saw this during the Bangladesh cafe siege last year
— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) June 7, 2017
This is a very significant point that Callimachi is making:
8. While this may be the 1st successful attack in Iran, ISIS has been agitating to hit them for years. See comments of expert @JcBrisard pic.twitter.com/yn5gMhj11O
— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) June 7, 2017
Brisard’s and Callimachi’s reasoning is further supported by this piece of analysis from yesterday at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty:
The Islamic State (IS) extremist group has recently expanded its campaign to recruit Iranians and disseminate its message to Persian speakers.
In late March, IS published a rare video in Persian in which it called on Iran’s Sunni minority to rise up against the Shi’a-dominated Iranian establishment. The video was dismissed by Iran’s state broadcaster as “nonsense” and an attempt by the group to cover up mounting losses in Iraq.
Since then, IS has published four issues of its online propaganda publication Rumiyah in Persian. Rumiyah, whose title means Rome in Arabic in an allusion to prophecies that Muslims would conquer the West, is already published in several languages, including English, Russian, French, and Indonesian.
Iran has deployed senior military advisers and thousands of “volunteers” in the past six years to help regional ally Syrian President Bashar al-Assad battle an armed insurrection that includes IS and other Islamist fighters as well as groups supported by Turkey and the United States.
IS advocates a radical Salafi version of Sunni Islam and regards Shi’a as heretics, and controls parts of Iraq and Syria under what it describes as a “caliphate.”
This attack is significant for several reasons. The first is that even as ISIL is being squeezed on the ground, with the long delayed start of the operation to clear ISIL from Raqqa finally seeming to be under way and operations to finish driving ISIL from Mosul coming to a completion and other parts of northern Iraq well under way, we are seeing an increase of ISIL related attacks well outside of the self proclaimed caliphate. This makes a certain logical sense. It allows ISIL, or those that objectively (have formally joined/under direct ISIL control) or subjectively (consider themselves to be in solidarity with, but haven’t formally joined/not under direct ISIL control) ISIL, to demonstrate that they are still relevant and have significant operational capability even as they lose more and more ground in Iraq and Syria. To a great extent this was always going to be part of the potential negative effects of the US’s strategy of degrading and reducing ISIL in Iraq and Syria. The more successful Operation Inherent Resolve is, the more ISIL inspired and/or directed terrorist activity would be seen well away from the actual declared caliphate in the Levant.
This is part and parcel of ISIL’s goal of destroying the greyzone. As I wrote back in January 2016 in the wake of an ISIL attack in Jakarta:
The Islamic State attack in Jakarta earlier today is part of the same campaign as the Paris attack last November. While the Jakarta attack was no where near as successful in terms of casualties, including those killed, the objectives of the attack was the same as of last November’s in Paris. Islamic State has two objectives for their attacks – both related. The first is to attack the Gray Zone; the social and civil space** that Muslims live in. It is an attempt to force Muslims, whether in the US or Britain or France or Indonesia or Jordan or anywhere else, to chose sides. To define themselves not only as Muslims, but as Muslim in such a way that sets them apart from their fellow citizens. It is both a figurative and literal attempt to collapse the public realm/sphere into the private one. The Islamic State hopes that by doing so they can then achieve their objectives of recruiting Muslims to relocate to the Caliphate – the only place where actual Islam is being practiced or to stay in place and use their local knowledge to attack targets that further weaken the Gray Zone. So the first objective is to set the conditions for recruiting by attacking the Gray Zone.
The second of the Islamic State’s objective with the Jakarta attack, just as it was with the Paris attack last November, is to get the US, its allies and its partners to provide the ways and means that the Islamic State does not have to achieve IS’s ends. This is terrorism as Psychological Operations (PSYOPS).
In regard to today’s attacks in Iran in specific, the targeting is highly symbolic in regard to ISIL’s doctrine/theology of extreme radical tawheed*.
Tawheed, or the unitary nature of the Deity, was the core of the doctrinal teachings of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab. At the time that he developed his doctrine of the unity of the Deity it was quite radical. Basically, it asserts that the Deity is completely one; that any form of intercessory prayer is therefore a denial of such unity and apostasy; that any form of adornment or adoration of great men/saints is a denial of unity and apostasy (hence the destruction of tombs and heritage sites); and living among apostates is forbidden requiring the devout believer to relocate to where tawheed is practiced and enforced.
Abdul Wahhab’s doctrine also included an extreme opposition to and distrust of Jews, Christians, Shi’a and Sufi Muslims, as well as all Sunni Muslims that did not accept tawheed. It was the combination of an inflexible understanding of apostasy, opposition to non Muwaheedun (unitarian) Muslims, as well as non-Muslims; and forced indoctrination of the tribes of the Najd (the Ikhwan – not the same as the Muslim Brothers) that led to the violence of the conquests of Ibn Saud.
I want to focus in for a moment on two parts of the brief description above from a post I did back in September 2015:
Abdul Wahhab’s doctrine of tawheed, which forms the basis of the practice of Islam within Saudi Arabia as well as the more extreme and radical offshoots at the heart of bin Laden’s doctrine for al Qaeda and ISIL’s doctrine, is genocidal towards the Shi’a. Wahhab taught that the Shi’a were to be wiped out wherever they were found. And while the Saudi authorities have not allowed the Saudi religious authorities to do so in regard to the Saudi Shi’a minority, ISIL has not shied away from attacking Shi’a as irredeemable apostates. So bringing the fight directly to Iran should not be surprising. Especially the targeting of the shrine to Ayatullah Uzma Khomeini. By attempting to destroy this shrine ISIL seeks to both destroy a source of apostasy (destroying a shrine where intercessory prayers/requests to the Deity might be made by invoking Ayatullah Uzma Khomeini) and to wipe out a prominent memorial to the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran – the only majority (Twelver) Shi’a government in existence. The attack on the majlis itself also fits into this targeting reasoning – attacking/destroying the seat of Iran’s government, or at least the publicly elected portion of it.
These attacks are both an escalation of ISIL’s war on Islam and a provocation to further draw Iran into the conflict. Right now the US, its Coalition partners, and the Syrian rebel forces they is backing are in an ongoing, low grade fight with Iranian backed forces over the Tanf garrison. The Tanf garrison is where the US and its Coalition allies are training a number of the Syrian rebel groups for the assault on Raqqa. Iran has tried several times to take the garrison, and the crossroads it is adjacent to, to secure its Ground Lines of Communication and Commerce (GLOCC) through Syria in order to better target ISIL and support the Assad government in the Syrian Civil War. This attack in Tehran will increase the pressure on Iran and its proxies to try to actually take Tanf and consolidate their position on the ground in Syria near Raqqa. This would serve ISIL’s purposes should Iran try to do so as it would serve as a distraction for the US, its Coalition partners, and the Syrian rebels as they begin to retake Raqqa and clear ISIL from it. ISIL is hoping that one of the effects of today’s attacks in Tehran will lead to this happening and buy them time to further entrench themselves in Raqqa to withstand the coming assault. What remains to be seen is how Iran and its proxies responds and what those responses have on the ongoing fight against ISIL, as well as the other ongoing conflicts in the Levant and the Arab gulf states.
* For a full treatment of tawheed, especially its development as radical concept within Wahhabi theology in Saudi Arabia, I highly recommend David Commins The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia.
This post is in: Dolt 45, Open Threads, Post-racial America, Republican Venality, Republicans in Disarray!, Trump Crime Cartel, Assholes, Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?
ABC: Sessions offered to resign as AG while Trump still fuming over his recusal https://t.co/92PNQAL6aP pic.twitter.com/WHZ0WHirwU
— Talking Points Memo (@TPM) June 6, 2017
Jefferson Sessions took the job to gut civil rights and nonwhite immigration. Trump hired him to kill #Russiagate. https://t.co/GtmprnVY4u
— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) June 6, 2017
Ms. Reid is, of course, correct: Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III scrambled aboard the ‘Trump train’ early, because Trump seemed like his best chance for a position where he could really abuse all those uppity people of color / women / liberals with impunity. And Donald J. Trump welcomed the Malevolent Leprechaun aboard, because he assumed that their shared revanchist social goals would keep ol’ Jeff from looking too closely at Don’s myriad ethical peccadilloes.
Now Jeff feels that Trump is treating him like a house… servant, someone required to yes-massah the Big Man’s every whim. And Don feels like Sessions is attempting to weasel out of his contract, as so many of the losers and haters in Don’s past have attempted to do…
Few Republicans were quicker to embrace President Trump’s campaign last year than Jeff Sessions, and his reward was one of the most prestigious jobs in America. But more than four months into his presidency, Mr. Trump has grown sour on Mr. Sessions, now his attorney general, blaming him for various troubles that have plagued the White House.
The discontent was on display on Monday in a series of stark early-morning postings on Twitter in which the president faulted his own Justice Department for its defense of his travel ban on visitors from certain predominantly Muslim countries. Mr. Trump accused Mr. Sessions’s department of devising a “politically correct” version of the ban — as if the president had nothing to do with it.
In private, the president’s exasperation has been even sharper. He has intermittently fumed for months over Mr. Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from the investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s election, according to people close to Mr. Trump who insisted on anonymity to describe internal conversations. In Mr. Trump’s view, they said, it was that recusal that eventually led to the appointment of a special counsel who took over the investigation…
David B. Rivkin Jr., a lawyer who served in the White House and Justice Department under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, said Mr. Trump clearly looked at the case from the lens of a businessman who did not get his money’s worth.
“He’s unhappy when the results don’t come in,” Mr. Rivkin said. “I’m sure he was convinced to try the second version, and the second iteration did not do better than the first iteration, so the lawyers in his book did not do a good job. It’s understandable for a businessman.”…
However, Mr. Trump is said to be aware that firing people now, on the heels of dismissing James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, would be risky. He has invested care and meticulous attention to the next choice of an F.B.I. director in part because he will not have the option of firing another one. The same goes for Mr. Sessions, these people said…
To quote an old saying: May they be chained to each other in hell.
Feels like an alt hed for this could be "Sessions Distances Self From Trump As Obstruction Investigations Progress" https://t.co/exDBDipjbc pic.twitter.com/OBEx4oPtf9
— Adam Weinstein (@AdamWeinstein) June 6, 2017
Trump is having such difficulty recruiting top-tier people that the threat to resign might be particularly potent right now. pic.twitter.com/XKMdtDP2ak
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) June 6, 2017
Two things – if Sessions was serious about resigning, he would have. And Trump isn't firing someone who would leave him with Rosenstein.
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) June 7, 2017
Repubs in Disarray Open Thread: Sessions & Trump, Falling Out of LovePost + Comments (161)