Let’s go ‘Stros!
Well, after two whole days of crisp fall weather, we’re back in the grip of a tropical system. But it’s baseball time anyway.
Open thread!
This post is in: Open Threads, Sports
Let’s go ‘Stros!
Well, after two whole days of crisp fall weather, we’re back in the grip of a tropical system. But it’s baseball time anyway.
Open thread!
This post is in: Election 2016, I'm With Her, Open Threads, Republicans in Disarray!, Russiagate, Assholes, Good News For Conservatives
Today is the 1-year anniversary of the Comey letter, which was probably decisive in the election. https://t.co/FjiCZKHbdr
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) October 28, 2017
CNN: Mueller’s arresting folks
MSNBC: Mueller’s arresting folks
Nick Jr: Mueller’s arresting folks
Fox: Obama may be blacker than we thought— mamoudou n'diaye (@MamoudouNDiaye) October 28, 2017
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“But wait,” cries the Mad Bitcher, “Some of us love chum!”…
i mean jfc pic.twitter.com/iz566hwyFd
— Ian Sams (@IanSams) October 28, 2017
and they say the left can't meme
— Zedward Tweeterhands (@ZeddRebel) October 28, 2017
Russiagate Open Thread: Saturday Night Cold DishPost + Comments (121)
by Adam L Silverman| 124 Comments
This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Politics, Popular Culture, Post-racial America, Silverman on Security, Not Normal
Throughout the comments since last night’s breaking news regarding Robert Mueller’s Special Prosecutor’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections there is a lot of confusion and speculation, informed and uninformed, about what is actually going on. I wanted to make what I think is an important, but often forgotten point: Mueller’s investigation is rooted in/an outgrowth of a joint counterintelligence investigation.
Joint Publication 2-01/Joint and National Support to Military Operations defines counterintelligence as:
Counterintelligence (CI) uses collection techniques that are similar to HUMINT, but CI targets those entities that are targeting friendly forces, a more narrow focus than HUMINT. Nonetheless, exploitation of data collected by CI assets can yield information critical to I&W and force protection. Service component CI elements conduct CI collection using liaison; elicitation; passive collection; review of open sources; military CI collections; and screening, interviews, and debriefing of displaced persons, defectors, refugees, and US persons with access to information of CI interest. Additionally, law enforcement information and suspicious activity reports are important sources of information that need to be processed, exploited, and fused with other CI sources. Processing of CI information primarily involves report preparation by collection activities at both the joint force and component levels. At the joint force level, this processing may also be accomplished within the J-2X*.
For more detailed information regarding CI processing, exploitation, and reporting, see JP 2-01.2, Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Support to Joint Operations.
Lawfare has an excellent two part run down of counterintelligence in regard to Mueller’s mandate as the special prosecutor by Aditya Bamzai. Professor Bamzai explains in part one:
Counterintelligence investigations are different from criminal investigations in several ways. For one thing, the goal of a counterintelligence investigation may be different from, and perhaps broader than, a criminal investigation. A criminal investigation would ordinarily pursue allegations of criminal conduct. A counterintelligence investigation, by contrast, may pursue allegations of “coordination” between U.S. persons and foreign hackers that may be unseemly and problematic if true, but potentially not criminal—such as, to use Professor Kent’s example, the possibility that a person within the United States coordinated to distribute material previously hacked by agents of a foreign government. As the Attorney General’s Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations explain, the FBI is “not limited to ‘investigation’ in a narrow sense, such as solving particular cases,” but may also collect information to support “broader analytic and intelligence purposes.” In the case of the FBI, the line between counterintelligence and criminal investigations may not be a bright one. “In many cases,” as the Guidelines put it, “a single [FBI] investigation will be supportable as an exercise of a number of these authorities—i.e., as an investigation of a federal crime or crimes, as an investigation of a threat to the national security, and/or as a collection of foreign intelligence”—because the FBI has a role in enforcing both criminal law and “in collecting foreign intelligence as a member agency of the U.S. Intelligence Community.”
There’s a lot more at the link, but this, I think, is one of the most important portions for everyone to get their heads around. Mueller inherited the joint counterintelligence investigation that had begun during the summer of 2016 into Russian active measures and interference in the 2016 election. This means that Mueller and his team in the Special Prosecutor’s office have access to the full range of US, allied, and partner intelligence and counterintelligence related to the issues he’s investigating. It is this material that forms the bases of FISA warrant requests, not political oppo research like Fusion GPS’s Steele dossier.
In seeking to bring charges, which are not always the focus or outcome of a counterintelligence investigation, Mueller has to navigate from the world of intelligence and counterintelligence, from the classified world of need to know and special access programs to information that can be brought before a grand jury. This means that while Mueller, his team in the Special Prosecutor’s office, and those on the joint counterintelligence task force he inherited know the full depth, breadth, and scope of what happened, how it happened, why it happened, where it happened, and who it happened to it doesn’t mean he can just curate that into a compelling narrative and bring it to the grand jury. Like everyone else with a clearance and access he has to protect not just the information, but the sources and methods that were utilized to get the information. This means that whatever information he brings to the grand juries he has access to, and whatever charges he brings, are going to have to fit within the body of Federal criminal law.
As a result there is a lot of speculation that what he’s doing looks like a white collar investigation and prosecution or one of organized crime. And this may be true as far as appearances go. But it is true in that he and his team have to find evidence that can be presented to the grand jury and then utilized in a trial to prosecute those who are the target of his inquiries and the joint counterintelligence task force. We may never see a charge of espionage, because while it certainly happened with the hacking of Podesta’s emails, the DNC, the DSCC, and the DCCC, as well as similar hacking of GOP organizations and officials, Mueller may not be able to make that case without divulging sources and methods. Instead he’s got to find another way to get at those who engaged in these activities through more mundane charges. Hence all the speculation about leveraging Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN), as well as other investigations into financial and business irregularities into Manafort, Flynn, etc. What we’re going to see play out in public – as a result of indictments and prosecutions – is really just a bit of what has actually happened and what Mueller and his team know. In this case the meme is very, very accurate.
* The J-2X is the staff element of the intelligence directorate of a joint staff that combines and represents the principal authority for counterintelligence and human intelligence support. See also counterintelligence; human intelligence. (JP 2-01.2) Adam here: J stands for Joint, 2 is the numerical code for the intelligence section in a US military unit, and the X here is referring to the counterintel and human intel personnel.
Just a Quick Note on the Mueller InvestigationPost + Comments (124)
by Betty Cracker| 106 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, The War On Women, Women's Rights Are Human Rights, Assholes, Our Failed Media Experiment
It’s good that women are naming and shaming highly placed sexual harassers / predators in the entertainment and media sector. But I don’t think it will change anything.
The reactions make me pessimistic. Several conservative media figures showed how clueless they remain by suggesting the solution is to further constrain the behavior of victims — e.g., “Wish you’d followed the Pence Rule now, huh, libtards?”
Others, like WaPo’s Dana Milbank, are horrified to learn they were oblivious to the hostile environment their female colleagues confront, but they’re still clueless about how their own oafish behavior contributes to it:
I and many other male alumni of the New Republic, feminists all, are shaken by what we’ve learned this week. We weren’t a conspiracy of silence, but we were in a cone of ignorance. My friend Franklin Foer, a former editor, recalls being uncomfortable with Wieseltier’s lewd comments when he first arrived at the magazine. But “they just seemed accepted. I said nothing — and certainly didn’t think hard enough about how those remarks would be suggestive of private behavior or created a hostile environment.”
That would be Dana “Mad Bitch Beer” Milbank. His co-sketcher, Chris Cillizza, seems to bob to the top of the media tank somehow, like a particularly buoyant (and untalented) turd. And his takeaway from the Weinstein scandal was that Hillary Clinton allowed X number of days to pass before speaking about it publicly. Hey, maybe y’all are part of the problem, even if you keep your paws off your coworkers’ boobs?
The disheartening thing is that, for the foreseeable future, we are doomed to live in the world these schmucks built. Rebecca Traister published a powerful piece making that point in New York Magazine. An excerpt of “Our National Narratives Are Still Being Shaped by Lecherous, Powerful Men” follows:
In hearing these individual tales, we’re not only learning about individual trespasses but for the first time getting a view of the matrix in which we’ve all been living: We see that the men who have had the power to abuse women’s bodies and psyches throughout their careers are in many cases also the ones in charge of our political and cultural stories…
And while it may feel cathartic for some women to finally get to say things they’ve been waiting years to say, this does not undo the damage. We can’t go back in time and have the story of Hillary Clinton written by people who have not been accused of pressing their erections into the shoulders of young women who worked for them.
We cannot retroactively resituate the women who left jobs, who left their whole careers because the navigation of the risks, these daily diminutions and abuses, drove them out. Nor can we retroactively see the movies they would have made or the art they would have promoted, or read the news as they might have reported it.
This tsunami of stories doesn’t just reveal the way that men have grabbed and rubbed and punished and shamed women; it shows us that they did it all while building the very world in which we still have to live.
Yeah, what she said. It’s really not surprising Trump could get elected in such a world, when you look at it from that perspective.
by Betty Cracker| 121 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Open Threads, Sports
Some of the games on tap for today:
Of most interest to me is Florida-Georgia, of course. Like I told Dawg fan Raven in the early morning thread, I’m surprised Florida is only a two-touchdown underdog. We suck this year.
The good news, from my perspective, is that the ‘Noles got walloped by Boston College last night, so the obnoxious FSU fans in my life won’t have standing to taunt me, even if Georgia blows Florida out.
Open thread!
This post is in: Dolt 45, Faunasphere, Open Threads, Republicans in Disarray!, Russiagate, Daydream Believers
"Elephants stomping giant pumpkins and loving it" <- pumpkins get that big?!?! pic.twitter.com/wumTORiqUU
— Fluff Society (@FluffSociety) October 19, 2017
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Apart from looking forward to new relevations, what’s on the agenda for the day?
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Top Trump loyalists — Stone, Gorka, Hannity — all melting down on Twitter
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) October 28, 2017
The best thing about when they announce an indictment target is going to be when Trump instantly ruins their defense on Twitter.
— Schooley (@Rschooley) October 28, 2017
I've been crunching numbers on scenarios and the one I like the best – not saying it is most likely – is conflict charges on Sessions.
— Al Giordano (@AlGiordano) October 28, 2017
I think the press and Comey assumed Clinton would win and were screwed, but I think Trump people assumed he'd lose and are screwed more.
— Schooley (@Rschooley) October 28, 2017
Saturday Morning Open Thread: Happy AnticipationPost + Comments (249)
This post is in: An Unexamined Scandal, Domestic Politics, Hail to the Hairpiece, I'm With Her, Open Threads, Republican Stupidity, Republican Venality, Republicans in Disarray!, Russiagate, hoocoodanode, Schadenfreude
a/k/a Benjamin Wittes, at LawFare:
Note the sourcing on this CNN story: “sources briefed on the matter.” pic.twitter.com/nBOF6UuNIB
— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) October 28, 2017
The one group of people I can think of who would be “briefed” on the matter is the deputy attorney general and his staff.
— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) October 28, 2017
I am not saying the story is wrong. I am saying let’s all hold our horses and respect the process.
— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) October 28, 2017
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That being said…
As far as belated birthday gifts go, Hillary must be pretty happy with what Mueller got her.
— Daily Trix (@DailyTrix) October 28, 2017
In hindsight, four major pro-Trump media arms dredging up a Bannon Special from a two-year-old movie at the same exact time while the president screamed “Russia is a hoax” this past week should’ve been an obvious tip this was coming.https://t.co/ddYbPIajAO
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) October 28, 2017
two laws of the universe: that there will always be a trump tweet for every occasion, and this: https://t.co/SUdrYgYeUq
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) October 28, 2017
What was on the cable nets at exactly 9:04:35 pm Eastern pic.twitter.com/r1ByHTMQpt
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) October 28, 2017
Fox's headline earlier today: "Mueller facing new Republican pressure to resign in Russia probe" https://t.co/twNbNaiCdj
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) October 28, 2017
Further Russiagate Open Thread: A Caution from Kindly Uncle Ben…Post + Comments (125)