Intelligence for Jan. 6

Reading some sources today that are trying to say that Jan. 6 happened because Dems let it happen, and their goal was to make Trump and his supporters look really bad. It could have been prevented. People like Pelosi and the intelligence community had the info but decided not to act because they benefited more if it went forward. 

There are some problems with that, but I decided to look into the intelligence and try to sort through it.

Tucker Carlson interview with the disgraced chief of capitol police who was forced to resign one day later. He seems to think he was set up. He's got some good points, but there's a lot questionable there. Transcript of his testimony to the Jan. 6 committee. 

Long piece about the Oathkeepers. I'm particularly wondering what their plan or plans were and how much was known about it in advance. They were highly involved in the Stop the Steal rhetoric and protests, emphasizing that they were willing to due Trump's bidding and defeat the deep state. Rhodes used rhethoric like "if we don't, there will be no more republic." They did appear to have a plan to infiltrate Congress and intimidate the elected officials and stop the peaceful, orderly transfer of power based on the certified election results. It wasn't a good plan or a successful plan, but it was a plan, and that is sedition. Testimony here. 

Just Security timeline of the intelligence failure. Very meaty with tons of links. In-depth reporting from WaPo on the intelligence failure. NBC news on the intelligence failure. 

Government Accountability Office (GAO) archive on what they gathered on the intelligence. Only two of 10 agencies correctly forecast that the capitol or Congress was going to be targeted.

Image: Live 5 news

Update 12/15/24. Here's a report from an Inspector General on the FBI response to Jan. 6. Inspector Horowitz is largely position on the FBI and mentioned only one oversight. 

Here's raw data (comments) from FBI agents about the FBI response. Many comments have a conservative bent that the reaction to Jan. 6 was much greater than to the race riots during the previous summer. Also a lot of comments on how the crisis teams could have done better. Either way, lots of on-the-ground response.

Inspector General Report on the FBI

This long-awaited report was supposed to reveal the cesspit in the FBI--all those conspiratorial corrupt agents trying to prevent Trump from competing in the election or taking the power he rightfully won.

The report didn't do that. A few weeks before its release (when the final changes are being made to the umpteenth draft), Trump predicted that it would be perhaps the biggest scandal ever, reaching all the way to Obama. Beyond that, Trump is strangely vague about the contents. Trump was either misinformed or deluded. The complaints in the report encompass several teams of agents but are clustered around just a few elements of the process, primarily the FISA warrant.

It's interesting to recall what the wingnuts predicted. Trump's phones were tapped (by Obama!). His campaign was spied on. The meeting between Mifsud and Papadopoulos was an FBI or CIA trap. The Trump Tower meeting was an FBI trap. The supposed report by the Australian diplomat was a fake. The FBI was working solely with the DNC and Hillary campaign, and the rest is lies to cover up how putrid and biased the FBI had become--no professionalism, raw partisanship. (I've written recently about one such conspiracy post.)

Well, the IG report is available with minimal redactions, and it does very little to support that wingnuttery. I've read various parts of it. It concludes that the FBI had reasonable grounds to open the investigation. It seems like the IG found the stuff about the Australian diplomat plausible, and not a phony cover story. A very common phrase from the report was:

... we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced his decision.

This wording was used in regard to the opening of the counterintelligence investigation, the use of 'confidential human sources' (informants sent to collect information), or in seeking the FISA warrant to surveil Carter Page. So those texts between Strzok and Lisa Page that the conservative media pretended were so ominous--the IG didn't find that they had any operational effect. No surprise there. They always seemed to be casual texts, not messages between conspirators setting operations into motion.

The biggest issues concerned the FISA warrant, the use of information from Steele, and the handling of that information and exculpatory information. The IG report had a lot of complaints about that area. However, that is really very limited.

Just consider what wasn't in the IG report:

1. Efforts to entrap Trump advisers (as conspiracy theorists theorized).
2. Clinton or her close circle instructing the FBI.
3. The FBI gathering tons of inside strategy information from multiple taps and bugs on the Trump campaign.
4. The FBI gathering inside campaign strategy information from tapping Page.
5. The FBI sharing ill-gotten inside campaign strategy information around in the FBI. 
6. The FBI sharing ill-gotten inside strategy information about the Trump campaign with close advisers of Obama or Clinton. 
7. The FBI working with Clinton and Obama advisers on how to hamstring Trump during his transition and after his inauguration. 

How do I know this isn't in the report? Because I read through the rather boring Table of Contents (pages xx-xxviii). It's a relatively painless overview of the decidely non-juicy details.(CHAPTER FOUR: THE FBI'S RECEIPT AND EVALUATION OF INFORMATION FROM CHRISTOPHER STEELE PRIOR TO THE FIRST FISA APPLICATION... CHAPTER EIGHT: MISSTATEMENTS, OMISSIONS AND ERRORS IN THE FISA RENEWAL APPLICATIONS.) Conclusions start on page 410. That's how I found out who got their hands slapped the hardest.

From the IG report, you don't get a sense that the FBI was a den of anti-Trump activist spies. Instead they are rather methodical drudges, but they still didn't manage to follow all the very important rules, and therefore everyone involved should have their performance reviewed. This applies especially to Bruce Ohr of the DOJ. Uhhhh, that's it. Performance reviews. That's kind of anti-climactic. 

The most common complaints, besides that information wasn't included in the FISA application or renewals as it should have been:

While we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence of intentional misconduct on the part of the case agents ... we also did not receive satisfactory explanations for the errors or problems we identified. 

Yep, those agents didn't explain why they didn't do things the right way. So maybe they were conspiring with... someone, but they were wily enough to get away with it. 

Were there any bombshells from the IG report? None at all, unless you were counting on some juicy conspiracy revelations. Too bad for those who were, such as Attorney General and all-around toady Bill Barr. I'd say better luck next time (the Durham investigation), but I wouldn't mean it.

Some will interpret it this way.

Image: cartoonistgroup.com

Update 4/1/20. As I suspected, the kinds of mistakes/shortcuts taken in the Carter Page FISA application weren't unique, but were rather common practice for FISA applications, which the Inspector General found as a follow-up to some of his other investigations. All those tut-tutting the Page application didn't know what the actual practice is, and, horrors, some rules are kind of winked at. Ummm, I've done this myself on some of the damn paperwork on some of my jobs, so that was always my top suspicion.

Update 4/10/20. Another disclosure on a Friday afternoon. Some footnotes in the Page FISA warrant were declassified. GOPers claim that they show the FBI knew the Steele document was rubbish. The footnotes actually show that the FBI was aware that the Steele document was likely to be partly Russian disinformation. GOPers maximize the disclosures beyond what they say. Fox News goes for broke. Hmmmm, though, on a Friday afternoon. Is this a burial or not?

Amazing theorizing about the Trump 2016 campaign

We all know about Occam's razor--that the simplest explanation is usually correct. We need a pithy name for a complementary principle--the bizarre and nutso complexity that is piled high to support a conspiracy theory.

A column in National Review inspired this realization. Here's the subhead:

The State Department and an Australian diplomat grossly exaggerated Papadopoulos's claims - which were probably false anyway.

The author makes such leaps of assumption. Papadopoulos didn't know about the DNC hacked emails (true) and didn't know about any emails (a big leap). Mifsud didn't tell Papadopoulos about any emails because there is only Papadopoulos's claim about that (true, but why would Papadopoulos fabricate that?) Mifsud wasn't a Russian agent as Papa believed, but was most likely a British one (because the author wants it to be so).

When Mifsud was interviewed by the FBI in 2017, he denied saying anything to Papa about emails. This must be true because Mifsud wasn't charged with lying to the FBI. (Never mind that he perhaps wasn't charged because they couldn't prove this was a lie.) Also, the Mueller report didn't say Mifsud knew about Russian intelligence, therefore Mifsud must not know anything about Russian intelligence (because the Mueller report contain all known information and nothing is true unless reported there).

And on, and on, and on. There is no evidence Papa told the Australian diplomat about the Russian approach because the Aussie can't be trusted, and made the whole thing up.

Yes, there's more. It just keeps on this way, doubting everything except when it's convenient not to doubt something.

The only interesting possible fact in the whole piece is that Steele passed some information on to an FBI legal attache on July 6, 2016. Maybe this was before the Australian wrote his meeting with Papa for the second time, and with much more urgency due to the leak of DNC emails. It should be possible to check this. I'm certainly not taking the word of this author. Nonetheless, it is worth noting the information for future checking.

The upshot of the whole 'it didn't happen' is that there was no other information given to the FBI about Russian contacts with the Trump campaign except for the Steele shitty and questionable research.

But maybe there was... Maybe the Mifsud, Papa, and Australian connection was as reported: a solicitation by Mifsud which Papa spilled to an Australian. Shall I apply Occam's razor?

Image: amazon.com

Update 12/27/19. I checked back to see if the author had amended anything due to the IG report. OF COURSE NOT. DON'T LET FACTS INTERFERE WITH A GREAT NARRATIVE... or even a mediocre narrative. The author, Andrew McCarthy, shows again that he's a hack.

The Republicans Strike Back... they hope.

Republicans are fighting against the Ukraine scandal and subsequent impeachment inquiry with all they have. They continue to push the theory that the FBI, CIA, and other departments were/are full of corrupt Dem-sympathetic officials who have illegally targeted Trump. The Horowitz Inspector General (IG) report was supposed to blow it out of the water. That didn't happen. Now the investigation by US attorney John Durham is supposed to unmask this deep state conspiracy. 

I doubt it will happen. As we saw with the Mueller investigation and IG report, almost all of the big pieces leaked well before the reports were published. So Durham will probably not have anything beyound the known bits on Comey, Strzok and Page, McCabe, Bruce Ohr in the State Department, and how the FBI used the Steele dossier. I doubt there will be any smoking gun showing that the Trump campaign was set up by the FBI or CIA, with a phony approach by Mifsud that they orchestrated. I predict that will turn out to be true as reported, that Mifsud offered info on Hillary Clinton, and the campaign was interested. That Papadopoulos drunkenly mentioned it to an Australian diplomat, who eventually reported it through channels to the FBI. 

Their grand hopes of indictments and perp walks of these heinous Dem-leaning traitors isn't going to happen. But we shall all see.

Image: youtube.com

Extra. This column points out how the GOPers are using slander as a counterattack. Lt. Col. Vindman who was injured in Iraq--has a grudge against Trump and is lying. Also, he's a never-Trumper, meaning he isn't loyal. Not loyal  to Trump--to me, it sounds like Trump thinks he's running a banana republic.

Update 2/28/2020. I never specified why I think there won't be perp walks of conspirators among the FBI/CIA/etc. There are two reasons: 1) There wasn't a conspiracy. 2) The inestigators, as much as they hope to find evidence of a conspiracy, will not manufacture evidence, i.e. lie and fabricate a case. No fake evidence and no real evidence, so no perp walks. Sorry, folks. No, not sorry. 

What the Dem/FBI/DOJ conspiracy looks like

Since I follow mostly MSM outlets about the election and Russian meddling, I didn't realize there was a full-blown alternative narrative. This alternative isn't as crazy as Pizzagate because it has a number of data points (facts) supporting it.

The big picture is that the FBI, DOJ, and other intelligence agencies were run at the highest levels by personnel who wanted Dems to win the 2016 election, and who acted in dishonest, biased, and corrupt ways to help with that goal. When the Dems lost, they acted to stymy the incoming president (Trump) with fake, trumped-up charges.

These charges, if accurate, are extremely serious. We definitely don't want our government agencies deciding who wins an election. That's for the voters to decide.

The theory is that top DOJ, FBI, CIA, etc. officials were biased and acted illegally. So who is being accused:

James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr (his wife), Brennan, Loretta Lynch, Hillary Clinton, Obama, and possibly Trump appointees Rob Rosenstein and Christopher Wray. Also involved were the personnel at FusionGPS, Glenn Simpson (the CEO, I think), and Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer.

The theory goes that the high-level Dems got the FBI, CIA, etc. to send adjuncts to entrap people in the Trump campaign, make it look like there were ties between Russia and Trump campaign personnel, start a witch hunt, dirty Trump, and hobble him.

Supporting this view are these actual data points:

1. Strzok and Page's text messages (depending how much weight you give them)
2. The Clinton campaign paid for Steele's research, which produced the Steele dossier.
3. Steele was also hired for a couple months by the FBI to continue his research.
4. The Steele dossier was leaked by Steele in September 2016 in an attempt to discredit Trump.
5. The Clinton campaign and the FBI hid their connections to Steele.
6. The Steele dossier was used to justify a FISA warrant to track Carter Page, a former Trump advisor.
7. FusionGPS also worked with the Russian lawyer involved in the Trump Tower meeting.
8. After Comey was fired, a friend of his leaked documents alleging that Trump made improper demands on him, and these raised concerns and calls for a special counsel. 
9. Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel on his own authority since his boss, Jeff Sessions, had recused himself.
10. One of the intelligence agencies paid Stephan Halper to meet with Trump campaign advisors and try to covertly find out information from them.
11. Several of Mueller's investigation team had ties to the Clintons and/or made donations to Dems.

These are the known, undisputed data points. In the reckoning of some theorists, this points to a conspiracy in the intelligence community to hobble Trump by accusations, leaks, and investigations.

However, this theory ignores many other data points, like the DNC being hacked, purportedly by the Russians. Of course, maybe you can't trust the intelligence agencies to be truthful about who did the hack. But there certainly was a hack, and the stolen info was disseminated by Wikileaks. So the Russia investigation cannot be a total con jobs, since the hack was real.

Also real was the Trump Tower meeting, and the Trumps' attempts to hide this meeting and what the subject was. Many connections between the Trump campaign advisors and Russians are not disputed, like contacts with the Russian embassador. Mike Flynn lost his job for lying about his connections. Jeff Session suffered well-deserved embarrassment and was forced to recuse himself as Attorney General overseeing the Russian investigation because of his amnesia related to his contacts.

This article from The American Conservative explains the two highly disparate ways of interpreting these facts, calling them 'narrative A' and 'narrative B.' Narrative A is that the security services followed up properly on reasonable suspicions, and did their patriotic duty. Narrative B is covered here--that the intelligence services conspired to spy on the Trump campaign and disable Trump as president.

I'm definitely a believer of narrative A, but I can see how the narrative B support that narrative. However, I have these good reasons to doubt that narrative:

1. Page and Strzok were lovers sending casual, low-significance texts to each other. These were simple texts, not part of a conspiracy that has no other paper or electronic trail.
2. Steele got some things right in his dossier, such as Carter Page going to Russia and having meetings with high-level officials.
7. The Russian lawyer from the Trump Tower meeting was paying FusionGPS for work it did for her. She and/or her clients paid FusionGPS; they didn't pay her, so she wasn't an employee of theirs.
8. Comey's notes, far from being unusual, are very typical documents written about any non-trivial meetings.
9. There was a huge uproar after Trump fired Comey, and even many Republicans were calling for a special counsel appointment.
10. It is not unusual for a counter-intelligence investigation to use operatives like Halper in hopes of finding out significant helpful information.
11. Mueller chose for his team people whom he had worked with in the recent past, including in private investigations. He also chose high-ranking FBI officers. This is normal. 

This leaves some fairly major suspicions, like the Clinton campaign and the FBI both hiring Steele, and then hiding this information. Come on, people, you're not going to be able to keep a secret like this. You need to come clean, and do it early.

Nonetheless, I still believe the narrative that the intelligence services needed to check out the activity of the Russians and possible connections to Trump, and they did their duty.

 Image; tennesseestar.com

Extras. Some sources supporting the conspiracy narrative - Investor's business daily: Ohr connection, IBD: McCabe 25th amendment testimony, IBD: Investigation started before election, Gateway Pundit, major pusher of the theory. GQ calls it a theory out of thin air, but I've shown that there is substantial data to support it, though not enough for me to think it's the best interpretation of the data. Barr doesn't call it treason. GOPers and their mistakes/lies about the Steele dossier and FISA warrant.

Update 7/11/21. I missed this news item from a news-heavy period during the election campaign. The Trump-loyal head of intelligence declassified some notes and memos from John Brennan about the Russia scandal. The memos/notes are from July 2016, and the declassification was 10/6/2020. In July 2016, Brennan knew about the Steele dossier, shared info about it, and said it should be used for legal proceedings, including FISA warrants, only with prior approval. I'm not sure how prior approval could be enforced, so that's dubious. Some conservative are claiming this shows Brennan thought the Steele dossier was worthless, but that's a stretch. What did Brennan really think--lots of conflicting speculation out there. 

May links

Religious right takeover. After about 40 years of trying, the religious right is taking over and abolishing the right to a safe, legal abortion. Conservatives used to pay lip service to pro-life groups, and those groups got fed up and marshalled their strength, electing someone malleable like Trump and his openly pious VP, Mike Pence. Snippet: More rights for workers to opt out of tasks due to conscience and religious belief. Will patients not receive care because of it?

Abortion actions in states. Many states are changing their abortion laws. Some are pushing to overturn Roe v Wade, and others are updating to allow late term abortion for therapeutic reasons. Related: an argument that men cause all pregnancies. Fun to read, but does it hold together? And an article and interesting comment thread about stealthing, which is secretly removing a condom during sex.

Mueller as witness. A profile of what to expect, as though we couldn't predict it from what we know already. Sober, honest, rule-based, tough, consistent. <---- Well, that item is now defunct. Mueller has said that his report is his testimony, and he has nothing to add. And finally a cogent conservative view on why Mueller was wrong to hint so broadly that Trump obstructed justice. I've read so much junk from conservatives, it's a relief to find something intelligent.

The spies don't like it. Trump has appointed Bill Barr, the Attorney General, to decide what documents to declassify related to unfair investigations into the Trump campaign. I don't trust Barr to be impartial or the intellligence servicess to be candid, but the truth almost always comes out.

Shutting down free press in Europe. Scary. Not by killing journalists, but by buying up the media outlets.

Maneuvering over impeachment. Impeachment will help Trump, so he's now trying to goad the Dems into it. I'll have to check what GOP mouthpieces are saying. Maybe their 'coup' rhetoric will be replaced with claims that the Dems are impeaching Trump, even when they aren't. It's obviously theater and moot because the Senate won't convict. In related news, Trump had a temper tantrum, blew up a negotiations session that was supposed to work toward an infrastructure bill, and then ranted in the Rose Garden. But it was all planned, with the podium and signs already set up.

My obsession with fake claims of voting fraud. Another entry in this category. Texas tries to remove non-citizens and screws up. Let me guess--are minorities the main target again?

Conservative fake news industry. For outright lies, conservative media wins hands down. Someone faked a video of Pelosi slurring her words, and the rubes ate it up. In related news, the Washington Examiner had a headline about Buzzfeed having to correct a tweet. It was a small correction, hardly worth a newstory or headline. I wonder when the Examiner will correct its own false stories, like the one I write about here.

Developing nations. An overview of nations with different levels of development and different obstacles. A good encapsulation, with helpful examples.

Is India headed to another civil war? Trouble is simmering, and might explode.

Important link on server forensics. Damn those stupid talking points. The DNC didn't need to turn over servers to the FBI according to an actual computer expert. And another article about the forensics of the computer hacking investigation, though ultimately the info comes from the same source.

Still available by mail, no matter what state

Image: thecut.com

April links

Always more on Russia investigation. Now conservative media is pretending the Papadopoulus contact was a CIA asset trying to entrap him. Long WaPo article about adminstration action against Russian hacking before and immediately after the election. Also covering that period, and answering the snarky question 'What did Obama do to stop it?' Even more, though it sounds like maybe Steele gave his dossier to British intelligence and their heads exploded.

FBI scandal. I skimmed the Inspector General report on the Hillary investigation. Strzok looks bad in his handling of the Weiner laptop. Lawfare review of it.

Peace deal failure. Someday I need to write a long piece about why the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks failed. What next for Israelis in their outlook.

Gitmo holding camp. Military tribunals have failed. Slow, questionable decisions, not a firm legal basis.

2020 Election. This is BIG, and worth watching if the trend continues. A poll in Texas has Trump even with two Democratic candidates. These are named candidates, not a generic one. The rich will support Trump in 2020. Not because they like him or respect him, but because the Dems want to raise their taxes.

Midwest flooding. A long article about the Missouri River, and how our relationship to it and adjacent land use should change. Move further away, don't try to manage for navigation because it doesn't carry a lot of navigation.

Japan's economy. Japan is doing pretty well. Not a lost decade.

Trump non-news. Trump's tweeting is becoming unhinged. Is this new and repeat?

Stuff I want to remember

(Clues to my interests.)

Understanding quantitative easing. A good article, very readable, that gives an easy-to-understand analysis of QE. It asked good questions, but I ask even better questions. It tells how QE inflates the value of certain bonds. In rolling back QE, demand is lower and the bonds are worth less. True, except that QE is done with demand is especially soft and needs the boost. QE is rolled back when demand is stronger. Still, I think I have more work to do to understand the workings. QE also shelters borrowers from surges in interest rates, right? Prevents lenders from demanding higher returns.

Extreme crazy conspiracy site. The crazy flat-earth lady gets her news here. Oh, the imagination involved in spinning these tales. Microwaves are needing to cook food grown with fertilizer, but it destroys the nutrients. Ummm, wow.

Gun info database. Save the link to check. Country by coountry information.

Image: bloomberg.com

Lies, damned lies, and GOP lies

The Mueller report is finally out. As I wrote earlier, there weren't many surprises. Most of the information had been revealed either in the press or in indictments. As I noted, the MSM has been fairly accurate and good at self-correction, at least from what I've seen and how I've interpreted it. Maybe when I read hyperbolic speculation, I shake my head and move on, not remembering MSM declarations that Trump worked with Russia. My impression was that most reporters and most left-of-center folks were waiting for Mueller to sort it out. Of the regular commenters I knew on Bloomberg, only two were declaring that Trump had conspired. That leaves most of them not expressing that opinion.

The GOPers/conservatives were usually exaggerating what others said, and they were definitely still doing it as the report was released. They accused others of being WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, while failing to notice what others had actually said. Frankly, I don't know how often talking heads on CNN or MSNBC declared that Russia owned Trump. My guess would be that they hedged. I asked my sweetie, who is more left than me. My sweetie expected about 50% chance of a conspiracy where there was enough evidence to indict. So maybe I'm not in touch with those further left without being the looney left.

1. So the first GOP lie is that all of the left prejudged Trump as guilty and are now pretending that they didn't do this. <------- LIE

Another GOP lie is that the MSM hasn't been reporting the facts. In fact, the MSM has been out front on this. I recall the NYT reporting on the Trump Tower meeting. Reporting a bit, waiting for the Trump team to respond, which it did usually with a cover story replete with lies. Then the NYT would release a bit more, and finally it released the emails of Trump Jr. that showed what was going down.

Now I expect a certain amount of spin from the presidency, but a news org should be as honest as it can be (an idealistic hope). However, there is no comparison. The MSM was telling the truth here, and the administration was lying. This was repeated over and over. That's one reason why I wasn't surprised by the Mueller report - because I followed the news, mainly through online MSM sources, and they were very accurate.

2. The MSM spread FAKE NEWS about the investigation. <------- LIE

Should I move on to some of the crazier lies? Maybe so, and turn the rest of this post into a rant against the lies.

3. All the Russian contacts were entrapment attempts by the deep state FBI/CIA. Cue the search for rumors that each contact actually was aligned with the deep state, not the Russians.

4. The Steele dossier was believed by the left. (No, it was labeled from the very beginning as unverified in screaming letters.)

5. The left took over the CIA, NSA, FBI, State Department, and God knows what else.

6. They all conspired to create this Russian hoax and try to overthrow Trump.

7. The coup was orchestrated by Clinton, Obama and their minions all over government and the MSM.

7.1 Obama didn't do anything about the Russian hacking and interference while it was happening, and instead spied on Trump's campaign.

8. Clinton, Obama, et al are going to jail in a streak of rightful payback.

9. Mueller is part of the deep state and hired Cllinton lackeys to help with the frame job.

10. The Mueller report found there was NO COLLUSION AND NO OBSTRUCTION AND NO EVIDENCE OF WRONGDOING by the Trump campaign.

11. The Dems are going to continue with the hoax because the coup attempt can't stop.

12. The real enemies of America are the Dems. Russians are preferable to them.

Image: twitter@Rob_Rogers

Extras. The FBI warned Trump about contacts with Russians. GOP liars deny this.

Update 4/23/19. I just found an example of GOP lies. Here's an article full of speculation, but it's not labeled as speculation. It's not attributed to unnamed sources (presumably vetted), which news organizations with ethics use. Instead, it's presented as ... um, fact? The big assumption in the article is that the woman Russian lawyer at the Trump Tower meeting was working for FusionGPS to entrap Trump campaign leaders. They also state (wrongly, if I'm not mistaken) that the Trump Tower meeting was used as evidence to secure a FISA warrant. I've looked at the redacted copy of the FISA warrant and didn't see anything about the Trump Tower meeting. I suspect that the author was making it up or repeated unsubstantiated rumors floating around Wingnutlandia.

Update 6/14/19. Trump had an interview with ABC news and he flat out lied about telling McGahn to fire Mueller. Read his lying words.

Why am I looking at a FISA warrant?

I don't regular see FISA warrants. Very few people do. They are secret warrants for gathering intelligence on foreign sources. Foreign Intelligence Something Act. Surveillance maybe?

But I'm looking at a warrant because the FBI requested a warrant to spy on Carter Page, an adviser to the Trump campaign on foreign issues, especially Russia. Numerous conservatives have accused the FBI of corruptly spying on the Trump campaign, saying that the warrant was a fraud, and the spying was a conspiracy to blah blah blah.

So a bunch of congressmen demanded a copy of the warrant, which was supplied with large redactions. Not surprising for a secret warrant really. That's the idea of secrets--you don't show them around. I love the picture of one page of the warrant with its redactions.

Carter Page, among others, claims that the warrant is an outrage against his rights as an American. Such warrants are supposed to be granted only on the basis of probable cause, whatever that means. OK, I'll look up what it means. Oh dear, it's rather broad. However, Page going to Moscow, reportedly seeing Russian intelligence agents, fulminating against sanctions on Russia while working on the Trump campaign, maybe there's enough probable cause there.

According to a fancy lawyer writing for the Brennan Center:

"... we cannot imagine the FBI that we know after decades of combined experience would ignore the evidence that was presented to them and decline to seek a warrant for Carter Page when it did. In fact, if the FBI had failed to investigate such allegations, we (and the American people) would’ve been entitled to find them derelict in carrying out their duties."

I definitely don't have experience in how much foreign contact is fine and how much is worrying. I have to depend on others to make that call in an unbiased way. If it turns out that Carter Page wasn't peddling influence to the Russians, that's good. However, maybe he was just careful not to leave an electronic trail. So, really, I'll never know if he's innocent, only if he's guilty and the evidence comes out. That's asymetry for you.

 Image: washingtonpost.com

Grilling the FBI agent

Peter Strzok is the reviled FBI agent to wrote all sorts of nasty texts about Trump using his official FBI phone. The texts were sent to an FBI colleague with whom he was having an affair, an interesting bit of spice but oh-so-common among Congressman, presidents, and assorted Washington folk.

Supposedly Strzok may have been in deep with the deep state that concocted the Russian interference hoax as part of a planned coup. That's according to the far-right conspiracy theorists, who really seem to believe this. (Sources 1, 2, 3.) And Fox News got heavily involved, showing that it isn't much different from the far-right conspiracy theorists. Everyone is now Alex Jones school-shootings-are-staged crazy.

This past Thursday, members of the House grilled Peter Strzok. It was a circus, with too many insane moments for complete discussion here. I'll pull out a couple bits I found significant.

Trey Gowdy, a one-man Jekyll-and-Hyde combo who can't decide whether to go full honest or full partisan, decided to grill Strzok about this text complaining about what an idiot Trump is. For some reason, Gowdy wants to take these off-hand texts as completely serious. (Scroll down here for the testimony.) Absurdly, he questions Strzok on what he meant when Strzok wrote the Clinton should win 100 million to zero. He refused to accept the answer that it was hyperbole, despite that it obviously was hyperbole. How does that make sense? How is that constructive at all as questioning?

Gowdy seems to have a special hatred for Strzok. Does Gowdy not know how people talk about Trump, and how Strzok is fairly representative? On the other hand, Gowdy can be realistic, like supporting the Mueller investigation and pointing out that there is no rationale for impeaching Rosenstein. This is a head-scratcher, but that's how Gowdy has been for a long time.

Stranger still...

Much more puzzling was Louie Gohmert's questioning. Gohmert appeared to be reading notes about the Inspector General for the intelligence community (ICIG) sending an investigator to verbally tell Strzok that Clinton's server had been hacked, something strange (an anomaly) installed, and emails copied and sent to a foreign account. Strzok remembered meeting with the investigator, but nothing else. Gohmert in incensed. How could such a finding be ignored by the FBI? Well, that's a good question. No one other than Gohmert seems to have information about this accusation. I have to wonder, was there a written report? Who was it sent to? Why didn't Horowitz, the Inspector General for the DOJ, mention it? And wasn't Hillary's server stored in some facility and wiped? How would an investigator find 'an anomaly' on it if that's true?

Gohmert seems to be the only person telling this story, which is a bit bizarre. I have to wonder if Gohmert got punked with a fabricated story using a few actual details, like the name of the IC Inspector General. So far, no reporters have followed up. But it can't be hard to call up the IC Inspector General and ask him about the server. I hope I get to read about it. It would be delicious if my theory was confirmed. I'll have to eat dirt if I'm completely wrong and there is an inspector's report to that effect.

Strzok's look of defiance

Image: 4videogames.com

June links

This has been an interesting month. Real things are happening. The long-awaited Inspect General's report about the FBI has been released. Trump and the despotic leader of North Korea insulted each other and almost torpedoed their summit, but then it was back on. Of course Trump is acting like he's saved the world from a huge threat without caring about the details, reality, or truth. But that's not new for him. Trump is never about substance or reality. It's about the show and ratings.

FBI official taking the fifth. Congress wants testimony from Andrew McCabe (probably for partisan show). However, the Department of Justice is considering charges against him, so he'll probably take the fifth in front of Congress.Normally, I'd think that is terrible, but considering he's likely to be facing charges, it makes good sense. I'm not sure why, but I have a somewhat good impression of McCabe. Maybe because he hasn't showboated or thrown anyone under the bus. However, the current director of the FBI demoted him, so it seems like there is something questionable there. And the reaction from the new FBI director? 'We need more rigorous training in being fair.'

How bad is James Clapper? Clapper is one of the many boogeymen according to those in conservative circles who believe in the horror of the 'deep state.' There's him, Comey, Loretta Lynch, Brennan, Rosenstein, and probably countless others. What exacting did Clapper do to earn that reputation? I had to look it up because no one was repeating it, just that he was evil. Supposedly his huge sin was lying to Congress about the NSA data gathering programs. His real sin was saying that Trump is a liar and unserious (my paraphrase). In this write-up of an interview, Clapper makes a lot of sense. Michael Flynn was probably played by the Russians, the Russians probably did tip the election, but we're probably going to survive this and come out stronger afterward. Sensible and reasonable.

Round-up on Inspector General's report. CNN has a series of short, readable clips about the significance of the report. Alan Dershowitz, legal savant and media whore, blasts Comey based on information from the report. Nice to know that Dershowitz has an infallible sense of how to handle fraught situations. He thinks Rosenstein has to recuse himself, and then oversight will fall into the lap of someone who will oversee the Mueller probe with perfect judgment. No, wait, there shouldn't even be a special counsel because there are people in the Justice Department who can handle the investigation without bias... if we're lucky enough that they're the ones who are appointed to do it and nobody interferes with them, like firing them or pointing a biased person in to supervise them.

Educated observer's report on Russia. Just the kind of rationality we need to read sometimes. Strip away hype, fear, and posturing, and you get this kind of reporting. It's great to have non-hyped, non-scary reporting about Russia.

Educated analysis of Pax Americana. This is a fairly long read as my links go, but worthwhile in that it asks questions and looks behind the explanations and mythology of US policies. I read it with an eye to what realistic expectations should be, not idealized expectations. After all, we live in a real world with many dangers, and you have to respond to danger in ways that are effective.

History lesson about altruism. The US helped a lot of countries through the Marshall Plan, and benefited from the peace and prosperity it fostered. Or we could have had a lot more communism.

Resegregation via charter school. Some places in the US, segregation never ended. Now there is a new way to create it or support it, and it's funded via tax dollars.

Football kneeling protest. I'm a supporter of this protest, which I find to be very dignified and respectful. In fact, I can't find anything disrespectful in it. I liked this statement from one of the leaders of the Philadelphia Eagles about the controversy around the protest. I compare this with the insults leveled at players, and it's no contest whom I respect more.

Helpful information for a rare situation. A woman was recently killed by an alligator in Florida. This report tells how to avoid that (stay far enough away from waterfront at dusk, nighttime, and dawn), how to run, and how to fight if you need to. Not much to remember. Good advice.

Copy-paste internet threat. I didn't realize this was a thing. I don't believe the threats made against me over the internet. A few people may be savvy enough to figure out who I am, but very few. So the threats are so likely to be rubbish that I've never worried. But it's incredible and ridiculous to find out there is a meme of threat--a veritable script that people copy and adapt. I guess it's too much work to make up your own bizarre threats, so just borrow something.

Image: irishtimes.com

Spies from the FBI, oh my!

Since it was leaked that the FBI had an informant contact members of the Trump campaign, Trump has been trying to frame it as though his campaign was infiltrated and spied on for political purposes. This is most likely a mountain of hogwash, as it so often is when Trump opens his mouth or gets on twitter. The guy is such a glib liar that he probably only accidentally utters the truth. As a person who cares deeply about truth, I find this appalling. Trump, on the other hand, finds lies to be completely normal.

So Trump says his campaign was being spied on, and he calls it 'Spygate.' What do others, who perhaps remember what truth means, say about this?

There's an interesting contrast between this article from Huffpost and this one from Fox News. The Huffpost article focuses on a former Trump aide who's embarrassed by his conspiracy theorizing. The Fox article, starting at the headline, exaggerates the FBI operation as a 'web of informant contacts.'

If you swallow the story that this was politically motivated spying, then it looks terrible. Trump wants people to swallow that. Along those lines, Trump regularly claims that the Russia issue is a hoax, ignoring all the parts of it that are real and are known to really have occurred. Again, Trump doesn't care about the truth, just his narrative.

Trey Gowdy, as a former prosecutor, has some idea what is required in an investigation. He has spoken clearly that he supports this part of the FBI investigation:

"Based on what I have seen, I don’t know what the FBI could have done or should have done other than run out a lead that someone loosely connected with the campaign was making assertions about Russia..."

But conservatives can't agree on this, not even at National Review. To some of them, the FBI crossed a line that must not be crossed! They don't bother to say what intelligence agencies or the FBI are supposed to do when there is somewhat credible information of foreign influence on a campaign. Only that it is forbidden to investigate by covertly asking questions of the campaign.

Well, that argument is so weak that it crumbles as soon as someone asks what the FBI should do when it hears of criminal activity like hacking our elections. Critics are left sounding as though they want the FBI to 'stand down' -- not do anything. Maybe the FBI should go on twitter and label it all a hoax. Maybe the FBI no longer needs to do investigations and work to protect the US and enforce the laws, but can become a post-reality entity where truth is optional and random. But I'd kind of prefer them to continue the role they had before reality TV took over the presidency and so much of the electorate.

Image: philsp.com

May links 2

Conservative Supreme Court prunes worker rights. I appreciate both sides of this argument in general, but I think this isn't a good ruling. If we want a strong middle class in this country, we need support for workers. That's how we got the middle class.

Shootings. An account of what the school shooter from Santa Fe, TX said and did while killing his victim. Not a vantage point we usually get. Some details of police actions. Young Texans will probably not being leading marches for changes in gun laws. Accounts from first responders to the Las Vegas shooting. There were a lot of first responders, and it was more like a military battle because the shooter was so well armed and prepared.

More on Russia. For reference. The fake ads that Russians put out. So many that they are condensed in zip files. I don't really want to look, but I know I should. Mueller apparently used a Russian oligarch for a sensitive mercy mission. Not scandalous. Background on an undercover FBI informant who tried to find out what was happening in the Trump campaign. Trey Gowdy, in his sometimes-straight-sometimes-hack way, says that the FBI use of an informant in the investigation was appropriate. Great background and historical perspective on Russia.

Memorial Day reflection. When war becomes mundane and most Americans become detached, wars can linger and not be resolved.

Sessions changed immigration enforcement. Revealing and fascinating article about how Jeff Sessions (the Attorney General) is changing immigration enforcement. Chilling, surprising.

Background on fentanyl. I have some knowledge of fentanyl, but this was instructive even to me.

Timeline on scandal. Trump friends Michael Cohen and Elliott Broidy were gathering a lot of money. At this point in the investigation, it may be a partial timeline, but it's already long.

Revealing more sexual harassment. University of Southern California is being sued over the behavior of one of its gynecologists. Surprise - complaints were ignored.

More on the gold standard. One of my pet peeves is people who dogmatically think that the gold standard is workable. Another revealing story about FDR and his odd relationship with the gold standard.

Well, then don't act like one. Lawyer claims he's not a racist after his non-racist rant went viral. And that kind of rant isn't popular in New York City, the home of large number of immigrants.

Image: thefirearmblog.com

May links: cleaning up from April

Korean peace? Don't be too hopeful yet. North Korea has pattern of reneging, or getting stubborn.

Syrian peacce? The role France may play.

Trump's fixer. Michael Cohen, who handled a payment and non-disclosure agreement for a paramour of Trump, also worked for Sean Hannity. It might be involve real estate, but maybe it's another fix-it situation. Time will tell, and I'm not convinced it is just real estate.

Parties and race. This article chronicles how the Dems signed up with blacks long before the 60's. Contrast this bravery with the craven behavior of most Repubs. Also from Vox: White evangelicals tolerate racism and character flaws in Trump. An explanation about Kanye West and Trump.

Forge and frame, inc. Software now makes it possible to fake someone's words and facial expressions in a video. What a bonanza for computer-capable liars and fake news generators.

What competence looks like. Saving all but one person when a jet engine falls apart, piercing the plane in the passenger compartment. The dive to lower atmosphere for more oxygen, the successful landing. Even calming the passengers. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

No effect from the weakening dollar. The dollar has been getting weaker, so are we exporting more? Not really. Good explainer for why.

Healthcare cost containment. California may try it. Good!

Russia-related stories: McCabe's wrongdoing at the FBI. I want to hold on to this resource about the Inspector General's report and see what happens. Was he conniving? Was he thrown under the bus? Also this article. Comey notes about Trump. His private memos, written to document the weirdness of Trump's communications with him, are now public. Who's the liar? Trump's legal team. Trump has hired Guiliani for his Russia strategy team. Another Russian tactic. (I almost , typed 'Soviet.') Use international committees to harass emigres in other countries. And to think that my favorite shills think that Russia is good and the US is a war-mongering horror. Russian meddling. A link to the House Intelligence report. A real report, not a Nunes tissue of lies.

Image: gulfnews.com

Our American gun culture

I've thought about guns all my adult intellectual life, which actually started at age 12-13. I've observed the American cultural traits and myths about guns. First, I have to say that guns are pervasive in American culture. Not as pervasive as food or cars or television, which are practically universal. But about as common as: voting, home ownership, and exercising regularly.

Our latest example of toxic American gun culture was a school shooting with 17 people killed. This is no surprise in the US. We have so many mass shootings, though the death toll isn't usually that high.

Gun rights advocates come up with so many excuses. It's never the goddamn huge availability of guns. It's never the worship of guns to blame. It's always mental illness, or a tenuous connection to the Democratic party, or bad parenting, or liberalism to blame.

I'm not having any of it. The gun rights advocates own these shootings. They are the ones who fight EVERY SINGLE REFORM.  They fight any improvement to background checking (NICS), until there's another mass shooting. They don't try to improve reporting. They don't want the system checked, its flaws revealed. They need the background check as a scapegoat. Many of them don't even support the background check, but feel it was imposed on them. That leads me to wonder if they want totally open sales with no limits on who can buy guns.

Maybe some do. Maybe they think it's a constitutional right, like free speech and freedom of religion. However, my freedom of religion doesn't give me the capability of killing even one person, much less riddling scores of people with bullets. Possibly that's a defect in our Bill of Rights--that gun ownership can't be restricted. Or perhaps I should say that 5 Supreme Court justices decided that's what the 2nd amendment meant.

But the interpretation of the 2nd amendment is only part of the problem. There is a whole cultural issue. In some quarters, you aren't a man if you don't own a gun. You aren't a man if you can't legally own a gun. You aren't an adult if you don't own a gun. Ownership is a right, not a privilege. It's a right, with no attendant responsibility to have training, or good handling. They belief anyone who speaks about good handling is infringing on sacred rights. That anyone who questions the gun culture is unpatriotic and infringing on sacred rights.

My god, more people may worship guns than attend church. That's how pervasive the gun culture is in the US.

Please note, though, that I don't think every gun advocate is part of the toxic gun culture. Many support reasonable reforms. Even more would support reforms if enough Democrats made clearly that they respect the right of sensible, responsible citizens to own guns. However, they aren't loud enough in their support of reasonable reform. Too often, their primary concern is not losing their gun rights, not safety.

Then there are the full-fledged nutcases. They resist all restrictions. They don't even trust restrictions due to mental issues. They would rather mentally ill people have full access than risk being labelled as unable to purchase due to mental impairment.

Frankly, my opinion is that our standards for mental impairment are seriously too tight. Many more people need to be disqualified due to mental impairment. We need to have a procedure for health professionals to report dangerous people, have their gun rights curtailed, and have procedures to follow up. We need the same for family members to report someone who is dangerous, and have their rights curtailed. Most of all, we need to encourage families and all parts of society to support this--to agree that safety is more important. To say "yes, we are committed to preventing dangerous people from having and using guns." I want that to be a whole-society commitment. That is the only rational basis for a healthy gun culture instead of the current toxic culture.

Again...

Image: abc15.com

Extras. An example of a gun advocate who blames anything and anyone but except the proximate cause. A conservative supports the kind of measure I talk about. It even has a name - Gun Violence Restraining Order, or GVRO. However, he writes as though these orders are common, but they aren't.

The FBI is accused of mishandling warnings about the shooter. I wonder how deluged the FBI with warnings, and whether the number far outweighed their ability to check. The right wing and alt-right have so many liars who keep them well-supplied with fake stories.

Update 4/7/18. Here's one of the fake stories. The most visible, talkative survivors are actually actors, according to lying stories floating around on the right. And many who repeat those stories don't give a damn that they're spouting lies.

Memo frenzy: sequel 1

The Nunes memo (text here) hammers on the Steele dossier, how biased Steele was against Trump, how the dossier was used to spy on an American whose rights were thus abridged, and, hey, the targeted individual worked on Trump's campaign.

The memo was heartily cheered by the Trump faithful. Their narrative is that the whole 'Russia thing' is fake news, stirred up by media, abetted by deep state leakers and a very biased FBI and Justice Department. Both of those departments should obviously be cleared out, with all these anti-Trump conspirators sent to jail.

The Nunes memo supported this narrative by positing the FBI used the perfidious Steele dossier to get a warrant to spy on a loyal American (Trump adviser Carter Page), violating his civil rights. Those who want to take that narrative even further into territory even Nunes can't go, they say that the FBI was spying on the Trump campaign and giving that information to Obama.

The Nunes is centered on the claim that the FISA court judge wasn't told that the dossier was opposition research. Dems dispute this. Am I going to believe Nunes? Not a chance. I'm looking forward to the actual verbiage that Dems points to as backing their claim that the judge was informed that the dossier had political origins.

The duplicity of Steele is a fair target. He didn't fully share his motives. His work was sloppy and uneven, and he broke faith with FBI by leaking to the press while he was very engaged with the FBI.
Did the FBI know the origin of the Steele dossier, paid for by Clinton and the DNC? Did they dig for the information? How did the FBI frame the information from the dossier? Were they clear on its origin at oppo research? Did the judge have full information? It is a reasonable question whether the court would have granted the FISA warrant if the judge had been fully informed.

The Nunes memo is also disputed because it ignores that the FBI was already investigating Russian hijinks prior to the creation of the Steele dossier. What other information had the FBI gathered? Nunes pretends there was none. Trump loyalists pretend there was none--as though there were no Russian hijinks at all. Dems claim there was other evidence.

If there was no evidence of hijinks, then there is no reason to spy on Carter Page. However, if there were Russian hijinks along with evidence that Carter Page was involved, then there's a good reason to spy on Page. Interestingly, Page hasn't been a big figure in the whole issue of Russian meddling. The current inquiry isn't centered around Page, but around multiple connection points between the Trump campaign and Russia. Also, Russian meddling -- can we take it as granted that there were a lot of Russian dirty tricks? Do we need a laundry list of them?

So the question of whether Russian meddling was real is paramount. If it was real, if there were sources showing Russian meddling, and not just the fervid, well-paid work of one biased spy, then the investigations appear to be justified.

If Russian meddling was real, then Russia deserves the sanctions put on it. And it would have been wrong to remove those sanctions, as it appears Trump was ready to do. In fact, the whole coziness of Trump, many of his advisers, and Russia appear to be frightening, as though rules and laws don't matter.

One other observation about the memo. Nunes claims twice that FBI and DOJ knew the Steele was being paid by DNC, but is actually vague on the point. It doesn't say who in the FBI and DOJ knew this. It is also vague on what was known, using the phrase "knew political actors..." This vagueness may indicate that there is no written evidence that the information was known at that time at the FBI and DOJ.

Is this applicable to the memo? To the strategy?

Image: smoosh.com

Extras. Reaction from the director of the FBI. Reaction from the New Yorker. Here's an interesting point. Carter Page was already on the radar of other news organizations before the leak from Steele: Huffpost early Aug 2016, ABC July 2016, and Slate July 2016.

Because of the memo frenzy, Congress didn't do the work they needed to in the run-up to the end of the most recent continuing resolution, so we're facing another shutdown. Way to go, boys!

Guess what! There was verbiage to the effect that the dossier was political. It was footnote, and Nunes knew about it. What a fucking liar he is.

More extras that I forgot. Conservative theories and reaction to them. Super-great wonderful interactive graphic about who is who in the Russia investigation. Gowdy splits the difference in conspiracies. An unofficial Dem rebuttal is rebutted. Scathing review of the memo because the critique is very sharp, not because the language is hyped. WaPo timeline I might want to refer to.

Finally, a much better memo from Senator Ron Johnson. Reasonable tone, reasonable questions. Download the memo and the internal FBI communications. This is what a decent congressman does. Nunes is a sideshow.

More and better extras. A long, detailed profile of Carter Page. Impressive unless it's full of Russian disinformation. Another more important memo, also about the Carter Page surveillance, but so much more solid.

Memo frenzy

House Republican Devin Nunes, who did some underhanded shit to cover up for Trump last spring, now has a new plan. He's claiming that he has secret information that shows how the FBI and maybe Justice Department (DOJ) had conspired to illegally surveille on the Trump campaign, and other such nefarious acts.

It's a bunch of hogwash. Nunes doesn't have new information -- that's my prediction. He has a hodge-podge that he's carefully piled up to make the FBI look as bad as possible, mostly by editing out info that shows the FBI doing their job, while playing up anything that makes them look bad.

I have no inside info at all, so my prediction of the contents of the memo are based on existing leaked information that is all over the press. Both the Washington Post (link above) and Reuters have detailed stories about what is in the memo. Nunes' memo shows the FBI used information from the Steele dossier to obtain FISA warrants to surveille Carter Page. Maybe there's a bit of a surprise, and someone else from the campaign was watched too.

Maybe there will be some innuendo that information was shared with the Clinton campaign. You know, hints that it was possible, but no definite evidence that such illegal information sharing actually happened.

It will leave out the information that Papadoupolous told a Danish Australian somebody that he was getting dirt on Clinton from the Russians. That this info was given to the FBI, and they obtained warrants based on that, and maybe other sources too. How this leads to a warrant to watch Carter Page--that I don't know right now. That interesting piece of the puzzle will probably be revealed sometime.

The memo probably pretends that there wasn't anything to worry about the Russians and the Trump campaign until all that misleading info from the Steele dossier, and that was the excuse to spy on the Trump campaign.

True and Not True

However, parts of the Steele dossier have been verified as true, parts have been shown to be wrong, and parts are very scandalous and the kind of delicious misinformation that some source enjoyed feeding to a gullible mark.

Too many Trump supporters would love to pretend that there is nothing to see in Trump's closeness to the Russians. There was no Russian misbehavior. Instead, the misbehavior was on the part of the Obama administration and its subverted spy network embedded in the FBI and DOJ.

What a cynical ploy this is. The Dems on the committee want to blow the whole issue open with their own version of the events. But somehow it's OK for the GOPers to publish their case, but not for the Dems to do the same. I wonder why? This is so obviously partisan that no one should see it any other way.

If and when Nunes' memo is published, there will be hew and cry, and hundreds of journalists will be working to dig out as much of the rest of the story as possible. We \probably won't have to wait very long to find out all the mitigating information that the Dems wanted to tell but weren't allowed to.

Hide and Seek

High-ranking officials in both the DOJ and FBI don't want the memo released either:

“We have grave concerns about the material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy,” the FBI said.

They'll be painted as part of a Dem-aligned spy group within these agencies. Maybe they don't want certain embarrassing details out there. Maybe they don't want internal methods revealed. Maybe they're pissed off about being accused when they were doing their jobs and looking into Russian influence.

Are Trump and Nunes hoping the hew and cry will be enough to shut down the Mueller investigation? Maybe that's what they hope, but I doubt it will happen. I doubt there is much that will smudge the investigation. Mueller will continue to work meticulously gathering the information that's out there, and maybe parts that are currently hidden--though I don't think there will be any more major revelations. I'm so looking forward to the detailed reports--reports are full of real evidence, honestly collected and presented without partisan spin.

What if the memo contains much more than I thought? Then I was wrong and will need to reevaluate. However, if it contains what I've outlined here, this memo is perhaps the biggest example of a shiny object so far in this presidency. A nothing-new-here that dominated the news cycle for several weeks, and that was called "shocking" and "far worse than Watergate." Yep, that's what I'm predicting: a bunch of GOP hype-tripe pretending to be shock and awe.

Image: twitchy.com

Extras. Is it a coincidence the Trey Gowdy is calling it quits? Gowdy may be an intense conservative, but he seems to have limits on stupid partisanship.

The head of the CIA, a conservative appointed by Trump, says that he's expecting more interference by Russians in the midterm elections. Fake news, I guess.