Continuing saga of how Trump tried to steal his second term, plus Jan. 6 committee reports

Much of the plan is now known, though it actually was fairly open in late 2020. Once the lawsuits failed, Trump hoped somehow to discredit the certified slates of electors and throw the vote into the House. Luttig, a traditional Republican judge, lays out the plan. It didn't work because Mike Pence, as president of the Senate, didn't go along with it. 

Former Attorney General Barr testified that Trump was 'detached from reality' when it came to the election results. 

Since that plan failed, Trumpie Republicans are working on 2.0 of the plan, which involves Republican legislatures ignoring the vote totals in their states and choosing pro-Republican electors. 

The biggest revelations for me (so far) was how hard Trump pushed the DOJ and how hard the DOJ pushed back. But this was somewhat apparent at the time. Enough of it leaked within days. DOJ officials testifying at the Jan. 6 hearings. Transcript of that day's hearings. Reconstruction of that very important day, Jan. 3. Very important: the lying letter that Jeffrey Clark wanted to send out just days before Jan. 6. 

Highlights of Pence Day at the hearings, plus the danger was greater than it appeared. The prospect of 'wild' demonstrations was viewed as leverage. All the evidence that Trump was warned he was doing illegal shit, but he ignored it. 

More to be added as I find it or remember to add it. Publish now, continue adding. 

Image: wttw.com

Extras. Three video summaries of key points in the riots: the role of the Proud Boys, demonstrators breaching line after line, and bodycam footage of police being attacked. 

Truth Social, supposedly the no-censorship twitter platform, has suspended accounts for posting about the Jan. 6 committee reports. 

A group led by the Kraken lady Sidney Powell may be paying for the defense of some OathKeepers. Prosecutors are concerned that they aren't getting informed consent or client-centered representation. Whose goals are the priority? That's worth asking. 

The Jan. 6 committee was very well organized with excellent pacing and focus in their presentations. A critique of how they've done that. 

From the excellent Jan. 6 hearings, a beautiful, smart, serious White House staffer tells a lot of the inside stories of Jan. 6, but certainly not all of them. Trump's support is shaken. A longer piece of how she broke from the Trump circle.

After Elon Musk was forced to follow through and buy twitter, he reinstated Trump's twitter account. Now some of that history is available to see again, but some is strangely gone. The tweet where Trump blasted Mike Pence for cowardice? Gone. 

Here's a list of his Jan. 6 tweets.Two important tweets from Jan. 6. The two final tweets from Jan. 8 that got his account permanently suspended until Musk became owner. Yes, he deserved to be suspended because he was starting on the incitement again. Trump's tweet slamming Pence is gone, but his post on that material is still available on Facebook. The audience is so different between twitter and Facebook. Mostly negative on twitter, mostly supportive with a lot of religious references on Facebook. And a fun look at Junior being clueless about his own father. 

Some of Trump's illegal fake electors still have roles in government or elections.

A bunch of stories based on releases of the final days of the committee. Some in the inner circle were dismayed. A timeline of the 187 minutes that Trump wasn't calling off the riots. Many bits of interest from WaPo folks pouring over the releases. And some bigger ones also. WaPo's view of the 187 minutes. 

Some clarification on what the capitol police leadership were facing. 

Because I don't know where else to put this: the story of a Trump loyalist trying to do major troop withdrawals, but he's only 30 years old and doesn't know how to write up a presidential order. He also doesn't know it takes more than writing it and getting a signature. Lots of top-level officials saying I don't know about this. Do you know about this? FUNNY.

The Georgia indictment.

Background of the Capitol HIll insurrection

This article is particularly good at laying out the violent rhetoric and actions that preceded the insurrection and set the tone for it. This includes invasions of statehouses in Michigan, Oregon, and Kentucky. Also the incident when Trump supporters boxed in a Biden campaign bus in Texas. 

There was some disarray in the Capitol police in the run-up. They didn't stay informed on the trends and missed the signs to be better prepared. Timeline and issues. Did some members of Congress help rioters in the run-up? 

Groups were saying that they'd storm the Capitol (a particularly good article, also here). Alt-right groups are taking advantage of the opportunity to radicalize Trump supporters. The groups are in the military and law enforcement, and disinformation is rife. The scope of planning within the groups and between the groups isn't clear yet. The Proud Boys appear to have spearheaded some actions (excellent video), but the Oathkeepers and 3-percenters are well-represented too. More will be emerging as investigations continue. Here's NYT covering Proud Boys' chat prior to the riot. 

Also, what roles did Roger Stone and Alex Jones play? Here's Roger Stone raising money in the run-up. Here's an article by Rod Dreher on the religious groups prior to Jan. 6.

It was perhaps sheer luck that more people weren't killed. Most of the rioters were pro-police and not in favor of injuring police just to get to the members of Congress. The more radical groups perhaps didn't see enough support for more violent action and therefore didn't go that route. 

Tucker Carlson says it was just good Americans yearning to be heard by a callous, uncaring, overbearing government. Wow, talk about propaganda. 

A huge article about the work done by non-partisan groups to prevent a huge mess in the election and the aftermath. Election systems were strengthened, sometimes with donated money. Business groups didn't want chaos, but they saw it coming if they did nothing. 

A transcript of the speech given by Trump on Jan. 6. Search for 'fight' and search for 'peace' to get a sense of how much peaceful protest wasn't emphasized. 

Two articles about the belated response of the military to requests for help. Shorter, possibly clearer. Longer with a detailed timeline. There appeared to be almost an hour delay in getting the OK from top military to send in national guard units. The guards weren't able to go directly to help--they had to stop at armories to get the proper gear first. But at least they had partially mustered, or it would have taken even longer. 

Image: brandeis.edu

And more aftermath. 

A Republican Congressman (and Nazi youth look-alike) Madison Cawthorn has a moment of regret, but did it last? Minority leader McCarthy says that everyone bears responsibility. That's a convenient smearing/spreading of the blame. A pundit trying to minimize the importance of the riot. Mostly, things weren't that bad and democracy wasn't overturned, so it's not that bad. 

A watchdog of Parler found a 'patriot' calling for much more violence next time. Lets hunt these cowards down like the Traitors that each of them are, he writes. 

In Michigan, the head of the state senate goes along with the line from the true believers, and then apologizes, somewhat. This is such a standard  problem of standard cowardice. 

In Pennsylvania, there's a civil war between Trump supporters and those who support Toomey and a level of independence. We'll see in 2022 who is nominated to the open Senate seat and who wins. 

The Capitol Hill police force deals with group (and individual) PTSD. 

The nutty pillow guy is making 'documentaries' about the election theft. Here is a review: Absolute  Proof is as bad as you'd expect. 

Facebook has its own 'supreme court' and they were called on to rule and/or advise on the permanent suspension of Trump's account. Here's the pithy version of what they decided, including the phrase 'replete with falsehoods' about Trump's statement. Here is a more detailed version. 

'Daddy told us to come to DC.'

Trump supporters aren't that different from the Proud Boys or other right-wing fight groups. 

The saga of Ashli Babbitt, the woman who was shot while crossing a barricade in the Capitol.  

More about OathKeepers, Three Percenters,  and other militias. 

Trump tried to get the DOJ to overturn the election.

The New York Times made a somewhat short video (40 minutes) about the Jan. 6 riot, using pieced-together video of the events. 

September links

DAMN, I'M LATE POSTING THIS. 

Truth-telling about guns. Wapo

No Charlottesville in Boston. In my home state, some twerps tried to have a Straight Pride Rally. Poor turn-out. Related. An article from the end of 2015 predicting the rise of white nationalism in the US.

Unscrutinized law. So much of law is about examination, scrutiny, testing in cases that are written down and reviewed. So it's a surprise the some law isn't subject to this when it's DOJ policy.

Clear-headed assessment of mass shootings. How big is the risk? That's a very fair question to ask.

More mass killings being twarted. More people are taking threats seriously and intervening. This time a teenage girl was stopped after buying a semi-auto rifle.

Late-breaking story about Russia. Most of the news about Russia interfering in the US election, and the responses to it, are well-known at this point. Here are two reports about a highly-placed spy in the Kremlin who was spirited away to safety at the beginning of the Trump presidency because Trump might have been careless and leaked info exposing him. Also a large section of the report on Russian interference was released by the Senate committee that is striving miraculously to be non-partisan.

How Trump treats advisers. Disrespectfully, we know. With the firing of John Bolton, we have a few more stories with insights. Trump hires 'brands' and Bolton was a well-known brand. The four categories of official Trump advisers, from 'shiny new toy' to 'fired via tweet' and other pithy observations.

Very few swing voters. Less than 5.5% are both undecided and moderate.

Big story on the Supreme Court? WaPo reports that getting a justice onto the Supreme Court is now so important that the ethics are shunted to the side.

Image: usatoday.com

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. 

Two cases of conservative distortions

Double header!! First up is an article from WaPo detailing how Fox News distorted one news story from January 2018. The New York Times reported that Trump had told the White House counsel (McGahn) to have Mueller fired. The rumor that Trump wanted to fire him was going around like crazy, largely because Trump regularly fed the impression. Also Trump was known for firing people, including the head of the FBI, his chief of staff, communications director, and assorted others. Oh yes, he fired people on his reality show too.

But the NYT doesn't report the odd rumor, and it had details. Fox, however, exists in a separate universe and doesn't believe the stinking NYT, even though they have a much better track record for accuracy.

Trump claimed it was fake news. Hannity repeated that. Then Hannity had to back down as actual news operations at Fox confirmed the report. Then spin took over. Trump has the right... This was six months ago... Who cares anyway. Immigration is more important...

The Mueller report confirmed this, by the way. Eye roll for Fox News.

Fox News Spins DOJ Letters

Fox News, as the defender of the Almighty, Protector of the Faith, etc. had an article on an official letter from the White House counsel complaining about the Mueller report. This was perhaps counterprogramming against a letter from Mueller leaked on 4/30/19 where Mueller complains that summaries of his report are inaccurate so the summaries he wrote himself should be released. (They were leaked.)

The letter from the White House counsel complains that Mueller didn't draw conclusions, and he should have. However, the arguments there completely ignore what the rationale that Mueller plainly gave in his report, which was that DOJ policy didn't allow him to make an indictment against the president, so he was doing what he could legally and ethically do considering those restriction. Mueller cites OLC in the first page of Volume II, concerning obstruction of justice inquiries. The White House counsel just ignores that. Plus it veers into an addition Trump probably requested complaining about leaks and claiming Trump is the highest official in the country so blah blah blah he gets to decide everything within the executive branch -- as though conflict-of-interest doesn't happen.

This isn't exactly a legal clown car because there is some coherence. However, it doesn't touch on the most important points, so the goal of the letter seems to be to blow smoke. Sad.

... but it was true.

Image: thedailybeast.com

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

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.

The significance of the Obama-era scandals

Republicans may be overjoyed--they have a triad of scandals to hold against the Obama administration. There's new information on Benghazi including the edit trail of the administration talking points and testimony of personnel who dissent with administration handling of the Benghazi attacks. The IRS targeted Tea Party groups for onerous oversight, and the Department of Justice (DOJ) subpoenaed and seized phone records of many journalists of the AP.

Benghazi

Benghazi is the oldest of the scandals, dating from September 2012. The death of four Americans at a satellite diplomatic facility in Libya hasn't been the story that the GOP had hoped for. It's difficult to turn a single incident like Benghazi into a wide-ranging indictment of the administration's capability of running competent foreign relations. The Obama administration has generally been competent, with fewer Americans soldiers dying, fewer wars started in various hot spots, and not considerably more nuclear tests by North Korea. It's hard to make the case that Obama is so incompetent that we need the more war-like Republicans in office. The narrative that some conservatives wanted to push, that Obama is a welcome mat for Islamist groups, was undercut by other groups in Libya attacking the group responsible for the attack. Also there's Obama's generally aggressive posture in Pakistan and Yemen that belie the GOP position.

So how bad is Benghazi? Hillary is looking less like the firm hand at the State Department handling a myriad of international situation without any of them spinning out of control. She ignored the warnings of dangerous conditions in Benghazi, and she has no good way to apologize for it. This is a black mark against her that she can't clean up. So far her efforts have been defensive and screechy--she may need to learn how to be humble and contrite. She has to hope that her strong points are enough to compensate. That said, she has a couple years to figure out how to explain and mitigate.

The damage to Obama is his lack of engagement. His underlings are mealy-mouthed, his own role in decision-making is muddy. He doesn't know how to end the drip, drip, drip of discrediting information and doubts about the handling of the situation. The CIA is trying to make sure State gets the blame for lack of preparation, but the responsibility for the non-timely military response to the emergency is still a liability that hasn't been fully explored. But this incident, as a small tragedy, isn't large enough to sink Obama's presidency.

IRS

The IRS scandal is also less than initial reporting would have it. The IRS probably wasn't directed by the White House, so this is more a rogue operation, rather like Fast + Furious. Also, I doubt that it will seem as egregious as trying to deny tax-exempt status to a church. These groups were political, and the three salient issues were:

• How much they would have to report, such as listing their donors.
• How much paperwork and red tape the IRS piled on them.
• Whether the IRS leaked confidential information to the press or other groups.

No political group, left, right or center, is going to arouse that much sympathy or indignation, so hearings will be either boring or falsely histrionic. That won't do much damage to Obama.

The Obama administration can and should be tough on the personnel responsible for the decisions to pursue these procedures. Perhaps this will mark a new higher standard for the IRS that future administrations will have to follow.

Subpoenas of Journalists' Records

Finally, there is the seizing of the telephone records from the AP. This concerns a leak about a foiled bombing. The leak included some surprisingly detailed information, such as the existence of a double agent who came from the UK and infiltrated a terrorist group in Yemen. If CIA methods for infiltrating this al Qaeda group were compromised, that is a serious leak that deserves scrutiny and perhaps prosecution.

On the other hand, Obama administration may just be trying to intimidate news organizations. Considering that the target was the evil mainstream media, the GOP are not going to be able to spin it as much as they would want to. (Let me crank up my crocodile tears over the missed opportunity.) Obama's handling of leaks and whistleblowers may be tougher than some previous administrations, but it hasn't been severe or common enough to worry the garden-variety, non-libertarian voter. There are good arguments on both sides, which makes it hard to paint Obama as the villain. So, no legs on this scandal either.

Thin Sauce

Sometime last year, perhaps when I was researching Fast + Furious, I realized that the Obama administration has been surprisingly clean, though certainly not squeaky clean. There were some known back door deals in ACA, and it would be hard to believe that there weren't any goodies in the stimulus bill. However, the worst malfeasance was ill-considered large loans to Solyndra and other pet causes. (Or maybe it was some of the big policies, like Obamacare, that don't lend themselves to sound-bit scandal hearings.)

That leaves the GOP-controlled House without enough to investigate, so they are inflating whatever they can find. But that isn't much. There isn't a revolving door between lobbying firms/oil companies and the White House staff. The administration either isn't throwing favors at its Wall Street friends, or the favors pale compared to other times.

The lean pickings, and the insistence of the out-party on investigating something brought us the endless delving into Fast + Furious last year, and will bring us endless Benghazi this year with some droning IRS hearings mixed in. Perhaps some Republicans will weary of the attempt to weave these tiny scraps into a funeral shroud for the Obama administration, and this will end, but I doubt it. The House will have to fill its time somehow, and they certainly won't be spending the time hammering out courageous compromises on pressing issues like entitlement reform or tax reform. No, we can expect some very dull partisan soap operas. Sigh.

The Short Version

Some lessons from these scandals:

• Bringing the in-party down a few notches doesn't translate into more support for the out-party. The Dems look slightly worse, but ...
• The GOP still look like a bunch of opportunistic scoundrels who are interested primarily in power rather than sound policy.

Image: democraticunderground.com