Month: March 2019

I’ve posted this before, but I love this song.

Conrad Black:

“…Of all the asinine and, at times, almost psychotic misstatements about the bone-crushing victory the president has won, the prize goes, with admirable historical symmetry, to John Dean.

It was Dean who led the destruction of lawyer-client privilege in the Watergate debacle, and with it, of much of America’s claim to be a society of laws. Having been the corrupt source of many of the most fatuous illegalities in the amateur obstruction put forward by members of President Richard Nixon’s entourage, John Dean was the first rat down the hawser, denouncing his client, employer, and benefactor with contemptuous disregard for the truth and in the supreme demonstration of the evil of the American plea bargain system.

This perversion of the justice system, more than anything else, has ensured that prosecutors in the United States, win a percentage of their cases about equal to those of North Korea and Cuba. They extort inculpatory evidence against the main target by threatening witnesses and give the denunciators immunity from perjury and a sweetheart sentence…”

And

“…Having expressed my wish for gentle sentencing, I proclaim what must now be the wish of the majority toward those who so gravely threatened the democratic republican system of American government. I am not a pious man, but so important is the proper outcome of this prolonged crisis, I am moved to cite Judeo-Christian Scripture: “God of Vengeance, God to whom vengeance belongs; show Thyself.” Then it will be time for mercy, even unto the most unworthy, who shall be nameless, such as John Dean and Carl Bernstein…”

Original

This is a great analysis. Really worth clicking over for the whole thing.

Lee Smith:

“…First, after nearly two years, the special counsel found no credible evidence of collusion. It found no credible evidence of a plot to obstruct justice, to hide evidence of collusion. The entire collusion theory, which has formed the center of elite political discourse for over two years now, has been publicly and definitely proclaimed to be a hoax by the very person on whom news organizations and their chosen “experts” and “high-level sources” had so loudly and insistently pinned their daily, even hourly, hopes of redemption.

Mueller should have filed his report on May 18, 2017—the day after the special counsel started and he learned the FBI had opened an investigation on the sitting president of the United States because senior officials at the world’s premier law enforcement agency thought Trump was a Russian spy. Based on what evidence? A dossier compiled by a former British spy, relying on second- and third-hand sources, paid for by the Clinton campaign.

Instead, the special counsel lasted 674 days, during which millions of people who believed Mueller was going to turn up conclusive evidence of Trump’s devious conspiracies with the Kremlin have become wrapped up in a collective hallucination that has destroyed the remaining credibility of the American press and the D.C. expert class whose authority they promote.

Mueller knew that he wasn’t ever going to find “collusion” or anything like it because all the intercepts were right there on his desk. As it turned out, two of his prosecutors, including Mueller’s so-called “pit bull,” Andrew Weissman, had been briefed on the Steele dossier prior to the 2016 election and were told that it came from the Clintons, and was likely a biased political document.

Weissman left, or was pushed out of, his employment with the special counsel a few weeks ago, after the arrival of a new attorney general, William Barr, who had deep experience in government, including stints at the Justice Department and the CIA. Knowing what we know now, here’s what seems most likely to have just happened: Barr looked at the underlying documents on which Mueller’s investigation was based. First, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s May 17, 2017, memo appointing the former FBI director to take supervision of the FBI’s investigation of Trump. And more importantly, the Aug. 2, 2017, memo from Rosenstein outlining the scope of the investigation.

Among the scope memo’s few unredacted lines are allegations regarding Paul Manafort’s “colluding with Russian government officials … to interfere with the 2016 elections.” The only known source for those allegations is the Steele dossier. What that strongly suggests is that under those redactions are other fabricated allegations that were also drawn from the Clinton-funded smear campaign—a dirty-tricks operation that was led by Fusion GPS founder and conspiracy theorist Glenn Simpson.

And now, after all the Saturday Night Live skits, the obscenity-riddled Bill Maher and Stephen Colbert routines, the half a million news stories and tens of millions of tweets all foretelling the end of Trump, the comedians and the adult authority figures are exposed as hoaxsters, or worse, based on evidence that was always transparently phony.

The Mueller report is in. But the abuse of power that the special counsel embodied is a deadly cancer on American democracy. Two years of investigations have left families in ruins, stripping them of their savings, their homes, threatening their liberty, and dragging their names through the mud. The investigation of the century was partly based on the possibility that Michael Flynn, a combat veteran who served his country for more than three decades, might be a Russian spy—because of a dinner he once attended in Moscow, and because as incoming national security adviser he spoke to the Russian ambassador to Washington. What rot.

While the length of Mueller’s investigative process may have protected the FBI from the president’s immediate rage, the release of the report has exposed the deep corruption and personal narcissism of the press and its professional networks of “experts” and “sources.” Instead of providing medicine, the press chose instead to spread the disease through a body that was already badly weakened by the advent of “free” digital media. Only, it wasn’t free...”

Original

“…The Mueller investigation has concluded, and Mueller’s declaration has now entered the public record: “The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” But it’s worth reflecting on how the contrary view — the firm conviction that Trump didcoordinate with Russia — became so deeply embedded in the hearts and minds of millions of Americans. And it’s worth reflecting on why another set of Americans could look at actual, troubling evidence of Russian contacts and simply not care at all.

The answer is complex, but at its heart is a set of documents compiled into a collection known as the “Steele dossier.” The dossier, characterized by James Comey under oath as “salacious and unverified,” consisted of opposition research compiled by a former British intelligence officer and commissioned by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Taken as whole, it undermined the credibility of American intelligence agencies, corrupted elements of the media, and distorted the public debate. It may well be one of the most malignant documents in modern American history…”

Original

Chicago Tribune Editorial Board:

“…It began as an alleged hate crime committed against TV actor Jussie Smollett on a downtown Chicago street at 2 a.m. It then careened into charges that Smollett staged the attack to benefit his career. And now this:

After State’s Attorney Kim Foxx makes errors of judgment that lead her to recuse herself, after Chicago detectives expend thousands of man hours doing meticulous work, after police Superintendent Eddie Johnson excoriates Smollett publicly for dragging the city’s name through the mud, after Foxx’s prosecutors take the case before a grand jury, after the grand jurors indict Smollett on 16 felony counts of disorderly conduct … after all that, Cook County prosecutors shock Chicagoans and the rest of the country on Tuesday with news that they’re dropping all charges against Smollett.

It’s an indefensible decision, a deal hashed out in secret, with — this is outrageous — Smollett not even required to take ownership of his apparent hoax. Not even required to apologize for allegedly exploiting hate crime laws. And not even required to reimburse Chicago taxpayers for the enormous cost of this investigation.

Flynn was part of it but not all of it. They hated Trump.

MICHAEL LEDEEN:

“…What, then, was it all about? I think I know. It was all about General Flynn. I think it began on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, when Flynn changed the way we did intelligence against the likes of Zarqawi, bin Laden, the Taliban, and their allies.

General Flynn saw that our battlefield intelligence was too slow. We collected information from the Middle East and sent it back to Washington, where men with stars on their shoulders and others at the civilian intel agencies chewed it over, decided what to do, and sent instructions back to the war zone. By the time all that happened, the battlefield had changed. Flynn short-circuited this cumbersome bureaucratic procedure and moved the whole enterprise to the war itself. The new methods were light years faster. Intel went to local analysts, new actions were ordered from men on the battlefield (Flynn famously didn’t care about rank or status) and the war shifted in our favor.

This earned him a following among some who worked for or with him, but it also gained him the enmity of those who had been cut out of “the chain of command.” By the time he was made head of DIA, Flynn had a real problem with the intelligence community, first because he had marginalized them, and for another reason: Flynn was determined to do a full-scale analysis of the (many) secret missions that had not been carried out over the years, and he wanted an accounting of the considerable funds allocated for them.

So there were many high-ranking intelligence officials who were out to get Flynn. You can see them at work long before there was a hint of Russiagate, when the target was not yet Donald Trump. But then things got worse for the IC, when Flynn was named to head DIA. By then, the FBI was fully engaged in the anti-Flynn campaign, paying people like Stefan Halper to surveil Flynn’s behavior in Great Britain. This produced the fanciful accusation (impossible, for anyone who knew the general) that Flynn had flirted with a good-looking Russian historian. This may have been the start of the “collusion” allegations…”

Original

When you break it down by race, you get this: Whites: 78% not a factor, 18% minor factor, and 4% major factor; Blacks: 62% not a factor, 20% minor factor, and 18% major factor; Hispanics: 65% not a factor, 22% minor factor, 11% major factor; Asians: 59% not a factor, 27% minor factor, 14% major factor.

Original

PETER VAN BUREN:

“…The short version? Mueller is done. His report unambiguously states there was no collusion or obstruction. He was allowed to follow every lead unfettered in an investigation of breathtaking depth.

It cannot be clearer. The report summary states, “The Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 US Presidential Election…the report does not recommend any further indictments, nor did the Special Counsel obtain any sealed indictments that have yet to be made public.”

Robert Mueller did not charge any Americans with collusion, coordination, or criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. The special counsel also considered whether members of the Trump campaign “coordinated,” a much lower standard defined as an “agreement, tacit or express,” with Russian election interference activities. They did not.

Everything—everything—else we have been told since the summer of 2016 falls, depending on your conscience and view of humanity, into the realm of lies, falsehoods, propaganda, exaggerations, political manipulation, stupid reporting, fake news, bad judgment, simple bull, or, in the best light, hasty conclusions…”

Original

Rare indeed when I post an article from Rolling Stone. This one is good.

MATT TAIBBI:

“…On Sunday, Attorney General William Barr sent a letter to Congress, summarizing the findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. The most telling section, quoted directly from Mueller’s report, read:

“[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

That one sentence should end a roughly 33-month national ordeal (the first Russigate stories date back to July 2016) in which the public was encouraged, both by officials and the press, to believe Donald Trump was a compromised foreign agent.

After the 2016 election, the storyline instantly became that Trump was an illegitimate president, a foreign operative who’d cheated his way into office and would therefore need to be removed ahead of schedule.

There were too many stories that dwelled on this theme to count here, but we all saw them. New York asked, Was Trump “meeting his handler” in Helsinki? The Daily Beast asked, “Is he a Russian asset?”

(Note: the extravagant use of hack spy-novel language during this period is going to look particularly ridiculous in history books decades from now.)

Some outlets didn’t even put their beliefs in the form of a question. “Trump Is Compromised by Russia” read a not-unusual editorial in the New York Times last November.

If you tried to protest that this had not been proven, that journalists should be more careful about leveling such serious accusations, the first line of response (if it wasn’t accusing you of being in league with Putin) was usually a version of: Be quiet, you don’t know what Mueller knows.

Mueller knows became the cornerstone belief of nearly all reporters who covered the Russial investigation. Journalists reveled in the idea of being kept out of the loop, thrilled to defer to the impenetrable steward of national secrets, the interview-proof Man of State. He was no blabbermouth Donald Trump, this Mueller! He won’t tell us a thing!

“What Robert Mueller knows — and Isn’t Telling Us,” proclaimed Wired in February, going on to list the many areas where Mueller “probably knows far more than he’s willing to say.”

Last month’s “What we know we don’t know from Mueller’s investigation,” by the Washington Post, marveled at Mueller’s ability to keep secrets. It made note of former Trump aide George Papadopoulos: “Mueller’s team kept him under wraps for months, with barely a hint of his importance.”

Dan Rather told us that “what Mueller knows” will make the Cohen/Manafort pleas “pale in comparison.” Often we were even told the things Mueller hadn’t told us yet were the most important facts of all, that his filings were “more revealing by what they did not include than by what they did.”

Other pieces were just embarrassing, the news version of “We’re not worthy!” The story Axiosreleased after Mueller’s Internet Research Farm indictments was entitled “We know nothing; Mueller knows all.” Axios gushed that Mueller indicted a bunch of Russians no one ever expected to appear in court without word getting out. This, they said, spoke to Mueller’s “deep, serious investigative work” which had gone “totally under radar, with zero leaks.”

“Amazing there was no hint of this in the media,” Axios noted.

All this hyping of Mueller The Omniscient dovetailed with the preposterous mythologizing of the special counsel through consumer goods (Mueller action figures! “Mueller time!” beverage mugs! Saint Robert Muller prints!) and breathless stories like the Vanity Fair ode to the “dreamiest G-man to hunt for collusion.”

Then there were episodes like the “All I want for Christmas is you!” song performed by the SNL cast. “I don’t need a full impeachment / I just need a little fun / Please don’t tell us we aren’t crazy / At least indict his oldest son.”

Now Santa Mueller has gone back to the North Pole, leaving just a written report. It absolutely should be released in full. It’s very possible that the full report contains a great many details that “Mueller knew” and we didn’t, and which will be embarrassing to Trump.

But the report’s key conclusions, as the Atlantic puts it, have already “quelled some of the fondest hopes of the anti-Trump ‘resistance.’”

Beyond the failure to “establish” Trump had colluded or coordinated with Russia, the letter had (despite news reports to the contrary today) a good deal to say on the obstruction issue.

The report’s most-quoted line read, “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

In essence, Mueller punted the question of obstruction back to Barr, who together with Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein has already decided the report didn’t provide enough evidence to support a criminal charge in any of the “number of actions” committed by Trump that raised the specter of obstruction.

This isn’t surprising, given that Barr is a Trump appointee. The Atlantic is one of many outlets to have already cried foul about this (“Barr’s Startling and Unseemly Haste” is the name of one piece). But Barr’s letter includes a telling detail from Mueller himself on this issue (emphasis mine):

In making this determination, we noted that the Special Counsel recognized that “the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference,” and that, while not determinative, the absence of such evidence bears upon the President’s intent with respect to obstruction…

After all the insistence that we put our trust in St. Mueller because he “knows all,” the new story suddenly is that Mueller all along didn’t know and didn’t try to know. The Atlantic’s take was, “Mueller, a career G-man, is fundamentally legally conservative,” which means “he has a narrow view of his own role.”

Therefore, despite the fact that Mueller didn’t determine he had evidence for a charge, we can “infer his conclusions by reviewing how he marshaled the evidence for and against guilt.”

This meant we should read between the lines of what Mueller ended up “saying,” so we can divine (I use that religious word on purpose) his true meaning. By not delivering the desired goods, Mueller is now being described as “The God that failed Democrats,” by Edward Luce of the Financial Times, who makes the shockingly belated observation that the Democrats putting all their hopes in the “magic bullet” of the Mueller investigation “postponed the harder, less glamorous work the party needs to be doing.”

MSNBC HOST Chris Matthews said something very similar. First, he recounted his dismay as he learned over the weekend there wouldn’t be new indictments of Trump family members, his inner circle, etc. From there, Matthews deduced, “There’s not going to be even a hidden charge…. They don’t have him on collusion.”

Members of the media like Matthews spent two years speaking of Mueller in mythical tones, hyping him as the savior who was pushing those “walls” that were forever said to be “closing in” on Trump. Mueller, it was repeatedly said, was helping bring about “the beginning of the end.”

Over and over, audiences were told the investigation had hit a “turning point,” after which Trump would either resign or be impeached, because as Brian Williams put it, “Donald Trump is done.”

This manipulative brand of news programming preyed upon the emotional devastation of liberal audiences, particularly the older people who watch cable. It told them the horror they felt over Trump’s election would be alleviated in short order. The median age of the CNN viewer is 60 and MSNBC’s is 65, and these people were urged for years to place their trust in Santa BOB, who knew all and whose investigation would surely lead to impeachment and “the end.”

All you had to do was keep turning in, because the good news could come any minute now! The bombshell is coming! Never mind that this is causing our profits to soar. Don’t wonder about our motives, even though outlets like MSNBC saw a 62 percent bump in viewership in the first full year of Russiagate coverage. Just keep tuning in. The walls are closing in!

That was bad enough, but now that the Mueller dream seems to have died, news organizations are acting like they didn’t hype Mueller as savior.

“Robert Mueller was never going to end Trump’s Presidency,” says Vox.

Matthews, in a tone that suggested he was being the sober adult delivering tough love, completed his thought about how “they don’t have him on collusion” by saying, with a shrug of undisguised disappointment:

“So I think the Democrats have got to win the election.” He added, “There’s no waiting around for uncle Robert to take care of everything.”

I know no one cares how this sounds to non-Democrats, but this is a member of the media looking sad that Democrats would have to resort to actual democracy to win the White House back.

Given that “collusion” has turned out to be dry well, to the ordinary viewer it will look a hell of lot like the MSNBCs of the world humped a fake story for two consecutive years in the hopes of overturning election results ahead of time. Trump couldn’t have asked for a juicier campaign issue, and an easier way to argue that “elites” don’t respect the democratic choices of flyover voters. It’s hard to imagine what could look worse.

For the commercial press to recapture any dignity after this collusion debacle, it has to at least start admitting to its role in artificially raising expectations in the last two years. It’s hard to imagine them doing that, however. This story has been so enormously profitable for cable stations, in particular, it will be hard for them to let go of this narrative. What are they going to do, go back to just reporting the news? One can almost feel how depressed network executives must be at the thought. They’ve trained audiences to expect bombshells. What will they sell now?…”

Original

U.S. Army Paratroopers assigned to 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade, exit from C17 Globemaster III Aircraft from Papa Air Base, Hungary, during an airborne operation as part of exercise Eagle Sokol at Cerklje Drop Zone in Slovenia, Mar. 22, 2019.

KYLE SMITH:

“…In the last two years, half of Americans say their trust in the media has decreased, while only 8 percent report increasing trust. By a margin of 69 to 29, Americans agree that the media are more interested in advancing their point of view than reporting all the facts. Three-fifths agree that the media covers matters in order “to delegitimize the views held by President Trump and his supporters.” Sixty percent of independents and 93 percent of Republicans agreed with that last item. The media have become an amen chorus of liberals chanting liberal refrains to liberals. The signature phrase of our moment is Fake News. And the Hindenburg of Fake News just went up in flames…”

Original