Purges and show trials?by digby
That seems to be what these people are angling for:
The Florida congressman said during an interview on MSNBC that the “American people have very high standards” for government agencies and suggested they aren’t being met.
Rooney said the agency – and in particular Peter Strzok, a top FBI agent who was involved in the Hillary Clinton email investigation – needs to be purged.
“I would like to see the directors of those agencies purge it,” Rooney said. “And say, look, we’ve got a lot of great agents, a lot of great lawyers here, those are the people that I want the American people to see and know the good works being done, not these people who are kind of the deep state.”
Right, all the “good ones” are fine. You know, the ones who are willing to do Trump’s bidding, no questions asked.
And it’s not as if McCabe didn’t make an effort:
FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe may have violated multiple existing Justice Department rules controlling contacts between the bureau and White House officials when they spoke earlier this month with White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus about their ongoing investigation into Russia’s influence operation against the 2016 U.S. presidential election, according to several former senior Justice Department officials.
The first questionable contact came when McCabe spoke with Priebus for five minutes after a 7:30 a.m. meeting at the White House on Feb. 15 on an unrelated intelligence issue. The day before, the New York Times had reported that Trump’s campaign and other Trump associates had multiple contacts with known agents of Russian intelligence in the year before the election.
At the White House meeting, McCabe told Priebus, ‘I want you to know story in NYT is BS,” according to senior Administration officials who briefed reporters on Feb. 24.
Priebus asked McCabe what could be done to push back, saying the White House was “getting crushed” on the story. McCabe demurred, and then later called back to say, “We’d love to help but we can’t get into the position of making statements on every story.”
FBI Director James Comey later called Priebus himself and repeated McCabe’s statements about the New York Times story. Comey also said he was unwilling to speak publicly about the piece but agreed to let Priebus cite senior intelligence officials in his pushback, the officials said.
It makes you wonder how far they expected them to go.
Right. We don’t really have to wonder at all, do we?
Also, can I just point out that right wing Republicans who voted for a man who said we should put all mosques under surveillance and “go after the families” of terrorist suspects and open up new black sites and create a private CIA complaining about the “deep state” is ludicrous? Please. These authoritarians love the deep state. What they’re complaining about isn’t the deep state. It’s law enforcement, which they think only applies to their enemies and not themselves. Surprise.
This “purge” talk is not unprecedented. You may recall, there was a lot of this kind of talk back during the 1950s. They were trying to “purge” the government of their political enemies then too. Same tribe, same tactics. In fact, the committee’s lawyer, Roy Cohn, was also Donald Trump’s mentor. Small world, no?
If you feel like dropping a little something into the Hullabaloo kitty over this holiday period, I would be most appreciative.
Happy New Year, everybody. Together we can get through this.
cheers — digby
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