Month: August 2018

The Strzok saga is bigger than people realize

by digby

Most former DOJ and FBI people in TV yesterday expressed limited support for the agency’s decisions to fire agent Peter Strzok for his unseemly behavior. It was all about preserving the reputation of the FBI and I can see why they would be concerned about that un the current circumstances.

As I noted yesterday, I happen to believe they are doing it as a way to buy time for Robert Mueller’s investigation. By throwing some chum into the water every once in a while it appeases the Giant Toddler for a while and makes him feel as if he has some control over the situation. Whether that actually works remains to be seen.

In any case, this piece from Slate spells out the tremendous risk involved in failing to follow normal procedures in these cases. (You could say the same thing about Comey’s daft decision to go outside the rules as well.)

[T]he inspector general’s report concluded, “we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative decisions we reviewed.”

But the minutiae of Strzok’s conduct are ultimately a distraction. The most important question right now is not “Were Strzok’s failings sufficiently grievous for him to get fired?” It is, rather: “Did he get fired because of his failings—or did the FBI buckle under the enormous pressure exerted by Donald Trump?”

That question is, unfortunately, far easier to answer. Testifying in front of Congress in June, the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, promised that the investigation into Strzok would be “done by the book.” But that is emphatically not what happened. The bureau’s Office of Professional Responsibility merely recommended that Strzok be demoted and suspended for 60 days. But it was then overruled by David Bowdich, the deputy director of the FBI As Bradley Moss, a leading national security lawyer, has pointed out, that step was “highly unusual. Maybe legal but definitely not standard practice.”

This should make us very concerned about the impending clash between Trump and his real target: Robert Mueller.
And this is why the crux of this complicated saga is actually pretty straightforward. Strzok stood accused of undermining public trust in the independence of the FBI through his carelessness. This is indeed a significant offense, one that liberals and conservatives alike should take very seriously. But by caving to a massive campaign of vilification by the president, and publicly violating Wray’s promise that the investigation into Strzok would be done by the book, the bureau’s leadership has undermined that trust in a much more public, deliberate, and grievous manner than the man they scapegoated ever did.

Even at this late stage, many commentators still take it for granted that Trump’s attempts to curb the independence of key political institutions will miraculously be foiled by the Constitution. But Strzok’s firing is only the latest in a series of cases in which high-ranking civil servants have been personally attacked by the president and then been forced to leave office under highly unusual circumstances: At this point, Trump has managed to dispatch the FBI’s director, its deputy director, its general counsel, and the head agent of its investigating agency.

This is worrying for two important reasons. First, it sends a clear message to rank-and-file bureaucrats across different agencies: If you value your career, you better stay in the president’s good books. It will take years or decades until we gain the full measure to which this message may already be swaying supposedly apolitical decisions at all levels of the government. And if the message keeps being sent in ever more high-profile cases, we will have to start worrying that political pressure could influence the behavior of key institutions in ways that are directly inimical to the proper functioning of a democracy (like, for example, an investigation of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate on trumped-up charges).

Second, it should make us very concerned about the impending clash between Trump and his real target: Robert Mueller. As Rep. Devin Nunes recently reminded us in his shocking remarks at a private fundraiser, many Republican legislators are now determined to defend the president against any meaningful investigation at just about any cost. The received wisdom remains that Trump cannot possibly win such an open confrontation. If Trump removes Mueller, the smart money says, it would mark the effective end of his presidency. But so far, Trump has amassed a strikingly strong batting average when it came to getting the targets of his ire fired from their jobs.

So if the strange saga of Peter Strzok does nothing else, it should refocus our attention on the urgency of defending the independence of our key political institutions, including the FBI and the Mueller probe.

As the experience of countless other countries, from Russia to Turkey, shows, attacks on the rule of law often start with the politically motivated purge of comparatively minor figures whose record is not entirely clean. Once institutions that are supposed to be independent from the head of state become accustomed to yielding to political pressure, the demands keep ratcheting up. Before long, any critics of the government know that they are unlikely to receive the same treatment as other citizens.

We are still far from that dystopia. But despite Strzok’s undoubted failings, the highly irregular manner of his firing is another early link along the chain that leads from the rule of law to what the Founding Fathers rightly deplored as “the rule of men.”

Trump revoked John Brennan’s security clearance today:

Sanders says it’s just a coincidence that Trump only wants to strip security clearances from critics of the administration pic.twitter.com/Af6RqJG2N6

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 15, 2018

You can’t make this shit up

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Stat o’ the day

by digby

I know this is mostly a structural issue but since Trump takes credit for GDP and claims the economy is better than it’s ever been in history,  he might as well have this rubbed in his face too:

Real average hourly earnings for all employees decreased 0.2 percent from July 2017 to July 2018. The decline in real average hourly earnings combined with the 0.3-percent increase in the average workweek resulted in a 0.1-percent increase in real average weekly earnings over this 12-month period.

Those tax cuts are going to trickle down any day now …

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Pathetic blast from the past

by digby

I’m going to guess this is a ploy to get elderly suburban voters out to vote. I’m going to guess it will have little impact now, even on those voters who remember it for the put-away shot it once was:

Republicans unveiled an ad campaign this week that seemed to turn back the clock a few decades — by trying to turn the word “liberal” into the kind of insult it was 25 years ago.

It’s the sort of campaign that would warm the heart of the late Arthur Finkelstein, the famous political media consultant whose clients from the late 1970s into the 2000s would relentlessly pound the Democratic candidate with the phrase “liberal” usually mixed in with some nickname. In 1992, for Republican Al D’Amato’s Senate reelection, his opponent faced 10-second ads calling him “hopelessly liberal.” And then in 1994, Mario Cuomo (D) was pummeled with ads that regularly ended with the sign off calling the three-term governor “too liberal, too long.”

The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC dedicated to electing Republicans to the House, is echoing that theme in a set of ads released this week in its bid to retain the eight-year GOP majority. The ads hammer home, again and again, the idea that the Democratic nominee is a liberal. “How liberal is Katie Porter?” the narrator asks at the outset of a 30-second spot against the Democratic nominee in California’s 45th Congressional District, challenging GOP Rep. Mimi Walters.

“Liberal Katie Hill doesn’t think you pay enough taxes,” the narrator saysfrom the outset of spot against the nominee challenging Rep. Steve Knight (R) in California’s 25th District.

“Liberal politician Anthony Brindisi is a tax-and-spend rubber-stamp,” he says in an ad running against the Democratic state assemblyman challenging Rep. Claudia Tenney in New York’s 22nd Congressional District.

A similar set of ads were unveiled last week, including one that blasts “failed liberal politician Paul Davis” — in all caps on the screen — in his bid to win a GOP-held seat in eastern Kansas.

This is a slight variation on what has been a steadily consistent theme from CLF: a steady attack on Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as the potential next House speaker should Democrats win back the majority.

But the earlier ads focused almost exclusively on Pelosi, assuming the viewer already knew what she stood for and why they disliked her. In this week’s trio of ads, however, Pelosi is a bit character, appearing on screen for just four or five seconds in the 90 seconds of airtime.

Instead, CLF is now trying to hammer home that the opposition’s political ideology is the most dangerous thing about their background. It’s an effort to try to move beyond being negative just about Pelosi and to connect the reasons center-right voters despise her on actual policy grounds.

“The word ‘liberal’ is deeply unpopular and represents everything people dislike about the Democratic agenda. Nancy Pelosi and her San Francisco values are the embodiment of what people don’t like about the word ‘liberal,’ raising taxes, open borders and yelling about impeachment,” Corry Bliss, CLF executive director, said Tuesday.

This makes Bliss, a native New Yorker, a modern disciple of Finkelstein, who grew up in Brooklyn and rose to fame with the support of D’Amato and the late senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.).
[…]
The question is also whether the Finkelstein approach has mileage this century. His pugilistic style worked effectively throughout the Reagan-Bush years, as he piled up victories and candidates across the globe. (Finkelstein served as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s consultant in the mid-1990s.)

By 1996, the “liberal” routine had begun to run its course. “I don’t know a Senate race in the country where the Republican message isn’t charging liberal, liberal, liberal,” Mandy Grunwald, a leading Democratic consultant, told The Washington Post then.

His clients lost at least five Senate races that cycle. “The trick is getting old,” Democratic pollster Mark Mellman said at the time.

The theme faded from most GOP campaigns by early last decade, partly because it had lost its bite and partly because liberalism was growing more popular. In 1992, at the height of D’Amato’s “hopelessly liberal” attack ads, voters identifying themselves as conservative outnumbered liberals by more than 2 to 1, according to the Gallup poll.

That edge has slowly but surely declined the past 25 years. By January of this year, 35 percent of voters identified as conservative and 26 percent as liberal, the first time that margin registered in the single digits, according to Gallup.

In recent years, however, the GOP’s campaigns have taken on a one-trick-pony approach of a different sort, focusing so heavily on linking the candidate to Pelosi that sometimes ads in special elections the past year have lost potency.

So now CLF is using “liberal” as an overarching way to connect Pelosi to the policies that middle-of-the-road voters in swing districts are not likely to support. Porter was linked to “the radical resistance” in the CLF ad for supporting the abolishing of ICE, while Hill was accused of supporting “radical environmental regulations” and Brindisi supported “liberal spending.”

All three ads focused more on state politics and figures — the gas tax issue in California and former state legislative leader Sheldon Silver (D) in New York — as they did on Pelosi or national issues. Intentional or not, the ads all ended with the kind of taglines reminiscent of Finkelstein’s work that hammered home the ideological theme.

“Liberal Katie Porter,” the narrator says in one. “Higher taxes, open borders.”

Good luck with that. “Liberal” was turned into an epithet as a dog-whistle. Dog whistles aren’t necessary anymore. It’s all out in the open now.

Its clear that the GOP is completely out of ideas. They are empty vessels into which Trump has poured his racism and incoherent juvenile name-calling. That’s all there is.

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My Salon column this morning:

I doubt there was even one Vegas oddsmaker who would have taken the bet that Omarosa Manigault Newman wouldn’t write a book about the Trump campaign and administration the minute she left the White House. Of course that’s what she would do. It’s what they all do. They generally used to wait until the president was out of office but George Stephanopoulos broke that norm when he wrote his memoir shortly after leaving the Clinton White House and shared a lot of information that embarrassed his former boss. The most famous reality show villain on television, known only by her first name (like Cher or Madonna) Omarosa almost certainly took the job with the Trump campaign largely because it would afford her this opportunity to turn the screws on her show business mentor, Donald Trump. That’s how reality shows work. It was scripted in the stars.

Omarosa’s new book may be mostly fiction but like any good reality show narrative, it must contain some elements of truth in order to be believable. The tapes she is releasing in carefully managed episodic fashion on her publicity tour are backing up at least some of the claims in her book. And she is clearly scaring the hell out of everyone in the White House. If she’s been secretly taping conversations since she joined the team there is no telling what she has.

As I watched Omarosa on the various news programs and talk shows this week I was reminded of another famous gadfly who made the White House very nervous in similar circumstances. Back in the early 70s, a garrulous southern belle  who was married to one of the most powerful men in Washington used to have a drink or two and then call up reporters and share information she’d overheard eavesdropping on her husband’s meetings. I’m speaking of Martha Mitchell, the wife of the Attorney General in the first Nixon administration and the man who ran the Committee to Re-elect the President, also known as CREEP, John Mitchell.

She too was something of a TV star, a household name, known for speaking her mind and causing no end of heartburn for the administration, largely because they didn’t know what she knew and who she was going to tell it to. As it happened she knew a lot because her husband was a corrupt schemer who was in charge of any number of illegal, nefarious schemes in his capacity as Nixon’s campaign chairman. As the Watergate scandal unfolded, Martha Mitchell was considered a ticking time bomb and Nixon’s supporters went to great lengths to portray her as a lunatic, not to be believed. (At one point a bodyguard physically restrained her from speaking to UPI reporter Helen Thomas by yanking the phone out of the wall. They later held her down, tranquilized her and kept her under lock and key for several days!)  This was all known in real time as the story was unfolding but it was relegated to the “woman’s pages” and treated as a sideshow.

Becalmed with sagging sails
by Tom Sullivan

A bridge collapsed yesterday in Genoa, Italy, killing at least 39.

A German journalist seems to have hit on an unlikely approach to covering the country’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Journalist Thomas Walde of ZDF asked AfD leader Alexander Gauland policy questions having nothing to do with refugees:

The resulting 19-minute interview, in which Gauland struggles to answer basic questions about his party’s positions on such issues, has been lauded by opponents of the AfD as masterful. Supporters of the AfD and Gauland himself panned it as biased. ZDF journalist Thomas Walde, who conducted the interview, repeatedly pushed Gauland to clarify or explain statements made by his fellow party members—and asked more than once about proposed policy “alternatives” from a party that counts the word “alternative” as part of its name.

Brilliant cartoon, @wuerker pic.twitter.com/TbRx49Ukyb— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) August 13, 2018

Asked about the party’s position on Germany’s retirement system and his AfD colleague Jörg Meuthen’s suggestion that there should be a “system change,” Gauland said his party had not voted on or released any specific plan for reforms. “We’re discussing this and have no determined concept,” he said. (Asked whether this meant that his party had, in fact, no “alternative” for Germany on this topic, Gauland replied there would be one after the next major party meeting, “not now.”) Referring to the party’s frequent rhetoric about wanting to “protect” the German people (presumably from migrants and increasing immigration), Walde then asked Gauland for the AfD’s position on “protecting” local renters from big international vacation rental companies like Airbnb—a major theme in Berlin, where previously-low rents are rising rapidly. “At the moment I can’t give you an answer on that,” Gauland said. “That has not been voted on in our party program.” On digitalization, which is a major topic of discussion among other political parties here, Gauland was asked to expand on an AfD colleague’s brief comments on the topic’s importance on the floor of the Bundestag. “I can’t explain that, and you’d need to ask an MP,” Gauland said, adding that he personally has “no close relationship to the internet.”

My German never was good enough to follow an interview on policy (interview link above), so I’m taking the word of Emily Schultheis, a Berlin-based freelance journalist (and her Atlantic editors) that the interviewer simply asked Gauland the kinds of policy questions the program “Berlin Direkt Sommerinterviews” typically asks guests. But from her description, Gauland came off like Karl Marx in a Monty Python sketch being quizzed on British soccer trivia.

“Ultimately,” she write, “the interview also highlighted the strategy some German politicians have told me they see as the most effective one against the AfD: to hold them to the same standards as other politicians, and watch them fail to deliver anything substantive.”

With no xenophobic winds to fill his sails, the AfD’s Gauland found himself becalmed. There is a lesson in there for a U.S. press that cannot help but cover the Donald Trump rallies that keep his sails full. But political drama makes infotainment too ratings-rich for many American reporters to bother asking about policies actually impacting people’s lives — infrastructure, for example — much less stop fringe figures from somehow making bridge collapses the fault of brown-skinned immigrants.

* * * * * * * * *

For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

Good Trumpie, bad Trumpie?

by digby

This is one of the weirdest sub-plots in this whole Trump saga. Usually I can see through the machinations of these Republicans but I have to admit that this one stumps me:

The husband of White House adviser Kellyanne Conway appeared to hammer President Donald Trump for making false statements and attacking allies, adding to a long list of criticisms he’s lobbed against the President online.

Since last year, George Conway, a prominent attorney whom Trump considered nominating for solicitor general, has been posting and retweeting tweets critical of the President. Conway’s latest criticism took aim at the President for his response to former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman’s unflattering accusations against Trump and his White House and campaign staffs.

…really bad things. Nasty to people & would constantly miss meetings & work. When Gen. Kelly came on board he told me she was a loser & nothing but problems. I told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me – until she got fired!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 13, 2018

After the President tweeted a suggestion that he kept Manigault Newman at the White House “because she only said GREAT things about me,” Washington Post writer Philip Bump asked on Twitter Tuesday what would happen in a similar situation at a publicly traded company. How would a board react to their CEO telling them an unqualified employee wasn’t terminated “because the employee constantly praised him”?

Interesting analogy. Likewise, what if a CEO routinely made false and misleading statements about himself, the company, and results, and publicly attacked business partners, company “divisions” (w/ scare quotes!), employees, and analysts, and kowtowed to a dangerous competitor? https://t.co/dTjUk7kApQ

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) August 14, 2018

I’m sure Kellyanne would have told all in her big insider account of the Trump admnistration if it weren’t for that NDA…

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Advance knowledge?

by digby

“I’m going to continue to blow the whistle on all of this….”

pic.twitter.com/sqw34SWIn6— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) August 14, 2018

It’s entirely possible that she’s completely full of shit with this but considering he panic coming from the White House about these tapes. She’s obviously been recording for a long time. She was in the campaign from the beginning and in the White House for a year. Who knows what she knows?

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Dot dot dot … dot dot

by digby

Colbert’s take on Omarosa is just the best …

The expedient purge

by digby

Attorney Bradley Moss points out that the purge of the top levels of he FBI and DOJ is coming to completion:

There was no doubt a viable—although arguably attenuated—policy justification supporting Strzok’s firing. Having represented government employees at the FBI and across the intelligence community in similar disciplinary proceedings for 11 years, however, I can tell you that the manner in which this particular saga came to a conclusion was in no way consistent with standard FBI practice.

No matter what some in the media might tell you, it is not impossible to fire government officials if there is a valid basis for doing so. When it comes to the FBI, that task is far easier because—with very limited exceptions that likely do not apply to Strzok—FBI officials are effectively “at-will” employees. The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, which governs the disciplinary due process system for the entire U.S. government, specifically excludes the bureau—as well as several other agencies within the intelligence community—from its statutory scope. In effect, FBI officials receive whatever internal due process the agency decides to provide to them out of a matter of discretion.

What was so unusual in the context of Strzok’s firing, however, was the direct intervention of Deputy Director David Bowdich into the process. Just like in any other FBI disciplinary proceeding, Strzok was initially afforded the right to appeal the proposed termination of his employment to Candace M. Will, the head of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility. I have appeared before Will several times on behalf of FBI clients and I can state from personal experience that she is well-credentialed and compassionate, but ultimately very strict. She is a firm believer in the notion that the FBI has to hold itself to the highest ethical and moral standards and that is often reflected in her determinations. In 11 years of practice, I cannot think of a single time I have ever managed to persuade Will to reverse a proposed termination of an FBI official’s employment.

Nonetheless, according to a statement from Strzok’s attorney, Will chose not to uphold the proposed termination of Strzok’s employment. Instead, she concluded that it was appropriate to instead demote Strzok and suspend him for 60 days. She apparently also concluded that Strzok would be afforded what is known as a “last chance agreement,” which is effectively a written understanding between the agency and the employee that even the slightest instance of misconduct going forward can and will likely result in immediate termination. That Will reached this conclusion is very surprising and, in my professional opinion, speaks to just how thin the case for firing Strzok likely was.

That Deputy Director Bowdich chose to overrule Will is what takes this matter so far outside the ordinary practice of the FBI disciplinary process. I have never seen senior FBI leadership unilaterally and directly intervene in such a manner, whether in my client’s favor or otherwise. If Strzok had not been satisfied with Will’s determination, appealing to Deputy Director Bowdich would not even have been a formal option. His final stage of administrative appeal would have been before the Disciplinary Review Board, which is comprised of three senior FBI officials but to my knowledge does not typically (if ever) include the deputy director.

To be clear: No legal restriction likely prevented Deputy Director Bowdich from directly intervening. After all, Strzok was effectively an “at-will” employee. What is concerning here is the continuous and repeated appearance of political considerations seeping into the traditionally apolitical disciplinary process at the FBI. President Trump made no bones about his distaste for Agent Strzok, just as he similarly publicly criticized Director Comey and Director McCabe prior to their terminations. All three men played or were still playing a role in the investigation into the president’s campaign before they were fired.

With the firing of Peter Strzok, the president’s purge of senior FBI leadership who helped launch that investigation is now complete. For those wondering whether Trump would allow the bureau to do its job without political interference from the White House, I think we have our answer.

Strzok was fired for political reasons. So was McCabe. They are trying to appease King Trump in order to keep him from firing Rosenstein and/or Sessions. I think that’s obvious. By throwing out some chum every couple of months they think they can keep him momentarily happy. Indeed, it appears that the new sacrifice will be Bruce Ohr, whose wife Trump currently obsessing about on his twitter feed.

They are buying time by throwing their own people overboard. One can only hope it’s for a good cause.

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The peace president

by digby

It’s good to see the president demonstrating his isolationist peace philosophy again.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday again seized on what he called a “terrorist attack” in London to call for tougher anti-terror measures, even though the incident was still in the early stages of investigation.

“Another terrorist attack in London…These animals are crazy and must be dealt with through toughness and strength!,” the US President tweeted.

Metropolitan Police in London were investigating the event — in which a car crashed into security barriers outside of the Houses of Parliament during rush hour Tuesday morning — as a terrorist incident. The driver, a man in his late 20’s, was arrested at the scene on suspicion of terrorist offenses. He was alone in the car and no weapons were recovered at the scene.

I don’t even want to think about what he would do if a major terrorist attack happened in the US right now. Or at any time in his tenure.

He made it clear during the campaign that he believes in harsh, violent retribution. (His Central Park 5 ad showed that he had held these beliefs for many decades.) People who chose to believe his silly insistence that he wouldn’t have gone into Iraq meant that he was a “non-interventionist” were fooling themselves. He might not have gone into Iraq. That was a particular hobby horse of the neo-con right and the Bush family. But whatever he did do in retaliation for 9/11 would have been even more bloody. He’s a violent, dominating monster.

Back in 2012, Trump said this at Liberty University with his pal Jerry Falwell Jr giving him the full adoring Pence:

“I always say don’t let people take advantage — this goes for a country, too, by the way — don’t let people take advantage. Get even. And you know, if nothing else, others will see that and they’re going to say, ‘You know, I’m going to let Jim Smith or Sarah Malone, I’m going to let them alone because they’re tough customers.'”

“They will never mess with us ….”

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