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Month: November 2019

They did it to you, Trumpie

They did it to you, Trumpie

by digby

Trump schadenfreude is rare. Enjoy it …

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Politics is easy if you have no shame

Politics is easy if you have no shame

by digby

September:

Last month:

Today:

I think that makes the Republican “strategy” pretty clear, don’t you?

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Secret agent man Devin Nunes at it again

Secret agent man Devin Nunes at it again

by digby

Oh look, Trump’s top henchman is still running around having clandestine meetings to cover his bosses’ criminal behaviors:

The former Ukrainian diplomat at the center of allegations that Kyiv meddled in the 2016 election has met Rep. Devin Nunes, the California firebrand who is one of President Trump’s top defenders.

The revelation indicates that Andrii Telizhenko’s connections in Washington are wider than previously known. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, has enthusiastically promoted Telizhenko’s allegations and met with him extensively. And Trump has touted his claims.

“Congressman Nunes had a really interesting and good impact on me as a very positive and influential politician who loves America and is interested in Ukraine and developments on fighting Russia,” Telizhenko told The Daily Beast. “We talked about how to fight Russian aggression in Ukraine and Russian propaganda.”

The previously unreported conversation is the only known encounter between two of the more significant figures in the story of Trump’s relationships with Russia and Ukraine. Nunes’ office did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Telizhenko worked at Kyiv’s embassy in Washington from December 2015 through June 2016, according to a copy of his C.V. that he shared with The Daily Beast. And he has played a key role in the promotion of the contentious narrative, popular on the political right, that the Ukrainian government worked with Democrats during the 2016 campaign to damage Trump.

Politico first reported in January 2017 on alleged efforts by Ukraine’s Washington embassy to find and dole out dirt about Paul Manafort, who was Trump’s campaign chairman for several months and is now serving a prison sentence for financial crimes unrelated to the 2016 election.

In Politico’s story, former DNC consultant Alexandra Chalupa and then-deputy chief of mission Oksana Shulyar both denied any inappropriate moves related to Manafort. Telizhenko, however, went on the record to say Shulyar directed him to share any relevant information with Chalupa. “They were coordinating an investigation with the Hillary team on Paul Manafort with Alexandra Chalupa,” he said at the time.

The allegation reverberated through conservative media. And while most coverage of election interference in early 2017 focused on the Kremlin’s well-funded operation to hack emails and spread disinformation over Facebook and Twitter, Telizhenko’s allegations about Ukraine found an eager audience among the president’s staunch supporters. A BuzzFeed story published earlier this week tracked Telizhenko’s reach through conservative media—including an appearance on the conspiracy site InfoWars—and called him “a bespoke purveyor of conspiracy theories.”

Since going public, Telizhenko has helped Giuliani try to investigate matters related to American politics and Ukraine. Telizhenko told NBC earlier this week that the two met earlier this year and have become friends. His allegations have also drawn the attention of congressional Republicans defending Trump in the impeachment inquiry; a newly released transcript shows a Republican staffer who questioned former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch as part of the inquiry asked her if she was familiar with the story.

The staffer also said the issue could damage the relationship between the two countries.

“I think most Americans believe that there shouldn’t be meddling in our elections,” she said. “And if Ukraine is the one that had been meddling in our elections, I think that the support that all of you have provided to Ukraine over the last almost 30 years, I don’t know that—I think people would ask themselves questions about that.”

Telizhenko met Nunes at a housewarming party in May of this year, he told The Daily Beast. The two chatted for about 15 minutes, he said, and didn’t follow up after the party.


“We had an interesting conversation,” he said. “He’s well aware on Ukraine politics and from what I understood, he’s a true patriot in the United States. And that’s how I saw it. It was interesting for me to meet him.”

Since their conversation, Nunes has touted claims that originated with Telizhenko. On Sept. 24, he tweeted out an article by John Solomon at The Hill arguing that Democrats have pressured Ukraine to meddle in American politics. The story quoted Telizhenko. A few weeks later, the congressman tweeted out another story highlighting claims that the Ukrainian embassy colluded with the DNC.

This is ridiculous. Nunes has no obligation to go this far for Donald Trump. He wants to do it.

By the way, if there has ever been a slimier, oleaginous comment than this, I’d like to see it:

“I think most Americans believe that there shouldn’t be meddling in our elections,” she said. “And if Ukraine is the one that had been meddling in our elections, I think that the support that all of you have provided to Ukraine over the last almost 30 years, I don’t know that—I think people would ask themselves questions about that.”

It is the very definition of phony, snotty, “I know you are but what am I” wingnut sanctimony. I know one should never feed the trolls but it’s this kind of thing that makes me want to throw things and scream uncontrollably.

What can you do with assholes like that?

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“He was in a bad mood…”

“He was in a bad mood…”

by digby

You can see why. He knew he was about to get caught:

Bolton resigned the next day as well. Clearly Trump had realized the shit was coming down.

Sondland’s statement that there was actually a quid pro quo, no doubt about it, in his amended statement is unequivocal:

A critical witness in the impeachment inquiry offered Congress substantial new testimony this week, revealing that he told a top Ukrainian official that the country likely would not receive American military aid unless it publicly committed to investigations President Trump wanted.

The disclosure from Gordon D. Sondland, the United States ambassador to the European Union, in four new pages of sworn testimony released on Tuesday, confirmed his involvement in laying out a quid pro quo to Ukraine that he had previously not acknowledged. The issue is at the heart of the impeachment investigation into Mr. Trump, which turns on the allegation the president abused his power to extract political favors from a foreign power.

Mr. Trump has consistently maintained that he did nothing wrong and that there was no quid pro quo with Ukraine.

Mr. Sondland’s testimony offered several major new details beyond the account he gave the inquiry in a 10-hour interview last month. He provided a more robust description of his own role in alerting the Ukrainians that they needed to go along with investigative requests being demanded by the president’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani. By early September, Mr. Sondland said, he had become convinced that military aid and a White House meeting were conditioned on Ukraine committing to those investigations.

The additions Mr. Sondland made to his testimony were significant because they were the first admission by a senior figure who had direct contact with Mr. Trump that the military aid for Ukraine was being held hostage to the president’s demands for investigations into his political rivals. A wealthy Oregon hotelier who donated to the president’s campaign and was rewarded with the plum diplomatic post, Mr. Sondland can hardly be dismissed as a “Never Trumper,” a charge that Mr. Trump has leveled against many other officials who have offered damaging testimony about his conduct with regard to Ukraine.

As such, Mr. Sondland’s new, fuller account is likely to complicate Republicans’ task in defending the president against the impeachment push, effectively leaving them with no argument other than that demanding a political quid pro quo from a foreign leader may be concerning, but — in the words of Mr. Trump himself — is not “an impeachable event.”

Mr. Sondland had said in a text message exchange in early September with William B. Taylor Jr., the top American diplomat in Ukraine, that the president had been clear there was no quid pro quo between the aid and investigations of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., his son and other Democrats. But Mr. Sondland testified last month that he was only repeating what Mr. Trump had told him, leaving open the question of whether he believed the president. His addendum suggested that Mr. Sondland was not completely forthcoming with Mr. Taylor, and that he was, in fact, aware that the aid was contingent upon the investigations.

In his updated testimony, Mr. Sondland recounted how he had discussed the link with Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, on the sidelines of a Sept. 1 meeting between Vice President Mike Pence and Mr. Zelensky in Warsaw. Mr. Zelensky had discussed the suspension of aid with Mr. Pence, Mr. Sondland said.

“I said that resumption of the U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anticorruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks,” Mr. Sondland said in the document, which was released by the House committees leading the inquiry, along with the transcript of his original testimony from last month.
[…]
The new information surfaced as the House committees also released a transcript of their interview last month with Kurt D. Volker, the former special envoy to Ukraine. Rushing to complete their final round of requests for key witnesses before they commence public impeachment hearings, the panels also scheduled testimony on Friday by Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff. And two more administration witnesses who had been scheduled to testify on Tuesday — Michael Duffey, a top official at the White House budget office, and Wells Griffith, a senior aide to the energy secretary, Rick Perry — failed to appear.

In his new testimony, Mr. Sondland said he believed that withholding the aid — a package of $391 million in security assistance that had been approved by Congress — was “ill-advised,” although he did not know “when, why or by whom the aid was suspended.” But he said he came to believe that the aid was tied to the investigations.

“I presumed that the aid suspension had become linked to the proposed anticorruption statement,” Mr. Sondland said.

In his closed-door interview last month, Mr. Sondland portrayed himself as a well-meaning and at times unwitting player who was trying to conduct American foreign policy with Ukraine with the full backing of the State Department while Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, repeatedly inserted himself at the behest of the president. He also said repeatedly that he could not recall the events under scrutiny, including details about the Sept. 1 meeting, according to the 375-page transcript of his testimony.

But some Democrats painted him as a lackey of Mr. Trump’s who had been an agent of the shadow foreign policy on Ukraine, eager to go along with what the president wanted. They contended that Mr. Sondland had deliberately evaded crucial questions during his testimony.

And other witnesses have pointed to him as a central player in the irregular channel of Ukraine policymaking being run by Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani, and the instigator of the quid pro quo strategy.

In the addendum, Mr. Sondland said he had “refreshed my recollection” after reading the testimony given by Mr. Taylor and Timothy Morrison, the senior director for Europe and Russia at the National Security Council.

Mr. Morrison, the National Security Council official, testified last week that it was Mr. Sondland who first indicated in a conversation with him and Mr. Taylor on Sept. 1 that the release of the military aid for Ukraine might be contingent on the announcement of the investigations, and that he hoped “that Ambassador Sondland’s strategy was exclusively his own.”

Mr. Sondland’s new testimony contradicted the notion that he was a lone wolf pushing the quid pro quo idea himself, and portrayed him instead as just the messenger who had discovered there was a linkage between the aid and the investigations and articulated it to others. He said it “would have been natural for me to have voiced what I presumed” about what was standing in the way of releasing the military assistance.

Mr. Sondland originally testified that Mr. Trump had essentially delegated American foreign policy on Ukraine to Mr. Giuliani, a directive he disagreed with but still followed. He said that it was Mr. Giuliani who demanded the new Ukrainian president commit to the investigations, and that he did not understand until later that the overarching goal may have been to bolster the president’s 2020 election chances.

Mr. Sondland said that he went along with what Mr. Giuliani wanted in the hope of pacifying him and restoring normal relations between the two countries. Under questioning, he acknowledged believing the statement was linked to a White House visit the new president of Ukraine sought with Mr. Trump.

The White House response:

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Trump’s accomplices are rotten to the core

Trump’s accomplices are rotten to the core

by digby

As we watch this vast corruption scandal unfold, with more clear and convincing eveidence that the president is a criminal coming to light every day, Republicans continue to lick his boots and defend him no matter what.

This is the truth:

Jolly was a Republican elected official once. He is among the tiny handful who left rather than be a part of what it has become. The rest are just empty vessels. They aren’t like the average Fox viewer Trump cultist who is being brainwashed by disinformation and propaganda. They know better. But they are doing it anyway.

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It’s all one scandal

It’s all one scandal

by digby

Will Bunch has a great column today discussing the FOA document dump that Buzzfeed and CNN obtained over the week-end filling out some of the details underlying the Mueller Report. And, as those of you who read my stuff already know, I agree with this conclusion:

The disclosures also bring into much sharper focus something that’s critical for understanding America’s current plight: The so-called Trump-Russia scandal — in which the president falsely claimed “total exoneration” after Mueller’s muddled two-year probe — and the so-called Ukraine scandal which now imperils the White House is really just one giant scandal. It’s a power-hungry demagogue seeking the ego boost and the enriching “brand-building” potential of the American presidency having no moral qualms about trying to work with criminals (2016) or abusing the power of his office (2019) to get what he wanted, even relying on the same shady cast of characters in both occasions.

Saturday’s news about the Mueller memos didn’t cause a huge stir — most on social media were more taken by the schadenfreude of seeing Trump’s narcissistic 2019 World Approval-Seeking Tour draw more boos in Madison Square Garden — yet it tells us three very important things. First — and not to be forgotten — is the role of BuzzFeed journalist Jason Leopold as well as CNN in relentlessly pushing to gain this information through our Freedom of Information laws. In a time when the White House has proclaimed journalists as “the enemy of the people,” Leopold and CNN remind us that the First Amendment is more vital and important than ever.

But here’s a more discouraging takeaway — the powerful suggestion that the Mueller investigation that dominated the news for the better part of two years was never what the millions of Americans who believed in the battle-tested former FBI chief, a functioning justice system, and the truth actually thought it was. Saturday’s revealing memos were just the latest and strongest hint that an investigation upon which too many pinned too much hope — from “Mueller Time” T-shirts to that “Hon, Mueller’s got this. Come to bed” cartoon in the New Yorker — was in fact the gaslighting of America on a massive scale, even for the Trump era.

Sorry, hon — Mueller didn’t get this.

It’s hard to know how much of this is the fault of Mueller, the taciturn Vietnam War hero who may not have temperamentally been up to the job of grasping such a vast threat to American democracy under the best of circumstances. And these clearly were not the best of circumstances. When Mueller finally testified in public before Congress and appeared hesitant and hazy about his own investigation, it seemed clear that a probe conducted strictly behind closed doors for two years may not have been what people thought it was.

There were, in hindsight, early clues. Why were Trump figures — including Gates, Flynn and others — given relatively sweet deals to plead guilty and provide information, when that information didn’t bring consequences for the president and other higher-ups around him? A warning flag was Team Mueller’s surprisingly public denial of a BuzzFeed article about Trump pressure on Cohen to mislead Congress, when Saturday’s memos suggest there was Trump pressure on Cohen to mislead Congress? Why was Mueller so willing to punt the substantial evidence on obstruction of justice to Congress, ducking any forceful recommendation on what to do with it?

Maybe that’s because, in the end, a probe that was 50 percent about obstruction of justice was thwarted by … obstruction of justice. Some of that likely was the collective impact of the 10 documented efforts to obstruct justice that are outlined in the Mueller report — from the firing of FBI chief James Comey to attempts to oust Mueller himself and then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was later removed. We don’t yet know how these reflect other closed-door pressures placed upon the Mueller probe.

But there is no doubt that the knobs of gaslighting were switched to “high” when new Attorney General William Barr — also known as Trump’s Roy Cohn — arrived at the Justice Department in February. Under Barr’s thumb, Mueller appeared newly pressed to quickly wrap things up. The end of his investigation came with a weeks-long delay before his actual report — a vacuum that was filled with Barr’s Trump-serving four-page memo with his own conclusions that there was no obstruction of justice and no collusion with Russia. Barr even staged a press conference hours ahead of the actual report with misleading spin on what was in it.

In the end — as the memos dropped on Saturday reveal — the Mueller report was not the definitive word on what happened with Trump, Russia and the tainted 2016 election. Rather, it was a series of not-always-great prosecutorial decisions about what to leave in and what to leave out, and what conclusions to make of it all — reached by an iconic-but-fading prosecutor no longer on top of his game, under relentless pressure from a justice apparatus that has been politicized and warped by the president and his Cohn-like hatchet man.

What’s telling is that Mueller’s impotent testimony before Congress came just one day before Trump’s extortionist phone call with Ukraine’s Zelensky — suggesting the presidential beatdown on the Mueller probe had inspired the delusion that he was now untouchable. The next few months on Capitol Hill will prove whether Trump was actually right — and if he was right, you can kiss goodbye to the United States of America.

Interestingly, the new Mueller info came just a day after an interview in which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seemed to confound expectations that she plans to limit the Trump impeachment probe to Ukraine and nothing more.

“What we’re talking about now is taking us into a whole other class of objection to what the president has done. And there may be other — there were 11 obstruction of justice provisions in the Mueller report. Perhaps some of them will be part of this,” Pelosi told Bloomberg Television. “But again, that will be part of the inquiry, to see where we go.”

This is a tough call, because every day that Donald Trump remains in the Oval Office is a danger to America and the world. But it’s increasingly clear that the speediest narrow impeachment — one confined solely to his Ukraine dealings while ignoring the naked corruption of obstructing the Mueller probe and his efforts to become president through lawbreaking, either through stolen emails or hush money, and then use his office to line his own pockets — would be a terrible mistake.

That’s because — as noted earlier — the real scandal of Trump’s presidency is his amoral and narcissistic willingness to do any and all things that are terrible for the country but are good for his own personal power and ambition. The symptoms of that corrupt disease played out on a global canvas from Kyiv to Trump’s golf resort in Scotland to the corridors of the Justice Department. If we don’t make it clear that no president is above the law — all of the laws, including obstruction of justice and the Emoluments Clause — then we will only be setting the stage for a future president who will be even more dangerous than Donald Trump.

This is one scandal. It’s about Trump’s overwhelming self-dealing and corruption as a candidate and president. This is clearly how he operates.

The polls show that plenty of people think this is a waste of time because we have an election coming. It is not. There is a chance that Trump can be re-elected. It is vitally important that the Democrats do everything in their power to show the American people what a criminal he is before that happens. They must take his criminality seriously and try to expose it and convince the public of its importance. The Republicans are probably going to do everything they can to protect him. Thay too must be revealed to the public.

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Comforting The Afflictor by @BloggersRUs

Comforting the Afflictor
by Tom Sullivan

William Blake, Satan Smiting Job with Sore Boils, c.1826, Tate, London, 2011. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

First, this isn’t a horse race. What we see in 2020 election prognostication is a media as flummoxed as the Democrats about how to deal with a phenomenon like Donald Trump. The Fourth Estate has yet to shake itself out of covering this presidency, this election, as it would a normal one. The election is a horse race. It’s always a horse race. This one, 2020, is a horse race. Except this is not Situation Normal, even if it is AFU.

The Washington Post and ABC News have another poll to show us this morning. This one purports (as they all do) to give us some insight into where the 2020 presidential race is headed one year out:

The new poll highlights the degree to which most of the country already has made a judgment about the president’s performance and their voting preferences next year. Among the 39 percent of registered voters who approve of Trump’s job performance, Trump is winning at least 95 percent support against each of five possible Democratic opponents. But among the 58 percent of voters who disapprove of Trump, he receives no more than 7 percent support.

Etc., etc.

And yet, the House will release another tranche of impeachment inquiry transcripts today. Politico asks, “Since the release of the first two transcripts … Monday, have you seen a single stitch of information that helps President DONALD TRUMP? Have you found any information exculpatory for him? Can you name one single fact that’s changed the basic arc of this story?”

The impeachment inquiry the Ukraine affair spawned is only going to get worse for the White House. Polls purporting to provide insight into next November’s outcome are meaningless except as thermometer readings of how the patient, our very republic, is faring today.

That’s the trouble with normal, Bruce Cockburn sang, “it always gets worse.” And it will. The question is, for whom?

The problem with “normal” press coverage of Donald Trump is it throws gasoline on a flame. Trump’s informal interactions with the press are litanies of unchallenged lies.

“We’ll be showing that to you real soon.” [evidence that Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman is a Never-Trumper]

“The whistleblower gave a false report.”

“I have the real polls.”

“It was a perfect phone call.”

Why must the Fourth Estate encourage Trump’s performance-lying? Virtually everything he says is a lie. Asking Trump questions they know he will lie about gives those lies oxygen, spreading them like those your right-wing uncle used to forward in chain emails. Broadcasting lies (not uttered under oath) is not news. It is comforting the Afflictor.

The problem, of course, is what to do about it. There is no journalistic or business model for reporting on a chief executive who is either a pathological liar or, worse, a methodically deliberate one.

CNN’s Daniel Dale live-tweets Trump’s MAGA rallies. He tries “to give Trump the maximum benefit of the doubt.” Why? A courtesy to the office, one presumes, not to the man.

Credit Dale’s tweeting with live-correcting Trump on the fly.

But even when the press tries to push back live, as talk-show show hosts did on Sunday, interviews with Trump administration officials are time I’ll never get back. Nothing new is revealed. It’s talking points and propaganda reinforced from coast to coast. The press persists in going through the motions of covering this administration as it would a normal one.

As worrisome are the Democratic presidential candidates running as if there is a normal to get back to. Jamelle Bouie comments this morning on the Democrats who have yet to admit that is not going to happen:

Arguably the most important divide in the Democratic primary field isn’t by ideology, but between those candidates who understand the obstacles ahead and those who don’t. Despite the example of the last 10 years, the centrist candidates are still running as if persuasion and compromise will win the day.

Good luck with that.

QOTD: Gordon Sondland

QOTD: Gordon Sondland

by digby

When former Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was under fire from the administration and didn’t understand what was going on she asked EU Ambassador Sondland what she could do to improve her situation and he replied:

‘You know, you need to go big or go home. You need to, you know, tweet out there that you support the president, and that all these are lies and everything else.”

In other words, lick his boots, kiss his ring, pledge your fealty to Dear Leader.

Stop standing in the way of the bribe.

A month ago she found out that the president of the United States had told Ukrainian president Zelensky that she was “bad news” and that she was “going to go through some things.”

I can hardly believe this stuff is real.

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Fox News Pete Hegseth is pretty much the acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs

Fox News Pete Hegseth is pretty much the acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs

by digby

As we await what sickening smear Trump has planned for Lt. Col Vindman in retaliation for telling the truth to the congress, check this out:

President Donald J. Trump has decided to restore convicted SEAL Edward Gallagher’s pay grade to chief petty officer, overriding a decision last week by the Navy’s top admiral, both Navy Times and Fox News learned.

Although naval officials and Navy Times discussed Trump’s looming decision on Sunday, it was announced on the morning Fox and Friends show by network contributor Pete Hegseth, who said he spoke directly with the president about intervening in three war crimes cases.

A week before Veterans Day, Trump’s move clears the way to free Army 1st Lt. Clint Lorance, who was convicted on a pair of murder charges for ordering his platoon to shoot and kill three Afghan men on a motorcycle in 2012 and is serving a 19-year sentence at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth.

It also is poised to end the prosecution of Green Beret Maj. Matthew Golsteyn, who is accused of executing a suspected Taliban bomb maker in Helmand Province nine years ago.

“This president recognizes the injustice of it,” Hegseth said during the broadcast. “You train someone to go fight and kill the enemy. Then they go kill the enemy the way someone doesn’t like, and then we put them in jail or we throw the book at them.”
[…]
Rumors swirled throughout the base that senior officers were poised to unleash a series of sanctions on him, including sending him to a Trident Review Board to strip him of the SEAL insignia, whispers also overheard by Gallagher’s defense attorney, Timothy Parlatore.

At the close of business in California, however, no action had been taken by embattled Rear Adm. Colin Green and new rumors percolated out of headquarters that senior officials had stepped in to halt the proceedings.

“We didn’t reach out to the president, but we’re grateful that he’s taking this action,” Parlatore told Navy Times on Monday. “The idea that even after everything Green did to still go after Eddie’s trident, that’s not the action of a SEAL admiral. That’s the action of a petulant child. It’s a good thing the adults in the room are standing up.”

Parlatore said he had yet to speak to Gallagher because it was 4 a.m. in California when Hegseth announced the impending intervention by the president.

“In 3 ½ hours, I have the expectation that Green might still pull Eddie’s trident when he shows up for duty,” Parlatore told Navy Times by telephone.

Late Sunday, Parlatore emailed Green’s staff a scathing letter addressed to the admiral, urging him to abandon “your fixation on harming Eddie Gallagher and his family.”

“He has already suffered indignities that vastly outweigh the severity of his alleged offenses. Continued unlawful attacks will serve only to undermines your ability to effectively lead the NSW community,” Parlatore wrote.

Pointing to interviews he conducted with a number of SEALs during his defense of Gallagher, Parlatore wrote that he continued to hear a common complaint that Green’s command “uses operators and then casts them away like garbage the moment they no longer satisfy your needs.”

He seems like a very special fellow.

Stung by a string of scandals, on Tuesday Naval Special Warfare commander Rear Adm. Collin Green issued a four-page “back to basics” directive designed to shore up shoddy conduct, restore moral accountability and create better leaders.

In the wake of Gallagher’s acquittal, Green in August issued a four-page “back to basics” directive designed to shore up shoddy conduct, restore moral accountability and create better leaders.

Released to senior leaders and then obtained by Navy Times, Green’s guidance sought to return his SEAL and boat teams to standards expected of service members across the fleet, with a mandate for leaders to conduct “routine inspections of your units and strictly enforce all Navy grooming and uniform standards, including adherence to all Navy traditions, customs and ceremonies.”

But Parlatore’s letter warned Green that mandating haircuts, outlawing unit patches “are not the problems” plaguing Naval Special Warfare and instead directed Green’s attention to a high tempo of overseas operations “and a lack of proper support from failed leaders” and “scapegoating” Gallagher will only undermine “good order and discipline; men are losing respect and confidence in their leadership.”

Who the hell does this lawyer think he is? Admiral Pete Hegseth?

Pentagon officials did not respond to requests by Navy Times for comment, except to refer all questions to the White House.

The reporter here clearly sides with this looney lawyer and seems to believe the prosecution of Gallagher was tainted by out of control brass and prosecutors.

But this is not right. The president interfering in the Naval procedures for dealing with war crimes like this is just terrifying. Something very bad is happening with the armed services.

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