The Washington Post reported on the “Obamaghazi” pseudo-scandal last night if you want to take a deep dive into this nonsense.
But this is the real story which doesn’t appear until the very end:
Last Thursday, when Grenell showed up at the Justice Department to deliver the list to Barr, the visit and Fox News’s apparent knowledge of it took some senior officials there aback. Grenell, who had been ambassador to Germany before assuming the intelligence post on a temporary basis, has long associated with some of Trump’s most vocal right-wing supporters and has earned plaudits from the president for his tweets attacking journalists.
Shortly after the visit, according to Justice Department officials, Grenell’s office seemed to be intimating to reporters that it would be up to Barr or his underlings to decide whether to release the document.
That, in the view of Justice Department leadership, was not accurate, since the department did not create the document and Grenell, not Barr, had declassified it.
“The information is not ours to release,” Justice Department spokesman Kerri Kupec said Tuesday on Fox News. She explained that Grenell’s office “owns that document. They declassified that document. So if they choose to put that out there, they’re more than welcome to do so.”
Ultimately, Republican Sens. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin asked for the list and then released it on Wednesday.
Trump and his allies were prepared to pounce.
“Almost all of us who are involved or follow this have the facts of this case memorized,” Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, said during the Russia investigation. “So it’s natural to want to talk about the requests to unmask Flynn and really look at whether these people were engaged in a conspiracy to get Flynn out.”
Conservative media in turn have been abuzz this week with anger about Flynn’s treatment and criticism of U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who is overseeing the Flynn case and must approve the dismissal of the charges. Sullivan has appointed a retired federal judge to oppose the Justice Department’s position and explore whether Flynn should be held in contempt for lying to the court.
“The hatred for Donald J. Trump is as strong and intense as ever, and it is flavoring and directing and influencing what everybody in that town is saying and doing about virtually everything they’re saying and doing,” conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh told his listeners this week.
Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett, whose books about the Russia probe have been touted by Trump, theorized Thursday on “Fox & Friends” that the Obama administration went after Flynn “with a vengeance” because he had been determined to “expose the Russia hoax.”
Two people involved in Trump’s reelection campaign said the effort was designed not only to weaken Biden, but also to tarnish Obama, who is likely to be a visible surrogate for Biden this fall. Obama had the highest approval rating, at 60 percent, of all living political figures tested in a recent Republican National Committee poll of voters in 17 battleground states. Biden and Pence tied for second at 47 percent.
Revealing the ways Trump hopes to benefit politically from the issue, Trump sent a fundraising plea to supporters on Thursday declaring, “Oh how the tables have turned.” After an investigation he dubbed “the Russian Collusion Delusion,” Trump wrote, the unmasking list shows “Sleepy Joe is the GUILTY one.”
That is the real story. It’s nothing more than a re-election strategy. I wrote about this for Salon earlier. And I suspect it may backfire spectacularly. Many of the seniors he’s consigning to death or endless imprisonment with his cavalier dismissal of the pandemic aren’t going to find this to be a compelling message. And if anyone was thinking that the African American vote might stay below 2008 levels this is one way to energize them. And frankly a lot of other members of the Democratic base are going to be offended by this. Obama is the most popular Democratic politician in America.
But sure, go ahead and bring him into the campaign.
Michelle Goldberg has an excellent column in today’s NY Times on this subject. She runs down the Obamaghazi plotline and contrasts it with the very real, deadly, scandal that was laid out by Dr. Richard Bright yesterday.
She concludes:
Since Trump took office, he has, like many authoritarians, built an alternative reality that deranges public discourse and encases his followers in a carapace of lies. As the evidence of his savage incompetence becomes harder to deny, the efforts to shore up that alternative reality will only become more desperate. The real scandal of a looted government leaving citizens prey to death and destitution will fuel ever more histrionic fake ones. It remains to be seen whether howls about Obamagate can distract from the desolation Bright warned of in January, and is warning of still.
Maybe we’ll get lucky. I hope so. But I wouldn’t bet on it. This is one case where the Bizarro World alternate reality is downright lethal.