544

UPDATE: This chapter might be able to totally replace the earlier chapter on the fake Russian doc.

There are many questions the future Democratic Congress -I’m presuming-must resolve regarding Comeygate as we’ve laid out in the last few chapters.

One burning issue is the fact that Comey used a fake Russian document in part to justify his unjustifiable press conference of July 5, 2018.

We have heard many contradictory things about this document-in his Senate testimony in June, 2017 after his firing he handwaved the entire story about the fake document as ‘fake news’ in a purely ad hominem way. Ie, he didn’t even attempt to answer the question. With so many-legitimate-questions about what happened in that election we must have a full accounting of Comeygate and there are many questions that need to be answered regarding the fact that Comey used a fake document he knew was fake as we saw in (Chapter B).

“Then-FBI Director James Comey knew that a critical piece of information relating to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email was fake — created by Russian intelligence — but he feared that if it became public it would undermine the probe and the Justice Department itself, according to multiple officials with knowledge of the process.”

“As a result, Comey acted unilaterally last summer to publicly declare the investigation over — without consulting then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch — while at the same time stating that Clinton had been “extremely careless” in her handling of classified information. His press conference caused a firestorm of controversy and drew criticism from both Democrats and Republicans.”

UPDATE: While the IG report is very critical of Comey’s ‘insubordination’, his deliberately sandbagging Lynch at the last minute on the press conference and letter-waiting until it would have been very difficult and awkward for Lynch to overrule him, McCabe in his newly published book has an interesting observation about Lynch that gives us a hint why she didn’t stand up to Comey and forcefully and put him back in his own lane: McCaber describes her as very much conflict adverse. 

In that vein while it’s wonderful to see Ms. Lynch find her voice now and in her upcoming book it’s too bad she didn’t find it then when it could have changed history-it’s clear from Comey’s own words if she had directed him not to to do the presser or letter he would not have.

Ok, so let’s just take a step back for a moment and absorb this. This was a fake document that Comey knew was fake from the Russians who his FBI knew was investigating for interfering in our election and Comey’s reaction was to intervene in a way that hurt Clinton-ie giving the Russians exactly what they wanted?

This as noted in previous chapters was Comey’s very curious modus operandi in the Emailgate investigation-he again and again took actions meant to reassure the Clinton haters that the investigation wasn’t rigged in her favor by rigging it to her detriment. Yet amazingly, it didn’t work-no matter how far Comey bent over backwards to convince GOP and Trump operatives that he wasn’t favoring Clinton, he never could convince them. Not even after he rigged the election and handed the Presidency to Trump. Even now the GOP is accusing the Deep State at the FBI with rigging the election against Trump. Even literally throwing the game for them hasn’t convinced them.

All of which points to the folly of worrying more about the appearance of a fair investigation than a fair investigation  in fact. By trying to give an appearance of being fair to Trump he was grossly unfair to Clinton and even then the Trump operatives still say he and his agency favored Clinton.

Back to CNN:

“Comey’s actions based on what he knew was Russian disinformation offer a stark example of the way Russian interference impacted the decisions of the highest-level US officials during the 2016 campaign.”

As I argued in earlier chapters while this book defines Watergate 2.0 as consisting of two scandals: Russiagate and Comeygate, it’s clear that the two conspiracies converged. After all, for the Russian hackers and Tump operatives to have failed to weaponize Emailgate would have been conspiracy malpractice. Emailgate was by far the most potent anti Clinton weapon in 2016-between the media’s absurd weaponization of it and the very fertile anti Clinton bias at the FBI why would the interferers and colluders have ignored Emailgate? Of course they didn’t.

“The Washington Post reported Wednesday that this Russian intelligence was unreliable. US officials now tell CNN that Comey and FBI officials actually knew early on that this intelligence was indeed false.”

They knew it was false yet Comey used it.

“In fact, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe went to Capitol Hill Thursday to push back on the notion that the FBI was duped, according to a source familiar with a meeting McCabe had with members of the Senate intelligence committee.”

Yes-Andy McCabe another causality of the Trump operatives. Like Comey, McCabe also broke protocol and procedure by leaking news of the Clinton Foundation investigation on October 31, 2016. But like Comey he did this to reassure the Clinton haters that he wasn’t in any way coddling her, that he had plowed through-as Mitch McConnell would say-with the Clinton Foundation investigation over the-quite legitimate objections-of the DOJ in Washington DC. Quite legitimate as the Clinton Foundation investigation was no more properly predicated than the Emailgate investigation itself-in deed the CF investigation was predicated on Clinton Cash.

Yet, despite McCabe’s ‘plow through’ at Hillary Clinton’s expense, he, like Comey, was unable to reassure the Clinton haters. Nothing can which is one major reason it was vain-and wrong-to try. So now McCabe was treated especially harshly, as the DOJ-clearly at Trump’s behest-forced McCabe out just 26 hours before he’d be eligible for his pension.

FN: Just like now in the impeachment investigation it’s wasteful and counterproductive to attempt to reassure Trump’s GOP co-conspirators that the Democrats are going to be fair to the President as nothing will convince them as the demand isn’t made in good faith. In reality, Trump’s been treated pretty fairly-he’s spoken of in reverent terms as ‘the President’ even though the election was stolen and if not for his ill gotten Office he’d be residing in the cell next to Michael Cohen.

End FN.

Like Comey, McCabe bent over backwards to harm Clinton in order to reassure the GOP operatives and like Comey  he was thrown overboard by these same Trump and GOP operatives and labeled a Clinton lover.

Of course, to understand why they were never able to reassure the Trumpsters-well to understand that you’d have to do what even the MSM today has still failed to really do: figure out that the Trump and GOP operatives don’t operate in good faith.

So Comey and his FBI dabbled in a fake Russian document but McCabe is quick to reassure us that: they knew it was fake. Ok, but it’s not clear this makes it even better. I have to quote Zizek here: both scenarios-they were duped by Russian hackers, they knew it was the product of Russian hackers and still used it-are ‘worse.’

FN: Even though I’m not fan of Zizek these days after he endorsed Trump.

“Was I right to back Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton? Absolutely”

Trump’s unexpected victory triggered a process of radicalisation within the Democratic Party – and this process is now our only hope.”

In other words Zizek is falling behind the Susan Sarandon argument. The idea that you do something very destructive and damaging as it then force us to find reservoirs of resilience we never knew we have is pretty vexing. I mean how far do you want to take this? Is it smart to play on train tracks, get hit by a car, only to untap levels of strength and resilience you never knew you had-in terms of the painful long recovery, physical therapy, etc?

So were those who said the Social Democrats were no better than Hitler-they were ‘social fascists’-the heroes of history? Clearly the rise of Hitler took mobilization, resistance, and radicalization to whole never hithero undreamt of levels. Was Hitler’s seizure of power then worth it from the perspective of the Last Judgment?-to use a phrase that Zizek and Lacan and other Hegelians like.

Nope in this case Noam Chomsky is the socialist who got it right and Zizek got it fatefully wrong.

Liberal scholar Noam Chomsky slammed those on the left who refused to vote for the “lesser evil” in Hillary Clinton.

In an interview this week with Al Jazeera, Chomsky said that those who did not feel compelled to back Clinton over Donald Trump made a “bad mistake.”

There is “kind of a moral issue, do you vote against the greater evil if you don’t happen to like the other candidate? The answer to that is yes, if you have any moral understanding. You want to keep the greater evil out,” he said.

“I didn’t like Clinton at all, but her positions are much better than Trump’s on every issue I can think of,” Chomsky added.

Chomsky had warned leftists like Zizek prior to this fiasco way back in June, 2016.

He specifically called out the moral preening many on the Left engaged in-they’d whine voting for Clinton doesn’t make them feel good or inspired. Here in moral terms, Chomsky argues for a clear consequentialist morality:

“Another point of disagreement is not factual but involves the ethical/moral principle addressed in 1), sometimes referred to as the “politics of moral witness.” Generally associated with the religious left, secular leftists implicitly invoke it when they reject LEV on the grounds that “a lesser of two evils is still evil.” Leaving aside the obvious rejoinder that this is exactly the point of lesser evil voting-i.e. to do less evil, what needs to be challenged is the assumption that voting should be seen a form of individual self-expression rather than as an act to be judged on its likely consequences, specifically those outlined in 4). The basic moral principle at stake is simple: not only must we take responsibility for our actions, but the consequences of our actions for others are a far more important consideration than feeling good about ourselves.”

I think this desire to engage in individual moral expression explains why Zizek ended up endorsing Trump-it made him feel provocative and contrarian.

Indeed as Nietzsche argues in the Genealogy of Morality-paradox-by the way paradox is perverse-is one way we as human beings are seduced to life and existence.

Zizek here got to feel  some of that pleasure-at the cost of the millions who have suffered under Trump’s illegitimate reign. Back to Chomsky:

A third criticism of LEV equates it with a passive acquiescence to the bipartisan status quo under the guise of pragmatism, usually deriving from those who have lost the appetite for radical change. It is surely the case that some of those endorsing LEV are doing so in bad faith-cynical functionaries whose objective is to promote capitulation to a system which they are invested in protecting. Others supporting LEV, however, can hardly be reasonably accused of having made their peace with the establishment. Their concern, as alluded to in 6) and 7) inheres in the awareness that frivolous and poorly considered electoral decisions impose a cost, their memories extending to the ultra-left faction of the peace movement having minimized the comparative dangers of the Nixon presidency during the 1968 elections. The result was six years of senseless death and destruction in Southeast Asia and also a predictable fracture of the left setting it up for its ultimate collapse during the backlash decades to follow.”

It’s a pretty big historical irony after all the dismissing of the importance of supporting a clear progressive like Hubert Humphrey under the premise that he’d be just as bad as Nixon on the Vietnam War, Daniel Ellsberg himself later admitted he and the other young leftists got it fatefully wrong-Humphrey actually would have wrapped up the war much sooner than Nixon did-another six years of Vietnam.

The reason the Left eschewed Humphrey in 1968 or Hillary in 2016 wasn’t because these candidates were unacceptable from a progressive point of view-quite the opposite; Humphrey was very progressive and going by Clinton’s actual 2016 platform she accepted at the Convention she was the most progressive Dem candidate in history, wasn’t ideology but mood affiliation.

The broader lesson to be drawn is not to shy away from confronting the dominance of the political system under the management of the two major parties. Rather, challenges to it need to be issued with a full awareness of their possible consequences. This includes the recognition that far right victories not only impose terrible suffering on the most vulnerable segments of society but also function as a powerful weapon in the hands of the establishment center, which, now in opposition can posture as the “reasonable” alternative. A Trump presidency, should it materialize, will undermine the burgeoning movement centered around the Sanders campaign, particularly if it is perceived as having minimized the dangers posed by the far right.”

In fact I spoke to a Bernie supporter on election night 2016 who was openly gloating about Trump’s fake win and he was far from the only one. Some of them  even now argue that somehow Trump has improved foreign policy. The reality is quite different-in truth the murder of civilians has skyrocketed under Trump. 

Indeed, ironically while noninterventionist leftists are celebrating Trump’s abrupt departure from Syria these won’t save but imperil many lives-in any case he’s not bringing our servicemen and sevicewomen home just shipping them off to Iraq.

Of course, it’s sometimes hard to figure out where Bernie Bros end and Trumpkins begin as HA Goodman has openly endorsed Trump this time around. 

Indeed Goodman’s-not to mention Sarandon’s and Zizek’s-impact on the Left was just as Chomsky warned.

The irony of this is that when Goodman first started blogging on Huffington in early 2014, he and his articles appeared tethered to reality. One of his first pieces, “The Republican Strategy Against Hillary Clinton in 2016,” is so level-headed that you almost can’t believe he wrote it. While it isn’t an endorsement of Clinton per se, it does outline all the ways Republicans will try to attack her, from spreading myths about Benghazi to attacking her mental health, which sound benign compared to the things he would say about her years later. This changed in November of that year when he wrote the first of his pieces aimed at the middle of Jean-Pierre Faye’s horseshoe, titled, “I’m a Liberal Democrat. I’m Voting for Rand Paul in 2016. Here’s Why,” his first step down the road to madness.

As his Huffington articles gained steam, Goodman became a contributor at Salon, where they published, by then-editor-in-chief Richard Daley’s estimations, “about a quarter of what he pitches.” The online publishing giant had already garnered a reputation for needlessly provocative clickbait, and Goodman fit their bill, sending them articles like, “Please, FBI, you’re our last hope: the Democratic Party’s future rests upon your probe of Hillary Clinton’s emails.” These articles sparked a debate in the newsroom over how they made the website look, but Daley insisted on giving the BernieBros a voice – after all, he also published Goodman clone Walker Bragman, who eventually collaborated with Goodman on a piece for Paste Magazine and wrote for Goodman’s short-lived website, Counter-Propa.com.

In the summer of 2016, Goodman was dropped by Salon as wiser heads prevailed, axing some of their most clickbaity writers. In addition, neither of his most-mocked predictions came true: Bernie did not become Democratic nominee and the FBI did not indict Hillary Clinton for her emails. The Banter’s own Bob Cesca wrote of him at the time:

“His almost sociopathic disconnect with reality will surely inspire other disaffected Bernie supporters who see Goodman on CNN and MSNBC and assume that he’s a legitimate reporter, thus making it acceptable for others to follow in his footsteps. The endgame is, obviously, the slow Fox News-ification of the left. Due to the efforts of Goodman and others, the progressive movement is rapidly losing its credibility and, at the very least, is stripped of its high-road posture.”

It was obvious to all of us at the Banter that Goodman was a con man – his use of stock phrases to glide over complexities (“we could go on forever,” in reference to all the wrongs Hillary and the Democrats have done, is an oft-repeated one, as is “Pick a crime, any crime”), embrace of conspiracy theories, and inability to admit how wrong he was all reminded me of an orange Republican candidate whom he repeatedly dismissed as a “buffoon” who wouldn’t get any of his policies passed by Congress. My hate-watching has continued to this day, especially since my articles about him have gotten under his skin. He refers to us often as “nobodies,” and has even made two videos attacking my articles, one last June, and one last October. (I know he made these to insult me, but honestly, I think they’re hilarious.)

Although Goodman spent early 2017 either downplaying Trump, or dismissing criticisms of him outright, the biggest sign that he would convert to the Orange Overlord came that summer when Caitlin Johnstone’s articles defending a progressive collaboration with alt-right leader Mike Cernovich hit Medium. Many in the progressive, Bernie-or-Bust community turned against her, but Goodman didn’t, arguing that progressives shouldn’t disqualify potential collaborators because they disagree over one thing, even if that one thing is vicious racism. In a debate with Progressive Army’s Ben Dixon, the African-American Sanders supporter challenged him on his repeated dismissals of Cernovich as a “blogger” with “crazy ideas,” repeatedly stressing the repugnance of these views. But Goodman couldn’t hear Dixon’s message: he had become so obsessed with going against mainstream reporters like Joy-Ann Reid and David Fahrenthold that he didn’t realize it was the online, progressive, pro-Bernie community, of which he had been a vocal advocate, were the ones asking him to disavow Johnstone and Cernovich, not the Reids and Fahrentholds of this world.

Do these long quotes belong in the HA chapter?  Or maybe not it’s just another long footnote.

Back to Chomsky:

3) One of these candidates, Trump, denies the existence of global warming, calls for increasing use of fossil fuels, dismantling of environmental regulations and refuses assistance to India and other developing nations as called for in the Paris agreement, the combination of which could, in four years, take us to a catastrophic tipping point. Trump has also pledged to deport 11 million Mexican immigrants, offered to provide for the defense of supporters who have assaulted African American protestors at his rallies, stated his “openness to using nuclear weapons”, supports a ban on Muslims entering the U.S. and regards “the police in this country as absolutely mistreated and misunderstood” while having “done an unbelievable job of keeping law and order.” Trump has also pledged to increase military spending while cutting taxes on the rich, hence shredding what remains of the social welfare “safety net” despite pretenses.

4) The suffering which these and other similarly extremist policies and attitudes will impose on marginalized and already oppressed populations has a high probability of being significantly greater than that which will result from a Clinton presidency.

5) 4) should constitute sufficient basis to voting for Clinton where a vote is potentially consequential-namely, in a contested, “swing” state.

6) However, the left should also recognize that, should Trump win based on its failure to support Clinton, it will repeatedly face the accusation (based in fact), that it lacks concern for those sure to be most victimized by a Trump administration.

And so the accusations of Zizek are just and correct and he stands condemned. That many now do condemn him shows why he now has to write such things in June of 2019 still defending his indefensible endorsement of Trump. Three years he hasn’t lived it down and he never will.

End of FN

Either they engaged in dishonest activity-either to cover their ass or to satisfy the extreme anti Clinton bias at the agency or perhaps some of both-that you have to wonder if it were criminal or they were so incompetent in being duped by the Russian hackers to the point of almost being criminal itself.

“The Russian intelligence at issue purported to show that then-Attorney General Lynch had been compromised in the Clinton investigation. The intelligence described emails between then-Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and a political operative suggesting that Lynch would make the FBI investigation of Clinton go away.”

Right here it’s a pretty decent conjecture that this fake document was part of the same operation behind the DNC leaks that roiled the Democrat’s convention on the first day-Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to resign because of the hacked DNC emails.

“In classified sessions with members of Congress several months ago, Comey described those emails in the Russian claim and expressed his concern that this Russian information could “drop” and that would undermine the Clinton investigation and the Justice Department in general, according to one government official.

Still, Comey did not let on to lawmakers that there were doubts about the veracity of the intelligence, according to sources familiar with the briefings. It is unclear why Comey was not more forthcoming in a classified setting.”

That needs to be sussed out in the Dems Comeygate investigation next year. The disparity between what Comey and McCabe said needs to be explained.

The Washington Post on the fake Russian documents that Comey used despite knowing they were fake though he told Congress the opposite in a classified setting. 

“Current and former officials have said that Comey relied on the document in making his July decision to announce on his own, without Justice Department involvement, that the investigation was over. That public announcement — in which he criticized Clinton and made extensive comments about the evidence — set in motion a chain of other FBI moves that Democrats now say helped Trump win the presidential election.”

Ok so these current and former officials should all be invited for voluntary interviews with the Democratic Congress

“But according to the FBI’s own assessment, the document was bad intelligence — and according to people familiar with its contents, possibly even a fake sent to confuse the bureau. The Americans mentioned in the Russian document insist they do not know each other, do not speak to each other and never had any conversations remotely like the ones described in the document. Investigators have long doubted its veracity, and by August the FBI had concluded it was unreliable.”

Regarding these Americans, namely Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Loretta Lynch, notice that they aren’t crying bloody murder like Erik Prince and Carter Page have about being ‘unmasked’ in the FISA warrant. Shows you the difference between the two parties-in a comparison that Democrats also could stand to learn from. The squeaky wheel very clearly gets the grease-and the rigged election.

As Democrats we neither need or want to gain an unfair advantage but too many of us don’t yet understand that to even get a fair chance you have to squawk like hell particularly against a party as sociopathic and malign a force as today’s Republican party.

“Current and former officials have argued that the secret document gave Comey good reason to take the extraordinary step over the summer of announcing the findings of the Clinton investigation himself without Justice Department involvement.”

“Comey had little choice, these people have said, because he feared that if Lynch announced no charges against Clinton, and then the secret document leaked, the legitimacy of the entire case would be questioned.”

The idea of  justifying utilizing a fake document of Russian hackers to  harm Hillary Cinton’s campaign in order to reassure Clinton haters the FBI isn’t biased in her favor is so surreal it would make Alice in Wonderland blush. I don’t see how you can describe such ‘logic’ as anything but wrongheaded to the point of perversity. 

The current and former officials can also explain their thinking to Congress.

Another very important question is who’s the source of this fake Russian document used to justify harming Hillary Clinton’s campaign by egregiously violating FBI rules and protocols”

“From the moment the bureau received the document from a source in early March 2016, its veracity was the subject of an internal debate at the FBI. Several people familiar with the matter said the bureau’s doubts about the document hardened in August when officials became more certain that there was nothing to substantiate the claims in the Russian document. FBI officials knew the bureau never had the underlying email with the explosive allegation, if it ever existed.”

“Yet senior officials at the bureau continued to rely on the document before and after the election as part of their justification for how they handled the case.”

These senior officials need to explain themselves in an open session. 

But a huge question this future Comeygate investigation by the Democratic House must answer-it should be a full Select Committee like even fake scandals like Whitewater and Benghazi got-is who was this source?

FN:  While Jerrold Nadler had previously vowed a Comeygate investigation we’ve heard nothing about it since the Dems historical Blue Wave win of November 2018.  Throughout the first 7 months or so prior to Mueller’s Congressional testimony,  the Dems oversight was pretty lackadaisical-at least going by the results. Since the breaking of Ukraine if you’re listening that has changed. The Dems now do have a lot on their plate to be sure with the impeachment investigation.

Pelosi eschewed the notion of a Select Committee in favor of moving the focus of the impeachment investigation to Adam Schiff’s Intelligence Committee. I’m not sure I buy Pelosi’s rationale for dismissing a SC though Schiff clearly is very good and effective at this. At this stage of the game the House Dems are doing their own investigation-as, of course, Coverup AG Barr failed to appoint a Special Counsel-though at this stage of the game that’s probably for the best, a SC investigation takes too long and is too unaccountable. If they are tightlipped like Mueller Trump and his GOP co-conspirators can slander it all day with no response or contradiction. Better to have the House Democrats who can respond and set the record straight in real time.

For a long time the institutionalist types-the Chuck Rosenbergs and the Ben Witteses tended to dismiss a ‘partisan’ Congressional investigation but Schiff and Friends have gotten a lot more information and much quicker than Mueller was able to. I don’t see how you can dismiss the question of how much Mueller, the life long Republican’s heart was in investigating a Republican Administration. Despite his power to put obstructive witnesses in jail unlike Schiff’s HSPCI, his results in 21 months are less impressive than Schiff’s HSPCI in five weeks.

So maybe you can understand why they haven’t gotten to Comeygate yet though this matter must not be dropped. For now Nadler needs to do little more than simply demand the IG explain why we still haven’t seen its report. That’s all. By the way this again underscores the folly of rushing impeachment. You were hearing previously the Dems would vote for impeachment before Thanksgiving-a terrible but also pretty unlikely scenario. Now we’re hearing before the end of the year.

It’s heartening that Pelosi is refusing to give a timetable and at least claiming there’s no such  timetable-though we don’t know how much she really believes it. Clearly the Dem consultant class think it should be done before the start of primary voting in February. I’ve long since argued the opposite-it should go on as long as possible for political and Rule of Law reasons-impeachment has already proven itself to be such a powerful weapon in putting Trump in a box why would you let him out long before the election? Hopefully Pelosi-Schiff see this too.

I’ve long argued-as is clear from through different points of time in this book-that they ought to impeach Trump 11 days before the election a la the Comey Letter. One argument against impeachment that was made-though I never found it all that compelling-was that the problem is that if you impeach Trump and McConnell and Friends ‘acquits’ him then somehow that vindicates him. This is false-for history and precedent he has a scarlet ‘I’ on his forehead for the rest of time.

However, it does make sense to leave the amount of time he can be out and about post impeachment and likely acquittal as short as possible. I mean why would you want to ‘get impeachment out of the way’ in time for Trump to get to run a normal election? Is it easier to beat an incumbent in a normal election or an incumbent in the middle of his impeachment?

And there is literally no limit of legitimate predicated impeachable offenses to investigate-the Trump campaign’s clear collusion with the rogue FBI agents being one. Another zombie idea you hear is that Ukraine if you’re listening is a legitimately impeachable offense but Russia if you’re listening isn’t as it was about 2016 but this misses the fact that obtaining the Office of the Presidency through illegitimate means is impeachable-indeed it’s the most foundational impeachable reason there is-if someone is in the Oval through nefarious means he needs to be ejected from it ASAP and even with a GOP Senate acquittal impeachment is needed to put the asterisk next to his legitimacy for all historical time.

So what the  Dems should do-as opposed to what they will do which remains to be seen-is draw out impeachment by investigating every single legitimately impeachable offense starting with Comeygate. Not that I imagine it would be the first thing besides Ukraine looked at-this would be the Mueller Report, then maybe the tax returns,. the emolument violations, maybe the lies Trump told about the Puerto Rico hurricane-remember when he claimed only 16 died rather than 3000?

Regarding the idea the Dems will return to the Mueller Report listen to Congressman Swalwell-a member of both the Judiciary and Intel Committees:

That will take us to late in the 2020 cycle. 

As for what Pelosi-Schiff et al plan it’s not clear though there is some reason for hope in her refusal to accept a timetable. My guess is that just as the plan for an impeachment before Thanksgiving scenario didn’t pan out an impeachment before the New Year may meet a similar fate and that we will probably be in at least March with a Senate trial.

UPDATE regarding the Mueller Report:

 

From Mueller’s interview notes:

“[Rick] Gates recalled a time on the campaign aircraft when candidate Trump said, ‘get the emails.’ [Michael] Flynn said he could use his intelligence sources to obtain the emails,” investigators wrote in a summary of Gates’ April 2018 interview with Mueller’s team. Flynn was a foreign policy adviser on the campaign and became Trump’s first national security adviser.

“Flynn had the most Russia contacts of anyone on the campaign and was in the best position to ask for the emails if they were out there,” the investigators also wrote about Gates’ interview.”

Gates described in an interview with Mueller investigators last year how several close advisers to Trump, Trump’s family members and Trump himself considered how to get the stolen documents and pushed the effort, according to investigators’ summary.

“Gates said Donald Trump Jr. would ask where the emails were in family meetings. Michael Flynn, [Jared] Kushner, [Paul] Manafort, [Redacted] [Corey] Lewandowski, Jeff Sessions, and Sam Clovis expressed interest in obtaining the emails as well. Gates said the priority focuses of the Trump campaign opposition research team were Clinton’s emails and contributions to the Clinton Foundation. Flynn, [Redacted] [Jeff] Sessions, Kushner, and [Donald] Trump Jr. were all focused on opposition topics,” Gates told investigators, according to the interview summary.”

But but but Bill Barr, Trump and Ken Dilaniain-not to mention, alas, Ari Melber-say no collusion no collusion I tell you.

 

Let me say I think this is a capital suggestion by  Glenn Kirschner:

 

End of FN.

As the title indicates I’m arguing-conjecturing-that it could be Joseph Schmitz. We discussed him in a previous chapter(Y). It’s quite plausible that Schmitz’s client in his search for Cinton’s emails on the dark web was none other than Peter Smith. It’s also quite plausible that Schmitz’s fake Clinton emails were Erik Prince’s source; he peddled them to his very good friend Steve Bannon at Breitbart 96 hours before the election. Of course, at the time Bannon just happened to be Trump’s campaign manager.

These are both very plausible conjectures of Seth Abramson. What I am offering up here is my own conjecture. Could Schmitz’s fake Clinton emails also be the source of Comey’s fake document? This is not a wild conjecture when you keep in mind that Schmitz did approach the FBI with the emails that he obtained from the dark web by his client-Peter Smith.

As we saw in Chapter (X).

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/06/politics/joseph-schmitz-trump-adviser-clinton-emails/index.html

“Joseph Schmitz approached the FBI and other government agencies about material a client of his had discovered that Schmitz believed might have been Clinton’s missing 30,000 emails from her private e-mail server, sources say. The material was never verified, and sources say they ultimately believed it was fake.”

“Schmitz’s connection to the multi-faceted effort to expose damaging information about Clinton has not been previously reported. His status as a former Pentagon inspector general afforded him access to the agencies and a sophisticated understanding of the government bureaucracy. He was relentless, sources say, and truly believed his client had found important, sensitive material. He did not hesitate in his pursuit even though the material on the dark web — a part of the Internet not easily accessible or traceable — was questionable and many experts already believed the Russians had stolen Clinton’s emails.”

“Schmitz met with officials at the FBI, the State Department and the Intelligence Community Inspector General — the watchdog tasked with investigating Clinton’s alleged mishandling of classified information. He claimed a source he called “PATRIOT,” an unidentified contractor he was representing, had discovered what he believed was likely material stolen from Clinton that could contain classified information. Both the client and Schmitz were afraid that going through the material without permission could jeopardize their security clearances, though there is no indication their actions were illegal.”

Again is “PATRIOT” actually Peter Smith

Ok a few caveats.

“A Donald Trump foreign policy adviser pushed government agencies to review materials from the dark web in the summer of 2016 that he thought were Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails, multiple sources with direct knowledge tell CNN.”

As we saw in the Washington Post link above, the FBI allegedly received the fake Russian document from its source in March, 2016 while according to this CNN story Schmitz approached the FBI-and other agencies in the Summer of 2016. Though the Post piece says doubts about the documents authenticity didn’t fully ‘harden’ until August of the election.

Dates can be fudged. Certainly the two stories have inconsistencies with the theory that it’s Schmitz but that’s why the sources in both CNN and WaPo should be interviewed to figure out the full truth of it. It’s also possible this wasn’t the first time Schmitz had shopped something from the Russian hackers to the FBI. Or maybe it’s all the same episode but the dates giving in the CNN piece are somehow misleading.

What’s clear is that someone was shopping fake Russian docs to harm Clinton and the Democrats at least in March of 2016 wether or not it was Schmitz. If it wasn’t Schmitz was it another Trump operative?

This paragraph in the CNN piece might also seem to contain a caveat:

“While officials at the State Department and Inspector General briefly interviewed Schmitz, they declined to review or accept the information, according to sources familiar with the process. The FBI interviewed him as a part of its ongoing criminal investigation into Clinton’s emails, sources said. It is not clear whether special counsel Robert Mueller is pursuing information about Schmitz’s efforts.”

“Schmitz then took a memo outlining his claims and concerns to the House Intelligence Committee. One cybersecurity expert outside the government who also saw the material on the dark web said the emails appeared to be fake, based on his review and the forum where they were posted.”

“I’m pretty sure they were posted on the (dark web) equivalent of Reddit,” the source said.

UPDATE: As Seth Abramson points out another question which needs to be answered is why didn’t the GOP Congress report it when Schmitz came waltzing in with these allegedly hacked Clinton emails?

FN:  Schmidt is not mentioned in the Mueller Report much less in relation to Smith. The late Peter Smith himself is discussed on pgs 62-65 in Mueller’s report. 

End of FN

But what does it mean for them to not ‘review or accept’ the information? Is it possible it sat on a shelf at the FBI in some kind of netherworld-never authenticated but known about and passed around?

What’s clear is wether or not Comey’s fake document came from Schmitz’s material, someone gave the FBI this fake doc. Who was it? A good starting point would be to confirm or deny if it was Schmitz. On another track the sources in the WaPo piece and elsewhere at the FBI should reveal who the source was. Wether it was Schmitz or not both Shmitz’s interactions with the FBI and the fake document used to justify the unjustifiable Comey Press Conference are of cardinal importance.

No doubt Schmitz went to the right place in taking these fake Clinton emails the FBI. As we saw in a previous chapter, in 2016 the FBI was Trumpland and Clinton was considered the anti Christ by large swathes of the FBI. In some way calling the Clinton hating agents ‘rogue’ is ironic as the Clinton hatred at the FBI during the election was very widely shared. Per the IG report, Comey and the leadership were constantly forced to again try to justify not indicting her to a large number of current and former FBI agent-the IG makes it sound less like a vocal minority than a vocal majority.

Which is ironic in the extreme as what was unjustifiable was not that Hillary Clinton was not indicted but that she was ever investigated at all as there was no probable cause.

And per the Post, there are still some who believe the Russian docs are real. In other words that Loretta Lynch, Debbie Wasserman-Schutlz and Amanda Renteria were in a conspiracy to clear Clinton. Right-clear her of charges  in an investigation that was never legitimately predicated in the first place.

These believers consider themselves Comey defenders:

“Comey’s defenders still insist that there is reason to believe the document is legitimate and that it rightly played a major role in the director’s thinking.”

“It was a very powerful factor in the decision to go forward in July with the statement that there shouldn’t be a prosecution,” said a person familiar with the matter. “The point is that the bureau picked up hacked material that hadn’t been dumped by the bad guys [the Russians] involving Lynch. And that would have pulled the rug out of any authoritative announcement.”

Again, let’s hear these Comey defenders make this oh so compelling argument publicly. As faith in the people’s democracy itself has been badly shaken.

“Other people familiar with the document disagree sharply, saying such claims are disingenuous because the FBI has known for a long time that the Russian intelligence document is unreliable and based on multiple layers of hearsay.:

Why anything coming from  hackers in Russian intelligence wasn’t seen as by definition poisoned fruit-particularly with the FBI starting its own investigation into Russian interference and possible Trump campaign collusion is itself a very interesting question.

“It didn’t mean anything to the investigation until after [senior FBI officials] had to defend themselves,” said one person familiar with the matter. “Then they decided it was important. But it’s junk, and they already knew that.”

“The people familiar with the Russian document spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss its contents. No one familiar with it asked The Post to withhold details about its origins to safeguard the source.”

Good, as we really need to know the identity of this source.

“Several of them said they were concerned that revealing details now about the document could be perceived as an effort to justify Trump’s decision to fire Comey, but they argued that the document and Comey’s firing are distinct issues. Most of the people familiar with the document disagree strongly with the decision to fire the director, but they also criticized current and former officials who have privately cited the document as an important factor in the decisions made by Comey and other senior FBI officials. Comey told lawmakers he would discuss it with them only in a classified session.”

Yes they are completely distinct issues-as noted in previous chapters (Find Ch X) even many liberals, Democrats, and other members of the #Resistance make this mistake: that if you criticize Comey-and for that matter McCabe and others-for his handling of Emailgate this somehow justifies what Trump did. It most certainly does not. As Scott Summer-of all people-note: process matters.

Find Sumner quotes.

It’s pretty clear that this fake Russian document was a pretext-much like Tarmacgate –as we saw in a previous chapter-to justify something Comey had decided to do for his own reasons. But to take the claim of Comey defenders that the fake Russian doc did justify the presser at face value, this premise is clearly flawed. 

“In cases where there is intelligence suspected of being false, the correct procedure is to investigate,” said Scott Olson, a recently retired FBI agent who ran the agency’s counterintelligence operations and spent more than 20 years at the bureau.

“In this case, the parties referenced should have been interviewed as part of the investigation,” Olson said. “Then, if the document was used as feared, the results of the investigation could be used to effectively rebut.”

In other words, for Comey to essentially accede to the blackmail of the Russian hackers was extremely careless. 

“Comey told lawmakers after the press conference that he had no choice but to go around the Justice Department and answer directly to reporters out of fear that the document might leak, but he did not tell them that the document was probably fake, according to CNN.”

“Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told CNN on Sunday that Comey “never once told a member of the House or the Senate that he thought the email was fake” and would have been “incredibly incompetent” to act on a document he knew to be fraudulent.”

“I can’t imagine a scenario where it’s OK for the FBI director to jump in the middle of an election based on a fake email generated by the Russians and not tell the Congress,” Graham said.

For once Graham is right though probably he’s in this for the wrong reasons-probably to suggest the documents were real.

But in truth even if you thought there was a decent chance they were real the source-the Russians in the middle of interfering in our election should have given pause.

Olson said Comey’s decision to bypass his superiors based on the document was even more bizarre.

“None of it makes much sense,” Olson said. “The notion that the FBI needs to circumvent DOJ procedure and officials because a known false document might be used publicly to forward some political agenda makes no sense. And the notion that DOJ is somehow incapable of defending itself against false publicity does not withstand scrutiny.”

Indeed, it’s so absurd it’s beyond simply failing a laugh test. It’s so bizarre it’s almost spooky. It’s very hard to see how Comey or anyone else can defend this in the light of day-wether he believed it might have been real or knew all along it was a fake.

“The FBI is in the business of ascertaining the true facts through investigation,” Olson said. “That is what should have been done. I’d love to know why it was not done.”

Scott Olsen ought to be the first expert the Dems interview at the Comeygate hearing.

“Matthew Miller, who was a Justice Department spokesman under Barack Obama, agreed that Comey “absolutely should have briefed” his superiors on the existence of the document before holding the press conference, especially if he thought it was fake.

“If he already knew the document was fake, then he in no way should have relied on it to make decisions about how to handle the case, and he had an obligation to brief his superiors,” Miller said on Tuesday.

Great minds think a like and I’m happy to see I’m on the same page as Obama’s former DOJ spokesman!

“Even if it was a real document, it wouldn’t excuse him acting on his own,” Miller added. “There are procedures set up for handling sensitive information like this when someone is potentially compromised, which is the best-case interpretation of his thinking. He could have briefed his direct boss, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and the two of them could have decided how to proceed.

“The bottom line is this document seems to have been an excuse to do what he always wanted to do, rather than an actual factor in any decision-making.”

Another theory of mine very early in the game-soon after the election-was that on some level there must have been convergence between Russiagate and Emailgate. Here is clear convergence.

“A ‘wildly successful’ Russian operation.”

“The revelation that a tainted document — believed to have been planted by the Russians in the trove of hacked documents obtained by the FBI — influenced Comey’s decision-making is evidence of the extent to which Russian disinformation could penetrate the highest levels of American law enforcement during the presidential campaign.”

As I note in a later chapter in this book, Comey has since-essentially-joined the #Resistance. (Get Chapter B link). No wonder-he has so much xplaing to do and it makes sense for him to do everything he can think of to ingratiate himself with Team Democrat.

Comey really does have so much to justify, so much to answer for, so much unrepentant guilt. It’s galling that he continues to defend the simply indefensible way he conducted Emailgate-starting from the fact it never had legitimate probable cause at the outset.

Just listen to Glenn Carle:

Glenn Carle, a former CIA operative who spent 23 years at the agency, said Comey’s use of the document to justify a decision that may have “changed the course of US history” meant that Russia’s election meddling was more “wildly successful” than anyone had imagined.

“It is common to let bogus reports from the [foreign] opposition go forward, and continue unchallenged, so as not to compromise sources and methods,” Carle said. “But I dispute that the director should have treated this from the strict sources and methods protection perspective.

“In my view, he should in this instance have briefed the attorney general, the president, and the Gang of Eight,” Carle said, referring to a select group of lawmakers briefed on sensitive intelligence matters. “This was a policy call — a larger issue than the source and method. Historic errors on his part.”

Historic errors that his absurd justifications-‘extreme transparency’ ‘a 500 year flood’, ‘conceal not reveal’ only make worse.

Comey needs to truly come clean before the nation. The 500 year flood was his own indefensible conduct in Emailgate.

“Mark Kramer, the program director of the Project on Cold War Studies at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, said Comey’s failure to alert the congressional committees that the document “was almost certainly a fake” was “appallingly negligent.”

“He should have emphasized that at the very start,” Kramer said. “By having failed to do so, he was disastrously incompetent and irresponsible.”

Again, let this sink in: appallingly negligent. Disastrously incompetent and irresponsible. Historic errors on his part. 

I do believe he’s chastened. But I still think for his own good but even more importantly for the good of the nation he needs to truly come clean-and tell us the whole truth. Because we are in the throes of a terrible legitimacy crisis and he is responsible for it on a disastrous and historical scale.

His disastrous incompetence, negligence, and irresponsibility are the 500 year flood.

Olson said he believed Comey and his team “forgot that the reputation of the FBI is secondary to the FBI’s responsibility.”

“At the end of the day, with due respect to notions of transparency, credibility, independence, and ensuring there is not even the appearance of improper conduct, what matters most is executing the role the FBI has in government,” he said. “Appearances don’t matter if reality, if the actual content, is wrong.”

The longtime FBI agent said he still believed Comey and his advisers “were trying very hard to do the right thing.”

“But they illustrated the old saying,” Olson said, “that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Our current legitimacy crisis where the ‘President’ in the White Russia House isn’t there legitimately and is a clear and constant danger to the rule of law in our country, our democratic system of government, and, indeed, our standing in the world is that hell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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