99 The No Collusion Myth: Chris Cuomo, Adam Schiff, and the Dems Prevent Defense

UPDATE: Overall thematically this is a very good chapter on the substance. We can ask wether it belongs in the FBI section, the media section, or another section but it definitely gets off the cutting room floor. It probably doesn’t belong here

No major substantive changes necessary. Maybe tweak the part on Bitecofer-she argues that persuasion and turnout matter. Maybe FN on the 2022 election which didn’t end up being the doom and gloom almost everyone assumed it would be.

Though not sure the analysis was wrong exactly-in some ways the leadership Dems got lucky-a la Dobbs.  Substantively the chapter is solid, only some very light editing remains. ” vs ‘

What Are Inverted Commas? | Proofed’s Writing Tips

When to Use Quotation Marks (“”) | Rules & Examples (scribbr.com)

End UPDATE

In reading Schiff’s recently published memoir it occurs to me that all these things are related: the savvy punditocracy, the savvy Dem leadership who clearly are not football fans-or they’d realize that as the great, just deceased John Madden liked to say the only thing the prevent defense does is prevent you from winning... Add these factors together and you understand how we ended up with the very harmful illusion that ‘Mueller showed no collusion.’

Because as we end 2021 this very harmful and false narrative that took hold in the immediate aftermath of Bill Barr’s fake exoneration letter has never been corrected in the mainstream press-one more reason to have disdain for the Savvy punditocracy. No, savvy pundits like Erik Wemple prefer to further entrench it with his narrow obsession with showing errors in the Steele Dossier.

Whatever his personal motivation in his obsession with debunking the Dossier the actual impact of it is to further entrench the lie of NO COLLUSION. I mean why not write 100 posts about that? If a savvy pundit like Wemple cared more about the substance of the truth than the narrow pedantic focus of technical quibbles only in the Dossier think how much better a position we’d be in today.

Apparently Ken Dilanian, Erik Wemple, Ari Melber, and Friends didn’t read Margaret Sullivan’s pre Mueller Report warnings as they committed every error and mistake she warned them of and then some.

on the failed MSM reaction

Or below.

This state of affairs where the conventional ‘wisdom’ among the Savvy couldn’t be more wrong-or harmful-is one that as Schiff himself goes on to say in the book is Putin’s wildest dream. As is the fact that over six years later US mainstream journalists focus only on GOP counternarratives that insist there was no collusion and that the only crime is that it was ever investigated-while the DOJ continues to investigate not Russian interference but only those who investigated it. 

FN: Even with a Democratic Administration this remains true. Apparently, Biden and Merrick Garland think this is what ‘nonpartisan institutionalism’ is supposed to look like.

Again, Schiff rightly bemoans this state of affairs-where the lie of NO COLLUSION has become universally received truth in mainstream conventional circles. What he doesn’t appreciate is his own complicity-how what he, Pelosi and Friends chose to do-and even more not do-in 2019 contributed to it.

But let’s go back to the beginning-in early 2018 when then HSPCI Devin Nunes -nominally Mike Conway but only nominally as Schiff also documents-prematurely shuts down the Russian Interference  and Collusion investigation. Remember Kash Patel? Nunes’ old operative who would later during the time post Trump’s 2020 defeat got a job in Trump’s insurrectionary Russia House…

“In Nunes’s efforts to advance the president’s conspiracy theories, his partner was a Republican staff member named Kash Patel. Patel had been hired by the House Intelligence Committee in 2017 after a lackluster stint in the Justice Department. While working on a counterterrorism case in January 2016, Patel was castigated by a judge, who told him to “act like a lawyer,” then demanded to know “what you have to contribute” before concluding, “You don’t seem to know anything about trying a case.” The judge ejected Patel from his chamber and later issued an “Order of Ineptitude” lambasting “pretentious lawyers” from the Justice Department who neither “knew what they were doing” nor “had the humility to ask for help.”

But not to worry, Patel found someone who took him seriously: Devin Nunes’ GOP HPSCI:

“Patel would receive a much warmer welcome among House Intelligence Committee Republicans, and Nunes in particular seemed to regard him as a kindred spirit. Nunes would go so far as dispatching Patel to London, without informing Conaway or me, in a failed effort to confront Steele at his lawyer’s office. The 2017 trip, nicknamed “London Calling,” was a fiasco, and when discovered, it did nothing but throw the committee’s investigation into further disrepute.”

It was yet another Devin Nunes sponsored fiasco just like his March 2017 midnight run. But honestly considering all this over four years later it doesn’t seem very funny. Because it’s become quite clear the joke is on us.

“While strongly resistant to the issuance of subpoenas in the investigation of the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia, Committee Republicans had no such hesitancy when it came to the use of compulsory process to advance the counternarrative, particularly involving Steele. In August, Conaway texted me: “Adam. Tomorrow or Wednesday we will issue subpoenas to the DOJ and FBI requesting records related to FISA court applications for Trump and associates or Russia investigations and records concerning Christopher Steele’s work as an FBI informant. I’ll be able to discuss tomorrow afternoon but I wanted you to know before the subpoenas are actually sent.” This was a disturbing new escalation by Nunes that was already, apparently, a fait accompli.”

Ibid.

As is clear throughout Schiff’s documentation, Conway was only ever meant to be a figurehead-Nunes ‘recusal’ was only ever nominal to neutralize-totally justified-criticism. But again, as pathetic as the entire running fiasco that was Devin Nunes was in retrospect the joke is on all of us.

“As Nunes pursued all things Christopher Steele, Fox News drove the counternarrative to its millions of viewers nightly, to the point where Republicans not only believed it but started to have a negative view of the entire FBI—a remarkable turn for a party that had always claimed to be the “law and order” party. Positive news coverage among conservative outlets had also resurrected Nunes’s fortunes; he went from pariah status after the Midnight Run to hero worship in the conservative tabloids, and became a top fundraiser in the GOP.”

Pg 152

Looking back it would be nice to laugh this all off-how sad the GOP echo chamber has become. But that’s not what stands out in retrospect. Because ultimately it wasn’t just the Fox News bubble that bought into the GOP counternarrative. Ultimately just like with Whitewater and years later Emailgate, the alleged serious MSM journalists totally bought into this same false narrative. Exhibit A being Erik Wemple who has written more about real or imagined errors in the Steele Dossier than the entire mainstream press ever wrote about Russia in the first place.

Margaret Sullivan had warned her charges in the press not to get gamed by Bill Barr’s summary on the Mueller Report but she was not needed to say the least. Indeed, the day after Barr’s highly misleading summary Ms. Sullivan tried to reassure journalists that they should be proud of the work done on the Russia investigations. 

“Serious journalists should be proud of — not bullied over — their Russia reporting.”

Very true but it turned out very quickly to be besides the point. It would be the point assuming that… Assuming facts mattered in mainstream US journalism but they don’t. What matters is narrative and once the mainstream punditocracy has taken on a new narrative facts don’t matter. This is why when mainstream journalists like Brian Stelter ridicule Fox News it’s a little facile. After all, ultimately the mainstream pundits came to take the exact same attitude towards Russian Interference and Collusion that Fox News did-that Mueller proved no collusion, and that coverage over Russia was excessive and ‘extreme.’

And since then clearly Sullivan’s entreaties notwithstanding, clearly the journalists who did report on Russia did feel bullied and self censored themselves-as they want to stay in the savvy club. Again why do I say this? Again the short answer is two words: Erik Wemple. Again he alone has done more pieces razzing the Dossier than was ever done on Russian Interference and Collusion itself.

FN: Sort of like how the Barr-Durham investigations into the Russian Collusion investigation was over twice as long as the original Russian Collusion investigation.

Very quickly savvy opinion decided that the Russia story was over. It’s ok to follow up on the GOP counternarrative-as Wemple proves. But anyone who wanted to stay in the club had to drop the Russia story itself. And that narrative has held. Even subsequently when the MSM lambasted Barr for his deceptions they still accepted his basic narrative.

To get a flavor of how bad the MSM reaction to Barr’s fake exoneration letter consider Tom Jones’ completely typical-that is to say completely awful-response the very next day.

Reckoning. That’s a word that keeps coming up today.

Yet Tom Jones thought Mueller proved Trump not only didn’t collude with Russia he was guilty of nothing-he was innocent. This is how big a dog’s breakfast the MSM pundits made of the Mueller Report-not even the Report just based on Bill Barr’s summary-which clearly hit it out of the park in terms of its successful dissemination of disinformation.

But to be clear Jones’s take was not unusual. So he’s ok-that’s the way Jay Rosen’s Savvy Church works. It’s ok to be outrageously and absurdly wrong if the rest of the Savvy is too-it’s ok to foment a bad narrative if that’s what the rest of the pack is doing. The only real sin can be to step out on a limb.

FN: Usually. OTOH sometimes you just get real unlucky a la Chris Cuomo who we’ll be discussing more below-who ended up going down because of who his brother was.

Again, Stelter and Friends can tsk tsk Fox News but they ended up disseminating the same dishonest narrative that Fox did-that Mueller proved NO COLLUSION and that the only real sin from 2016 was the Steele Dossier.

Anyway the MSM decided that Trump and his GOP co-conspirators were right-there was a need to for a reckoning. They gave Trump a wholly undeserved mea culpa. Note this is the opposite of how they treated Hillary Clinton. They truly did owe her an apology but of course they simply buried their terrible reporting post November 8, 2016. Any attempt to discuss their terrible reporting was dismissed as  ‘making excuses for not going to Michigan and Wisconsin.’

Ok but back to Schiff. How does he-and his fellow leadership Dems fit into this story?

FN: The story of Russia’s wildly successful disinformation campaign such that the story of its 2016 interference has been buried as too embarrassing to ever be discussed again?

End FN

This will become clear as the story unfolds. Let’s return to Schiff in 2017  where the HPSCI   proceedings had largely become a joke-the GOPers would tell Kushner, Don Jr, et al that they didn’t need to answer the Democrats questions and that they were free to leave whenever they wanted. They treated denials as evidence collusion didn’t happen. They would literally ask Don Jr or Kushner or Erik Prince if they were aware of ‘any collusion’ and when they got the predictable denial treated it as debunked-after all if there was collusion they would say so!

Nunes had fake recused but was still giving orders-and engaging in fiascos like the London excursion he sent Patel on discussed above.

“By the end of 2017, Nunes was no longer content to wage his counterinvestigations on the president’s behalf, he wanted the real investigation shut down. Conaway began scheduling witness interviews multiple times a day, including some in other cities and on dates when we had critical votes and it was impossible for members to attend. And the Republican practice of allowing witnesses to refuse to answer questions became more and more egregious.

When Erik Prince, a major Trump donor and the former CEO of Blackwater, refused to answer a relevant question about his back-channel contacts with a Russian state banker in the Seychelles, Representative Quigley turned to Conaway for help. “Mr. Chairman,” he said, “I would ask that you respectfully ask the witness to answer.” “The witness is here on a voluntary basis,” Conaway said. “If he answers, he answers. If he doesn’t, he doesn’t.” Then he told Quigley, “The gentleman’s time has expired.”

Spurred on by the Republicans’ complete deference to the president, administration witnesses became even more emboldened in their defiance of the committee. Steve Bannon showed up for testimony one afternoon with a list of only twenty-five questions he would deign to answer in the entire investigation, notwithstanding the fact that he was a key witness. More stupefying, he admitted that the list had been written by the White House, complete with a one-word answer to each—“no.”

This was too much even for Gowdy, but Republicans still refused to do anything about it.”

Pgs 152-153

Again the GOP  HPSCI was so bad it was comical-though, again, the joke is on us.

“Nevertheless, they could not conceal a growing body of evidence, including dozens and dozens of illicit contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian entities and an extensive effort by the president to cover them up. Since most of the Republican members didn’t bother coming to the Russia interviews, or would leave shortly after their attendance was recorded, I began to wonder whether they were simply unaware of the facts. “Mike,” I said aid to Conaway one day in the SCIF, “I think it would be a good idea to get the whole committee together to go over the evidence we have accumulated so far. Most of your members haven’t been coming to the interviews, and we would like an opportunity to explain why we think the evidence is so troubling. It would also be a good opportunity to clear the air.” Conaway agreed, but as the weeks went by and I repeated the request, it became obvious that such a meeting was never going to take place. Nunes wouldn’t have it.”

Ibid.

The joke is on us because, once again, it was the GOP narrative about Russia that the savvy MSM cum Devlin Barrett , Erik Wemple,and Kevin Dilanian ultimately took hold of. Most of these partisan Republican hacks weren’t even at the hearings. But they are the ones whose narrative the MSM has accepted. But again-the MSM doesn’t care about facts. I mean they love the kind of earnest, painstakingly pedantic and pointless quibbling that Wemple does with the Dossier. But what they lack is concern for the spirit of the truth-rather than showing off how much they hew to the hairsplitting letter.

“We had not been able to conduct the investigation in the bipartisan way I had hoped and that I believed the public deserved, and I wondered whether there was anything I could have done differently. But given the Republican determination to protect the president at all costs, it seemed the only way our investigation could have been bipartisan was if Democrats had agreed to abandon a pursuit of the truth and call it progress. If there was to be a real House investigation of the Trump ties to Russia, and of the danger that Trump was compromised by his financial interests, personal history, or the hopes of doing business in Russia in the future, we would have to occupy the majority ourselves.”

“With the midterm election seven months away, that seemed increasingly possible. The vulgar transformation of the GOP under Trump had alienated many conservatives, and dozens of House Republicans had already announced that they would not seek reelection. The exodus culminated on April 11, when Speaker Paul Ryan added his name to the list.”

Pgs 158-159.

As Schiff notes just a few years earlier, “Ryan had been widely regarded as the future of the Republican party.”

So Schiff and his fellow Dems were left to hope for a Dem House. Of course, the Democrats went on to a historical landslide on November 6, 2018 thanks to the vigilance and mobilization of millions of mobilized Democrats. Still I have to say in retrospect that regarding the #Resistance this proved to be our highwater mark. Soon after November 6 I’d personally begun to detect signs that there was a sizable number of folks in the Dem base who had ‘fatigue.’ As a unit the #Resistance never had quite the vigilance it had in those first two years after Trump’s illegitimate ‘win.’

To be very clear, the base remained highly motivated and energized but what concerned me was that the energy and motivation was still there but more narrowly focused-while previously we had wide ranging discussions on Dem Twitter and elsewhere after that many folks seemed to focus far more narrowly after this-what mattered was defeating Trump period.

Which I found disconcerting. Obviously defeating Trump was vitally important but it wasn’t sufficient or the be all end all. Yet many seemed implicitly to see defeating Trump as the mission and once that was completed they could afford to ratchet things down a little and take it easy again-get back to normal, engage in “self care”, get coffee, etc.

You begun to see a large group who I thought of as the #UnityPolice-you couldn’t criticize the Democratic House leaders-if you did it means you wanted Trump to win. Which is absurd-the record will clearly show that no one has despised and opposed Trump more than I have. My criticism of the Dem leaders was tactical-but the #UnityPolice refused to note the distinction.

After the recent ‘Red wave’ this past November, 2021, it’s even clearer that I indeed had saw the early signs of of #Resistance that was already beginning to retreat-defining it’s mission more narrowly-defeat Trump-and then go back to coffee and donuts. Trump was defeated-so now there’s nothing to worry about.

As for the newly empowered Dem House leaders, already in late 2018, I had some misgivings-many of them had already begun to ratchet down their agenda in terms of oversight and investigations. For instance, Jerrold Nadler had vowed the Dems would get to the bottom of Comeygate and then post Kavanaugh, he vowed the House Dems would do the kind of investigation Trumpland the FBI had failed to do. 

But after November 6, you never heard Nadler discuss it anymore-though as is clear even from Schiff’s account, this may not have been Nadler’s but Schiff’s and Pelosi’s preference.

FN: It becomes even clearer from Rachel Bade’s u

In January, 2019, Schiff was saying the right thing.

Early in the new year, I sat down with the Democratic members and staff of the Intelligence Committee to discuss the Russia investigation. Robert Mueller was close to wrapping up the Special Counsel’s investigation, and I had carefully followed the subpoenas Mueller was issuing and the indictments he was obtaining, searching for clues as to what he was investigating and what he was not. As the new chairman of the Intelligence Committee, I had no interest in re-creating the work that he was already doing, and with greater resources behind the effort. But as I scrutinized the public record, I grew increasingly concerned that the counterintelligence investigation was being ignored as Mueller pursued the criminal investigation. There is a lot of activity that, while not criminal, is nonetheless a real danger to the country, and if Mueller wasn’t pursuing that, as Comey had been charged to do, then our committee needed to do so or the country would be left at risk.”

I remember hearing about Schiff’s plans at that time-with some hope, with the emphasis on some. I also had some misgivings. Again, I’d noticed a change in the way the Democrats were talking already. Paradoxically as the dog who had caught the car, the Dems were talking a considerably less tough a game. It was easier to talk about what should be done when they weren’t in charge. Now that they were in charge they already were perceptibly talking less about it.

Time would prove my misgivings all too apt. Indeed, reading of Schiff’s determination back in early 2019 to do a real counterintelligence investigation today almost three years later the question that begs is: what happened? What happened to this promised counterintel investigation?

FN: And as we discuss in Chapter Joe Should Have Fired Wray, Schiff inexplicably cheered Wray’s retention despite the fact it was Wray who stopped sending HPSCI the counterintel on Russia.

End FN

The short answer to this question is: George Stephanopolous and Chris Cuomo happened to him. And Ken Dilanian and Tom Jones happened. And Katty Kay, Devlin Barrett and Erik Wemple happened to him…

You get the idea:

“Adam Schiff’s Plans to Obliterate Trump’s Red Line read a headline in The New Yorker, over a piece outlining my intentions to subpoena financial and other records to determine whether there was any entanglement that could compromise our interests.

“An economic miracle is taking place in the United States,” Trump declared in his State of the Union address that February, “and the only things that can stop it are foolish wars, politics, or ridiculous, partisan investigations.” As I sat in the chamber listening, heads turning in my direction to see if I thought he was talking about me and to gauge my reaction, I resisted the impulse to shake my head. A few days later, he made explicit what he thought was a ridiculous, partisan investigation, tweeting: “So now Congressman Adam Schiff announces, after having found zero Russian Collusion, that he is going to be looking at every aspect of my life, both financial and personal, even though there is no reason to be doing so. Never happened before!”

Pgs 169-170

There he goes again zero Russian Collusion but once again the joke is on us as that became the mainstream media’s article of faith too after not the Mueller Report but Barr’s fake summary of the report. For the next two years every time Trump or his GOP co-conspirators would speak of NO COLLUSION the pundits wouldn’t say a word-as he had successfully brainwashed them too no less than Trump State Television over on Fix News.

Looking back, it’s clear that the writing was on the wall already in early 2019. The Savvy narrative was a constant focus on when Mueller would end his investigation. On the night of Barr’s fake exoneration letter, Kasey Hunt said the quite part out loud when she said people are tired of Russia.  In retrospect it was abundantly clear months in advance that Beltway journalists were. It was an interesting moment of candor as it recalled nothing so much as the MSM feeding frenzy over Emailgate in 2015. Each pundit finished yet another screed about HER EMAILS by declaring in a purely ad hominem way that this is why the American people don’t think they can trust Hillary Clinton. 

Where was Annalise Keating?-she would have declared facts not in evidence. The Savvy just presumed it was true. They asserted nobody trusted Hillary again and again then acted vindicated when polls showed voters saying they didn’t trust her. This recalls Ezra Klein’s point late in 2016 that the media doesn’t like to admit the extent to which it doesn’t just report the news but shape it.

Was the country ‘tired of Russia’ by March, 2019? No evidence was presented. Much like the idea that the country had Hillary Clinton fatigue in 2015. Chuck Todd as we saw in Chapter Chuck Todd also had a moment of candor when he said ‘I don’t know if the country has Clinton fatigue-but the press  certainly does.’

Just so, it’s clear that the MSM had Russia fatigue in March, 2019 and they confused their preferences with that of the voters. Just like they were tired of Iran Contra by about 1990.

CF. Robert Parry in Chapter Iran Collusion

But the media doesn’t always tire of a story this quickly-what’s considered ‘a long time’ varies. For seven long years they never tired of Whitewater and Paula Jones and other fake Clinton scandals just like they never tired of HER EMAILS in 2016, and Erik Wemple assuredly will never tire of poking holes in the Steele Dossier.

In any case it’s clear in retrospect that for months in advance the media wanted to put the Russia story to be no less than Trump and Devin Nunes. There were helpful stories making the point that Barr was in charge and he didn’t have to release a report if he didn’t want. Not clear what the intent of stories like this other than to simultaneously give Trump and Friends assistance in hiding what really happened from the public and demoralizing the Dem base.

So already expectations were being dropped into the basement such that we presumably had to be grateful for anything Barr doled out-as he was completely within his (legal) right to dole out nothing. Sure, Barr probably didn’t need the punditry to know he had the option of revealing nothing but why would you do anything to assist him abuse his power to protect Trump?

Just on the oft chance Barr hadn’t thought of it why make it the center of MSM reporting for three months? Why give this group any ideas?

But this way of managing expectations down is the opposite of how the Savvy handled expectations in Emailgate. In that case we heard nothing about ‘fatigue’-or the factual point that it was very unlikely she’d be indicted-as there were no evidence of intent. Instead the-very unlikely-expectation that she would be indicted was amplified-as we see in Chapter Et tu Chris Hayes-‘even Chris Hayes’ asked Hillary to her face as his last question if she worried about being indicted.

It goes without saying managing expectations down is also the opposite of how the Beltway handled the Ken Starr Report back in 1998.

There was no fatigue with HER EMAILS or Ken Starr but there was with Russian Collusion just as they had been in Iran Contra. There’s your liberal media. 

Back to Schiff:

By late February or early March, rumors were circulating that Mueller would not be seeking any further indictments and would soon be issuing his report. Immediately, Trump and his allies claimed exoneration and went on the attack. On March 23, Rudy Giuliani tweeted:

“@AdamSchiff said ‘there is significant evidence of collusion involving Trump campaign.’ I trust he is relieved there is no collusion. And I hope he will apologize for his mistake. We all make them. The real virtue is to admit it. It would help us heal.” That Sunday morning on his program, George Stephanopoulos asked me if I was going to apologize. Declining, I pointed out the distinction I had always made between collusion and proof beyond a reasonable doubt of the crime of conspiracy.”

“The president’s campaign could, and did, try to collude with the Russians to get help in the election. Whether Mueller believed he could satisfy a jury that all of the elements of the crime of conspiracy had been met was another matter, and that would be up to him. But Giuliani was in the vanguard of another Republican assault on the truth that would explode in the coming days, and it was engineered by President Trump’s new attorney general. And as Giuliani’s statement presaged, one of the main targets of this assault would be me.”

Pg 171

A good, factually supported answer. But again facts don’t matter to the mainstream media if they contradict their narrative. And it’s clear even here-the morning before Barr’s fake exoneration letter-that press had its narrative-NO COLLUSION and since there was NO COLLUSION folks like Adam Schiff-and Rachel Maddow-should apologize.

FN: As typical for the punditry post Barr’s fake exoneration letter, Tom Jones held up Maddow as someone who’s reporting on Russia was excessive and unprofessional.

Looking back this was a clear tell-Stephanopolous was telegraphing the Savvy response to Barr in advance: as there was no collusion Schiff-Maddow et al needed to be a little humble and contrite.

FN: This is why I argued above that in asking what happened to Schiff’s vowed counterintel  Russia investigation the short answer is Stephanopoulous-and Chris Cuomo-happened. We’ll get to-more recently unlucky-Cuomo below.

So it’s clear now that Barr was riding with the wind at his back and speaking to a sympathetic crowd-Kasey Hunt and Friends-whose mind was already made up that this was enough on Russia and there was nothing left to say just as they had felt about Iran-Contra 30 years ago.

“Later that day, I was pulling my car into a parking spot beside Amoeba Music in Hollywood when my cellphone pinged with the news that Attorney General Bill Barr had just delivered a summary of the Mueller report to Congress. The timing could hardly have been worse. My daughter, Lexi, and her boyfriend, Eric, were visiting me in Los Angelos, and we had been planning a hike in the hills above Griffith Park after a quick stop at the record store.”

“Now I would be inundated with requests from the media to comment on whatever the Barr summary said. Boland and Simons were on the other side of the country and we would have to coordinate our response remotely; with news this big, that was far from ideal. Giuliani’s attack the day before made more sense now—and suggested that Barr was coordinating with the White House, if not with the Trump defense team directly. I told Eric and Lexi, “You guys head in, I’m going to need to deal with this. I will meet you inside.” I never made it into the record store. Instead, I sat alone in the car reading the summary letter, my heart racing.”

“According to Barr, both parts of the Mueller report vindicated Trump. The first part directly exonerated his campaign of conspiring with Russia in their election interference. “The Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” the letter said.

This, of course, was false-actually what the report said was did not establish, In other words there wasn’t-in Mueller’s view-evidence beyond the reasonable doubt standard of 90% to establish collusion-coordination-conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. The way Barr framed it made it sound as if Mueller found zero evidence of collusion-coordination-conspiracy  not simply less than 90%.

But again-with the savvy pundits facts and truth don’t matter. That Mueller found no collusion has been an article of Savvy faith the last two and three quarters years.

The second part, Barr acknowledged, was indirect. Mueller “did not draw a conclusion” on the question of obstruction, but in the absence of a conclusion by Mueller, Barr claimed the right to make a determination himself. “After reviewing the Special Counsel’s final report on these issues,” he wrote, “Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and I have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.” By the time the kids emerged from the store, I had yet to wrap my head around the full import of Barr’s summary. But one thing was immediately clear: The letter from Barr had given Republicans all the ammunition they needed to condemn the Russia investigation as a hoax. Frantic messages were pouring in from Boland that I was getting pummeled on conservative media.”

But it was not just conservative media. If it was only there the damage would have been far less. But the savvy mainstream press followed the conservative media’s lead much as it had on Whitewater, and years later, Emailgate.

But this is something that leadership Dems like Schiff can never grasp. It’s why I also call the leadership Dems savvy-as no one is more sensitive to savvy logic than elected leadership Dems. What happened here wasn’t just about conservative media it’s that so-called mainstream media was standing shoulder to shoulder with them-after all as Kasey Hunt revealed they were tired of Russia whatever the facts. Schiff as typical of elected Dems always makes the mistake of thinking mere factuality is enough to combat lies. It’s not about facts it’s about narrative. The savvy Dem move is to accept the narrative but attempt to combat lies with facts-but once you’ve accepted a bad narrative you’ve already lost. Basically, you forfeited before the football game started-yet you still -wrongly-think you might win.

It’s like Chris Hayes being surprised that 60% of Americans thought Hillary should have been indicted for her emails after when he had her on the show his very last question to her was if she thought she’d be indicted.

FN: It recalls Chuck Todd’s interview of Guiliani-truth isn’t true. Todd was incredulous and that became something of a meme but what Todd failed to grasp is that truth isn’t in fact true for he and his savvy friends much of the time either-if it conflicts with their current narrative. Again, truth is true but it’s not enough. This is the point made by Soviet defector Yuri Bezemov-the goal of Russian propaganda is to so demoralize folks so much facts no longer even matter.

And this is the irony of the “liberal media’-if you use the Maddow Rule it quickly becomes clear what a canard this idea is because going by what the media does, we see how they take scandals with Democrats as the object-Whitewater, Emailgate, etc-entirely credulously and are only skeptical when Republican politicians are the object-Iran-Contra, Russian Collusion, etc.

The leadership Dems are savvy in the sense that nobody takes savvy “logic” more seriously than the leadership Dems. It reminds you of the point made in the 1990s that Clinton took the MSM hitjob on himself particularly personally as he did believe that on some level they too were liberal. This is the illusion the Democrats always make-that on some level the MSMers are on their side-it’s like even they believe Rush Limbaugh-recently deceased, fittingly enough, of lung cancer.

But the narrative that the media is liberal comes from: conservative Republicans. Oops. So accepting this narrative just leaves you further down the rabbit hole. What it actually serves to do is lead the Democrats to accept that the Savvy pundits are operating in good faith, a very dangerous presumption as the record amply shows.

The Dems wrongly believe that the Beltway journalists are motivated primarily by an objective, disinterested search for truth-rather than to vindicate Savvy logic and the desire for the safety of the pack mentality-it’s ok to get the story wrong even terribly wrong so long as all your colleagues across various mainstream outlets also get it terribly wrong.

Ironically it’s conservative Republicans who instinctively seem to understand how to handle the media. Unlike the Dems when the GOP doesn’t like a narrative they go on a counteroffensive to change it.

Here was Schiff’s initial response to Barr’s fake-though extremely successful-exoneration summary.

“Mueller did not find sufficient evidence to establish conspiracy, notwithstanding Russian offers to help Trump’s campaign, their acceptance, and a litany of concealed interactions with Russia,” I tweeted, in response to the news. “I trust Mueller’s prosecutorial judgment, but the country must see the evidence. Mueller spent two years investigating obstruction of justice and found evidence that ‘does not exonerate’ Trump. Barr took two days to set aside that evidence. The entire report must be published and evidence provided to Congress so the American people can judge for themselves.”

Pgs 172-173

This as far as it goes wasn’t a bad response-though again mere factuality isn’t enough in this country with this media in this day and age. He was certainly right to demand the evidence and we ultimately would see the redacted Mueller Report in about a month. But note that based on the mainstream narrative seeing the actual report post Barr’s memo was a mere formality. They had been reporting for three months that really, Barr had great discretion and didn’t even have to release the report at all if he felt like it he could just table it-as Michael Horowtiz actually chose to do with the report on the leaks of the rogue FBI agents.

FN: As we see in Chapter Horowitz, he released a Bill Barr like summary and never released his report at all.

And they’d already decided post Barr that whatever was in the report wouldn’t change the narrative-there might be some interesting details but NO COLLUSION NO OBSTRUCTION TOTAL EXONERATION-Ken Dilanian’s tweet that night was the final take regardless of any subsequent facts. Maybe now you understand my cynicism over mere facts. Mere facts don’t matter once someone’s mind is already made up. The savvy had decided and even though they’d later admit that Barr’s performance here was very dishonest they still never questioned his framing-NO COLLUSION. And close to three years later, still never have.

PACE Kasey Hunt people are tired of Russia. Though they aren’t tired of the GOP counternarratives and investigations into the Russian investigators-see Wemple who even after 100 articles about the Dossier still shows no signs of fatigue.

“Barr’s summary was the first draft of the history of the Special Counsel’s investigation of the president, and it was a deliberate and monstrous deception. With it, Trump and his allies seized control of the narrative, and they used it to bury the truth.”

They seized control of the narrative with the willing help and complicity of the MSM-we must never for one moment lose sight of the fact that without the cooperation of the Savvy, their tacit consent-this doesn’t happen: a wildly successful injecting of disinformation into the public’s bloodstream.

FN: On the part of both Putin and Bill Barr.

This led us to the world we still live in today-where nobody ‘serious’-ie savvy-investigates Russian Interference and Collusion but you have folks like Wemple who have made a second career partnering with the GOP to sell their counternarrative-it’s ok to investigate the investigators. That doesn’t give them fatigue.

Schiff:

“They also used it to try to bury me. Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson filled the airwaves with condemnations of the “Russia hoax,” portraying me as a sinister conspiracist whose fertile imagination defamed and imperiled the president of the United States. I remember watching Kellyanne Conway hold forth on Fox and Friends in the morning, saying, “Adam Schiff should resign. He has no right, as somebody who has been peddling a lie day after day after day! Unchallenged! Unchallenged, and not under oath! Somebody should have put him under oath and said, ‘You have evidence? Where is it!’ ”

This idea was very insidious-and prevalent-in the Beltway not just Fox News and Breitbart. It was the idea that Schiff-and Maddow-had done something wrong, evil, maybe even illegal. There’s a notion built in somewhere that you shouldn’t be allowed to make serious allegations against the President unless you’re under oath.

So should all those suggesting Hillary was going to jail have been put under oath? There’s also the idea that if someone predicted Trump would be indicted, they now at the least should do a public mea culpa if not face indictment themselves.

Tom Jones:

Some pundits, such as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, certainly suggested that the Mueller report could eventually lead to a Trump impeachment. Whether it was overwhelming coverage, opinions based on actual reporting or nothing more than wishful thinking, Maddow’s show did often lead viewers to believe Trump’s days were numbered. Even the normally measured Brian Stelter of CNN asked in his newsletter: “Do Maddow’s viewers feel misled right about now?”

So let me see if I get this right simply suggesting you believe the Mueller report could eventually lead to Trump’s impeachment makes Maddow-assuming Jones’ characterization is right-guilty of indictable crimes against journalism? I mean simply making a prediction that doesn’t come to pass makes you guilty of being a bad journalist who misled your readers/viewers and perhaps PACE Kellyann Conway guilty of indictable offenses in the criminal code?

So, when are the trials of all the pundits who predicted Hillary was going to be indicted?

If so, we still haven’t built enough prisons as the number of Savvy pundits predicting or at least strongly suggesting Clinton was going to be indicted is a very long list-though no doubt they’d get Michael Horowitz to investigate and he’d Bill Barr that report too-too many savvy pundits predicted she would go to prison to name and shame them much less indict them.

But they’re attacks were on Hillary Clinton so it was all as Ruth Marcus would put it fair game. OTOH if you’re a Democrat who offers up provocative predictions or takes-or even does a bad take-then you at a minimum should lose your job if not go to prison yourself. That’s some liberal media.

And as Trump did end up getting impeached how bad a take was this alleged take of Maddow’s anyway?

FN: I say “alleged” as I’m skeptical as Maddow’s not in the prediction business. I watched most of if not all Maddow’s Russian Collusion episodes and am skeptical she even said what Jones thinks she said-though you’d have to check the videos for sure. In this bizzaro MSM narrative logic is completely collapsed onto itself and no distinctions are made between making a positive prediction Trump would be impeached vs a normative point that he really should be.

But again, if simply doing a bad take or making a prediction that doesn’t come true proves you’ve misled viewers or even committed indictable crimes no one is safe to do journalism-except this is not meant seriously, except for anyone known as a Democrat leaning pundit or journalist.

We see this again with the fact that no one has any problem with Anderson Cooper laughing at De Blasio in public. Turns out he does have a sense of humor as long as you make fun of a Democratic rather than Republican politician.

I thought Anderson Cooper was objective? Why shouldn't he be fired like Chris Cuomo was? https://t.co/6eQjcViLxf

— Expand the Court (@ProChoiceMike) January 1, 2022

Exactly. Why did Kathy Griffin get the ax for making fun of Trump but this by Anderson Cooper is cool? Why isn't he fired like Chris Cuomo? https://t.co/8AHMF56WFU

— Expand the Court (@ProChoiceMike) January 1, 2022

How about a quid pro quo-Anderson only gets to keep his job if Kathy Griffin comes back https://t.co/XujaZWvreA

— Expand the Court (@ProChoiceMike) January 1, 2022

Back to Schiff:

“For his part, the president, meeting in the Oval Office with Israeli prime minister Netanyahu, suggested that those who had been probing his Russia ties were guilty of treason and should be investigated. “There are a lot of people out there that have done some very, very evil things, some bad things, I would say some treasonous things against our country,” he said. “And hopefully people that have done such harm to our country—we’ve gone through a period of really bad things happening—those people will certainly be looked at.” A few days later, he made it clear who he believed at least one of the traitors was, tweeting: “Congressman Adam Schiff, who spent two years knowingly and unlawfully lying and leaking, should be forced to resign from Congress!

Pgs 173-174

So we go from-falsely claiming-Mueller showed no collusion to making the huge leap from that canard to the idea that therefore anyone who said he did was at the least if not dishonest highly irresponsible and perhaps even guilty of a crime.

FN: Note that on the issue of the January 6 Insurrection the standard is different. So it is that Bernard Kerik-former rogue anti Clinton NYPD chief Bernard Kerik, who as we argued in Chapter Wayne Barrett probably was another deep in the know in the eytmology of the Comey Letter-another who Horowitz is protecting assuming he spoke to him at all and he probably didn’t-is arguing that the 1/6 Select Committee can’t accuse Trump and his GOP co-conspirators of insurrection until they first prove the negative that his claim that the election was stolen was false. 

NEWS: Bernie Kerik has given docs to the Jan. 6 committee. He also provided a log of documents he didn’t turn over.

One is labeled: “DRAFT LETTER FROM POTUS TO SEIZE EVIDENCE IN THE INTEREST OF NATIONAL SECURITY FOR THE 2020 ELECTIONS.”

w/ @nicholaswu12 https://t.co/gHQ9mu19wv

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) January 1, 2022

So in the case of the Insurrection, you can’t indict anyone until you do an unpredicated investigation into their false claims-with the accurate claim of Trump-Russia 2016 Mueller saying he didn’t have 90% confidence is enough to mean that anyone who said Trump colluded should be at least fired if not indicted.

Ok so Chris Cuomo. Recently fired from CNN because his brother is the former Governor of NY Andrew Cuomo who was also forced to resign. In principle I have sympathy for Chris as it’s the worst kind of guilty by association rap-once Cuomo got in the crosshairs-what Mike Tracey calls a putsch-it was clear it was only a matter of time before the Savvy Gods would demand their pound of flesh-to prove how serious they take avoiding even the appearance of, etc.

A major piece of the savvy logic is that when anyone who’s a Democrat are associated with anyone who’s a Democrat is accused of anything improper you immediately throw them overboard and ask questions later-if you ever do-to prove to Republicans you aren’t partial to the Democrats.

So, I feel bad for what happened to Chris Cuomo as I hate seeing good people get railoaded over specious savvy nonsense.

FN: Even regarding Andrew Cuomo himself I have some mixed feelings. To be sure at least some of the examples of alleged misconduct are deeply concerning others are dubious. Without getting too far down the rabbit hole how is it that if someone sat on Cuomo’s lap that makes him guilty of sexual harassment?

To be sure overall there are some very legitimate concerns about his conduct. But the speed that this all happened is truly headspinning-and let’s face it, this doesn’t happen if Cuomo were a Republican even if the accusations were far more serious than what Cuomo was accused of.

Never thought I’d get a chance to agree with Mike Tracey but find this critique of Letticia James itchy trigger finger very on point in the many questions raised..

https://twitter.com/kristi2281/status/1456417481569050629

It was smart of her to drop her big for Governor as with all the talk of ‘optics’ tough to think of worse optics than the woman whose own shoe prints kicked Cuomo out of office is now running for his seat-even as she discusses indicting him and making him register as a sex offender.

End FN

OTOH it’s hard not to feel that Cuomo sort of reaped what he sowed. He was felled by the same savvy logic he himself had wielded plenty of times when it was others on the chopping block. Live by the sword die by the sword.

UPDATE: Considering editing the negative comments out about Tish James. Pretty much done with Cuomo who has jumped the shark once and for all after criticizing DOJ investigating Trump’s espionage.

FN: Just like his brother, former Governor Cuomo also died by his own sword-see his shots at Weiner back in Weinergate chapter. Cuomo also wasn’t helped by being such a consistently abrasive persona over the years-now when his fortunes turned few were interested in defending him-in may way the NY Democrats saw this as a fortuitous turn of events-it had seemed that Cuomo might be Governor of NY the next 30 years-then in an eyeblink, he was gone.

UPDATE: While some have talked about an Andrew Cuomo comeback it’s going to be pretty hard for him to win future Office as a Democrat after defending and normalizing Trump’s espionage. 

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) weighed in on the FBI’s search of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on Monday, arguing it could “undermine” the legitimacy of the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) broader investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.”

Certainly, one election Cuomo has a shot in is a vote for the worst take on Trump’s espionage by an alleged “Democrat.”

For starters the J6 investigation has nothing to do with the FBI’s raid to take back all the classified and sensitive intelligence Trump had no right to. I guess such fine distinctions are lost on Cuomo-as a NYer I can only say “good riddance.”

Back to Schiff:

“Appearing on CNN for the first time since the summary was released, I faced a skeptical Chris Cuomo, who asked, “You think that you’re really going to be surprised by the report itself? You think the AG would hide any material findings of Bob Mueller? I mean, it would be pretty foolish to do so.” Foolish or otherwise, that is exactly what Barr was doing, but as long as he withheld the report from the public, his preferred narrative of the events would set in. And I could see how powerless I would be to defend myself.”

Pg 174

So, a few thoughts-at least. First of all, we see Cuomo engaging the post Mueller MSM narrative-even though we hadn’t even seen the report yet, the Savvy had decided that Barr’s memo was the final word. In other words, even as Schiff and the Democrats fought to force Barr to release it-and even the very publicly shy and reticent Bob Mueller fought in his own way to release it-in the bigger picture it was all irrelevant as the mainstream pundits had made up their mind. Above, we saw that even in Schiff’s interview with Stephanopolous before Barr’s phony exoneration letter the MSM had already decided its narrative-Stephanopolous pressed Schiff to apologize even before we even heard Barr’s lies.

FN: What’s ironic is that Chris Cuomo was recently interviwed by Scarramuci and complained about this kind of thinking-‘it’s impossible they would lie…’

Again, Kasey Hunt let the cat out of the bag: People-in other words the Savvy pundits-was tired of Russia. 

Like they got tired of Iran-Contra but like they never got tired of Whitewater, Her Emails and how Wemple never tires of poking holes in the Steele Dossier.

So, the truth never had a chance-NO COLLUSION had long since been baked into the MSM Mueller cake.

Then you heard the celebrating-savvy pundits gloating like we quoted Giuliani-whose own tweet was prior to the Barr fake exoneration- as we also saw above that Schiff himself suggested Giuliani may have been speaking based on inside information from the Russia House-what’s the matter, Democrats? You should be happy our President didn’t collude with Russia. 

FN: Indeed, yet another begged question is wether Barr and Friends had actually shared what his memo would say with GOP co-conspirators like Rudy. It would fit the pattern-as Rudy-Stone-Corsi-Peter Smith-Devin Nunes-Erik Prince-and likely many more knew about Huma’s emails long before Comey did-that many of them also knew what was in Barr’s fake exoneration letter.

Cuomo, Stephanopoulous, Kasey Hunt and Friends had their narrative-that Mueller proved NO COLLUSION. So Schiff was right to perceive that “I could see how powerless I would be to defend myself.”

Because the Savvy had its narrative, and no facts were going to be allowed it to get in the way-people are tired of Mueller. Cuomo was blatant-they had decided that no way could Barr have lied. The very idea was unpossible. In the next few weeks, a lot of information would come out that proved he had lied. They acknowledged this and said a few critical words about him personally. But they still held to the canard that the basic narrative of Barr’s memo was sound no matter how dishonest he was.

Indeed, like Stephanopolous the morning before Barr and Cuomo the day after Barr, Katy Kay wasn’t even subtle about it. After someone on team Mueller leaked to the press that Barr had grossly mischaracterized their report, she wagged her finger at Democrats for relitigating-the fact the news reports came from lawyers in Mueller’s office not the Democrats was far too subtle a point for her, apparently.

Risk for Dems here is that the public narrative has already been formed and they look like sore losers in keeping the story going. https://t.co/W2HVGIRcWM

— Katty Kay (@KattyKay_) April 4, 2019

See also:

https://www.mediamatters.org/cnn/flawed-media-coverage-muellers-findings-underscores-importance-good-headlines

Again, as for Chris Cuomo himself, I feel bad he got taken down on such a phony guilt by association canard-he could only keep his job if he publicly disowned his brother. But in a sense he did reap what he sowed-he lived by the savvy rules and was very happy to do it. If what happened to him happened to someone else, he wouldn’t have any sympathy for them-put it this way given the same fact pattern, Chris Cuomo would have no sympathy for someone losing his job because his brother was the embattled Governor of NY if this embattled NY Gov wasn’t actually his own brother.

And he very happily fomented the lie of NO COLLUSION just like the rest of the savvy pundits.

Finally, Schiff’s final sentence again: “I could see how powerless I would be to defend myself.”

I think that answers the question I poised above: what happened to the promised counterintel investigation into Russia-to make up for Nunes’ whitewash. It seems clear that he and Pelosi cut and run when they saw how dug in the MSM was that Barr was the final word on Russia-no matter how dishonest he was. Any attempt to take it any further would lead to headlines that the Dems were sore losers-literally the same playbook in 2000 to bully Gore and Friends into dropping the recount-he was a sore loser for demanding that the rules be followed-Florida law called for the recount it wasn’t Gore’s idea. But as the MSM liked this narrative, the fact that it was the law didn’t matter.

The more things change-amazing that four years of Trump changed so little.

Above regarding the attacks on Maddow-Schiff-et al I pointed out that if Maddow “suggested” the Mueller Report could lead to impeachment that wasn’t such a bad take-we ended up having impeachment start just six months later.

But, of course, Pelosi took pains to differentiate that impeachment from Russia-she acted as if this were a totally different issue even though you can argue that Ukraine Extortion was the logical next step to Russia Collusion.

FN: Trump literally called Zelensky the day after Mueller finished his testimony.

There’s no question that in the immediate aftermath of the fake exoneration letter the Dem leadership instinct was to cut and run-the MSM didn’t think pursuing it was ‘smart’-so it was smart not to pursue it-after all the Savvy said people are tired of Mueller-and the Savvy know all.

The idea that the Savvy knows all doesn’t pass the laugh test for anyone except-the Dem leaders themselves. It’s they who give the Chris Cuomos-before his brother went down-the Katy Kays, the Kasey Hunts, the Ken Dilanians way more respect and credibility than they deserve.

This is why I refer to the Dem leadership as savvy-they alone actually take the savvy takes seriously. So they said doing anything further on Russia would be a disaster politically, and the Dems obediently dropped the whole thing.

Schiff does discuss the fact that the Dem base wanted to go further, indeed, wanted impeachment based on Mueller.

What’s clear is that as dishonest as Barr’s memo was it was an extremely effective performance in terms of the public dissemination of disinformation. A lot of members on Team Democrat headed for the hills after Chris Cuomo-Ken Dilanian-Katty Kay gave the verdict that Barr’s word may not have been true, but it was the final word.

Be glad Democrats our President didn’t collude with Russia. Any more of this Mueller stuff will look like you’re being sore losers. 

Most Democrats felt they had their marching order-it was enough of the Mueller stuff. Schiff had more staying power than most of them-he showed some defiance-even though he ultimately agreed it was over.

“As I stepped into the hearing room a few minutes ahead of schedule, I was surprised to see that all of my Republican colleagues were already there. They stood on the dais at the front of the room, whispering in a huddle. While the GOP members were present in force, my Democratic colleagues were late, only amplifying a sudden unease. Were they planning to make a motion to end our investigation of the counterintelligence risks of Trump’s innumerable Russian contacts? If I brought the gavel down when the hearing was set to begin at 9 a.m., Democrats could have been outvoted on any motion brought by the Republicans. For fifteen long minutes, I waited in the anteroom, jotting down notes if I needed to defend the investigation or myself, and waiting until we reached parity so that I could begin the hearing.”

Pg 175

The GOP HPSCI members then ambushed the temporarily outnumbered Schiff and demanded he resign-typical GOP theatrical tactics.

After Nunes gave a brief statement about how it was the Republicans who had sounded the alarm about Putin, I heard the voice of Mike Conaway trying to interject. “Mr. Chairman,” he said, staring down to read a letter and not able to look me in the eyes, “since prior to the inauguration of President Trump in January of 2017 You have been at the center of a well-orchestrated media campaign, claiming, among other things, the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government.”

“The letter claimed that I had abused my position on the committee, damaged its reputation, and undermined public trust in democratic institutions. Using the Barr summary as a proxy for the unreleased Mueller report, Conaway’s letter—which had been signed by every Republican member of the committee—accused me of making false allegations against the president, and also, paradoxically, of leaking classified information that supported the allegations. “Your actions both past and present,” he read, “are incompatible with your duty as Chairman of this Committee, which alone in the House of Representatives has the obligation and authority to provide effective oversight of the U.S. intelligence community. “As such,” Conaway concluded, “we have no faith in your ability to discharge your duties in a manner consistent with your Constitutional responsibility—and urge your immediate resignation as Chairman of the committee.”

Pp. 176-177

Schiff’s reaction was to feel stung and sandbagged.

“I pride myself on having a thick skin, and by then I had been the subject of innumerable presidential attacks—but these were my peers, people I had worked hard to get along with and was still trying to salvage a working relationship with. To have them blindside me with a call for my resignation was wounding, as deeply personal as it was unexpected.”

Pg 177

I mean-really? Schiff didn’t expect this kind of stunt. You want to ask him where he’d been the last 10 years when in fact he’d been in the eye of the storm. He’d been there with all Nunes’ shenanigans and the summary way they had shut the Russia investigation down prematurely and how before that they’d simply told Erik Prince, Don Jr, Jared Kushner, et al they didn’t have to answer all the Democrats’ questions as “they’ll never stop.”

And indeed, in the very next sentence Schiff says this:

“After three years of their deliberate falsehoods and endless capitulation, it was also more than I could take. As my Democratic colleagues looked to me for my answer, I could feel the heartbreak inside—years of effort developing bipartisan relationships had come to naught. But I could feel something else rising within me. I could feel the anger.”

Yet President Joe is still always talking about bipartisanship. In Chapter Deep State is Republican I discuss why many Democrats have disengaged. I explained that I personally haven’t disengaged just witness this book you’re currently reading but that I have largely disengaged with Democratic Twitter and watching MSNBC. Nothing ever changes-no one on Team Democrat ever learns or changes a thing. No matter how many times the Dems get Charlie Browned, they still react yet again like Schiff does here-with stung and stunned-how unexpected. 

Schiff then launched into a pretty impressive and impassioned piece of oratory with his you might think it’s ok speech.

“You might think it is okay that that campaign chairman offered polling data—campaign polling data—to someone linked to Russian intelligence. I don’t think that’s okay. You might think it’s okay that the president himself called on Russia to hack his opponent’s emails if they were listening. You might think it’s okay that, later that day, in fact, the Russians attempted to hack a server affiliated with that campaign. I don’t think that’s okay. You might think that it’s okay that the president’s son-in-law sought to establish a secret back channel of communications with the Russians through a Russian diplomatic facility.”

“I don’t think that’s okay. You might think it’s okay that an associate of the president made direct contact with the GRU, through Guccifer 2 and WikiLeaks—that is considered a hostile intelligence agency. You might think that it’s okay that a senior campaignofficial was instructed to reach that associate and find out what that hostile intelligence agency had to say, in terms of dirt on his opponent.”

“You might think it’s okay that the National Security Advisor–designate secretly conferred with the Russian ambassador about undermining U.S. sanctions. And you might think it is okay he lied about it to the FBI. You might say that’s all okay. You might say that’s just what you need to do to win. But I don’t think it’s okay. I think it’s immoral. I think it’s unethical. I think it’s unpatriotic. And, yes, I think it’s corrupt and evidence of collusion.”

Pp. 178-179

It was a great speech and galvanized all of us on Team Democrat desperate to finally punch back The ending flourish was particularly apropos-I don’t think it’s ok and I think it’s evidence of collusion. If only that were the opening salvo for that real Russia counterintel investigation Schiff had vowed. Instead, it was basically the Russian Collusion swan song.

Now that Schiff got it out of his system they could pivot to talking about (as opposed to passing) healthcare.

FN: Note as much as the 2019-2020 Dems preferred talking about healthcare to investigating Trump-they’ve done little about it since they got unified control. What the elected Dems-at least the Old Guard like Pelosi-Schumer-never seem to get is that talk is cheap. Talking about healthcare all the time but passing nothing does nothing for the millions of Americans who can’t get sick as it will ruin them.

But the Dems have proven time and again they’re much more comfortable talking about what they want to do than doing it.

UPDATE: And no doubt my saying this opens the rabbit hole of the debates over Manchin-Sinema during the 2021-2022 years-the #UnityPolice would tell us they lacked the votes. Is that true? Even if it were true-I have mixed feelings-it still makes my point. The Democrats talked about it more than anything during the 2019-2020 years though they definitely didn’t have the votes. Pelosi was much happier talking but not passing healthcare than investigations though unlike passing healthcare, investigations were actually within the Dems’ power to do-indeed literally within her own power.

With all the Savvy political horse-racing she seemed to miss the fact that constantly talking about stuff you might want to do but can’t do is not great politics-far better politics is to discuss what you can do-what they had the power to do was investigate Trump. But they-especially she-didn’t want to do so.

End FN

Back to Schiff:

In my experience, it is very difficult to tell when something you’ve said will resonate with people. This did. There were Americans all over the country who had watched with horror the slow but steady degradation of civility, decency, and ethical conduct and wondered whether anyone else felt that way or were they just crazy. Hearing someone tell them that what they were seeing wasn’t right, wasn’t moral—wasn’t okay—struck a nerve in a way that I certainly hadn’t expected. My Democratic colleagues took to telling me that the Republicans should call on me to resign more often.

Pg 180

It did galvanize the country. But again, the problem was that was all she wrote. If that had been the opening salvo it would have been tremendous. But the Dems were already pivoting back to talking about healthcare.

Ok in fairness Schiff and Pelosi had to expend a good deal of energy simply to get the report released. And finally on April 18, 2019 Barr released the redacted report.

“When Barr finally released a redacted copy of the Mueller report, on April 18, the onslaught of partisan spin had been under way for weeks, and many Americans had already locked in to a fixed view of what the report said. Even then, Barr was not content to release the report without a further attempt to mislead the public about its contents.”

“Holding a press conference at the Justice Department, with Rod Rosenstein and his deputy Ed O’Callaghan flanking him, Bill Barr painted a sympathetic portrait of a sincere president besieged by investigations and a hostile press and cooperating fully with the investigation. I had seen all of the witnesses before our committee refuse to answer questions at the president’s direction, and I knew this was a lie, but it was the least of Barr’s deceits.”

“Barr went on to claim, over and over, that Mueller had found no evidence of collusion. This too was clearly wrong, but Barr was counting on the public to take his word for it rather than read the lengthy report. Finally, Barr claimed that there was insufficient evidence of obstruction of justice—when in reality the report would provide a factual basis to charge the president with multiple crimes of obstruction.”

Once he was finished, Barr fielded questions from reporters. “Why is he [Mueller] not here, this is his report obviously that you are talking about today,” a reporter asked. “No, it’s not,” Barr responded. “It’s a report he did for me as attorney general.” “

“Is it an impropriety for you to come out and sort of, what appears to be, sort of, spinning the report before the public gets a chance to read it?” the reporter asked. “No,” was Barr’s abrupt answer, Rosenstein smirking at his side. And with that, they left the stage.

Pg 182

But for the reporter to call Barr for spinning the report belies the fact that the media had already decided that Barr’s memo was in the underlying substance if not in every detail the God’s honest truth-Chris Cuomo argued that there was no way Barr could have lied. With all the effort to just get the report released the media narrative was exactly what Barr said-that Mueller found no evidence of collusion. 

How could the media call Barr out for this lie when this lie was the Beltway’s own narrative.

And clearly the Dem leadership-first and foremost, Pelosi-saw this as their last task-once the report was out that was all she wrote-Steny Hoyer declared about 50 minutes after its release that nothing in the 444 pages rose to the level of impeachable offenses-Hoyer is also a world champion speed reader evidently…

Schiff does acknowledge that the Democratic base wanted to go forward with impeachment-and certainly didn’t think the Russia story was “done.”

But this again points to the asymmetry of the parties-the GOP fears the GOP base, the Dems ignore their own base and fear only the savvy punditry-who did believe Russia was “done.”

“The base of the Democratic Party overwhelmingly favored impeachment, as I would find when I was again invited to address my state party convention in San Francisco. When I followed Representative Maxine Waters onto the stage (she had been one of the earliest proponents of impeachment in Congress), the audience greeted my arrival on the podium with chants of “Impeach Forty-five! Impeach Forty-five!” But that was not something I was prepared to endorse.”

Pg 184

The Dem base be damned-Katy Kay thought it was over, Kasie Hunt was “fatigued” and Ken Dilanian thought it was a fine thing that”‘our President didn’t collude with Russia.” The Democratic party’s own voters never had a chance-just like even now after the latest shellacking on November 3, 2021 the Dems are STILL focusing not on their own voters but the mythical”‘independents” that the MSM is so besotted with.

FN: As we see in Chapter The Real Deep State the roughly 10 percentage points President Joe has seen drop off his poll numbers is not from the mythical independents but from his own Democratic voters-as Michelle Goldberg pointed out only 66% of Biden voters vs 88% of Trump voters voted on November 3.

We get into the tendentious position of Schiff-Pelosi et al that Trump had committed impeachable offenses-but he shouldn’t be impeached because it would hurt bipartisan civility or ‘stir the fevered swamps’ etc.-the same premise Bill had dropped all things Iran-Contra in 1993 and it clearly led the GOP to be more bipartisan and civil-Ken Starr…

“The president was clearly guilty of impeachable offenses, and I was convinced that he should be removed from office. But Barr’s deception had been so effective that out in the country, the impetus for impeachment, never high, seemed to decline further. An impeachment based on the Mueller report alone would not have popular support and was doomed to failure in the Republican Senate.”

Pg 184

This became one of the Dem leadership’s many canards-unless you were confident the GOP Senate would vote to convict you couldn’t impeach.

It’s notable and once again points to the asymmetry of the parties to remember that the Ken Starr Republicans of 1998 didn’t care that the chance that the Senate would convict Clinton was no better-arguably even worse-than the chance the Senate would convict Trump in 2019. Though let’s be clear-it was always very remote that the GOP would convict. But this imaginary rule that Schiff-Pelosi created-that you only impeach if you know the Senate will convict-gave the very partisan GOP veto power over whether to impeach.

By the way popular support for impeachment in 2019 might not have seemed that high-it seemed to average in the high 30s or low 40s but this was much higher than 1998 support for Clinton’s impeachment.

But what explains this asymmetry? Because as noted above, the GOP fears its base, but the Dems could care less about its own base-the Dems care what Chuck Todd and Kasie Hunt think not their actual voters.

Indeed, at the time Schiff-Pelosi et al-note that Schiff won his first election in 1998-and was arguably helped by the GOP’s impeachment obsession-argued that the GOP experience in 1998-1999 shows that a ‘partisan impeachment’-as if in our system there could ever be another kind-was a political loser. This was an article of faith among the old guard Dems-Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler, Barney Frank-who by 2019 was out of office but came out strongly against impeachment-that the GOP hurt itself with impeachment and that the Dems need to avoid same.

UPDATE: I crossed out Chairman Nadler’s name as in retrospect it’s now clear he was not an opponent of impeaching Trump but one of impeachment’s biggest proponents in 2019-we learn inAmazon.com: A Case for the American People: The United States v. Donald J. Trump -that he and his Judiciary Dems had written 10 articles of impeachment in August, 2019-so it’s not at all fair including him on this list so I subsequently crossed off his name.

But when you do look at the subsequent fortunes of the Ken Starr GOP it’s a lot more complex than this simple story the old guard Dems thought it was. True the GOP lost five seats in the House in 1998-which was a real historical anomaly. That this was due to an overreach on impeachment is certainly plausible.

But even if so, the GOP quickly regrouped-by January 2001 they controlled all three Houses of DC government-for the first time since 1952, with a major assist by the GOP dominated Supreme Court, true.

It’s highly plausible that Gore’s big election mistake was his refusal to campaign with Clinton-who post impeachment Gore believed too tarnished. Once again-the parties are, were, always have been-highly asymmetrical.

Indeed, impeachment had the long-term impact of tarnishing the Clinton brand-arguably if not for impeachment Hillary would have won 2016-but it left the mainstream media with the idea that they had done something evil-though no one ever bothered to explain what exactly.

FN: Arguably the MSM needed to believe this to justify their awful Whitewater coverage in the 1990s.

End FN

So maybe impeachment had hurt the GOP short term but longer term it was a net major positive. Clearly the two parties’ attitude here are highly asymmetric-while the Dems imagined in 2019 that impeaching Trump would hurt them the GOP never questioned in 1998 it would help them-even after they lost five seats in the midterm. But again, looking at the history, it’s far from clear the Republican theory was wrong. Actually, it’s arguable that their way of looking at it in 1998 is more right today than it was then as there were still a decent number of swing voters then-which sunk them short term-while the country has moved much further along the partisan polarization that was already accelerating then-as underscored by Ken Starr et al.

While Rachel Bitecofer once worked for the Senate Dems, few of the leadership Dems have ever read her analysis that what matters in today’s politics is clearly not predominantly persuasion, but turnout-the field of persuadable voters gets smaller ever cycle.

FN: Not surprisingly, Politico considers her theory ‘deeply unsettling.’

UPDATE:

https://www.salon.com/2021/11/12/guru-rachel-bitecofer-democrats-face-10-alarm-fire-after-virginia-debacle/

But the article of faith among the Dem leadership that impeachment was a political loser was deep in the aftermath of the Mueller report. Schiff had been warning for some time that somehow impeaching Trump would ‘play right into the hands of the GOP.’

Almost exactly a year earlier, I had written an op-ed in the New York Times entitled “Democrats: Don’t Take the Bait on Impeachment.” In the piece I described the legal standard for impeachment—high crimes and misdemeanors—and a second, much more practical and political standard: “Was the president’s conduct so incompatible with the office he holds that Democratic and Republican members of Congress can make the case to their constituents that they were obligated to remove him? If they cannot, if impeachment is seen by a substantial part of the country as merely an effort to nullify the election by other means, there will be no impeachment, no matter how high the crime or serious the misdemeanor.” This was a very high bar, but the bar should be set high for removing a president.”

The idea that impeachment ‘nullified’ the previous election had been considered-and rejected-by the founders.

FN: See Applebaum…

But while the decision should not have been made predominantly on what Schiff and Friends thought of a “much more practical and political standard” that’s clearly how they thought about it. The standard that he drew here of course made impeachment impossible-as you will never get the 80% public support for impeachment, he and Pelosi said we would need to see. But practical political analysis-a la Rachel Bietcofer-would have argued for impeachment. If what matters is turnout, then the only factor-or at least the predominant factor-to be considered in a political consideration is not the topline level of public support for impeachment but among your own party’s base. As that was always high, the practical political case for impeachment-or at least to not turning the page on Russian Collusion-could not have been clearer.

The GOP no doubt would have pushed full steam ahead-and over time probably converted much of the MSM to their way of thinking. Again-most MSM pundits today believe that Mueller proved there was NO COLLUSION-when his report proved nothing of the kind-and that the only important wrongdoing-or least the most important wrongdoing-was the compilation of the Steele Dossier.

Instead, the Dems accept and conform with the bad takes and narratives of Todd-Wemple-Devlin Barrett, etc.

Today the only kind of piece about Russian Collusion in the mainstream media is one of mirth-see chapter Seth Abramson hitpiece. Of course, collusion didn’t happen!

It’s a major victory for Vladimir Putin.

There’s more than enough blame to go around-the sociopathic GOP, savvy MSMers more interested in savvy narratives than the truth… But the leadership Dems also bear significant responsibility.

You can blame the MSM pundits, but you also have to blame the Dems for accepting the MSM punditry narrative. For example, the freakout over Afghanistan was so big in large part because the Democrats agreed that Biden somehow did something EVIL in simply completing Trump’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Accepting the bad takes of the mainstream press and trying to “fact check” within a flawed narrative is political equivalent of using prevent defense in the NFL-as the great recently deceased John Madden said the only thing the prevent defense does is prevent you from winning.

But it’s clearer than ever after-going back to June 2015-six and a half years of Trump that the folks that make up the conventional wisdom are awfully slow learners.