Tricky Dick Land

Hero For a Minute:  We’ve entered the Nixonian universe and it’s not pretty.  Yesterday, Andrew McCabe the embattled FBI Deputy Director who had briefly served as the Acting Director after Trump fired former Director Comey, announced that he was stepping down, leaving the FBI effective immediately.  McCabe had planned to leave in March once he attained the requisite years of service to retire at full pension, but is jumping ship early using his accumulated leave time to make up the difference.  Although the mendacious Sarah Huckabee Sanders denies that Trump had anything to do with McCabe’s early departure, her denial is deceptive nonsense.  Trump started speaking out against McCabe during the campaign and has been relentlessly hammering him with nasty tweets ever since.  Trump’s attacks have focused on McCabe’s wife’s failed 2015 campaign to serve in the Virginia legislature and the $600,000 that she received from then Governor McAuliffe’s PAC, a legitimate contribution from her Governor that was appropriately spent on campaign ads. Trump has repeatedly referred to the money as a payoff to McCabe from Hillary Clinton’s friends.  NBC reports that Trump ramped up his hostility to McCabe immediately after firing Comey.  Comey, who had been speaking to FBI agents in California when he learned he was fired, flew back to Washington on the FBI plane that had taken him there in the first place.  When Trump, who would have preferred that Comey fly home commercial, in coach, in a middle seat between two really fat, smelly people possibly from sh-thole countries, found out that he was allowed to use the plane for his return trip he was furious, he yelled at McCabe, wanting to know who had given Comey the permission to return on the FBI plane.  McCabe boldly responded by telling Trump that he hadn’t authorized the flight, but would have if asked.  A vindictive and petty Trump then “turned on McCabe, suggesting he ask his wife how it feels to be a loser” a reference to her election loss. McCabe replied, “OK, sir.”  Trump then hung up the phone.  Last week it had been reported that current FBI Director Christopher Wray had “heroically” said that he would quit rather than fire McCabe after being told by Attorney General Sessions that Trump wanted him ousted ASAP.  Wray’s hero status officially ended yesterday. The newly complicit Wray is using the impending release of an Inspector General report that is expected to be critical of the way that the FBI handled the Hillary Clinton emails as a justification for his change of heart and denies that Trump “persuasion” had anything to do with his decision to accelerate McCabe’s exit. Nevertheless, his Hillary Clinton email excuse sounds eerily similar to the one that Trump initially used for firing Comey.  Not only are these guys deplorable, but they are also woefully unoriginal. 

Next on the Chopping Block:  As expected, the Devon Nunes led House Intelligence Committee voted along party lines to release his classified memo, the one that asserts that the FBI abused the FISA warrant process to illegally obtain permission to surveil Carter Page, the devious Russia loving odd ball who served as an advisor to the Trump campaign and who had many curious and implicating conversations and meetings with Russian spies.  Among other things the Nunes memo argues that the warrant relied on the infamous Steele Dossier, the one that they believe is chock full of false information even though to date most of it has been proven true, given the disclosure of Trump’s porn star payoff, even the salacious parts of the dossier have gained credence. The Nunes argument is that if the warrant was inappropriately granted than there is no basis for the Russian investigation and thus no basis for Special Counsel Mueller’s appointment.  In any case, the FISA warrant process is very rigorous so obtaining the warrant would have required more justification than could have been provided by the Steele Dossier alone.  Significantly, the Nunes memo holds Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Mueller’s boss, responsible for signing off on the “illegally” granted warrant.  Led by Adam Schiff, the Democratic members of the Committee have prepared a detailed response to what they assert are the intentionally misleading points in the Nunes memo.  However in a brazen attempt to control the narrative, the Republicans voted to withhold authorization for the release of the Democratic response for now, giving the Nunes version a head start in the news cycle. Fox News, or at least their sole realist, Sheppard Smith, thinks this is ridiculous.  Last night he called the Nunes memo a “weapon of partisan mass distraction.”  The Nunes memo contains confidential information and can only be released to the public after receiving White House approval, approval that Trump is anxious to provide. The Daily Beast reports that Trump threw a fit on his flight back from Davos when he learned that the Justice Department had sent a letter to Nunes asking him not to release the memo because of concern that its release would irreparably harm national security by revealing critical information about US intelligence gathering practices.  Despite the Justice Department’s reservations, Trump is expected to approve the release of the memo shortly, but probably not until after tonight’s State of the Union address.  To be clear, not only does the memo attack the credibility of the Mueller investigation but it also puts his position in jeopardy by attacking Rosenstein.  The road to Muller goes through Rosenstein and if Trump gets his way, Rosenstein will soon be on the chopping block.  If this sounds absurd, it’s because it is, Trump is out Dicking Nixon.

Russia, Russia, Russia:  The Trump administration has decided not to comply with the sanctions legislation that was passed last year, the legislation that mandated additional sanctions against Russia interfering in the 2016 elections.  Instead, the Treasury released a list of all the Russian oligarchs with a net worth of $1 billion or more, warning those who aren’t already on the existing sanctions list that they could be at some point in the future.  It’s not clear that the “naming and shaming” strategy will satisfy Congress.  In any case, it doesn’t seem that the emboldened Trump cares all that much about meeting the terms of the legislation.  As to that election interference, although Trump doesn’t believe it was or will be much of a problem going forward, yesterday CIA Director Pompeo told the BBC that he’s confident that the Russians will continue to try to interfere in the elections and that they will target the 2018 midterms.  He also said that the US has great intelligence gathering capabilities and that "We deliver nearly every day personally to the president the most exquisite truth that we know from the CIA." He didn’t add that he can’t help it if Trump then takes that truth, twists it, and turns it into lies.  As to that upcoming election, the Republican Chair of the House Appropriations Committee New Jersey’s own Rodney Frelinghuysen has announced that he will not be running for reelection.  He joins the growing list of Republicans who have decided that they won’t want to play in the House sandbox next year, especially if Nancy Pelosi or another Democrat becomes chief playground bully. In 2016 Trump won Frelinghuysen’s suburban district by a very small margin, it’s highly likely that it will swing Democrat in 2018.