The Spy Who Tried

Real Life 007:  Much of the effort to delegitimize the Special Counsel Mueller investigation focuses on Christopher Steele, the respected former British MI5 agent who researched and prepared a dossier on Trump for Fusion GPS, the opposition research group first hired by a the conservative Republican website the Free Beacon and subsequently retained by a law firm representing Clinton’s interests.  To this end, the memo prepared by Trump surrogate Devin Nunes erroneously claims that the FISA warrant that authorized the surveillance of Trump campaign advisor Carter Page relied mostly on Steele’s work, a misdirection that seeks to question the legality of the warrant and impugn the entire Russia investigation.  Additionally, Senators Grassley and Graham want Steele to be investigated for failing to tell the FBI that he had shared his conclusions with several press outlets.  Yesterday evening, the Washington Post, one of those outlets that Steele spoke with before the 2016 election, posted a story chronicling Steele’s journey from investigator-for-hire to Trump alarmist, detailing how, during the course of his GPS Fusion  assignment, he grew increasingly concerned that Trump had been compromised by Putin.  During his twenty year career as a British agent, Steele spent a considerable amount of time working on their Russian desk and in that role developed a number of contacts in high places in Russia.  Leveraging his contacts he uncovered disturbing information about Trump’s financial involvements as well as some “personal activities” that he believed left Trump exposed to Russian manipulation.  He also grew increasingly worried that the Russians were trying to influence the election.  Steele reached out to his FBI contacts, specifically people he had previously worked with when he helped US officials with their successful investigation into the huge FIFA soccer corruption scandal.  During the course of his conversations with the FBI he learned that they had already reached similar conclusions about Trump’s Russia ties through different sources.  In fact, though Steele’s research had been quite thorough, he hadn’t picked up “coffee boy” Papadopoulos’s activities.  Although initially reassured by the FBI’s simultaneous investigation, Steele grew frustrated over what he perceived to be their inaction, particularly concerned that only Hillary’s email server was getting public scrutiny while Trump’s troubles were being hidden from public view. In October 2016 he provided more information to his contacts at the FBI, including a report that had been given to him by his contacts at the State Department, that report which had been written by a journalist who was also a Clinton friend, also claimed that Trump had been involved in some compromising personal behavior with Russian “actors.”  He remained so concerned that nothing was being done to inform the public about Trump’s Russia problems, that he then spoke to several news outlets, including the Washington Post, but only Mother Jones’ David Corn published a pre-election article. The Mother Jones article was entitled “A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump,” a catchy title but one that didn’t gain much traction and did not influence the outcome of the election.  After the election, Steele reached out to Senator McCain, giving him a copy of the now infamous dossier because he felt someone high up in government outside of the FBI  needed to know that Trump, by then the president-elect, could be a bigly problem for the US.  McCain forwarded the dossier to then FBI Director Comey who obviously already knew about Steele’s concerns and was involved in his own investigation.

One Year Later:  Comey is now gone.  Trump together with a large band of Republicans continue to bad mouth Steele, making him out to be a Hillary loving renegade spy of ill repute.  Steele, who has spent time going through his research with Mueller, is hiding out somewhere near London. Trump, who insists that here is no collusion and no obstruction is also doing his best to avoid a Mueller interview, one that might focus on some of those things that Steele uncovered.  At the same time he is also trying to slow walk the Democratic rebuttal memo, the one that points out the inaccuracies in the disputed Nunes memo.  He released the Nunes memo over the objections of Justice and the FBI but has decided that he won’t release the Democrats’ memo unless and until the FBI and Justice signoff on its contents.  To that end he met with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein last night to get his comments, a meeting that must have been fairly awkward given that Rosenstein is another one of his targets.  Democrats remain concerned that their memo won’t be released or that if released it will be so redacted that it will be impossible to read.  Based on what Chief of Staff Kelly had to say, those concerns are valid. In response to a question about the memo Kelly said “where the first one was very clean relative to sources and methods, my initial cut is this one is a lot less clean.” By less clean, he probably means frighteningly accurate.

    

Russia, Russia, Russia:  The White House is still trying to limit the subjects that former strategist Steve Bannon will be allowed to address during his second go round with the House Intelligence Committee.  As a result, Bannon’s return engagement, which was supposed to take place this week, has been put off for at least another week while the Committee tries to get the White House to allow Bannon to answer more than their 14 pre-approved yes-or-no questions, none of which cover anything that took place between Trump’s election and inauguration, Bannon’s time at the White House and communication with Trump after his departure.  In other words the White House is so concerned about what Bannon has to say that they are trying to shut him up without explicitly invoking executive privilege.  While the haggling with the Committee goes on, Bannon is expected to meet with Mueller, that interview is scheduled for next week.  To avoid a threatened Grand Jury appearance Bannon has already promised that he will answer all of Mueller’s questions so at least someone will find out just what the White House is afraid to let Congress hear.  

Funding Update:  Senate leadership appears to be close to doing something relatively unusual, they might actually reach a two year budget deal.  Although, the House has already passed a stopgap funding resolution, their bill is short term and would keep the government open only until March 23.  The House bill focuses on funding the military, with little on the domestic side except for some money for Community Health facilities, a sweetener intended to lure in Democrats.  It will not garner enough votes to pass the Senate.  Assuming Majority Leader McConnell and Minority Leader Schumer work out their  remaining differences, and House honchos Ryan and Pelosi signoff, the Senate will pass a budget bill, sending it down to the House for their vote.  The Freedom Caucus won’t be happy but if enough Democrats sign on the plan should pass.  Notably the  Senate bill will bust a $300 billion hole in budget caps because it will come close to achieving parity in funding between domestic and defense spending and may also fund disaster relief. It may even raise the debt ceiling,  something that must be done pronto because the ceiling will be reached sometime around the first week of March.  Once funding is out of the way, Democrats expect McConnell to fulfil his earlier commitment to begin a floor debate on immigration and DACA.  Oddly enough, the only person hoping that negotiations fail is Trump, he’d rather have another “Democratic” shutdown if he can’t get the harsh immigration changes he wants.  Yesterday in a meeting on the M13 gang problem with law enforcement officials and some members of Congress he stunned attendees  by saying “let’s have a shutdown, we’ll do a shutdown and it’s worth it for our country.”  Virginia Congresswoman Barbara Comstock, one of the most vulnerable Republicans in Congress, from a district with many government workers, was so taken aback that she confronted him by retorting “we don’t need a shutdown over this!”   Though he didn’t join Trump in calling for a shutdown, Chief of Staff Kelly does share his draconian views on immigration.  In remarks to reporters he called out the undocumented “children” who would have qualified for DACA but never applied as “too lazy to get off their asses.” He noted that some people say that they were too afraid to sign up due to their fears that coming out of the shadows would expose their families to deportation, but he thinks that’s just an excuse, he prefers the lazy explanation. Another case of Trumpian discordance, immigrants are bad because they steal jobs from “real” Americans, immigrants are bad because they are “lazy.” What they really mean to say is that immigrants are bad because they aren’t blonde and white and don’t come with trust funds.  

Really:  The Washington Post reports that Trump has asked the Pentagon to make plans for a large scale military parade because he really liked the one he viewed during his Paris visit with President Macron. Of course, he wants his to be much bigger, gold uniforms and some really big missiles would be nice too. Steele was right to be concerned, this is not a good thing for America.