So Shakespearean

Much Ado About Very Little:  In response to Freedom of Information requests from several media organizations and breaking with years of tradition of never releasing anything related to any FISA warrant, over the weekend hundreds of pages related to the series of FISA warrant applications that authorized and reauthorized the surveillance of former Trump advisor and current odd ball Carter Page were released.  The heavily redacted material didn’t reveal much more than what had been disclosed in the warring memos written by the two factions of the House Intelligence Committee earlier this year though they pretty much bolstered the Democratic argument that the warrant was justified.   Essentially, though it remains hard to believe that the truly strange and continuously smirking Carter Page was much of a spy, the Russians did try hard to recruit him and may well have succeeded.  The FISA application identified him as “an agent of a foreign power” and said that the FBI believed that Page had been the “subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian Government” in an effort to “undermine and influence the outcome” of the 2016 election.  The Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, especially Chairman Devon Nunes, had made much ado about the fact that the FBI had obscured that they had relied on the “notorious” Steele dossier for the FISA application.  The released information clearly discloses that some of the information included in the FISA application came from Christopher Steele’s materials, but provides far more from other sources and despite Nunes’ assertion to the contrary makes it clear that the Steele Dossier was used and that it was paid for by people supporting an opposing candidate. On Sunday a few notable Republicans, including Congressman Gowdy and Senator Rubio acknowledged that the FISA warrant was justified, that Page was sketchy and had engaged in so many questionable meetings with Russian officials that the surveillance was appropriate.  However Senator Lindsey Graham stuck with the Trump party line calling the FISA warrant flawed because it was, according to him, based on that Steele Dossier “garbage.”  The Page warrant is like one of those Rorschach tests, the ink blots are either Russians in trench coats or innocent “Inspector Gadgets” with wings, your choice.  Personally, I buy into the Russians.  Trump, not so much, after a momentary hiatus, he’s back to calling the Mueller investigation a Democrat inspired witch hunt.  He’s also back to blaming the whole mess on the failure of the Obama administration to act against the Russians and has selectively forgotten that his campaign was told that the Russians were trying to make inroads into his campaign before the 2016 election took place.

The Intelligence Wars:  Senator Rand Paul is one of the few politicians who thinks that Trump’s bromance with Vladimir Putin is a good idea.  The iconoclastic senator also believes that the Helsinki summit was an overwhelming success so when he heard former CIA Director John Brennan call Trump’s cozying up to Putin and reports of some frightening concessions  treasonous he got really angry and decided to do something about it.  He responded by tweeting “Is John Brennan monetizing his security clearance? Is John Brennan making millions of dollars divulging secrets to the mainstream media with his attacks on @realDonaldTrump ?”  Adding “Today I will meet with the President and I will ask him to revoke John Brennan’s security clearance!”  When asked whether Trump was seriously considering revoking Brennan’s clearance, Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded that  the White House is seriously looking into it and was also considering stripping former FBI Director Comey, Former Acting Director McCabe, former National Security Advisor Rice, former Director of National Security Clapper, and former CIA Director Michael Hayden.  When asked about Obama and Biden, she said that they aren’t on the list, for now.   Trump is really furious that all of the targeted individuals have actually criticized him publicly and positively irate about what they’ve said about his Russian chumminess so he’s planning to punish them in the only way that he knows how, or at least the only way that he thinks he can get away with right now, by taking away their security clearance, that is taking away the clearances from those who still have them.  Comey and McCabe’s representatives pointed out that they no longer have security clearances.  Former CIA Director Hayden, a Republican, who was initially a Bush appointee responded by tweeting "I don't go back for classified briefings. Won’t have any effect on what I say or write."  In any case, beyond the vindictiveness of stripping critics of privileges, removing security clearance from former officials limits current officials from reaching out to them for advice and institutional memory but since none of that really matters to Trump, not a bigly problem.  As to criticizing them for “profiting” from their years of service, some of them have written books and appear regularly on “fake news” outlets like CNN and MSNBC, that’s really rich coming from Trump, the man who looks to profit from every activity he undertakes.

The Supremes:  Senator Paul is thoroughly enjoying his moment in the sun so much so that he’s also made it known that he’s considering opposing the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to serve on the Supreme Court.  Paul says that he is “honestly undecided. I am very concerned about his position on privacy and the Fourth Amendment. This is not a small deal for me. This is a big deal.”  Paul probably is truly concerned about Kavanaugh’s position, however he has a habit of holding out before caving so it’s highly likely that he will ultimately vote for Kavanaugh.  Kavanaugh’s road to the court did however hit another speed bump.  Some more of his earlier writings and speeches are now coming to light.  In one of them he questions the unanimous court ruling in the landmark US vs Nixon case, the one where the court ordered Nixon to deliver tape recordings and other subpoenaed materials to a federal district court.  It’s becoming clearer and clearer why Trump selected Kavanaugh as his nominee.  What could be better than a Justice who overturns Roe v Wade and rules that presidential powers are inviolate?  Democratic leader Schumer continues to try to slow walk Kavanaugh’s review process but at some point he will likely get overridden by the wily and scarily effective Mitch McConnell.  Yikes.  

     

Manafort and Cohen:  We’ll have to wait six more days for the start of Paul Manafort’s Virginia trial.  Yesterday, Judge Ellis, the somewhat cantankerous judge overseeing that case responded to his lawyers’ request that they needed lots more time to review the large number of documents that they had recently received from Mueller’s team.  Mueller’s team countered that Manafort was familiar with the documents because they were made up of information provided from his former partner Rick Gates who is now cooperating with prosecutors, and that as such Manafort’s team was well aware of their contents.  The judge was only a wee bit sympathetic to Manafort’s side, he granted them six more days, far less than the months of extra time they had requested.  As had been previously requested by Mueller’s team, the judge also granted immunity to five possible witnesses but contrary to usual practice required their names to be publicly disclosed.  Notably two of them are Manafort’s outside accountants and another two are from Federal Savings Bank, the small Chicago bank that made some of Manafort’s more questionable real estate loans.  Despite early assertions made by Fox TV pundit Tucker Carlson, Tony Podesta, the brother of Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, who ran his own lobbying firm, another one of those firms with some questionable clients and questionable lobbying practices, did not appear on the list.  Jury selection for Manafort’s trial begins today.  Meantime, in New York, after Trump’s lawyers waived any client privilege, a total of twelve of Michael Cohen’s surreptitiously taped audio conversations were turned over to prosecutors. No indication yet as to what’s on those tapes but its reported that some of them involve conversations with people other than Trump. That said the subject of those calls was Trump.