Exfiltration

Mulligan Stew:  It’s election day in North Carolina’s Ninth District for the Congressional seat that has remained open since the 2018 midterms, a result of the discovery that the Republican candidate had committed election fraud by engaging a consultant to harvest absentee ballots from local residents, throwing out the ones cast for his Democratic rival.  The Republican replacement candidate, Dan Bishop, is running against Democrat Dan McCreedy who “lost” the first go round of the election by a narrow margin possibly because of the election fraud perpetrated by the prior Republican candidate and his absentee ballot “farmers.” Although technically this is a do over of the 2018 midterm, it is being viewed as an harbinger of things to come in 2020.  That said, Trump won this North Carolina district by around 10 points in 2016 so though the race is expected to be a squeaker, McCreedy, the Democrat, is far from a shoe in.  To help Bishop, the Republican candidate, Trump held a rally in North Carolina last night; he was supposed to visit Hurricane Dorian victims too, but a local storm and a close lightning strike forced the cancellation of that part of his visit.  Trump spent most of his rally on the usual subjects: himself, draining the swamp he keeps filling, attacking the migrant hordes and the invasion at the border,  disparaging the press and claiming that a Democratic victory would end the world as we know it.  Wouldn’t that last claim be nice?  As to Hurricane Dorian, the #SharpieGate controversy isn’t going away though the focus has now shifted from Trump’s kindergarten scribble to Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross who is reported to have called into officials at NOAA, which is part of the Commerce Department, threatening to have people at the National Weather Service fired for refuting Trump’s claim that Alabama was within the Dorian cone of uncertainty. It turns out that NOAA’s Friday missive, the one that disavowed the Alabama National Weather Service storm clarification, was issued in response to Ross’ threats.  The Friday memo has caused widespread anger within NOAA and the scientific community leading to accusations that NOAA had been “bent to political purposes.” The whole incident which is now being examined by the Commerce Department’s Office of the Inspector General, has being added to the growing list of things being investigated by House Democrats who pretty much initiated the first stage of impeachment proceedings yesterday.  Calling Ross’ threats “an embarrassing new low” a few Democratic House members are calling for his resignation.  Ross, the cranky old guy who frequently falls asleep during meetings, is probably safe for now, not because he should be, but because Trump would rather not have another cabinet seat to fill.  On the swamp front, though Trump insists that he knows nothing about all those US Air Force transport crews refueling at Prestwick Glasgow airport and staying at his Turnberry, Scotland resort, Scottish government documents obtained by the NY Times show the Trump Organization made an arrangement with officials at Glasgow Prestwick Airport that routinely sends flight crews to Trump's Turnberry resort and that Trump "played a direct role in setting up" the deal at the time.  The House Oversight Committee  is investigating that too. 

Spy Story:  Yesterday in a story reported by CNN and now verified by other news outlets, it was revealed that the CIA exfiltrated a highly placed Russian spy from Russia in 2017 over fears that his cover was about to be blown.  That fear was driven in part by concerns that Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and were coming close to exposing the “covert source” as a spy.  The decision to exfiltrate the Kremlin based spy was made shortly after the May 2017 Oval meeting between Trump and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and then Russian Ambassador Kislyak, the meeting in which Trump “accidentally” shared super, duper top secret Israel intel about ISIS with the Russians.  Trump’s oversharing with the Russians, though not specifically about the Kremlin spy, prompted intelligence officials to renew earlier discussions about the potential risk of his exposure causing then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo to conclude that it was time to get him out of Russia.  The former spy now lives, or at least until yesterday when his location and identity was uncovered by an NBC reporter, lived in the Washington, DC area.  Though the spy is now being relocated, Trump, remains in the White House, where he continues to inappropriately declassify and share highly secret information, things like super-secret satellite photos of Iran missile sites, on twitter. Remember when Republicans were so outraged about Hilary Clinton, saying that she couldn’t be trusted because of her personal email server, the one that wasn’t breached by the Russians and that held no super-secret stuff.  Those concerns are so yesterday.    

Footnote:  After a large number of Bahamians were banned from boarding a ferry to the US because they didn’t have visas, visas that typically aren’t required of Bahamians heading to the US, Acting US Customs and Border Head Mark Morgan said that was a mistake made by the ferry operator,  that they should  have been allowed on board for humanitarian purposes.  However, his statement has now been turned on his head by Trump, who, sticking to brand,  said that we “have to be very careful” when letting people from the Bahamas into the United States, saying “I don’t want to allow people that weren’t supposed to be in the Bahamas to come into the United States — including some very bad people and very bad gang members.” Because we all know that slews of gang members headed to the Bahamas after Dorian struck so that they could then turn around and “sneak” back into the US, right?  Does make you wonder if white Bahamians are being subjected to the same reviews as all the other now homeless locals.  So much for that whole humanitarian thing.