Who Needs Housewives?

Reality Programming:  Yesterday was all hearings all the time.  The day began in the Senate where this week’s episode of the Lindsey Graham Show, also known as the Senate Judiciary Committee featured Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz and his report.  Despite former FBI Director Comey’s assertion that he’d been vindicated by the Horowitz report, the reality is that no one, least of all Comey got off scot free. The FBI, or at least the whole FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance) warrant process, took a major hit.  Though we’ve all been told over the past few years about how hard it is for the FBI to get authorization for a FISA warrant, it turns out that there are plenty of flaws in the process, that once a mistake, intentional or unintentional, is made, renewal warrants can get reissued endlessly as everyone up and down the food chain continues to assume information included in an initial application is true even when eventually proven false. The prime example for this was the warrant authorizing surveillance of Carter Page, the Trump campaign’s quirky foreign affairs “expert.” Despite recurring errors and a reliance on what later turned out to be inaccurate information, the authorization for his surveillance kept getting renewed.  Notably, Information that Carter Page had at times acted as an undercover informant for the CIA wasn’t initially shared with the FBI and, when it finally was, the FBI lawyer responsible for forwarding the information didn’t share it, instead he actually altered an email to conceal it, worse than what I had previously called a “cut and paste” offense.  It’s not clear what his motivation was for that deception but, already gone from the FBI, he’s likely to be indicted for his malfeasance if he hasn’t been already. Notably, Horowitz refused to call him out by name him, but Graham did because why not add another person’s life to the human shredder.  We still don’t know how Carter Page ended up as a CIA informant but it’s likely that before he joined team Trump he’d been caught canoodling with Russian agents, something no one on the Trump campaign team knew or cared about.  Anyway his informant activities did not involve spying on any of the Trumpkins and he unlike Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos and a few others was never prosecuted though he did get lots of TV appearances and has an op-ed in today’s WSJ. The FISA screw ups aside, Horowitz did not find that any politically motivated bias affected “Crossfire Hurricane,” the name of the FBI investigation into team Trump though you wouldn’t know that given how much Trump and his cohorts in crime continue to scream about bias yesterday when, in addition to rightfully criticizing the FISA process, the Committee’s Republicans, most notably Chairman Lindsey Graham focused as much as possible on sexting duo Lisa Page and Peter Strozk’s Trump bashing texts. In fact Graham made them the key feature of his never ending, rambling opening remarks.  Funny thing about that is that neither he nor his Republican committee members cited any of the the texts from the pro-Trump crowd.  Wonder why?

Always Rudy:  FISA problems aside, there were some other notable takeaways from Horowitz’s testimony.  First and foremost the independent Horowitz stands by his conclusion that there is no evidence that political bias affected the investigation into the Trump team. He clearly is not pleased that Attorney General Barr doubts that conclusion.  He, like the rest of us, doesn’t see the purpose of the additional investigation by Barr’s handpicked guy US Attorney John Durham.  Moreover, he was surprised by Durham’s statement dissing the conclusions of his investigation because the two had discussed the rationale behind the opening of Crossfire Hurricane.  Though Durham had told him that he didn’t necessarily agree that the information provided by Australia, the unnamed friendly country that tipped the FBI to George Papadopoulos’ drunken bragging about Russian plans to offer up emails to the Trump team which was the premise for the opening of an investigation, warranted the “full” investigation that the FBI opened, Durham agreed that there had been enough evidence to support the opening of a  “preliminary” investigation.  And as Horowitz notes in his report, “investigative steps such as confidential human source activity that occurred here are allowed under a preliminary investigation or full investigation."  Under questioning from the Democratic members of the committee Horowitz revealed that he’s still investigating the allegations that back in 2016 one or more NY FBI agents leaked information about Anthony Weiner’s laptop and its stash of Hillary emails to Rudy Giuliani.  He’s got lots of call records that show that conversations took place but still doesn’t have information about what was said on those calls, but he’s still working on it!  And though, the law doesn’t allow Justice Department Inspectors General to initiate investigations into the actions of Justice Department lawyers, other Inspectors General do not operate under similar restrictions and it appears that some of them are already looking into things related to Ukraine.  Getting back to Rudy, who has now settled his most recent divorce, apparently his upcoming “documentary” on Ukraine “corruption” may have an air date. Who needs housewife programming when you’ve got Rudy?

Prime Time:  As the day turned to evening, action shifted to the House where the Jerry Nadler led Judiciary Committee held hearings on the articles of impeachment against Trump.  That process had little to do with actual drafting and a whole lot more to do with pontificating and fire breathing.  Each member of the committee got to say whatever they wanted to say about the whole impeachment thing.  Democrats who talked about the need to defend the Constitution against the Trump crime wave were mostly somber, Republicans not so much.  Representative Louis Gohmert, one of Trump’s designated flamethrowers actually called out the Whistleblower by name during his rant.  The committee is expected to vote on both of the articles of impeachment today before sending them to the floor for a full House vote.  It doesn’t appear than any Republicans will crossover to the pro-impeachment side though it’s likely that a few Democrats will vote against.  That said, Speaker Pelosi is confident that she will hold most of her caucus and that she has the votes to impeach.  For his part former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is on Team Impeach, announced last night that he’s setting aside $10 million to help purple/red district Democrats who get targeted by Republican PACs and their ads for voting for impeachment.  Speaker Pelosi is all in on that, she responded by saying ““In 2018, Mayor Bloomberg was a critical ally in helping House Democrats regain the majority. Now, the stakes are even higher as we work to make health care more affordable by reducing the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs, increase wages and root out corruption. We welcome and thank Mayor Bloomberg for his support.”  The other Democrats running for president, or at least the ones who aren’t billionaires, might find Mayor Mike’s money problematic but the every pragmatic Pelosi gets it value and is happy to have some of it.

Other News:  During his Tuesday night rally in Pennsylvania, Trump made a baseless claim about Lisa Page and Peter Strozk saying that he’d heard that Strozk needed a restraining order “to keep him away from Lisa? That’s what I heard. I don’t know if it’s true. The fake news will never report it, but it could be true.” It’s not true, but it will provide more fodder for any lawsuits that either of the two might want to file against Trump, at least Kellyanne Conway’s husband George feels that way.  He tweeted out all the grounds that would justify such a lawsuit, maybe next he’ll take the case?  Lev Parnas is in some more trouble this morning for failing to disclose to Federal prosecutors that he’d received $1 million from someone in Russia in September. The payment raises “provocative” new questions about the nature of the work Parnas and his buddy Igor Fruman were doing and who they were doing it for and could get Parnas’ bail revoked.  It also makes it unlike that Parnas  will be available to spill his guts to Congress anytime soon.  A skeptical person might thing that was the reason that the Barr run Justice department disclosed this new information.  Michael Cohen, the Trump lawyer/fixer from an earlier chapter of this saga is now asking a judge to reduce his sentence in appreciation for his continuing efforts helping out prosecutors.  On the Ukraine front, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff revealed that VP Pence’s national security assistant Jennifer Williams, who has already testified, submitted additional classified evidence to House impeachment investigators about a September 18 phone call between Pence and Ukraine President Zelensky. Schiff is asking Pence to declassify the information saying that there is no “legitimate basis to keep it secret.”  Surprise, surprise Pence is not cooperating.  In still other news Israel will be holding another election, that makes three if you’re counting, because their Democracy is even more polarized than ours.  And, though he sees “good people on both sides” and likes to use and tweet anti-Semitic tropes, Trump wants us all to think that he’s leading the war against anti-Semitism.  To that end he appears to be defining Judaism as a nationality rather than just a religion, saying that will help him clamp down on anti-Semitic actions on college campuses.  Clamping down on college anti-Semitism, definitely a good thing.  Defining Judaism as a nationality not so much.  What’s next?  Yellow stars on lapels?