#(and then obviously does not recuse himself and votes yes)

[bleachbleachbleach]

I don’t think I’ll ever be over the fact that Hitsugaya was, by virtue of Aizen’s letter, technically one of the primary/only suspects in Aizen’s murder and the overthrow of Soul Society. Because of the options, he has gotta be… one of the squarest (second only to Komamura, though at the time that guy had a BUCKET ON HIS HEAD). 

At the same time, though, Hitsugaya also manages to engage in only the MOST sus behavior.

Like, can you imagine the decadal Gotei audit. Some paper-pusher in 1st who was assigned to some other non-Aizen, non-ryoka project during the Soul Society arc gets put on the audit committee and he, like most of the Gotei, knows nothing about the ryoka invasion or the facts around the three captains’ “disappearances” some time ago (only as much as was reported in the SC). And he’s going through people’s personnel files and reading stuff like, what 🙃 the fuck,,,

Auditor: Do you have a connection to 5th Division Vice Captain Hinamori? Answer yes or no.

Hitsugaya: Yes.

Auditor: Describe the nature of that relationship.

Hitsugaya: We’re acquainted.

Auditor: Be more specific.

Hitsugaya: What are you getting at?

Auditor: Were you her arresting officer in August 2001?

Hitsugaya: Oh. Yes.

Auditor: And you assumed control of the 5th Division leadership shortly thereafter? What about 3rd Division Vice Captain Kira? You were his arresting officer as well?

Hitsugaya: Yes, though I’m not sure what that has to do—

Auditor: And SHORTLY THEREAFTER, did you not infiltrate the 3rd Division grounds and assault 3rd Captain Ichimaru?

Hitsugaya: “Infiltrate” is a little—

Auditor: We have third party eyewitness accounts stating that not only did you draw your sword, you released shikai, resulting in—

Hitsugaya: Resulting in nothing!

Auditor: AND IN A SUBSEQUENT ALTERCATION INVOLVING THIRD DIVISION VICE CAPTAIN, WERE YOU NOT 

SUSPICIOUSLY PRESENT FOR THE DETONATION AND DESTRUCTION OF A CIVILIAN BUILDING????

[Bleach e303]

[anghraine]

Two separate bipartisan bills to protect Mueller is interesting. Lindsey Graham working with Cory Booker is one thing—Graham's right-wing, but notorously hostile to both Trump and Russia (and foreign policy bffs with John McCain). 

But Tillis, as far as I understand, is much more of a rhetorical party-liner. However, he also narrowly won his seat in a swing state (North Carolina) and his fellow senator is Richard Burr, who is more or less decently handling the Senate Intelligence Committee’s separate investigation.

Still, the immediate context:

1) Congress overwhelmingly voted for sanctions that the WH and State Department angrily lobbied against, and for sharply restricting presidential power wrt sanctions.

Trump signed it with a whiny screed about how bad it was and how it preventing him from making Good Deals and something about what a great company he built yes this was about Russia sanctions. The general view, I think, is that he only signed it because the political fallout would have been so disastrous if he hadn’t. That is entirely possible! Clearly that’s what has preserved Mueller so far. 

But, uh, only two people in the Senate and three(?) in the House voted against. Congress has the power to override a presidential veto if enough members support it, and clearly that’s the case here. Vetoing the sanctions would have been the political equivalent of stabbing himself in the lung and wouldn’t have prevented them from going through anyway.

2) Trump has been carrying on a weeks-long humiliation of Jeff Sessions in order to pressure him to resign. Now, Sessions is an ultra-racist, ultra-everythingist nightmare. But if he’s this weird evil Keebler elf, he’s the Senate’s evil elf, and you probably couldn’t find a senator of any party who isn’t pissed at Trump’s treatment of him. 

(All the more so because Sessions was really the first establishment figure to back Trump and to stick by him through all the ups and downs of the campaign; Sessions gave him a legitimacy with the GOP that otherwise he would never have had. That was awful, obviously, but it makes Trump’s attempts to throw him under the bus even more repugnant.)

On top of that, the explicit reason for Trump’s behaviour is that Sessions recused himself from the Russia probe. He did it because he had undisclosed contacts with Kislyak, who is apparently so forgettable that nobody remembers their meetings with him! Anyway, Sessions admitted that it didn’t quiiiite square with his Senate testimony and recused himself(—as an aside, the FBI was absolutely certain he’d have to recuse himself sooner or later because of Something Classified; it wasn’t just an unfortunate choice of words). That left the deputy, Rod Rosenstein—who hadn’t covered himself with glory so far—to call the shots, while under intense pressure for his own part in the Comey firing. It was Rosenstein who appointed Mueller.

3) So Trump has been attacking Sessions for recusing himself from the investigation, which in Trump’s view was not necessary (it clearly was) and unfair to him(?). If Session resigns, Trump can nominate a more pliable Attorney General without Russia ties(...ideally) who would then be able to override Rosenstein. 

Except! Appointments have to be approved by the Senate and the relevant committees—that’s where the “she persisted” meme comes from (Elizabeth Warren’s opposition to Sessions’ own appointment in the Senate). So if Session resigns or Trump fires him, Trump’s nominee would have to go through the Senate again. 

The GOP Senate was playing nice in the first few months (largely for the Supreme Court seat—one of the more disgusting political victories of our time—and legislative goals). However, Senator Grassley (whose committee oversees the relevant appointments) announced that if, theoretically, the president were considering judicial appointments, WELP THEIR SCHEDULE IS FULL. FOR MONTHS. WHAT A PITY

On top of that, the Senate agreed altogether that their recess is not actually a recess, but will in fact be in session for one(1) minute every three days, and therefore the president can’t make recess appointments. You know, just if it so happened that the president was considering bypassing the Senate in some unknown appointment.

4) Trump was either passive or actually counter-productive as a partner in getting healthcare passed. In fact, apparently the Interior’s threat to fuck over Alaska to pressure Murkowski is now getting investigation as the obvious political corruption it is.

(Probably won’t go anywhere, but the fact that it’s happening at all is Not Good.)

5) Trump’s approval rating is crashing further. Worse, polls are showing it finally dip among Trump’s core demographics (white w/o college education, white men). 

Rasmussen, a very Trump-friendly poll, showed it dropping below 40% for (I think) the first time. Meanwhile, Quinnipiac showed it dropping to 33%, and it’s increasingly looking like Democrats are headed into the midterms with a strong advantage.

And there’s stuff like the anti-trans military ban, where the joint chiefs’ response basically comes down to “lol make me.” 

So Republicans’ increasing willingness (esp in the Senate, where they’re more secure) to tell Trump to go fuck himself is ... interesting. And someone like Tiller proposing legal protection for Mueller’s investigation alongside a fairly obscure Democrat is—well, difficult not to see as part of a broader trend.

Not that the GOP Senate isn’t perfectly ready to hold hands with Trump when it comes to their shitty agenda, or that they won’t do horrible things in the future. But it does seem vaguely promising.

[sewingscars]

Diversion!!!

To all the trans military and veterans who have fought for our freedom, WE SEE YOU AND WE THANK YOU!!! . 

We will NOT be posting any articles about the Anus-Mouthed-Leathery-Tangerine's tweets from his shitter. This is not to devalue or distract from this mornings news. On the contrary, it is simply a reminder.

 This piece of shit H.R.2796 - Civil Rights Uniformity Act of 2017 was introduced into Congress on 6-7-2017. 

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/2796 

.Civil Rights Uniformity Act of 2017 

This bill prohibits the word "sex" or "gender" from being interpreted to mean "gender identity," and requires "man" or "woman" to be interpreted to refer exclusively to a person's genetic sex, for purposes determining the meaning of federal civil rights laws or related federal administrative agency regulations or guidance. 

No federal civil rights law shall be interpreted to treat gender identity or transgender status as a protected class unless it expressly designates "gender identity" or "transgender status" as a protected class. 

. 

YESTERDAY DAY 187- 1/ Senate Republicans secured the 51 votes needed to advance their health care bill after Pence cast the tie-breaking vote. The Senate will now begin debating, amending, and ultimately voting in the coming days on the future of Obamacare. The vote was too close to call until the last moments, when several Republican holdouts announced their support, including Rand Paul, Dean Heller, Rob Portman, and Shelley Moore Capito. Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski both voted against the motion to proceed. (New York Times / Washington Post / CNN)

 .

 2/ The Senate will now have 20 hours of debate the health care bill, evenly split between the two sides. Senators can bring up and debate an unlimited number of amendments to the bill as long as they are “germane” to the bill and would not add to the budget deficit. Then a period known as vote-a-rama happens, where Senators votes on the amendments. The first amendment will be the Obamacare Repeal Reconciliation Act, which repeals most of the Affordable Care Act without a replacement. If that fails (as is expected), Senators will then vote on the Better Care Reconciliation Act, which cuts massive portions of the ACA. Because of reconciliation rules, these amendments would require 60 votes to pass. If BCRA fails, Senators will consider what is being called a “skinny repeal,” which repeals the individual mandate penalty, the employer mandate penalty, and the tax on medical devices. (New York Times / Vox / Time / NBC News) John McCain returned to the Senate for the health care vote after being diagnosed with brain cancer last week. McCain’s vote is critical to today’s procedural vote. His absence would have left Senate Republicans with no margin of error. (Washington Post / Politico) Senate Republicans don’t know what’s in their health care plan, but they voted anyway on the motion to proceed. About a half-dozen senators were publicly undecided about whether to start debate on rolling back the Affordable Care Act. Several senators have said they want a “replace” plan ready to go before voting “yes.” An agreed upon replace plan is not in place. The bill will have to pass the House before making its way to Trump’s desk. McConnell forced the procedural vote to put every senator on record. (Politico / Vox / CNN). 

.

 3/ Trump ripped Jeff Sessions on Twitter, calling him “very weak” when it comes to investigating Hillary Clinton. Trump has repeatedly taken aim at Sessions in recent days, leading to speculation that it’s just a matter of time before the attorney general resigns or is fired. The recent tweets come a day after Trump publicly described Sessions as “beleaguered.” (NBC News / CNN) 

.

 4/ Later in the day, Trump added that he is “very disappointed in Jeff Sessions” but won’t say if he’ll fire him. Trump has previously discussed replacing Jeff Sessions in a move viewed by some of Trump’s advisors as part of a strategy for firing special counsel Robert Mueller in order to end his investigation into the campaign’s efforts to coordinate with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election. Sessions recently asked White House staff how he could patch up relations with Trump, but that went nowhere. Instead, Trump floated longtime ally Rudy Giuliani as a possible replacement for Sessions. (Wall Street Journal / Washington Post / Associated Press)

 .

 5/ Sessions is “pissed” at Trump for the attacks, but doesn’t plan to quit. Senate Republicans have said that attacks on Sessions, who spent 20 years in the Senate, strain their relationship with Trump. Many GOP senators have expressed annoyance with Trump’s tweets, saying “I really have a hard time with this” and "I’d prefer that he didn’t do that. We’d like Jeff to be treated fairly.” Senators have also been nonplussed by Trump’s criticism of Sessions’ decision to recuse himself, saying “Jeff made the right decision. It’s not only a legal decision, but it’s the right decision.“ Trump’s senior policy adviser Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon also support Sessions. (The Daily Beast / McClatchy DC)

 .

 6/ Anthony Scaramucci says it’s "probably” correct that Trump wants Sessions gone. The new White House communications director didn’t want to speak for the president, but said he thinks Trump has a “certain style” and he is “obviously frustrated.” (The Hill)

 .

 7/ Senate Democrats are planning a procedural move to prevent Trump from making recess appointments by forcing the Senate to hold “pro forma” sessions – brief meetings, often only a few minutes. Democrats are worried Trump could attempt to bypass Congress and appoint a new attorney general and undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing probe into alleged Russian meddling in the US election during the planned August recess. (CNN / Reuters) 

.

 8/ The Senate Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena to Paul Manafort to testify in its Russia probe. Manafort had agreed to provide notes of the meeting at Trump Tower last year with the Russian lawyer, according to a person close to the investigation. Committee chairman Chuck Grassley and ranking member Dianne Feinstein said they had been “unable to reach an agreement for a voluntary transcribed interview with the Judiciary Committee” with Manafort. (ABC News / Politico) . UPDATE: **The Senate Judiciary Committee has dropped the subpoena against Paul Manafort **and plans are underway for the former Trump campaign chairman to speak to investigators. (Politico) 

. 

9/ Parents are angry after Trump delivered a politicized speech to tens of thousands of boy scouts. Over 35 minutes, Trump threatened to fire one of his Cabinet members, attacked Obama, dissed Hillary Clinton, marveled at the size of the crowd, warned the boys about the “fake media,” mocked the polls, and said more people would say “Merry Christmas.“ Responding to criticism, the Boy Scouts of America insisted it was "wholly non-partisan and does not promote any one position, product, service, political candidate or philosophy.” (Washington Post / BBC) Trump joked he would fire Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price if the health care bill doesn’t pass. “Hopefully he’s going to get the votes tomorrow to start on the path to kill this thing called ObamaCare that’s really hurting us,” Trump said during a speech to Boy Scouts at the 2017 National Jamboree. “He better get them, otherwise I’ll say, ‘Tom, you’re fired.’” (The Hill) 

. 

10/ Trump confirmed a covert CIA program while tweeting that the Washington Post had “fabricated the facts” about his decision to end a program aiding Syrian rebels fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad. Trump was referring to a story about ending an Obama program where the CIA armed and trained moderate Syrian rebels, a move long sought by the Russian government. (Washington Post / Politico) 

.

 11/ A federal judge ruled that Trump’s voter fraud commission may request voter roll data from states. Opponents contend the effort could infringe on privacy rights. The judge said the lawsuit did not have grounds for an injunction because the commission was not technically an action by a government agency – the commission is an advisory body that does not have legal authority to compel states to hand over the data. (Reuters) 

. 

12/ Jared Kushner bought real estate from an oligarch’s firm represented by the Russian lawyer. Lev Leviev was a business partner at Prevezon Holdings, where Natalia Veselnitskaya acted as legal counsel. Prevezon was being investigated by Preet Bharara for money laundering before he was fired by Trump in March. Prevezon Holdings attempted to use Manhattan real estate deals to launder money stolen from the Russian treasury. In 2015, Kushner paid $295m to acquire several floors of the old New York Times building at 43rd street in Manhattan from the US branch of Leviev’s company. The Prevezon case was abruptly settled two days before it was due in open court in May for $6 million with no admission of guilt on the part of the defendants. (The Guardian) 

. 

13/ A White House press aide resigned after Anthony Scaramucci said he planned to fire him over alleged leaks. Michael Short is the first to leave after Scaramucci promised all aides “a clean slate” and “amnesty” to prove that they were not leaking. “This is the problem with the leaking,” Scaramucci told reporters outside the White House. “This is actually a terrible thing. Let’s say I’m firing Michael Short today. The fact that you guys know about it before he does really upsets me as a human being and as a Roman Catholic.” Short, who initially said Tuesday that he hadn’t yet been informed of any decision, resigned Tuesday afternoon. (Washington Post / Politico / The Hill) 

. 

DAY188 - Trump TWEETS ( NO official report, NO press release, NO executive order) that trans people are banned from the military. The Internet explodes. Everything that has been happening is no longer discussed. His diversion has been executed perfectly. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. #lightingahellfiretocoverashitstorm

[alex51324]

Comey Firing and Trump-Russia--an explainer

OK, my previous “explainer” on this topic was basically just keyboard smashing, but here’s the real one.  I’m sure everyone has heard something about this story, but in this post, I will attempt to cover the basics of what happened, its historical context, and what it may mean for the future. 

What happened:

Trump fired James Comey, the director of the FBI.  Comey has been widely criticized by Democrats for his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, which also prompted concerns about his independence in investigating Trump-Russia.  However, he is generally regarded as honest and capable, apart from this one glaring lapse, and people in a position to know how the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation reported no major red flags suggesting that he was shielding Trump or his associates.  

Trump and his team initially claimed that they fired Comey due to his handling of the Clinton investigation.  This was greeted by howls of laughter from liberal and moderate commentators.  “Does he really expect anyone to believe that?” was the gist of the response.  

It quickly emerged that the answer was “No,” as Trump proceeded to admit, on national television with reporter Lester Holt,  “And in fact when I decided to just do it I said to myself, I said, “You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.”  (That is a real quote.)  He also explained that he was not acting on the advice of Attorney General Jeff Sessions or his Deputy, Rod Rosenstein, even though the administration initially used statements from both men to justify the decision.  He stated specifically that he had made this decision himself and was going to do it regardless of advice.  Additionally, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders stated in the press briefing that they expected that the firing would bring the investigation to a rapid conclusion.  

These statements by Trump were widely reported as being ridiculously self-incriminating--in essence, a deliberate, on-camera admission of obstruction of justice.  (Link is to New Yorker magazine as just one example of such reporting, chosen because it’s a well-known mainstream source.)  It is not clear why Trump would do this; the theory I find most compelling is that he felt that saying he acted upon advice from people who knew more and were not actively being investigated by Comey made him appear weak.  Another possible factor is that Rod Rosenstein may have threatened to resign if Trump kept blaming him for this clusterfuck of a decision.  

So why did he actually fire Comey?  I mean, obviously, but why right now?

Theory one:  Comey ramping up investigation

The most widely-reported and reliably-sourced reason is that Comey had asked the Justice Department (that is, Rod Rosenstein, since Sessions is recused from Trump-Russia) for more resources.   The White House and the Justice Department deny this; however, the source says that Comey told lawmakers about this request, and lawmakers have confirmed that he did so.  Those lawmakers are, unsurprisingly, Democrats, but Republicans who have defended Comey’s firing have not denied that he asked for more resources. 

Theory two:  Grand juries 

Another major thing that happened around the same time as the Comey firing is that it was confirmed that a grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia subpoena’d associates of Mike Flynn.  (Flynn is the one who was National Security advisor for 20-odd days and who Sally Yates warned Trump about. That guy.)  It had been rumored for some time that there was at least one, possibly several, grand juries empaneled on Trump-Russia, but these subpoenas made it possible to discuss them on rigorously-fact-checked mainstream media.  

A bit of background on grand juries:  The purpose of a grand jury is to investigate whether or not there sufficient evidence of a crime to bring charges.  If the answer to that question is “Yes,” the defendant is said to have been indicted.  While “indicted” is used colloquially as a synonym for nailing someone’s ass to the wall, a grand jury does not actually rule on guilt or innocence, only on the need for a further trial.  An indictment, in the technical sense, means not “this person is guilty as fuck,” but “this person looks guilty as fuck.”   Grand juries are usually used in cases that are large, complex, and potentially vulnerable to interference--public corruption and organized crime are the two commonly-cited examples.  The equivalent for a more run-of-the-mill case is a pretrial hearing.  As a result of these factors, grand juries operate in secrecy; usually, the first the public learns is when an indictment is handed down.  

Therefore, while we now know that there is at least one grand jury looking at Mike Flynn, we do not know anything else about it.  We don’t know if there is just the one, or if there are others.  We don’t know if they’re looking just at Flynn, or at other Trump associates (or even Trump himself).  We don’t know exactly what aspects of Flynn’s conduct they’re examining, or what potential crimes they may be interested in.  

Now, with all that out of the way, there is a highly-speculative rumor going around that Trump ordered Comey to make those grand juries go away, and he was fired because he refused.  The source there--the Palmer Report--is a guy who has reported a lot of rumors, and sources his articles almost exclusively from other people who report rumors.  He’s been right a few times.  (For instance, about the existence of the grand juries.)  He’s also been wrong a bunch of times.  (For instance, he’s said at least three different times that the first Trump-Russia arrests “could be coming next week.”)  So, to be clear, this is a pretty active rumor--lots of the social-media rumor peddlers are saying it, including ones a bit more cautious than Palmer--but it’s still just a rumor. 

However, we do know that there is that one grand jury, and that the Comey firing happened at the same time that the mainstream media started talking about it.  

Theory three: The other subpoena

Another thing that happened this week is that Mike Flynn, himself, was subpoena’d by the Senate Intelligence Committee to produce documents relating to his contacts with Russian officials during the campaign and the transition.  Flynn had refused to produce these documents after a formal (but non-mandatory) request, and this was known prior to the Comey firing.  The subpoena was issued after the Comey firing, and the committee vote to issue it was unanimous.  More on this below, under “So what happens now?”

Synthesis:  the Upshot  

So, taking these three reasons together, it’s reasonable to say that Trump-Russia was heating up.  We cannot say which--if any--of these developments was decisive in Trump’s firing Comey.  However, it is also safe to say that, if he had been the least bit concerned about the optics, this week was a particularly explosive time to make this move--there is no time Trump could have fired the person leading a major investigation into himself without looking suspicious, but almost any other time would have been better than this week.  And that, more than anything, is what’s  driving the speculation that someone was dangerously close to something.  

Has anything like this ever happened before?

The short answer is, No.  The long answer is, there are two possible historical parallels, neither of them exact.  

One important detail to know here is that, after Watergate, a ten-year term for FBI directors was instituted.  (Comey was about 3 years into that term.)  This term was deliberately set up to span at least two presidential terms, in order to protect the independence of the FBI, in case a situation arose again where a sitting president needed to be investigated.  So, you know, clearly it didn’t work, but this is a thing that government officials still reeling from Watergate thought nobody would be brazen enough to do.  So that’s one data point.

The second data point is the only other time a President fired an FBI director.  That President was Bill Clinton, and the FBI director was William Sessions (no relation).  Clinton was, like Trump, a fairly new President--it was July of his first year.  (The Whitewater investigation, incidentally, did not open until the next year.)  The stated reasons for Sessions’s firing were tax evasion, refusal to cooperate with an investigation into his home mortgage, and using FBI funds for and resources for personal matters.  These reasons were factually substantiated, unconnected to Clinton himself, and were not things that Clinton had previously applauded Sessions for doing. Both the previous and the current Attorneys General had raised concerns about Sessions’s conduct, and he was given an opportunity to quietly step down, which he chose not to do.  Nevertheless, the move was regarded as somewhat controversial.  

Finally, the other historical comparison to be made here is the Saturday Night Massacre, of Watergate fame.  In October of 1973, Archibald Cox was the Special Prosecutor running the Watergate investigation.  He subpoena’d President Nixon to produce tapes made in the Oval Office.  (Nixon routinely taped his own conversations, even when they dealt with incriminating subjects.)  Nixon refused to produce them, and ordered his Attorney General to fire Cox.  (Nixon did not have the power to fire Cox himself.)  The AG refused and resigned.  Nixon then ordered his Deputy AG to fire Cox.  That man also refused and resigned.  (If you’re keeping a scorecard, those are the two jobs held by Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein today.)  He then ordered the third-ranking official at the Department of Justice to resign, and that man followed orders.  His name was Robert Bork, who was later nominated but not confirmed to the Supreme Court.  (If you’re protesting anywhere in or around the Justice Department, you might want to consider a sign that just says “BORK.”  I promise that Sessions and Rosenstein will understand that reference.)  

So what happens now?

Nobody actually knows what’s going to happen next.  There is a vast amount of tea-leaf-reading going on.  Loads of lawmakers and other officials have made statements (or requests, or demands), and every political commentator in the media world is trying to read the tea leaves.  Here are the big questions, and what I think are the major indicators.

Who is going to head up to FBI now?  

Currently, the former Deputy Director, Andrew McCabe, is Acting Director.  This occurs automatically when an FBI director leaves office.  Trump gets to nominate the new director, who must be confirmed by the Senate.  There’s a widely-reported list of four candidates being interviewed this weekend.  Democrats, particularly in the Senate, are strategizing about how to handle this, since, obviously, it’s a problem that Trump will be picking the guy investigating him.  One of the most-talked-about strategies is refusing to confirm a nominee for the position until a Special Prosecutor is appointed.  It is not completely clear how the Democrats could do this, given that the Republicans will control the process, but options include either getting 2 Republican Senators to stand with them, or using arcane procedural rules to grind the process to a halt.  

So--Special Prosecutor?

Note:   The terms Special Prosecutor, Independent Commission, Independent Prosecutor, Special Counsel, and so forth, have different technical meanings, and the lawmakers and other officials discussed below are probably making very careful and deliberate choices about which option to call for.  However, for our purposes, it’s sufficient to lump them together as “an investigator or investigative body Trump doesn’t get to pick and can’t fire.”

Calls for a Special Prosecutor, Independent Commission, or similar have been going on for some time now, but the Comey firing has added to the sense of urgency surrounding the matter.  Up until now, Republican lawmakers and officials have been united in saying that one is not necessary, but now two Senate Republicans (Heller and McCain) have joined the call, as have at least three Republicans in the House.   20 State Attorneys General have also called for a special counsel.   Democratic leaders have said that Rosenstein, the Deputy AG, should either appoint a special prosecutor or resign.  Rosenstein, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Richard Burr (the Senate Intel chair) have all stated that they don’t see a need for one.  

It is, frankly, anybody’s guess at this point whether this will be the thing that finally gets us a special prosecutor. 

Senate Investigation--is shit getting real?

As noted above, after the Comey firing, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted unanimously to subpoena Mike Flynn’s documents.  This is notable because Republicans on the committee have been slow to take any decisive action.  An unnamed official stated that this move was meant to send a message to Trump that he is now on thin ice with his party.  Some have even speculated that it actually means they are done covering for him.

The other big thing going on with the Senate is that the Intelligence Committee are now getting records from the Treasury Department’s money laundering unit about Trump’s financial ties to Russia.  This request was made last month, prior to Comey’s firing, but the Wall Street Journal is now reporting that they are getting them, and they are red-hot. 

We can say for certain that the Senate investigation has made some big steps this week.  They made them after the Comey firing, not before, so it makes sense to interpret them as responses to (rather than causes of), Comey’s dismissal.  However, anything anyone can say about why they did it or what it means is interpretation, not fact.  

FBI Investigation: where does it go from here?

The other big question people are asking is whether Comey’s firing will hamstring the FBI’s investigation, by making FBI agents fear for their jobs, or strengthen their resolve to investigate Trump thoroughly.  Acting Director McCabe, testifying before the Senate, contradicted Trump’s claim that Comey had lost the respect and confidence of FBI agents, stating that he “enjoys broad support” within the agency.  McCabe’s willingness to publicly contradict Trump is viewed with optimism by many left-leaning commentators, as a sign that he can lead an independent investigation.  We’ll have to wait to see how that turns out.  

Finally, a new thread to the investigation

Finally, the firing of James Comey gives everyone involved a new thing to investigate, namely, whether the firing of James Comey was, in itself, an act of obstructing justice.  Obstruction of justice was, of course, the charge laid in the first of four Articles of Impeachment against Richard Nixon.  

And one more Watergate “rhyme”

Comey learned about his own firing when the news came up on a TV screen behind him as he was speaking to a group of FBI recruits.  While that is a massive dick move, there’s no law against being a massive dick, so you may wonder why it matters.  It matters because the GOP would really rather not be branded as a massive bag of dicks--they have no systematic objection to doing things that are massively dickish, such as taking away healthcare from 24 million people, but they want to be able to clutch their pearls and go “well I never” when anyone dares to point out that they if it walks like a massive dick, and quacks like a massive dick, it’s probably a massive dick.  

The bit where history rhymes a lot is that on the “smoking gun” tape, in which Nixon admitted to obstruction of justice, he also swore a lot.  Like, a lot.  Like, in comparison, the previous paragraph seems like something you could read to a Sunday school class.  Many Republicans at the time felt that they just might have been able to get away with defending Nixon’s actual criminal behavior, if only he hadn’t been such a massive dick on the tape.  

Times have changed--see, for instance, “pussy tape”--but it does seem plausible that the, again, massively dickish way that this firing was carried out could be the last straw for some in the GOP.  And if it is, I’ll take it.  

[movietvtechgeeks]

Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/understanding-devin-nunes-memo-affect-donald-trump/

Understanding the Devin Nunes memo and affect on Donald Trump

Devin Nunes is currently hogging the American political media spotlight with Donald Trump with what's being called "the Nunes memo." By now, most of you have heard about it, but what exactly is it and why is it causing so much fuss. Sadly, everything Trump does creates a big media fuss, so it's every easy to get numb to it all, but this is one fuss that's worth paying attention to and understanding. If you recall, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) is the guy who jumped on the Donald Trump train when it came to the Barack Obama wiretapping claim the president made on Twitter about one year ago. It was actually the weekend after his first major speech to Congress. Nunes was the run who rushed to the White House in the middle of the night (yes, it's got the drama of All the President's Men) and said he had just received papers that he then delivered to the White House the next morning. It turned out that the White House had actually given him the papers to give back to them with a big press conference flourish. It's 'that' guy, which should give many people pause about why he's suddenly running this investigation again since he was recused from it. The four-page document, prepared by Nunes, alleges serious abuses of power by the FBI during its investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. House Republicans and conservative media see it as proof of President Donald Trump’s long-running allegations of FBI bias against him; Democrats say it’s deeply misleading, twisting and cherry-picking classified intelligence to make the president seem right. The memo quickly became issue No. 1 on Monday evening, when House Republicans voted to release it to the public. The vote kicks things to Trump, who has until Saturday to decide to release it — over the FBI’s objections — or keep it classified. Democrats are trying to slow down this process, but it’s not clear how successful they’ll be. The stakes are big. The memo reportedly discusses classified intelligence in depth; its release could compromise that data. Worse, its contents could be used by President Trump to clean house at the Department of Justice — firing top officials he perceives as insufficiently loyal, like Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and shutting down the Mueller probe. The memo, in essence, raises this question: Is there an anti-Trump bias at the FBI, and if so, does it justify placing the historically independent bureau under Trump’s personal control? It’s a question with profound implications for the health of American democracy, and one that explains why the fight over the memo’s release is the fight of the moment. What follows is a guide to the biggest issues about the Nunes memo, based on what we know about it publicly. Just who is Devin Nunes, and why did he prepare this memo? What does he get out of it? Devin Nunes is the chair of the House Intelligence Committee and a longtime Trump ally. He served on Trump’s transition team after the election and defended former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn when he was (credibly, it turns out) accused of lying about his contacts with Russia last February. Nunes “seemed to go out of his way to defend Trump,” the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake wrote, “in a way few others did.” Perhaps the clearest example arose after Trump tweeted in March that President Obama had “wiretapped” Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential campaign. The heads of both the NSA and the FBI categorically denied that any such wiretapping had occurred. But Nunes quickly came to Trump’s defense, holding a press conference to announce that “the intelligence community incidentally collected information about US citizens involved in the Trump transition.” What this actually meant is that some Trump transition personnel had been in contact with foreigners legally under surveillance, and their conversations were intercepted as part of that surveillance (that’s what “incidentally collected” means). This, needless to say, did not vindicate Trump’s claim that the Obama administration was spying on his campaign headquarters. However, the timing of Nunes’s press conference and the confusing way in which Nunes presented the information made it seem like he was trying to provide cover for Trump. The president himself said Nunes’s revelation “somewhat” vindicated his tweets. Then it turned out that Nunes got his information from the Trump White House itself. Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the National Security Council’s senior director for intelligence, uncovered the information; Michael Ellis, a White House attorney who worked for Nunes before the Trump administration, personally took it to Nunes. To recap: Nunes released information in such a manner as to make it look like Trump’s claims of being persecuted by law enforcement were true — and did so after secretly getting the information from the Trump White House. The situation proved to be such an embarrassment that Nunes was forced to recuse himself from the intelligence committee’s investigation into Russia for eight months during a House ethics investigation into his conduct. So when news broke in mid-January that Nunes had been working in secret to prepare a memo on FBI surveillance of the Trump campaign, the initial sense among intelligence experts was that it would be a repeat of the wiretapping debacle — Nunes misrepresenting intelligence to support President Trump’s political position. But many of Nunes’s colleagues in the House saw it as damning proof of anti-Trump animus at the FBI. They started a public campaign, backed by conservative media, to #ReleaseTheMemo. This culminated in Monday’s vote by the intelligence committee, along party lines, to begin the process for formally releasing it. What does the Nunes memo allege? The full contents of the memo obviously aren’t public yet. But several officials familiar with its contents told the New York Times that it focuses on surveillance of Carter Page, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser with business ties to Russia and open sympathies with the Kremlin’s foreign policy. The key allegation, according to the Times and other outlets, is that the surveillance of Page was improperly authorized — and potentially politically motivated. In July 2016, while advising the Trump campaign, Page flew to Moscow and met with Russian officials. This raised eyebrows among US intelligence officers, to say the least. So the FBI and DOJ put together an application to a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court — a court that approves surveillance warrants pertaining to national security and foreign intelligence — to start watching Page. The court granted the application. The Nunes memo reportedly alleges that this surveillance was not properly vetted by the court; specifically, that it relied on the now-infamous Steele dossier, the document prepared by former British spy Christopher Steele alleging the existence of a conspiracy between Donald Trump and the Russian government. “The memo’s primary contention,” the Times writes, “is that FBI and Justice Department officials failed to adequately explain to an intelligence court judge in initially seeking a warrant for surveillance of Mr. Page that they were relying in part on research by [Steele].” Steele’s research was, partially and indirectly, financed by the Clinton campaign — which the memo alleges is a major problem. Not only did the FBI spy on a Trump adviser on the basis of partisan opposition research, the argument goes, but they weren’t fully honest with a judge about doing so. There are lots of problems with the memo’s alleged line of reasoning. For one thing, Steele is a respected investigator, and some of his dossier’s less explosive allegations have so far proven to be true. The FBI’s surveillance application may have relied on Steele’s findings, but if that’s true, it doesn’t necessarily discredit the application. For another thing, the memo’s claims are impossible to evaluate without seeing the underlying intelligence it was based on. Nunes could have highlighted the FBI’s citation of Steele without mentioning other, more concrete sources the agency listed. “The memo won’t actually answer the underlying question, which is whether there was sufficient independent evidence to support the underlying FISA application,” Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas, said. “Only the application materials can conclusively shed a light on that.” Finally, the idea that FBI agents would act in such a way — and a FISA judge would let them — strikes a lot of legal observers as absurd. The FISA process certainly can and has been abused — that’s something civil libertarians have been warning about for a long time. But this particular method of abuse would require an implausibly vast conspiracy, for reasons former FBI special agent and current Yale Law professor Asha Rangappa lays out in a detailed post on FISA procedures at Just Security:

The Nunes Memo reportedly alleges that at least a dozen FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors fabricated evidence, engaged in a criminal conspiracy to commit perjury, lucked out on being randomly assigned Judge Low Blood Sugar who looked the other way, and — coincidentally — ended up obtaining evidence that justified extending the initial FISA surveillance. ...

If Nunes has, in fact, singlehandedly uncovered this vast criminal enterprise, it’s hard to know what’s more astonishing: That a government bureaucracy managed to pull it off — or that Nunes has exposed it all in a scant four-page memo.

So if the Times’s description of the memo’s “primary contention” is accurate, then there are good reasons to be skeptical of it even beyond Nunes’s personal history of misusing intelligence. Who does the Devin Nunes memo implicate? There’s a second part to the memo, according to the Times report, focusing on the reauthorization of surveillance of Page in 2016. This part is vital because it directly implicates Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — the man currently supervising special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. In late spring of 2017, the FBI petitioned to renew its surveillance warrant on Page. According to the Times, the memo claims Rosenstein personally signed off on the renewal application. The reason this matters, the Times writes, is that “Republicans could potentially use Mr. Rosenstein’s decision to approve the renewal to suggest that he failed to properly vet a highly sensitive application for a warrant to spy on Mr. Page.” But it’s actually deeper than that. The memo already seems to imply that the Russia investigation is a corrupt partisan hatchet job. By bringing Rosenstein into it, it also ends up indicting the guy currently in charge of the Russia investigation — suggesting he’s at best incompetent and at worst corrupt. Theoretically, this would be cause for Trump to dismiss Rosenstein. Trump currently can’t fire Mueller without Rosenstein’s say-so; Rosenstein said in December that there is no “good cause” to fire Mueller. If he were to fire Rosenstein based on the memo, he might be able to get to Mueller. What is driving House Republicans to want to release a classified document? Ostensibly, Republicans in the House have been pushing to release the memo because they believe it outlines surveillance abuses the American people need to know about. “Let’s have a great debate about its consequences and the opportunity it presents to make things better, so these things never happen again,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said in a January 30 speech on the House floor. But experts on the FISA system, even civil libertarians critical of the way law enforcement uses it, are skeptical. They note that these Republicans aren’t proposing any changes to how FISA works, or even suggesting that the system in general needs reform to stop any future abuses. “There’s a conspicuous lack of interest in drawing any policy conclusions from what they purportedly consider a major institutional scandal,” Julian Sanchez, an expert in privacy law at the libertarian Cato Institute, said. Instead, the motivation seems purely political. Many of the most vigorous supporters of #ReleaseTheMemo, like Gaetz, have also called on President Trump to fire Robert Mueller. “I think the president should’ve fired Mueller long ago,” Gaetz said in a December interview with media outlets. These are people who seem to either genuinely believe that the Russia investigation is a partisan witch hunt targeting the president or believe there’s some political advantage to be gained from championing an anti-FBI crusade near and dear to both the president’s and Fox News’s heart. Either way, experts say the motivation behind the memo’s release seems pretty clear — it’s a way of waging war on the Russia investigation specifically and the FBI in general. “The release of the memo, and the fabrication of a set of ideas around the memo empowers Trump to go after the FBI,” Ryan Goodman, a former Defense Department special counsel and current editor of Just Security, said. “The ultimate goal is undermining the Mueller investigation. There doesn’t seem to be another reason for the president to be so obsessed with Rod Rosenstein and to be gunning for him.” Why do the FBI and Democrats oppose it? The FBI and Democrats don’t like the Nunes memo for one big reason: They think it’s full of lies. On Wednesday, the FBI put out a strongly worded statement signaling the agency’s worry with the memo’s accuracy:

The FBI takes seriously its obligations to the FISA Court and its compliance with procedures overseen by career professionals in the Department of Justice and the FBI. We are committed to working with the appropriate oversight entities to ensure the continuing integrity of the FISA process.

With regard to the House Intelligence Committee’s memorandum, the FBI was provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it. As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Select Intelligence Committee, said after the statement that he sided with the FBI. “I think the FBI is exactly right. I have the same grave concerns over it.” He added that he knew of the FBI’s concerns before he voted against the memo’s release. Schiff and his fellow Democrats on the committee also went the extra step of compiling a 10-page memo of their own. It reportedly asserts two things. First, that the FBI didn’t abuse its FISA power when requesting the Page warrant. Second, and more importantly, that the Nunes memo is simply an effort to help the White House discredit the Mueller probe. On Monday, Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) asked Nunes if his staffers worked with the White House on his memo. Nunes originally answered the question by saying “as far as I know,” no one collaborated with the White House. Ultimately, though, he refused to answer the question — perhaps suggesting that there may actually have been some collusion there. The House Intelligence Committee, however, voted not to make the Democratic memo public. But late on Wednesday, Schiff tried another gambit — arguing that Nunes “substantively” altered the memo in between voting to release it and sending it to Trump and that the altered memo would require another House vote. It’s too early yet to tell if this argument will fly. Will Donald Trump actually release the Nunes memo? It’s unclear — but Trump has signaled that he might. He was heard on a hot mike that he would "100 percent release it" after his State of the Union address. We all know that Trump loves the reality show drama and having everything in his hands like this, but knowing that this memo was basically created to help him with the Bob Mueller Russia investigation, don't be surprised for this to come out. "We can only hope that someone in the White House uses common sense to let Trump know how bad this could actually wind up making him look once it's discredited," a Congressional aide said. Trump has the power to declassify the information in the memo (and the underlying FISA documentation), but he has yet to see the memo, according to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Still, after his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, Trump told Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) that he would “100 percent” make the memo public in the coming days. And on Wednesday, Chief of Staff John Kelly told Fox News Radio that the memo “will be released here pretty quick, I think, and the whole world can see it.” There’s a reason Trump may ultimately decide to release the memo: He has publicly stated several times that the Trump-Russia probe is a “witch hunt” perpetrated by rogue partisans within the FBI. “Trump is shockingly overt about believing that the problem here is that the FBI is staffed by loyalists to the wrong person,” Sanchez, the privacy law expert at the Cato Institute, said. “He does, in fact, seem to think that the job of the DOJ, and the FBI, and the rest of the intelligence community is to protect the president and follow his orders — including going after his political enemies based on stuff he saw on Fox News, if that’s what he wants to do.” So Trump could decide to release the memo to try to prove his suspicions correct. But it could also backfire. It’s possible that the evidence Nunes presents in the memo is thin. Worse, the fallout of the release could lead to more leaks proving that Nunes’s account is wrong. That would not only hurt the conservative argument against the Russia probe but prove a self-inflicted wound. So it’s possible that Trump will make the memo public — but at this point, it’s still up in the air. What happens if the memo does get released? The first thing people will likely look for is the evidence Nunes has to prove the Mueller investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign was based entirely on the controversial Steele dossier, a largely unconfirmed opposition research document asserting corrupt collusion between Trump and Russia. Recall that the memo saga began in the fall of 2016 when the FBI applied for a warrant from a federal court to wiretap Page. Republicans claim the FBI based its warrant on information in the Steele dossier. The FBI has another story: It says it obtained a warrant based on information from a variety of sources that showed they had probable cause Page may have been acting as an agent of the Russian government. That will lead to the second outcome of the memo’s release: calls to see the FISA documents. Many conservatives who are calling for the release of the memo are also calling for the disclosure of the FISA documents it’s allegedly based on. Those files would show the information included in the warrant application presented to the federal court judge who approved the surveillance of Page. If it’s what conservatives claim, they can say they uncovered the conspiracy. But if documents show the FBI told the truth from the start, that puts a big damper on the Nunes-led narrative. In sum, some conservatives will take Nunes’s memo at face value and continue to lambaste the FBI as a partisan, anti-Trump agency. Others will want to see the underlying documentation to see if what Nunes claims is true. Meanwhile, Democrats will almost certainly push back on the memo — regardless of what it alleges — and deride Trump for releasing it. Does this threaten the Mueller probe? Possibly. The effort to release Nunes’s memo is part of a much larger conservative effort to discredit the Mueller investigation. And once it’s released, it will serve as another data point for the growing anti-Mueller movement. But the memo could also serve as a pretext for removing those responsible for the Mueller probe. According to the Washington Post, Trump told his close advisers that the memo could give him the ammo he needs to fire Rosenstein or force him to resign. Trump could replace Rosenstein with someone friendlier to the Trump administration and more willing to constrain Mueller. That could prove more detrimental to the Mueller probe in the long run. Rangappa, the Yale expert, writes that the deputy attorney general could effectively cripple the Mueller investigation by rejecting Mueller’s requests to investigate more people, obtain new evidence, or pursue charges against additional people, for instance. More simply, the new appointee could just fire Mueller. And, of course, it’s also possible that Nunes’s core allegation — that the FBI surveilled Page because of claims made in the Steele dossier — proves true. If so, that could potentially delegitimize the Mueller probe and perhaps lead to Mueller’s dismissal. That said, this is more of a political game than a legal one. Nunes and many conservatives say there’s proof in the memo that the FBI is corrupt, and the FBI and Democrats say this is all a smokescreen to protect the president. What the memo’s release will do, if it happens, is take this fight to the next level. It will be an all-out war between the House Republicans and Trump administration officials who want the president to fire Rosenstein and shut down the Russia probe, and the FBI and Democrats who oppose all of this. How bad could the memo fallout get? There are two broad ways this political war between the FBI and Trump and his allies could go. In the first, the FBI is brought to heel. Rosenstein and the other senior FBI executives are fired and replaced with more Trump-friendly appointees. The Mueller investigation is quashed, and the bureau essentially serves more like an arm of the Trump administration than a quasi-independent agency. The implications of this scenario for American democracy are pretty scary. “I shudder to think what the [2020] election looks like when you’ve got a guy who says, ‘I saw Fox & Friends this morning, and my opponent is a crook’ ... except now you’ve got an FBI and a DOJ that say, ‘Yes, sir,’” says Sanchez. In a second scenario, the memo leads to a lot of FBI-Republican skirmishing but no actual showdown. Trump either decides not to fire Rosenstein or is somehow stopped from doing so, the Mueller investigation continues unhampered, and the FBI remains relatively untainted by political influence. There are many factors that could make the difference between these two outcomes. Two of the key ones are congressional Republicans, particularly Senate Republicans, and Trump’s own staff. Senate Republicans have been notably quieter and more restrained about attacking the FBI than their peers in the House. Senate Republicans also have to confirm Trump appointees to the Justice Department; they could make clear that if he fires Rosenstein/Mueller and tries to appoint a crony to take their place, they won’t confirm whomever he picks. What influential Senate Republicans say and do after the memo’s release, in short, could signal to Trump whether he has enough backing to really take on the FBI. “This particular president advances when he senses weakness,” Goodman said. “The critical factor is the will of many Republicans to stand up.” Members of Trump’s White House have also blocked his moves to interfere with the Mueller probe in the past. The New York Times reports that in June, Trump ordered White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller. McGahn said he’d rather resign than do that, and Trump backed down. He was, according to the Times, “concerned that firing the special counsel would incite more questions about whether the White House was trying to obstruct the Russia investigation.” If McGahn and other voices of relative restraint in the White House succeed in backing the president away from the memo fever that will soon be playing out all over the conservative news, or even outright refuse to carry out his orders, then you might see the same thing again in the wake of the memo’s release.

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