#after may 6 I am free (installation date for the senior art show)

[anna-scribbles]

haven’t had enough time to draw s5 adrinette to convey just how much this is genuinely the only thing on my mind

[oldguardaudio]

PowerLine -> The silence of Susan Rice vs. Susan Rice responds, sort of

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Daily Digest

Nunes responds

Rebut this

The silence of Susan Rice

“Bubbles of Our Own Liberal Sentiments”

Susan Rice responds, sort of

Nunes responds

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 02:21 PM PST

(Scott Johnson)House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes was ready to go with his own response to the Democrats’ memo that I have embedded in the adjacent post. I have uploaded his point-by-point response to Scribd and embedded it below. It is a useful document. Moreover, by contrast with Adam Schiff et al., Nunes is a credible player. Consistent with my comments, he notes some of the Democrats’ rebuttals of points not made by the Republicans. In any event, here is his response.

Democrat Memo Charge and Response by Scott Johnson on Scribd

(more…)

   Rebut this

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 02:01 PM PST

(Scott Johnson)The powers that be have redacted and released the House Intelligence Committee Democrats’ memo rebutting the committee Republicans’ four-page memo. In a quick reading, among other things, I find it rebutting claims that weren’t made. The Democrats vouch for the credibility of Christopher Steele when the only relevant question is the credibility of his sources. The Democrats also challenge just about every point made by the Republicans.

The Democrats are overinvested in the synthetic collusion scandal. They stand by all the works of the Department of Justice and the FBI. To borrow a phrase attributed by Susan Rice to President Obama, they did everything strictly by the book. According to the Democrats, Carter Page deserves what he got. One wonders how it is that he remains a free man.

There is some new information provided. The FISA warrant on Carter Page was authorized and renewed three times by four different federal judges (see page 3). In a heavily redacted portion of the memo, the Democrats go to town on Page (pages 3-5). I infer from guarded comments made to the press by committee Republicans that there may be something to this. Chairman Nunes has released the statement below.

Nunes Statement on Release of Democrat Memo with point by point refutation. https://t.co/JjXyslktSz pic.twitter.com/P7UaGEQVsE

— Nick Short 🇺🇸 (@PoliticalShort) February 24, 2018

There is much more that could be said. We badly need the FISA warrant application and related representations in renewal proceedings redacted and released. As always, I urge interested readers to review the documents with your own eyes. I have uploaded the memo to Scribd and embedded it below.

House Dems’ Intel Memo by Scott Johnson on Scribd

   The silence of Susan Rice

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 09:13 AM PST

(Scott Johnson)By letter to Susan Rice dated February 8, 2018, Senators Grassley and Graham posed 12 numbered questions. I posted the Graham/Grassley letter in “Rice papers the file.” By letter dated February 23, 2018, attorney Kathryn Ruemmler has now responded to the Grassley Graham letter. I posted Ruemmler’s letter nearby this morning in “Susan Rice responds, sort of.”

Let’s take an inventory. I have italicized my accounting below, subject to further thought and analysis:

Question 1. Did you send the email attached to this letter to yourself? Do you have any reason to dispute the timestamp of the email?

Answered.

Question 2. When did you first become aware of the FBI’s investigation into allegations of collusion between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia?

Not answered.

Question 3. When did you become aware of any surveillance activities, including FISA applications, undertaken by the FBI in conducting that investigation? At the time you wrote this email to yourself, were you aware of either the October 2016 FISA application for surveillance of Carter Page or the January 2017 renewal?

Partially answered.

Question 4. Did anyone instruct, request, suggest, or imply that you should send yourself the aforementioned Inauguration Day email memorializing President Obama’s meeting with Mr. Comey about the Trump/Russia investigation? If so, who and why?

Partially answered.

Question 5. Is the account of the January 5, 2017, meeting presented in your email accurate? Did you omit any other portions of the conversation?

Not answered.

Question 6. Other than that email, did you document the January 5, 2017, meeting in any way, such as contemporaneous notes or a formal memo? To the best of your knowledge, did anyone else at that meeting take notes or otherwise memorialize the meeting?

Not answered.

Question 7. During the meeting, did Mr. Comey or Ms. Yates mention potential press coverage of the Steele dossier? If so, what did they say?

Answered narrowly (“In the conversation Ambassador Rice documented, there was no discussion of Christopher Steele or the Steele dossier, contrary to the suggestion in your letter”).

Question 8. During the meeting, did Mr. Comey describe the status of the FBI’s relationship with Mr. Steele or the basis for that status?

Answered narrowly (see above).

Question 9. When and how did you first become aware of the allegations made by Christopher Steele?

Not answered.

Question 10. When and how did you first become aware that the Clinton Campaign and the Democratic National Committee funded Mr. Steele’s efforts?

Not answered.

Question 11. You wrote that President Obama stressed that he was not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. Did President Obama ask about, initiate, or instruct anything from any other perspective relating to the FBI’ s investigation?

Not answered.

Question 12. Did President Obama have any other meetings with Mr. Corney, Ms. Yates, or other government officials about the FBI’ s investigation of allegations of collusion between Trump associates and Russia? If so, when did these occur, who participated, and what was discussed?

Not answered.

Susan Rice has lawyered up. For some reason or other, with respect to several pointed and important questions, she is resting on her right to remain silent.

   “Bubbles of Our Own Liberal Sentiments”

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 08:35 AM PST

(Joe Malchow)I think that I am like most American men in, every five or ten years, directing my reading deep into the Revolution and the Founding generation. It is impossible to resist the magnetic attraction of this period. It is not that the Founding Fathers were geniuses (though some were) or gods (though one was close). Instead, there seems to be something about the vacuum of the founding moment and the men who filled it that gave rise to a decades-long period of writing, speechmaking, and statecraft that was benevolent, intelligent, honest, and crafted to secure a true durability. Therefore these men, whose brains weren’t of course any better than the brains today, were so much less molested by self-deception, pieties, lore, and loyalties that they produced world-changing thought transcending everything else then existing.

It is a worthy subject for a later time why the American founding moment was so exceptional in human history. To be sure there have been many founding moments since, from Africa to Italy and many places otherwise. Mostly their results have been very sad. I wonder if it had something to do with the generalist liberal arts education received by most of the participants at the Continental Congresses, the Constitutional Convention, and the later House of Burgesses. There were lawyers, of course, and at least a few doctors (Benjamin Rush and Josiah Bartlett. Anyone else?). But by and large, they were well-read non-experts and family men. I imagine that today, Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School would be happy to supply your fledgling country with all manner Experts bearing Ph. D.s., each without the annoying encumbrance of a traditional family life or the cruft of knowing, say, Plato.

Anyway, here is something that John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson on September 4, 1785. Adams was in London and Jefferson was in Paris. It comes from American Sphinx by Joseph J. Ellis, who prefaces the lines I wanted to share.

In addition to their mutual animosities toward England and their common sense of indignation at the insufferable arrogance of the king, the friendship worked because Jefferson deferred to Adams. After all, Adams was his senior and had been negotiating with the French and English for five years. Jefferson’s deferential pattern began as soon as he arrived in France: “What would you think of the enclosed Draught to be proposed to the courts of London and Versailles?” Jefferson inquired. “I know it goes beyond our powers; and beyond the powers of Congress too. But it is so evidently for the good of the states that I should not be afraid to risk myself on it if you are of the same opinion.” The proposal envisioned reciprocal rights for citizens of all nations, complete freedom of trade and a reformed system of international law.

Yes, Adams replied, it was a “beau ideal” proposal, but unfortunately it was also completely irrelevant to the current, and cutthroat, European context: “We must not, my Friend, be the Bubbles of our own Liberal Sentiments. If we cannot obtain reciprocal Liberality, We must adopt reciprocal Prohibitions, Exclusions, Monopolies, and Imposts. Our offers have been fair, more than fair. If they are rejected, we must not be Dupes.”

I read that highlighted quotation from Adams and thought: only one modern politician would say something like that, and he is Donald Trump.

By the way, I returned to my books on the Founding this time because of the Broadway show Hamilton, which we have had the good fortune to see twice. It’s truly a wonderful work. (For a glimpse of why here are five random American teenagers reenacting the Act I song “Non-Stop.”)

   Susan Rice responds, sort of

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 07:12 AM PST

(Scott Johnson)Barack Obama installed Susan Rice as his National Security Advisor in recognition of her service to him as a knave and fool in the matter of Benghazi. As National Security Advisor she sent an email on Obama’s last day in office shortly before President Trump inauguration. Released in redacted form on February 12, the email is one of the most intriguing bits of evidence to have emerged in the alleged Russian collusion scandal. The email purports to memorialize January 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting including President Obama, Comey, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, Vice President Biden and Rice herself regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election. What a crew.

Rice wrote:

President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities “by the book.” The President stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.

As part of their oversight efforts, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Grassley and subcommittee chairman Graham obtained the email from the National Archives in response to their request for records of meetings between President Obama and Comey in the collusion investigation. Rice sent the email to herself with a copy to Curtis Ried (Twitter feed here) on January 20, 2017. Grassley and Graham were struck by the context and timing of this email and sent a follow-up letter to Rice. The letter reads in part:

It strikes us as odd that, among your activities in the final moments on the final day of the Obama administration, you would feel the need to send yourself such an unusual email purporting to document a conversation involving President Obama and his interactions with the FBI regarding the Trump/Russia investigation. In addition, despite your claim that President Obama repeatedly told Mr. Comey to proceed “by the book,” substantial questions have arisen about whether officials at the FBI, as well as at the Justice Department and the State Department, actually did proceed “by the book.”

According to the email, the meeting further took up the question whether Trump could be trusted with “information fully as it relates to Russia.” Andrew McCarthy authoritatively explicated Rice’s email in the NR column “What Did Comey Tell President Trump about the Steele Dossier?”

Susan Rice has now responded to Senators Grassley and Graham through attorney Kathryn Ruemmler. Ruemmler is the global co-chairman of the Latham & Watkins white collar criminal defense practice. She formerly served as White House Counsel to Obama.

Ruemmler’s letter on behalf of Rice asserts that denies that there was anything unusual about Rice’s email purporting to memorialize a crucial meeting two weeks after the meeting had occurred, on her way out the door. Ruemmler’s letter on behalf of Rice states:

The memorandum to file drafted by Ambassador Rice memorialized an important national security discussion between President Obama and the FBI Director and the Deputy Attorney General. President Obama and his national security team were justifiably concerned about potential risks to the Nation’s security from sharing highly classified information about Russia with certain members of the Trump transition team, particularly Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.

In light of concerning communications between members of the Trump team and Russian officials, before and after the election, President Obama, on behalf of his national security team, appropriately sought the FBI and the Department of Justice’s guidance on this subject. In the conversation Ambassador Rice documented, there was no discussion of Christopher Steele or the Steele dossier, contrary to the suggestion in your letter.

Given the importance and sensitivity of the subject matter, and upon the advice of the White House Counsel’s Office, Ambassador Rice created a permanent record of the discussion. Ambassador Rice memorialized the discussion on January 20, because that was the first opportunity she had to do so, given the particularly intense responsibilities of the National Security Advisor during the remaining days of the Administration and transition.

Ambassador Rice memorialized the discussion in an email sent to herself during the morning of January 20, 2017. The time stamp reflected on the email is not accurate, as Ambassador Rice departed the White House shortly before noon on January 20.

While serving as National Security Advisor, Ambassador Rice was not briefed on the existence of any FBI investigation into allegations of collusion between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia, and she later learned of the fact of this investigation from Director Comey’s subsequent public testimony. Ambassador Rice was not informed of any FISA applications sought by the FBI in its investigation, and she only learned of them from press reports after leaving office.

Ruemmler’s statement goes on offense about “concerning” discussions intercepted by Rice’s colleagues at the NSA along with the “distraction” routine practiced by lying Democratic liars. Ruemmler serves up a lame excuse for the tardiness of Rice’s email and slyly inserts a reference to the advice of White House Counsel. In substance, however, Ruemmler’s statement cries “nobody here but us chickens,” just as Rice’s email itself did. There seems to be a postmodern echo in here.

The Grassley/Graham letter posed 12 numbered questions to Rice. I posted the Grassley/Graham letter and the appended Rice email via Scribd in “Susan Rice papers the record.” Ruemmler’s letter to Senators Grassley et al. is embedded below. By my reckoning, Ruemmler’s letter answers to question 1, part of question 4, and narrowly responds to one or two others with a dollop of the Obama defense (she learned about it in the newspapers). For some reason or other — no excuse is offered on this score — Ruemmler’s letter declines to answer the rest of the questions submitted to Rice.

Susan Rice Response to Grassley-Graham by sonamsheth on Scribd

   PowerLine -> The silence of Susan Rice vs. Susan Rice responds, sort of PowerLine -> The silence of Susan Rice vs. Susan Rice responds, sort of Daily Digest Nunes responds…