Obeying in Advance, or: "What Rats Won't Do"

 

#FBI Director Christopher Wray announces that he will step down at the end of the current administration.

Learn more: https://t.co/W7xY34F37h pic.twitter.com/FIJ5QIjI29

— FBI (@FBI) December 11, 2024

I hear scientists are starting to use lawyers instead of lab rats in their experiments. They do this for two reasons. For one thing, they become less attached to the lawyers. For another, there are some things lab rats won't do.    

 I get the idea that one shouldn't obey in advance, I really do.  And I get the argument that FBI Director Wray should have said "C'mon and fire me." Take a damn stand. Show Mr. Trump and the world what you are made of. 

But he did that. Remember when he shit-canned all the tips about Brett Kavanaugh? Because I'm not forgetting that. Remember when he took the job in the first place after Trump, Jeff Sessions, and Rod Rosenstein concocted a reason for Trump to fire Jim Comey that wasn't what Trump expressly told Lester Holt (and Sergey Lavrov) the reason was (to end the Russia, Russia, Russia investigation).

Meathead Mike Lee

 

Republicans launched a new conspiracy based off J6 footage claiming an insurrectionist was holding an FBI badge & must be an agent.

The facts?

It was a vape and he was sentenced to more than 4 years in prison.

These lies are sickening. Story… https://t.co/wd14r0qdOj

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) November 19, 2023

 A lot of Republicans having read the community notes now understand they have been led astray, but Mike Lee, US Senator and former law clerk for Sam Alito, wants to hold on to the fantasy that an FBI "op" instigated the 1/6 melee, and that an undercover fed was for some reason caught flashing his actual badge on camera. In a set-up to compromise Trump supporters to make it look like they stormed the Capitol and beat up cops and whatnot which they did, but to somehow make it look worse for reasons? 

That's fucking asinine. There was no need for an op: every damn extremely online human associated with politics knew what was up that day. All antifa humans knew they were not going there because the headbreakers were coming out in force. MAGAs were being drawn like moths. And actual "cops" seemed to have little clue. This all would make a lot of sense unless your guilty little soul needed a retcon for some reason. 

Like actually being one of the people who wanted to overturn the election.  I don't know why the boy needs to be so shy about it, after Trump misdialed Mike trying to reach Tommy Taterhead. He considered Sidney Powell a "straight shooter". 

Is Mike Lee saying he's still going around looking for the "REAL CULPRITS"? 

Somehow, I'm not buying it. And I think Mike Lee is just playing at being this big of a meathead himself. 

Just the Tips?

 

The FBI said some of the 4,500 tips it received about Justice Brett Kavanaugh during its investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against him were given to the Trump White House, leading some Democrats to call the process a sham. https://t.co/vp4eq75JLC

— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 22, 2021

I didn't think that I'd be blogging about this again so soon, but apparently, the FBI hotline into Brett Kavanaugh's conduct led to 4,500 tips, and you'll never guess what happened next:

In a letter dated June 30 to two Democratic senators, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Chris Coons of Delaware, an F.B.I. assistant director, Jill C. Tyson, said that the most “relevant” of the 4,500 tips the agency received during an investigation into Mr. Kavanaugh’s past were referred to White House lawyers in the Trump administration, whose handling of them remains unclear. 

The letter left uncertain whether the F.B.I. itself followed up on the most compelling leads. The agency was conducting a background check rather than a criminal investigation, meaning that “the authorities, policies, and procedures used to investigate criminal matters did not apply,” the letter said.

And my guess from that is then Don McGahn bundled them up, loaded them onto a raft, doused them in kerosene, and let the whole mess sail down the Potomac as he played "Dust in the Wind". 

Admittedly, I do have a particularly picturesque imagination. 

So yes, Alice, this did just get "curiouser and curiouser". Of course, tiplines do generate duplicate claims and sometimes sheer nonsense, but what a series of rabbit holes are suggested here!

Old TrumpWorld Grab-Bags Never Die

 

It's amazing to me that six whole months after Donald J. Trump, twice-impeached one-term president and current Florida Man, dramatically lost the 2020 election and then whined about it incessantly, I'm still writing TrumpWorld Grab-bag posts. Why can't I just treat him like any other private citizen newbie blogger trying to figure out his platform who really needs help?

Because this country either takes a long hard look at this guy right here, now, and the damage done, or nothing, not one thing, gets better. That's why. The Republican party needs to address how damaging and bad he was so they can improve, if that's ever going to be a thing. The Democratic party needs to address how damaging and bad he was so they can understand how you can not rely on Republicans' good intentions or judgment to save us. We all need to understand why crime-adjacent amoral reality show hosts aren't fucking responsible government leadership material. And we need to get to just how much he fucked up if we ever want to unfuck it.

Anyway, you might ask yourself, where is that unsealed Barr memo we were supposed to be getting? And then cursed Merrick Garland out for not wanting to release all of it. (Or, I don't know, maybe you're normal people, but if so, what are you doing here?)  So, I get the equity of the thing--the DOJ has ongoing matters and maybe not all their business needs to be out in the street, so this is protective--not of Barr, but just the agency in general. It's also a little political: 

Why, no! Nobody here is slavering for the heads and entrails of the previous administration's stalwart cover-up artists, that would be petty and beneath us and besides....

We have time.

The idea that DOJ doesn't go after a sitting president is one of those known but untested things--it's right up there with the extent of executive privilege. Mueller took it for granted in his report. I keep going back to the "murder on 5th Avenue" hypothesis though--what if you got him dead to rights? What if the president is engaging in unlawful activity for no discernible national interest at all, but only self-interest? That's an investigation in and of itself--what is the interest, which might not be readily discernible but still exists, for a president to ostensibly be covering up his own dirt like a cat in a litterbox? But you know--for the people? My gut feeling says --no Trump was covering up his own dirt for himself. 

Maybe Congress will have the Russian investigation obstruction elucidated for them a bit when former White House counsel Don McGahn testifies in a closed-door hearing as soon as next week (instead of like, a year and half or so ago when it should have been).  McGahn has always been a little fascinating to me as having been involved in a complicated maneuver (as I understand it) of being asked to fire Mueller, and then lie about whether he was asked to fire Mueller, and then be asked to lie about being asked to lie. (Trump loves to get people fired, even if it's stupid--getting Comey fired got him the Mueller investigation. If Mueller was fired, that would have been super Saturday Night massacre. And he also wanted to fire his own appointed FBI Director, Christopher Wray, because something something Russia, something something "election security".  Weird, right?

Anyhow, in more Mueller-era stuff, some of the redacted information from the Manafort trial has been unsealed, and whoo! Manafort and Gates were just all over the place contacting Konstantin Kilimnik with polling data and whatnot and discussion of a Ukraine plan that would have Russia in control of part of the region. (Yes, this mattered during 2016, and regarding the first impeachment. TrumpWorld using Ukraine to get/keep Trump in power. It still matters.)

If we're still getting stories relating to the 2016 election--here in 2021? How long will be be looking at the 2020 shenanigans--what with the ongoing rehashing of the election results and the attempted insurrection and all? (And what shenanigans they were! And in the case of the "fraudits" and voter suppression laws, still are!) I may very well be writing these things forever.

In TrumpWorld, Grab-Bag Investigates You!

Imagine that nothing else happened today, but that a president who was accused during his campaign of being a "puppet" of a foreign dictator, who spoke effusively at times of that foreign dictator, when faced with a mandate from congress that overwhelmingly voted to put sanctions on that dictator for interfering in that election, just said "No, because it's such a deterrent to them doing stuff with us." Umph! Like, a deterrent to influencing more of our elections or making other decisions as a sovereign nation? 

It would seem from an actual real-time event like that, just as we have had other real-time events that kind of suggested that Donald Trump was doing the bidding of Russia, this should bother the Congress that passed that act bringing those sanctions, but what actually happened was they decided to release a memo that was made by Devin Nunes, who I will be referring to as Trump's Renfield, and did not release a memo drafted by House Democrats. 

This seems odd. It's like Congressional Republicans both understand that Russian interference was a real thing, but also will only pay the merest lip service to doing anything about it. Huh! And yet, the same House is investigating DOJ decisions for a while, now.  As if the real sin in today's politics is finding fault with Trump.

In other news, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is leaving because there's really only so much a person can put the hell up with before one's legit retirement and maybe one's Director is giving strong hints where the exit door is. He joins a storied company that includes Sally Yates, Preet Bharara and Jim Comey. 

I wouldn't wonder what lessons the DOJ in general and the FBI specifically are taking from this politicized display regarding their office and the approach it shows regarding the rule of law. It might not be what the authors of this deplorable exercise had in mind, though.

In other news, we are sad to hear that Julian Assange is in bad shape because he lacks Vitamin D and the courage to just suck it up and deal with the thing where he took off his condom and tried it.  It's rumored he also doesn't smell great and sent DMs to Sean Hannity parody accounts.  Which does not only suggest Assange's mind has gone a little soft, but also that he and Hannity have possibly had a previous correspondence or so. 

Anyway, what I am saying is, the history of dirt against Trump seems to have been spot on, and the dirt against Clinton and the DNC seems to have been spotty. Trump and his admirers striking out against the investigation seems to me not like they see wrongdoing there, but like they are afraid it will be found with their team.

I'm just saying, as I always do: It looks bad because it is bad.