Used to Call Me on My Cell Phone

The funny thing about the CNN report that Trump refers to in a Tweet from an iPhone is that this isn't the first time it's been noted that Trump definitely is still using his personal cell phones for business, or the first time he has denied that this was the case, in a Tweet, from an iPhone.

It's just possible that both times the Tweets were actually sent by aides that Trump dictated his Tweets to or written by someone else. 

But all Tweeting aside, the idea that Trump has given his personal cell phone number to other world leaders in an attempt to evade White House record-keeping while leaving these communications subject to potential foreign eavesdropping is pretty disturbing. If he wants to keep his communications away from the prying eyes and ears of federal employees and from the American people, any information digitally picked up by foreign interests leaves him open to blackmail. (Assuming, which I don't actually, that he isn't already as compromised as a very compromised thing.)

It would be really quite something if "but his cell phone" had anything like the impact on this upcoming election that "but her emails" did the last one. But call me skeptical about it. IOKIYAR seems to be very much in effect--actually, Trump seems to be the most extreme example of it I can recall. 

The News is Real, The Leak Was Fake?

So, I mentioned this a little bit as an aside on Wednesday, but Rep. Devin Nunes gave a presser then that did not do exactly what it looked like he was trying to do. It looked like he had received some kind of information that clarified the "wiretapping by the Obama Administration claim" made by President Trump, by virtue of Trump transition folks after the election apparently being caught up incidentally in lawfully FISA'd wiretaps that were just ordinary old SIGINT on foreign nationals.

This sort of made me wonder just who all were the Trump insiders regularly in contact with that might be under surveillance--but that is still a "no big whoop" kind of speculation. Doubtless, Trump and associates got congratulatory calls post-election. Despite our Logan Act, no small number of representatives of other governments might have wanted reassurances and to start "talking shop". Not every call a Trump associate might have gotten swept up in was as dodgy as the "General Flynn calling Russia all the time" thing. Gosh--we can't already be forgetting how Trump got a call from Taiwan that turned into a tempest in a teacup!

But all the same--there is something kind of weird about why Rep. Nunes went out of his way to make his Wednesday statement when he didn't really seem to be carrying too much in his hands on this one. The Daily Beast kind of suggests he got some kind of shadowy summons and disappeared off this mortal plane for a minute while spooky shenanigans went down. I wouldn't know about that.  What I would say is, if Nunes received some kind of ameliorating intelligence to spin to make the Trump investigation look better, he handled it like a drowning man thrown a life preserver who goes on to try to eat it. It doesn't help that he described what he was doing as being out of a sense of "duty and obligation" to Trump--when that isn't his job. Figuring out if Trump did something grossly wrong, is.

So, he walked back even as much as he had said on Wednesday, on Friday--a thing that might have gotten overshadowed by the health-care bill-fail. The upshot of which is, still spinning, nope, no wiretap,  and maybe we aren't even talking about people from the Trump transition being spoken to, but spoken about.

Can it be that what looked like Rep. Nunes possibly leaking classified information to make Trump look right about the wiretap and to undermine the credibility of the Trump/Russia investigation, turned out to sort of be just a case of him making "fake news"?  As in--not news, just performing for Trump's benefit?

Nunes' leak should be regarded as "fake". Except the bits where he reiterated that Trump Tower was not wiretapped. The reasons why Trump should be investigated remain real.