The FBI’s Trump-Russia Informant Explained

May 22, 2018

News last week that the FBI used an informant to probe what two Trump staffers, George Papadopoulis and Carter Page, were up to in contacts with Russians prompted President Trump to protest that the FBI embedded a spy in his campaign “for political purposes.” Mr. Trump has demanded that the Department of Justice investigate the FBI’s actions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has agreed to the President’s request, announcing that the scope of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s investigation into the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email probe and FISA warrant against Carter Page will be expanded to include the propriety of the use of an informant.

From what we know so far, there is no evidence that the FBI embedded anyone in the Trump campaign nor that an informant was used for political purposes. But, as Mr. Rosenstein said in a statement, “If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action.”

Rosenstein’s action was appropriate given the circumstances. It is hard to think of a precedent for a President ordering the Justice Department to take such direct action. But, by referring the matter to the Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, who has a reputation for non-partisan fair-mindedness and is insulated from political interference, Mr. Rosenstein has avoided the hijacking of the Department of Justice’s investigative process to provided political fodder for Trump’s claim that he is the victim of an FBI run amuck. It is unlikely, based on the facts known to date, that Mr. Horowitz will find that the FBI acted inappropriately or for “political purposes.”

Political Purposes?

The FBI was scrupulous in keeping it’s investigation, code named “Crossfire Hurricane” into potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia out of the political spotlight prior to the 2016 election. The FBI went to unusual lengths to limit access to information about the investigation, deliberately keeping some Obama Justice Department political appointees in the dark. According to a text by FBI agent Peter Strzok, this was out of concern that the details might prove too “tasty” to resist leaking.

When the New York Times learned of the existence of the FBI’s investigation in late October of 2016, the FBI went to lengths to downplay the significance of the probe, telling the Times that it had seen no evidence of coordination between Trump or his campaign aides and Russia.

One reason an informant, rather than FBI agents, was employed to probe Trump campaign aides was the FBI’s fear that direct questioning by FBI agents might leak into the news and negatively impact Trump’s election chances. Another is that it might tip off Russia to what the FBI knew, compromising their ongoing counterintelligence investigation into Russian election meddling.

“Ironically, the FBI’s apparent attempt to protect the campaign by investigating Russia’s efforts quietly is now being weaponized against it,” former FBI agent Asha Rangappa wrote in the Washington Post. “Accusations that the FBI was “spying” on the Trump campaign — rather than spying on foreign spies, which is its job — erase the important distinctions between counterintelligence and criminal investigations.”

Papadopoulis and Page

The FBI investigation was first initiated after Australia’s intelligence services informed their American counterparts that at least one Trump campaign advisor, George Papadopoulis, seemed to have advance knowledge of Russia’s hacking of Democrat emails. Over drinks in London in May of 2016, Mr. Papadopoulis had told Australia’s ambassador to the United Kingdom that Russia was in possession of emails hacked from Democrats that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton. When those emails began leaking out in mid-June of 2016, it raised the alarming possibility that Russia’s election interference campaign was being coordinated with the Trump campaign.

A July trip to Russia by another Trump advisor, Carter Page, in which he gave a decidedly pro-Russian speech had also caused reason for worry. Page had previously come to the FBI’s attention as part of a 2013 investigation into a Russian spy ring in New York in which Page had been the target of an apparently unsuccessful effort by Russian intelligence officers to recruit him as an agent. Page was a cooperating witness in the case.

According to reporting by former MI-6 intelligence officer Christopher Steel, who compiled the now famous “dossier” about connections between team Trump and Russia paid for by Clinton’s campaign and the DNC, during the trip Page had met with Russian officials while in Moscow to coordinate Kremlin efforts to swing the election towards Trump.

To figure out what was going on, the FBI turned to an American academic based in Britain who had long been a source for U.S. intelligence agencies. Several news outlets have identified the source as Cambridge University Professor Stephen Halper.

The informant queried Mr. Papadopoulis about what he knew about Russia’s election interference operation over dinner in London. Mr. Papadopoulis’ answer was not much. The informant also had several several similar conversations with Trump advisor Carter Page. Mr. Page, whom Mr. Halper had met at a conference in July, described those conversations as innocuous. “I never felt groomed. If he’s good at doing that, then perhaps that’s part of the game,” Page said during an interview on Fox News.

There is little reason to believe that the FBI’s use of an informant yielded much that confirmed allegations of coordination between Trump and Russia or that the FBI used the information to hurt Mr. Trump politically. Rather, it appeared that the FBI chose to use an informant to quietly evaluate the allegations that Mr. Papadopoulis and Mr. Page coordinated with Moscow in Russia’s efforts to influence the election.

The FBI later sought a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor Mr. Page’s communications after he was no longer associated with the Trump campaign. That warrant, has become the focus of accusations by Mr. Trump and his allies that he is the victim of a politically motivated “witch hunt” that employed the pretense of an investigation to undermine Mr. Trump. Yet, the lengths the FBI went to in order to avoid exactly that argues against this interpretation.

A Difficult Position

In the lead-up to the 2016 election, the FBI found itself in a difficult position. It had a responsibility to unravel Moscow’s ongoing efforts to influence the election and disturbing reports that indicated the Trump campaign might be in on it without unfairly tarnishing Mr. Trump with unfounded accusations. Yet, how it went about doing so has now exposed the agency to a great deal of scrutiny, placing it in the middle of the very political fray it hoped to avoid.

An agreement struck in a meeting with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray at the White House Monday to grant Congressional investigators access to confidential documents related to the investigation long sought by Republicans diffuses a standoff with Congress but it also raises the possibility of selective leaks that will further confuse the issue.

There remains little evidence that Mr. Trump personally was complicit in Russia’s election meddling even as evidence mounts that many of in his orbit were at least uncomfortably close to Moscow during the campaign. Getting to the bottom of whether this was out of coincidence or criminal malice remains an important reason that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation be allowed to reach its conclusion.

While there is certainly reason to believe that at least some FBI investigators involved in examining Trump-Russia connections prior to the election were not Mr. Trump’s fans, that does not mean that they acted improperly. Although there is little evidence to suggest that FBI agents took any actions that were politically motivated, they are not above scrutiny.

Mr. Rosenstein’s decision to refer Mr. Trump’s accusations to the Department’s inspector general will provide a mechanism for definitively resolving the matter. Still, until the inspector general reports back, it’s likely that the conspiratorial accusations will continue to fly. In the meantime, it would be wise to resist jumping to conclusions.

Why North Korea is Threatening to Pull the Plug on the Trump-Kim Summit

Taylor Griffin

May 19, 2018

As President Trump welcomed home three Americans released from captivity in North Korea, he beamed with optimism about a diplomatic breakthrough with the world’s last Stalinist dictatorship. “We’re starting off on a new footing. This is a wonderful thing that he released the folks early,” Mr. Trump said referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“I really think he wants to do something, and bring that country into the real world,” he said about his upcoming summit in Singapore with Mr. Kim. “I really think a lot of progress has been made … some great things can happen.”

The road to Singapore is going to be a much rockier one than Mr. Trump’s buoyant talk suggests. Mr. Trump has said that he’ll accept “nothing less” from North Korea than “full denuclearization.” But, as a new statement issued by North Korea’s foreign minister made clear, the chances that Mr. Trump will walk away from the summit with Mr. Kim accepting anything like that are slim.

North Korea’s diplomatic charm offensive camouflages a harsh reality: North Korea has no intention of giving up its nuclear weapons. It never did.

There have been encouraging signs in recent months of a thawing of tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Images of North Korea’s leader clutching hands with South Korean President Moon Jae-in as they stepped across the border between the two countries was a powerful symbolic gesture. And, North Korea’s announcement of plans to decommission its nuclear test site at Punggye-ri is a further positive sign. But, North Korea’s diplomatic charm offensive camouflages a harsh reality: North Korea has no intention of giving up its nuclear weapons. North Korea says it’s willing to discuss denuclearization. But, what Pyongyang means by denuclearization is something different than the complete dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear program President Trump is talking about. As the summit nears, Pyongyang is making this increasingly clear.

In a harshly worded statement, North Korea’s foreign minister, Kim Kye Gwan, threatened to pull out of the summit altogether if the U.S. continued to insist on the North’s unilateral nuclear disarmament.

“[W]e are no longer interested in a negotiation that will be all about driving us into a corner and making a one-sided demand for us to give up our nukes, and this would force us to reconsider whether we would accept the North Korea-U.S. summit meeting,” he said.

Expectations Mismatch

The statement highlights the fundamental challenge Mr. Trump will face when he meets North Korea’s leader in Singapore next month. For Mr. Trump, the upcoming talks are about removing North Korea’s nuclear capability. For Mr. Kim, they are about leveraging his newly-minted status as the leader of a nuclear power to extract concessions from the United States. This mismatch in expectations raises the risk that the summit goes sideways.

Mr. Trump believes that his “maximum pressure” campaign towards North Korea has primed Pyongyang to strike the disarmament deal that eluded his predecessors. His new National Security Advisor, John Bolton outlined what such a deal might look like.

“We have very much in mind the Libya model from 2003, 2004,” Bolton said in an April interview with Fox News. “There are obviously differences. The Libyan program was much smaller. But that was basically the agreement that we made.”

North Korea’s foreign minister bristled at that idea. A deal modeled on Libya, he said a recent statement, is “an awfully sinister move to impose on our dignified state the destiny of Libya or Iraq which had been collapsed due to yielding the whole of their countries to big powers.”

The White House is now distancing itself from Bolton’s comments. “I haven’t seen that as part of any discussions, so I’m not aware that that’s a model that we’re using,” Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday.

The Libya deal is hardly hardly a model that North Korea wants to imitate. Under that agreement, Libya gave up its nuclear program, and eight years later the country found itself in the grips of a civil war in which Libyan President Muammar Gaddhafi was overthrown by rebels backed by American air strikes and murdered in the most gruesome way possible. From Kim’s perspective, Libya is not a model, but a cautionary tale.

“The world knows too well that the DPRK is neither Libya nor Iraq, which have met a miserable fate,” North Korea’s foreign minister added.

An example that involves a leader giving up his nuclear program only to be deposed with America’s help and then dragged from the drainage ditch he was forced to hide in and repeatedly stabbed in the butt with a bayonet hardly inspires confidence. Avoiding a similar fate is exactly why Mr. Kim believes he needs nukes in the first place.

“Kim looks at the world and he sees that Gaddafi gave up his nuclear program, he’s dead, his regime is gone. Saddam never had nuclear weapons, he’s dead, his regime is gone,” former defense secretary Robert Gates said in an interview with “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan.

North Korea argues that, unlike Libya, it has a fully developed nuclear capability and therefore should be reckoned with on its own terms.

“It is absolutely absurd to dare to compare the DPRK, a nuclear weapons state, to Libya, which had been at the initial stage of nuclear development,” Mr. Kim, the North Korean foreign minister, said in his statement.

Pyongyang is not going to relinquish its nuclear weapons in exchange for the lifting of sanctions and and a little economic assistance as some Trump officials have suggested. North Korea’s foreign minister says that it has no intention of “abandon[ing] nuke” in exchange for economic compensation.

When North Korea says it is willing to pursue the “denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula, it means something entirely different than unilaterally giving up its nuclear weapons. For Pyongyang, denuclearization likely means removing the U.S. military presence from the Korean Peninsula and rescinding the protection of the US nuclear umbrella from America’s regional allies like Japan and South Korea. Both would probably be be a non-stater for the US and its allies.

The Reality

North Korea may agree to some sort of aspirational statement about giving up its weapons at some point in the future. It may also make some concessions, such as agreeing to halt further nuclear tests — something it says it no longer needs to do anyway since it considers its nuclear program complete. The best Mr. Trump is likely to get out of Mr. Kim is something like the Iran deal, an agreement of which Mr. Trump doesn’t think that highly.

But, it bears noting that North Korea has a long history of agreeing to things and then almost immediately violating the agreement. In 2008, North Korea blew up the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear reactor to much fanfare as a concession to the U.S. It made for dramatic TV footage, but it had little practical effect. They simply used water pumped from a nearby river to cool the reactor instead.

Mr. Trump isn’t the first President to enter office with expectations of a grand bargain on the Korean Peninsula. But, as his predecessors learned the hard way, North Korea is where Presidential aspirations of diplomatic greatness go to die.

While the odds are long, if Mr. Trump actually manages to get North Korea to give up its nukes, it will be a historic diplomatic achievement for which Mr. Trump will deserve substantial credit — and maybe even a Nobel Peace prize.

The Science Behind Why You Hear Laurel or Yanny

Taylor Griffin

May 19, 2018

Over the past week, the internet has been consumed by a raging debate about whether a sound clip is saying “laurel” or “yanny.” The clip comes from a vocabulary site page for the word “laurel.” Yet, about half of people hear “yanny.”

So, how can people listening to the exact same audio clip hear two completely different things? The answer lies in how our brains process sound and variations in the frequencies different people are able to hear.

Spoken language is sound waves propagated through the air at different frequencies, which our brains then interprets into words. “yanny” and “laurel” have a similar length and cadence. But, depending on the frequency, the same clip will sound more like one or the other. In higher frequencies, it sounds more like “yanny”, while in lower frequencies, sounds more like “laurel.” What you will hear depends on what frequencies your brain emphasizes and hears best.

The clip is a recording of the audio pronunciation of the word “laurel” from Vocabulary.com played through computer speakers. This has the effect of accentuating the higher frequencies making it possible for some to hear “yanny” rather than “laurel.”

This is because some, especially younger people, are able to hear higher frequencies better than others. As we get older, our ability to hear higher frequencies tends to diminish. So, older people will be less likely to hear “yanny” and more likely to hear “laurel.”

Another factor: our brains filter out frequencies to allow us to better focus on certain sounds. This is useful for things like hearing what someone is saying to us in a noisy room. If your brains is filtering out higher frequencies, you’ll be more likely to hear “laurel” rather than “yanny.”

We can simulate this by using audio processing software. When we shift the pitch lower, bringing the high frequencies down into the lower frequency range, the clip sounds more like “yanny.” When we shift the pitch higher, it sounds like “laurel.”

Isolating the frequencies makes easier to hear why this works. If we isolate the high frequencies, it’s possible to make out “yanny.” But, if we isolate the low frequencies, all we hear is “laurel.”

What you hear is purely a function of what frequencies your brain is processing and how it interprets them. It’s a debate that will never be settled. Some people will hear “laurel” and others will hear “yanny.” And a few will hear something else entirely — President Donald Trump says “I hear ‘covefe.'”

What Trump’s Decision to Withdraw From the Iran Deal Means

Taylor Griffin

May 11, 2018

While President Donald Trump’s criticisms of the Iran Deal have merit, withdrawing from it now could very well make things worse. Trump hopes that pulling out of the deal will compel Iran to come back to the bargaining table. But it’s a gamble with long odds of paying off.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as it is more formally known, does have substantial flaws. Even if all goes perfectly, the JCPOA delays — but does not prevent — Iran from eventually acquiring a nuclear weapon. It does not eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons capacity, it simply places it in mothballs until the deal expires. At best, the deal extends the “breakout time,” the time it will take Iran to develop a weapon if it restarts its program, from a few months to about a year.

The Flaws

Chief among the JCPOA’s flaws are the so-called sunset clauses. Nearly all of the restrictions placed on Iran’s nuclear program end after 10–15 years. At that point, Iran can essentially pick up the nuclear program not far from where they left off and have a nuke in about a year. This is because Iran is allowed to keep most of its uranium enrichment infrastructure. Under the deal, Iran is permitted to keep 5,060 of its 20,000 centrifuges used to enrich uranium in operation. The rest must be kept in storage, but the deal does not require that they be destroyed. This is significant because enriching uranium is the most difficult and time-consuming part of building a nuclear weapon. Allowing Iran to keep its centrifuges means that it can manufacture enough highly-enriched uranium to build a bomb in a matter of months.

Even President Obama acknowledged that this is a problem. “What is a more relevant fear would be that in year 13, 14, 15, they have advanced centrifuges that can enrich uranium fairly rapidly, and at that time the breakout times would have shrunk almost down to zero,” Obama said.

Even before the JCPOA expires, if Iran decides it no longer wants to comply, all it has to do is pull its gas centrifuges out of storage and start enriching uranium again. And, the procedures for verifying Iran’s compliance with the deal have some blind spots that leave room for abuse. By the time the international community discovers that Iran is back at it again, Iran may be only months away from having a bomb.

Emboldened Iran

President Obama hoped that the deal would result in a moderation of Iran’s behavior. But, the reality has been exactly the opposite. Iran, now flush with cash thanks to sanctions relief, is wreaking chaos through its terrorist proxies in Syria and throughout the Middle East.

These are all perfectly valid reasons to believe the deal should not have been struck. It’s reasonable to argue the US and EU should have held out for an agreement that requires Iran to dismantle its nuclear weapons capability permanently. But, pulling out of it now is a different calculation entirely. There is a strong argument that the Iran deal was a mistake, but chunking it now could prove to be a bigger one.

Abandoning the JCPOA does little to correct its problems. While complaints about the sunset provisions are valid, if Iran reciprocates and the deal collapses, a worry down the road about Iran restarting it’s nuclear program becomes an immediate threat.

In Congressional testimony Tuesday, Stephen Rademaker, a skeptic of the Iran deal and Assistant Secretary of State in President George W. Bush’s Administration, argues that the U.S.’s withdrawal from the deal “would threaten to turn the long-term problem of the sunset clauses — a problem which will mature in January 2026, ten years after the agreement entered into force — into an immediate problem.”

The JCPOA gave Iran benefits on the front end. Ending the deal will prevent the US from getting much in return over the long haul. “The reality is that structure of the JCPOA frontloaded many of the benefits to Iran, while backloading most of the benefits to us. Consequently, if we abandon the agreement today, we will be unable to reclaim the benefits Iran has already received, while positioning Iran to withhold many of the future benefits it committed to provide us,“ Rademaker says.

The other problem is that the JCPOA involves more than just the US. It is an agreement between the five permanent member of the UN Security Council — Russia, China, the U.S., France, and Great Britain — plus Germany and the European Union. Multilateral sanctions, once lifted, are very hard to reimpose. And, the countries still party to the deal appear to have no intention of reimposing sanctions.

For President Trump’s gambit to succeed where Obama failed, he will have to convince Iran to fold while holding a weaker hand.

The U.S. is no longer a part of the deal, but in reality little else has changed. The other countries party to the JCPOA intend to continue to participate in the deal and Iran says it plans to continue complying with the JCPOA’s terms.

It’s unlikely that Iran will decide now to accept the concessions President Trump is demanding. There is less incentive for Tehran to accept tough terms than when President Obama’s Administration was negotiating with them. If far more crippling multilateral sanctions weren’t enough to compel Iran to make deeper concessions a few years ago, it’s hard to see how US sanctions alone would provide President Trump enough leverage. For President Trump’s gambit to succeed, he will have to convince Iran to fold while holding a weaker hand. Trump fancies himself a pretty good negotiator. But, that’s a tall order.

Interview: Taylor Griffin Breaks Down the Mueller Investigation with Stacy Washington

Taylor Griffin

May 2, 2018

Roughly Explained Editor Taylor Griffin talks with Stacy Washington, host of Stacy on the Right, about where Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is heading.

Rosenstein Told Trump He’s Not a ‘Target’ of Probes, That May Not Mean Much

Taylor Griffin

April 20, 2018

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein reportedly told President Donald Trump that he’s not the “target” of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe or the investigation into Trump Attorney Michael Cohen being overseen by the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. But, that does not mean that the President is off the hook. Not being a target merely indicates that prosecutors have not yet decided to pursue criminal charges. Further, under the standing Justice Department interpretation of the law, a sitting President cannot be subject to a criminal indictment anyway — at least while they are in office.

Witness, Subject, Target

In a federal investigation, people fall into one of three categories: witness, subject or target. Each of these categories has a very precise meaning under Department of Justice rules. A witness is obviously someone who can provide information relevant to a case; subject is someone whose conduct merely falls within the scope of a grand jury investigation, and; a target, according to the Department of Justice’s U.S. Attorneys’ Manual, is someone “whom the prosecutor or the grand jury has substantial evidence linking him or her to the commission of a crime and who, in the judgment of the prosecutor, is a putative defendant.”

Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported that Mr. Trump was a subject of the Mueller probe but not a target. But, a subject of an investigation may become a target. “It’s not comforting to be a ‘subject’ of an investigation. Most white-collar criminal defendants started out as subjects of a grand jury investigation,” Bruce Green, a former federal prosecutor and a law professor at Fordham University told The Atlantic. “Calling President Trump a ‘subject’ rather than a mere ‘witness’ generally means that his conduct is still being investigated, he is still suspected of having acted criminally, but no conclusion has yet been reached that he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”

In the peculiar circumstances of an investigation involving a sitting President, it’s not clear that a sitting President could technically be considered a target of an investigation. This is because under a longstanding interpretations by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), “a sitting President is constitutionally immune from indictment and criminal prosecution.” An OLC memo in 1973 written during the Nixon administration and subsequently affirmed by a 2000 OLC memo during the Clinton administration, found that “the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting President would unduly interfere with the ability of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned duties, and would thus violate the constitutional separation of powers.”

Since prosecutors could not bring criminal charges, a President would never technically meet the definition of a target, at least while holding office. While it’s unclear whether Mr. Rosenstein’s assurances to Mr. Trump rely on such a technical interpretation of the definition of a target, it’s possible that the distinction between a subject and a target is meaningless in the peculiar circumstances of an investigation of a sitting President.

Of course, it’s also very possible that when Mr. Rosenstein told President Trump he wasn’t a target, the Deputy Attorney General meant it in the more conventional sense of prosecutors having not yet acquired sufficient evidence that a crime was committed by the President.

Impeachment Versus Criminal Prosecution

Regardless, none of this means that a President is above the law, just that impeachment rather than prosecution is the appropriate venue to hold a sitting President accountable. Once he no longer holds office, a President could still be subject to criminal charges.

It is very likely that Special Counsel Robert Mueller accepts the Office of Legal Counsel’s view that a criminal indictment against the President is not a valid outcome of his investigation. Mr. Mueller may intend instead to produce a report to Congress and leave it to the House of Representatives to determine whether the President’s actions meet the Constitution’s “high crimes and misdemeanors” standard for impeachment.

“High crimes and misdemeanors” is sufficiently vague that impeachment is rendered an inherently political question. No matter what Mr. Mueller reports, if Democrats win the House in November, it’s likely that they will find his conclusions worthy of impeachment. But, so long as Republicans hold the House, it’s likely they won’t.

The Washignton Post reported a few weeks ago that in negotiations with the President’s legal team in early March, Mr. Mueller told the President’s lawyers that he is preparing a report detailing potential obstruction of justice. While Mr. Trump may not be the target of either investigation in a literal sense, he’s not out of the woods either.

Russian Disinformation and the Syria Strikes

Taylor Griffin

April 17, 2018

In the lead up to this weekend’s coordinated attack in Syria by U.S., French and British cruise missiles, the Russian propaganda machine went into overdrive. The Pentagon reported a 2,000% increase in Russian social media troll activity in the 24-hours before and after allied militaries launched 105 cruise missiles at targets associated with the Syrian government’s chemical weapons capabilities after Western leaders blamed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for killing 40 people with chemical munitions including chlorine gas and an unknown nerve agent. Bellicose Russian threats of retaliation raised worries that the allied response to the attack risked sparking World War III and wild accusations were flung by Russian officials to confuse the issue and send the debate off into irrelevant directions.

“Welcome to the new face of warfare, where disinformation has become an important new front in international security policy, confusing policymaking and raising doubts about what is real.”

Welcome to the new face of warfare, where disinformation has become an important new front in international security policy, confusing policymaking and raising doubts about what is real. This, says Senator Ben Sasse, is what “the wars of the future will look like…The fog of war will not be limited to our situation rooms and battlefields.”

Propaganda is nothing new in Russia. The strategic use of disinformation was a prominent element of Soviet strategy. But, the proliferation of new technologies, social media and twenty four hour global news coverage provide new opportunities for mischief. As an article in Armeyskiy Sbornik, a Russian military publication put it, “under today’s conditions, means of information influence have reached a level of development such that they are capable of resolving strategic tasks.”

Information warfare provides Russia a low-cost way to achieve strategic goals. Through bluff and confusion, Russia is able to shape the strategic landscape despite inferior conventional military capabilities. And, in the context of Syria over the past week, it’s a strategy that appears to have yielded at least some success. It is very likely that the Western response was at least delayed, and probably tempered by, the clammer stirred up by the Kremlin. “A measured dose of faux insanity is being used to make up for a gaping disparity in conventional military and economic strength,” the New Yorker’s Joshua Yaffa writes.

The Syria Strikes

There are two primary ways Russia employed propaganda to shape the Western response the gas attack:

1) creating an exaggerated fear of Russian retaliation, and;
2) muddling the issues, making it harder to discern what is and isn’t true and blurring moral distinctions between the sides.

Last month, Russia’s top military officer, General Valery Gerasimov, threatened to shoot down missiles fired at Syrian territory and, if Russian forces were threatened, he suggested Russia would retaliate with attacks on the U.S. warships and aircraft that launched them. Last week, Russia’s Ambassador to Lebanon reiterated the threat as President Trump and his advisors weighed a response to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s chemical weapons attack on Douma. The comments bolstered the idea that, as I wrote last week, “escalation with Assad will mean an escalation with Russia that risks stumbling into a conflict neither Washington nor Moscow want.” The prospect of armed conflict between the United States and Russia is enough to scare the tar out of anyone.

While Russia’s military is nothing to be scoffed at, America’s war-fighting capabilities are far superior. There is little doubt that the U.S. and its allies would prevail if the two forces ever came to blows. Still, the costs of such a clash would be higher than the U.S. is willing to pay. “We could stumble into direct conflict very quickly,” Heather Conley, a European security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank told Vox News. “The nation is not prepared for this eventuality.”

A direct conflict with the U.S. is not something Russia likely wants either. “But, those fears also have tactical utility for the Kremlin, both in terms of causing alarm in Western capitals and serving to unite the population at home against the spectre of foreign aggression,” Yaffa says.

Although Russia did not succeed in preventing the US and allies from responding to last week’s gas attack altogether, fears of escalation with Moscow likely restricted its scale. The mere threat of a Russian retaliation established by Moscow’s preemptive bluster was enough to discourage more aggressive options for response under consideration in Western capitals.

In reality, allied missiles reached their targets. The deconfliction channel through which allied and Russian military forces communicate to avoid inadvertently hitting each other worked. Russia was informed in advance of the attacks and stood by as the attacks occurred.

The Confusion Track

The other tactic in Russia’s propaganda effort is what we’ll call the confusion track. In the immediate aftermath of the Douma attacks, Kremlin propaganda set out to muddy the question of Assad’s culpability in the gas attack. Syria and Russia claimed that there was no gas attack. Then, later in the week, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Laverov ludicrously claimed that the attack was staged. Lavrov said he had “irrefutable data that [this] was yet another staged event and staging was done … by the special services of one of the countries at the forefront of the anti-Russia campaign.” A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman pointed the finger at Britain, saying the UK was “directly involved.” He offered no evidence and nor did he even bother to suggest a motive for Britain to do such a thing.

On the eve of the attacks, I was interviewed on BBC radio about this charge alongside Alexander Nekrassov, a former Kremlin advisor who reliably tows Moscow’s line. When I pressed Nekrassov to explain why Britain would launch a poison gas attack in Syria, he responded by launching into an absurd machine-gun fire of irrelevant whattaboutisms — Britain ruined Yemen, Britain destroyed Libya, and something about America purportedly using chemical weapons in Vietnam. None of this had anything to do with why Britain would want to gas women and children in Syria.

During the same interview, Nekrassov also accused a conservative British Member of Parliament who also joined us on air of being a paid British propaganda shill. Without a hint of irony, he claimed that Britain used Twitter-bots, paid shills, and a media taking orders from the state to gaslight the world. What he was describing, very precisely, was Russian propaganda and attributing it to Britain.

The ridiculous accusations created a distraction that forced advocates of military action to refute nonsense rather than to directly debate the issue of Assad’s use of chemical weapons and Russian backing for the Syrian regime while sewing doubts about who was really responsible. The sheer unbridled absurdity of the claims and the accusations that Britain used similar disinformation tactics, serves Russia’s broader objective of encouraging assumptions that the statements of governments cannot be trusted, that objective truth is an illusion.

The Aftermath

On Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a statement calling the attacks “an act of aggression against a sovereign state,” and demanded an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to consider a resolution condemning the strikes. That resolution, predictably, failed. But, as the New Yorker’s Yaffa wrote, “that fiery rhetoric—more theatrical than substantive—may be the limit of Russia’s immediate reaction, or at least a signifier that its response will not be on the battlefield.”

In the wake of the strikes, Russia is walking back their threats, saying that the allied cruise missiles did not cross their air defense “zone of responsibility,” thus there was no need to engage them. Russia and Syria‘s erroneous claims that most of the cruise missiles were knocked down by Syrian air defense systems, amplified by social media trolls, diminished the importance of the strikes in Syria even as Russia went through the ritual of denouncing them.

Yet, Russia’s strategy seems to have yielded at least some results. The biggest threat to Russian interests in Syria, a decision by Western nations to seek Assad’s removal from power was averted. In the end, the strategic situation remains unchanged. The attacks diminished, but did not eliminate, the Syrian regime’s ability to deliver chemical weapons. Syria’s military capabilities were otherwise left untouched. Syrian government forces continue to have the upper-hand in the seven-year-old civil war that has claimed nearly a half million lives. As of this writing, Assad remains poised to wipe out the remaining elements of resistance and the Middle East beach-head Russia has established in Syria is secure.

As Trump Considers Response to Syria Gas Attack, No Easy Options

Taylor Griffin

April 9, 2018

Douma kids White Helmets — PHOTO: Syrian Civil Defense/White Helmets via Twitter

An apparent chemical weapons attack in Syria over the weekend left at least 42 people dead, many of them children, in the rebel-held Damascus suburb of Douma. NGOs and Western governments strongly suspect Syrian government forces are responsible along with their benefactors in Moscow and Tehran.

President Trump expressed outrage at the attack and uncharacteristically called out Russian President Vladimir Putin directly, as well as Iran, for “backing Animal Assad,” and vowing a “big price to be paid.”

Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria. Area of atrocity is in lockdown and encircled by Syrian Army, making it completely inaccessible to outside world. President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 8, 2018

….to pay. Open area immediately for medical help and verification. Another humanitarian disaster for no reason whatsoever. SICK!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 8, 2018

Syrian Denials

The Syrian regime of Bashar Assad, along with its allies Russia and Iran, are denying Syrian responsibility for the attack, variously claiming that it didn’t happen at all or suggesting that the rebels themselves are responsible for the attack.

It all has the ring of the now debunked Russian/Syrian claims about the chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun that killed 80 people last year. Initially they claimed that a the Sarin gas was released from a purported rebel chemical weapons facility. But, when that explanation proved untenable, they then said it was released by an IED. A UN investigation found that the gas attack was carried out by an arial bomb dropped from a Syrian military aircraft.

According to opposition forces, the most recent gas attack was carried out by Syrian government aircraft as well. Because the area around Douma is controlled by Russian and Syrian forces who are blocking Western observers from interning the area, it’s impossible to verify these claims yet.

While it will take some time to determine exactly what happened, in the past, Syrian President Bashar Assad has used chemical weapons to terrify and demoralize civilian populations, undermining local support for opposition forces, making the population easier to pacify. This latest attack came as Syrian forces were in the process of moving on Douta, so the attack fits this pattern.The brutally agonizing mechanism of death brought by chemical weapons serves not only to sap the will to fight in Douma, but also as a warning to rebels in Islib province, a rebel stronghold in the north of the country likely to be the target of the Syrian government’s next offensive.

President Trump has been signaling over the past few weeks that he wants to pull the U.S. out of Syria. This may have led Assad to believe that Trump would have little appetite for a forceful American response to the attack. Although, Trump’s tweets over the weekend suggest he might have miscalculated. At the least, the attack will slow Trump’s plans for a withdrawal of the 2,000 U.S. troops currently deployed in Syria.

A Tough Position

President Trump is now mulling a response. “It was atrocious. It was horrible,” Trump said of the attack in a cabinet meeting on Monday. “This is about humanity, and it can’t be allowed to happen.” Trump said that his administration would be making a decision on a response in the next 24-48 hours. On Monday evening, as Trump dined with military leaders, he vowed that the attack “will be met and it will be met forcefully.” But, the President is in a tough position without many good options. Any American response would be complicated by the presence of Russia in the region.

Russian advisors are intermingled with Syrian government forces. Any attack on Syrian targets risks hitting Russian assets as well. Further, under a deconfliction agreement with Moscow the U.S. is required to notify the Russian military in advance of any attack, allowing them to warn their Syrian allies in advance.

Finally, Russia has indicated that a U.S. retaliation would be unacceptable. “There was no chemical weapons attack,” Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations told the Security Council in a highly charged emergency meeting Monday. “Through the relevant channels we already conveyed to the US that armed forces under mendacious pretext against Syria – where, at the request of the legitimate government of a country, Russian troops have been deployed – could lead to grave repercussions.”

This raises the stakes for Trump. Any escalation with Assad will mean an escalation with Russia that risks stumbling into a conflict neither Washington nor Moscow want. Whatever Trump decides, the national security equation has just become a lot more complicated. Meanwhile, in Douma, they are burying children.

Syrian Civil Defense/White Hats via Twitter

Rosenstein Bolsters Team, Names Veteran Prosecutor Ed O’Callaghan as His Right Hand

Taylor Griffin

April 6, 2018

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has tapped Edward O’Callaghan, a widely respected veteran prosecutor, as Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General, a post that is among the most important at the Department of Justice. The PADAG, as the position is known within DoJ, is charged with wide-ranging responsibilities including oversight of investigations and Department operations.

O’Callaghan is assuming a post previously held by FBI Director Christopher Wray and Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland among others. The Russia investigation has made it even more crucial now.

The PADAG also serves as “a consigliere” to the deputy attorney general, Matthew Axelrod, who held the position under Rosenstein’s predecessor Sally Yates, told CNN. “[S]omeone to discuss the most sensitive issues with, to give you sound advice, and to ensure your decisions get implemented.” It is in this part of the job that O’Callaghan will be especially important.

Rosenstein, who is responsible for overseeing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and potential coordination between President Trump’s campaign and Moscow related to Kremlin meddling in the 2016 election, may prove to be among the most consequential deputy attorney generals to ever hold the role. Ed O’Callaghan’s experience with corruption and counterintelligence prosecutions will be key to helping Rosenstein navigate the tricky issues that the Russia probe will raise.

O’Callaghan’s well-regarded work as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where he was co-chief of the Counterterrorism and National Security Section from 2005-2008, makes him especially well-suited for this role. O’Callaghan led high-profile prosecutions related to the United Nations Oil for Food Program scandal, as well as a number of other prominent corruption and national security cases. More recently, O’Callaghan served as the number two official in the Department of Justice’s National Security Division.

O’Callaghan has long been on legal watchers‘ short list for a prominent position in the Justice Department. Last year, it was widely speculated that he might be tapped to succeed Preet Bahara as US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. While President Trump ended up picking Geoffrey Berman, a close associate of Trump-pal Rudy Giuliani instead, the fact that O’Callahan was at the top of so many people’s lists for the role is an indication of how highly-regarded he is within the legal community.

As Mueller’s Russia investigation enters its final stage, Rosenstein and O’Callaghan will have a difficult needle to thread. Agitation from Trump allies in Congress seeking to discredit the probe will surely grow louder. And, if President Trump decides to finally scratch his longstanding itch to fire the special counsel, Rosenstein and O’Callaghan will be squarely in the middle of it. O’Callaghan is known for a deliberate, thoughtful, and clear-headed style that makes him especially well-suited to balancing the twin tasks of protecting the nation’s legal institutions and ensuring that the investigation is carried out fairly.

It will not be an easy assignment, but O’Callaghan is no stranger to preposterous situations. In 2008, he led the McCain campaign’s efforts surrounding the “Troopergate” investigation, a family squabble involving Sarah Palin’s former brother-in-law, State Trooper Mike Wooten that, whipped by the winds of the 2008 Presidential campaign, mushroomed into accusations that then-Governor Palin improperly tried to get him fired. The Alaska Personnel Board later cleared Palin of wrongdoing.

I was in part responsible for drafting Ed O’Callaghan into that particular goat rodeo. His sense of humor, keen legal insight in a case in which the facts often bordered on the absurd — whether or not a moose was shot out of season, was actually a key issue — and his deft navigation of an overheated political environment proved invaluable.

The challenges Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will likely face in the months ahead are weighty. But, judging from my experience in the trenches with Ed, Rosenstein could not have picked anyone better to help him navigate them.

China’s Prototype Space Station is About to Fall From the Sky

Taylor Griffin

March 30, 2018

Sometime this weekend, Tiangong-1, China’s first manned space station will plummet back to earth. Originally launched in 2011, the nearly nine-ton prototype space station was only intended to operate for two years. But, China extended it’s life a little further before finally losing control of the satellite in 2016. The Tiangong-1, which means “Heavenly Palace” in Chinese, has been on a slow collision course with earth ever since.

Oceanic pole of inaccessibility at 48° 52′ 36″S 123° 23′ 36″W

It’s highly unlikely that Tiangdong-1 will crash into an inhabited area, but not impossible. Normally, controllers guide obsolete satellites to a place in the South Pacific Ocean called the Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility, which lies about midway between Australia and Chile, south of the Pitcairn Islands. It is the point on the earth furthest away from civilization where falling satellites are least likely to hit anything. Some 260 satellites have met their fate here over the years.

However, because China’s space agency no longer has any control over Toangong-1, no one knows for sure exactly where the “Heavenly Palace” will fall back to earth. Still, the odds are remote that it will come down anywhere it could do harm and most of it will burn up in the earth’s atmosphere anyway. The satellite, or whatever will be left of it, is small while the earth is comparatively large and mostly covered by water. So, the odds are long that it will end up coming down in an inhabited area.

What are the chances it falls on your head? It’s not impossible, but highly unlikely. The European Space Agency, which has a unit devoted to tracking space junk, estimates that it is ten million times more likely that you’ll be struck by lightning.

But, there’s a chance you might see it in the sky. Once it falls below 100 miles, Tiangong-1 will speed up and begin to glow as it encounters thicker layers of the atmosphere. If you’re in the right place, it will look like a meteorite streaking through the sky.

In the 1970s, all 77 tons of the U.S.’s much larger SkyLab crashed harmlessly into Western Australia. Like SkyLab, Tiangong-1 will most likely fall harmlessly into an unpopulated area. We’ll have a better idea of exactly where it will make impact about 24 hours out. But, until then, we’ll be left wondering.

Why the U.S. Just Expelled Dozens of Russian Diplomats

Taylor Griffin

March 27, 2018

1024px-Russian-Embassy-US — Photo Credit: Aaron Siirila

President Donald Trump’s decision to expel 60 Russian diplomats the U.S. believes to be working as intelligence officers and shut down the Russian consulate in Seattle, marks the strongest action the Trump Administration has taken against Moscow yet. The move was part of a coordinated response by more than twenty countries to Russia’s use of a military-grade nerve gas to poison former spy, Sergei V. Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England March 4th. Britain considers the attack, “an unlawful use of force” against the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Theresa May said recently.

Western nations fear that the attack represents a newly strident Russia willing to openly flaunt international norms. In a statement, the White House called it “the latest in [Russia’s] ongoing pattern of destabilizing activities around the world.”

Moscow’s Miscalculation

The Kremlin likely assumed that Britain’s government, distracted by Brexit, would be unlikely to forcefully respond and President Donald Trump’s previous reluctance to criticize Moscow would minimize the risk of U.S. countermeasures as well. As it turns out, they miscalculated.

To date, 21 countries have expelled a total of 135 diplomats in what Prime Minister May says is the “the largest collective expulsion of Russian intelligence officers in history.”

The broader and more important effect was symbolic — a strong demonstration that the transatlantic alliance, which Russia has sought to disrupt, is alive and well.

The move diminishes Russian intelligence operations in U.S. and Europe to some extent. The broader and more important effect was symbolic — a strong demonstration that the transatlantic alliance, which Russia has sought to disrupt, is alive and well. “If the Kremlin’s goal is to divide and intimidate the western alliance, then their efforts have spectacularly backfired,” the prime minister told the House of Commons Monday.

Why It Matters

Skripel’s murder was a slap in the face not only to Britain, but to the United States as well. Skripel, a former colonel in Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, was convicted of spying for Britain’s MI6 foreign intelligence agency in 2006. He ended up in Britain as part of a U.S.-brokered spy swap in 2010. Skripel, who was pardoned by then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, and three other spies were handed over in exchange for ten Russian spies arrested by the FBI. Russia’s attack on Skripel was an afront to the deal struck between the U.S. and Russia.

What Happens Next?

Russia is downplaying the significance of the expulsions, and will likely retaliate in kind. The Russian embassy posted a poll on Twitter asking which U.S. consulate in Russia they should close. St. Petersburg is winning.

US administration?? ordered the closure of the Russian Consulate in Seattle @GK_Seattle??. What US Consulate General would you close in @Russia, if it was up to you to decide

— Russia in USA ?? (@RusEmbUSA) March 26, 2018

But, whatever measures Russia takes, the coordinated response has rejuvenated the western alliance against an increasingly aggressive Russia. That is an important and positive development. Still, the new cold war between Russia and the west just got a little hotter.

FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s Firing Explained

Taylor Griffin

March 20, 2018

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Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced late Friday that he was firing FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, a frequent target of attacks from President Donald Trump. Mr. Sessions said that he dismissed Mr. McCabe, a career FBI agent who oversaw both the Clinton e-mail investigation and the FBI’s Russia probe, for “a lack of candor” in statements to the Department of Justice’s internal watchdog about an unauthorized disclosure to a Wall Street Journal reporter in 2016. That is a credible enough explanation, but Mr. Trump’s evident disdain for Mr. McCabe complicates the picture.

Mr. McCabe has been portrayed by Mr. Trump and his defenders as the villain in what they claim is a politically-motivated FBI plot against Mr. Trump in support of his election rival Hillary Clinton. And, Mr. Trump has publically vented his frustration with Mr. Sessions’ that he didn’t fire him sooner. “Why didn’t A.G. Sessions replace Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, a Comey friend who was in charge of Clinton investigation,” Mr. Trump tweeted in June.

Why didn't A.G. Sessions replace Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, a Comey friend who was in charge of Clinton investigation but got….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

After news broke that Mr. McCabe had finally been sacked, Mr. Trump took to Twitter for a victory lap. “Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI – A great day for Democracy,” Mr. Trump proclaimed.

Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI – A great day for Democracy. Sanctimonious James Comey was his boss and made McCabe look like a choirboy. He knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2018

Mr. Trump and his allies’ primary complaint about Mr. McCabe relates to donations to Mr. McCabe’s wife’s unsuccessful 2015 campaign as a Democrat for Virginia State Senate by Common Good VA, a Super PAC controlled by Terry Mcauliffe, a close ally of the Clintons and the then governor of Virginia. Evidence, they say, that Mr. McCabe is a politically motivated ne’er-do-well.

Mr. McCabe, unsurprisingly, disagreed. “Here is the reality: I am being singled out and treated this way because of the role I played, the actions I took, and the events I witnessed in the aftermath of the firing of James Comey,” Mr. McCabe said in a statement.

For his part, Mr. Sessions maintains that the decision was unrelated to Mr. Trump’s calls for McCabe’s head. Instead, he says, McCabe was fired based on the recommendation of career officials at the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) and the findings of a yet to be released report on a broader investigation into the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation and the Russia probe conducted by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) led by Michael Horowitz, a well-regarded career Justice Department official.

“Both the OIG and FBI OPR reports concluded that Mr. McCabe had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor − including under oath − on multiple occasions,” he said in a statement late Friday. “…The F.B.I. expects every employee to adhere to the highest standards of honesty, integrity and accountability. I have terminated the employment of Andrew McCabe effective immediately.”

As Mr. McCabe’s defenders are eager to point out, the story in question had nothing to do with Mr. Trump and wasn’t exactly favorable to Mrs. Clinton either. The October 2016 Wall Street Journal report by Devlin Barrett chronicled a dispute between the FBI and the Justice Department about how aggressively to pursue a probe into the Clinton Foundation. In it, Mr. McCabe’s allies portray him as advocating continued investigation of the Clinton-linked charity over the objections of Justice Department prosecutors who saw little merit in the case.

Mr. McCabe contends that his actions were entirely appropriate and that he was merely trying to defend the FBI against perceptions that the Bureau was not pursuing the Clinton Foundation case vigorously enough. “The FBI was portrayed as caving under that pressure, and making decisions for political rather than law enforcement purposes. Nothing was further from the truth,” McCabe said in his statement. “In fact, this entire investigation stems from my efforts, fully authorized under FBI rules, to set the record straight on behalf of the Bureau, and to make clear that we were continuing an investigation that people in DOJ opposed.”

Mr. McCabe maintains that interactions with journalists were neither unusual nor inappropriate. “The OIG investigation has focused on information I chose to share with a reporter through my public affairs officer and a legal counselor,” his statement said. “As Deputy Director, I was one of only a few people who had the authority to do that..I answered questions truthfully and as accurately as I could amidst the chaos that surrounded me. And when I thought my answers were misunderstood, I contacted investigators to correct them.”

It’s hard to know who is right without seeing the OIG’s report. Still, from what we know so far, Mr. McCabe’s dismissal seems to have gone through the proper process. The FBI takes the honesty of its agents seriously and lack of candor is absolutely a fireable offense. The Justice Department took great care to avoid the perception that Mr. McCabe was sacked at the behest of Mr. Trump by emphasizing that the decision was guided by career civil service officials.

But, Mr. Trump’s past calls for Mr. McCabe’s ouster were sure to make his dismissal controversial. And, Mr. Trump’s tweets trumpeting it did nothing to diminish Mr. McCabe’s claim that he is a victim of a “larger effort not just to slander me personally, but to taint the FBI, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals more generally. It is part of this Administration’s ongoing war on the FBI and the efforts of the Special Counsel investigation, which continue to this day.”

Why Being Donald Trump’s Lawyer is the Worst Job in the World

Taylor Griffin

March 20, 2018

When one of President Donald Trump’s lawyers, John Dowd, told the Daily Beast that “I pray that Acting Attorney General Rosenstein will…bring an end to the alleged Russia Collusion investigation,” the backlash was swift and fierce. Asked about Mr. Dowd’s comments on Fox News Sunday, Rep. Trey Gowdy, usually a reliable defender of Mr. Trump’s, had harsh words. “If you have an innocent client, Mr. Dowd, act like it,” he said.

The episode ignited renewed speculation that Mr. Trump, who has been on a firing spree of late, might actually go through with firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller — a prospect that was met with considerable alarm on Capitol Hill. Sen. Lindsey Graham declared on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday that, “if he tried to do that, that would be the beginning of the end of his presidency.”

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Mr. Dowd later clarified that he was speaking for himself, not his client. Still, it is no secret that Mr. Trump could not agree more.

Surely to his lawyers’ dismay. Mr. Trump has in recent days flung wide the window into the Presidential mind that is his Twitter feed to vent his fury at Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. “The Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime,” he tweeted. “It was based on fraudulent activities and a Fake Dossier paid for by Crooked Hillary and the DNC, and improperly used in FISA COURT for surveillance of my campaign. WITCH HUNT!!”

The Tweet marked the first time Mr. Trump has mentioned Special Counsel Robert Mueller by name, a striking departure from the strategy of cooperation with Mr. Mueller that Trump’s legal team has advocated. Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Mr. Gowdy offered similar advice to Mr. Trump that he did to Mr. Dowd. “If the allegation is collusion with the Russians, and there is no evidence of that, and you are innocent of that, act like it,” Mr. Gowdy said.

The Best Laid Plans

To the great frustration, of his attorneys, it has been Mr. Trump’s own actions that provide the strongest basis for suspicion. Mr. Trump’s conspicuous refusal to criticize Russia, his reluctance to acknowledge Moscow’s culpability in election meddling and his bafflingly unshakable admiration for Vladimir Putin do little to dispel the notion that he is somehow under the Kremlin’s sway.

Mr. Trump‘s unceremonious sacking of FBI Director James Comey; his aborted attempt to fire the Special Counsel last year; and his dogged efforts to discredit Mr. Mueller, the FBI and anyone involved with the Russia investigation are a sled of bricks his legal team must haul. And it gets heavier with each tweet.

Mr. Trump’s celebratory Tweets about the firing of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe heaped more weight on the load. A career civil servant who oversaw both the Clinton e-mail investigation and the FBI’s Russia probe, Mr. McCabe was sacked by Attorney General Jeff Sessions just a day before he had planned to retire.

Mr. Sessions insisted that the decision was merited and based on the recommendation of career officials at the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) and a yet to be released report on a broader investigation by the Justice Department’s Inspector General (OIG) into the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation and the Russia probe.

https://prodroughlyexp.wpengine.com/2018/03/3286/

The OIG reportedly faulted McCabe for a “lack of candor” in recounting an interaction with a reporter in which Mr. McCabe sought to push back on a perception that the FBI was not vigorously pursuing an investigation into the Clinton Foundation. Lack of candor is absolutely a fireable offense at the FBI. But, Mr. Trump’s past calls for Mr. McCabe’s ouster were sure to make his dismissal controversial.

Why didn't A.G. Sessions replace Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, a Comey friend who was in charge of Clinton investigation but got….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

The Justice Department was careful to separate the decision on McCabe from Mr. Trump’s anger with him, emphasizing that it was guided by career civil service officials rather than ordered by the White House. But, Mr. Trump promptly undermined that argument with a tweet proclaiming Mr. McCabe firing as “a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI – A great day for Democracy.”

“The President does not help the Justice Department argue that this is a fair and nonpolitical process by repeatedly engaging on this and gloating about this,” Matt Appuzzo, who covers the FBI for the New York Times, said on a Times podcast Monday.

Mr. Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey last year added obstruction of justice to the list potential charges against Mr. Trump with which his legal team must contend. While Mr. McCabe’s dismissal seems to have gone through the proper process, Mr. Trump’s tweet raised questions about whether he might have improperly applied pressure to bring it about. From what we know so far, it appears that Mr. Trump is likely on safe legal ground, but his tweets over the weekend added needless complications for his legal team.

A Red Line

Mr. Trump insists that he has done nothing wrong, leading his lawyers to conclude that the best approach is to cooperate. An exoneration by Mr. Mueller investigation would definitively lift the cloud that the Russia scandal has placed over his Presidency. If Mr. Trump is innocent, working with Mr. Mueller and his team is the quickest way to put the issue to bed.

Mr. Mueller’s activity to date has focused on the periphery of Mr. Trump’s orbit, scrupulously avoiding indication of where the investigation may be going in regard to Mr. Trump. But, that is starting to change.

Mr. Trump’s defiance of his lawyers’ cooperative approach may stem from Mr. Mueller’s recent decision to subpoena Trump Organization business records. Mr. Mueller’s move can only be interpreted one way — the Russia investigation is getting closer to Mr. Trump himself. Mr. Trump has previously suggested that if the Special Counsel’s investigation extended to his business dealings would represent a “red line.” Now that Mr. Mueller has crossed it, Mr. Trump is furious.

As he has found himself more directly in the Special Counsel’s crosshairs, Mr. Trump, who puts great stock in his gut instincts, is now casting aside his attorneys’ counsel for the sort of bare-knuckled brawling that has historically been among his go to tactics.

According to reporting by the New York Times, Mr. Trump is fuming about his lawyers:

“As [Mueller’s investigation] goes forward, Mr. Trump has questioned his lawyers’ approach and clashed with them about whether to be interviewed by Mr. Mueller. The president believes he is his best spokesman and can explain to Mr. Mueller that he did nothing wrong. The lawyers see little upside.”

In recent days, Mr. Trump has reportedly been chewing over the dismissal of one of his lawyers, Ty Cobb, who has been among the strongest voices among his legal team arguing for cooperation with the Special Counsel’s investigation. It was also Mr. Cobb who insisted that the whole thing would be over by last Christmas. It’s not.

Another indication of Mr. Trump’s preference for a more aggressive approach is the prospective newest addition to his stable of attorneys, Joseph E. diGenova, a Washington lawyer who has claimed that Mr. Trump is being framed.

“There was a brazen plot to illegally exonerate Hillary Clinton and, if she didn’t win the election, to then frame Donald Trump with a falsely created crime,” Mr. diGenova said in a Fox News appearance earlier this year. “Make no mistake about it: A group of F.B.I. and D.O.J. people were trying to frame Donald Trump of a falsely created crime,” he said.

Mr. diGenova’s pugnacious style seems in keeping with Mr. Trump’s combative instincts. But, for the rest of his legal team, Mr. Trump’s renewed preference for an antagonistic approach to the Russia investigation is troubling.

The Times also reports that Mr. Dowd has grown increasingly frustrated with his legal team’s lack of control over a client whose public outbursts are compounding his legal problems. So much so that he is told friends that he is contemplating resigning. When Mr. Dowd said he was praying that the Special Counsel investigation would end, it appears that he was speaking for himself too.

Editor’s Note: Since this post was written, Trump Attorney’s John Dowd and Ty Cobb have resigned. Joseph diGenova never came on board. And, Trump has added Rudy Giuliani and Bill Clinton’s impeachment attorney Emmet Flood to his legal team.

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Why Trump Fired Rex Tillerson

Taylor Griffin

March 15, 2018

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Rex Tillerson, a former CEO of ExxonMobile, cuts the figure of a globetrotting titan of industry. And it was this, not ideological alignment on foreign policy, that recommended Tillerson to President Donald Trump. “I have chosen one of the truly great business leaders of the world, Rex Tillerson, Chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil, to be Secretary of State,” Trump wrote on Twitter in December of 2016. And it was this that led to his downfall too.

I have chosen one of the truly great business leaders of the world, Rex Tillerson, Chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil, to be Secretary of State.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2016

Both in terms of style and in terms of substance, Mr. Tillerson proved a poor fit. Mr. Trump’s populist nativism was bound to collide with the conventional foreign policy views of the former oil executive. “I actually got along well with Rex. But really it was a different mindset. It was a different thinking,” Trump told reporters Tuesday explaining his decision.

Tillerson holds very conventional foreign policy views that were often out of step with the nationalist, America first agenda of the President he served. “When you look at the Iran deal, I think it’s terrible. I guess he thought it was OK,” Trump said this week.

Mr. Trump’s friction with his Secretary of State was no secret. The President’s fondness for Twitter leaves little doubt about exactly what is on Mr. Trump’s mind at any moment in time. And on Oct. 1, 2017, it was Mr. Tillerson’s diplomatic overtures to North Korea.

“I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,” Trump tweeted, adding, “save your energy Rex, we’ll do what has to be done!”

I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 1, 2017

Affixing the superlative, “wonderful” to Mr. Tillerson’s title did little to diminish the extraordinary spectacle of a President publicly cutting down his chief diplomat, whose ability to do his job depends on the perception that he speaks for the President.

It wasn’t the first time that Trump and Tillerson were not on the same page. Last June, as Tillerson sought to defuse a dispute between countries allied with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Tillerson condemned the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar only to be contradicted just hours later by President Trump. At a press conference in the Rose Garden that same afternoon, Trump signaled support for the Saudi position. “Nations came together and spoke to me about confronting Qatar over its behavior,” Trump said, referring to a recent visit to Riyadh. “So we had a decision to make. Do we take the easy road or do we finally take hard but necessary action?” adding that “I decided that the time had come to call on Qatar to end its funding.”

An engineer by training who served for a decade as the CEO of one of the world’s largest companies, Tillerson is deliberate and averse to risk. The smash the system aggressiveness of the early months of the Trump administration was at odds with Tillerson’s style. Tillerson also chaffed at the outsized influence of the President’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his relationship with Trump’s young, brash, senior advisor Steven Miller, the most ardent keeper of Trump’s nationalist ideology, was tense. To them, Tillerson was a counterproductive globalist interloper in their anti-establishment revolution. And in time, Trump came to agree.

In private, Mr. Tillerson could be downright contemptuous of his boss. He never directly denied reports last fall that he referred to Mr. Trump as a “moron.” Asked about Mr. Trump’s controversial remarks that there were “good people” among the white nationalists protesting in Charlottesville and blame to be shared on both sides for the violence that erupted, Mr. Tillerson told Fox News Sunday that “The President speaks for himself.”

None of this was likely to go over well with a President that values personal loyalty above all else.

There were other issues too. Tillerson’s efforts at management reform at the State Department and isolation from his subordinates rankled career foreign service officers. And he’s rightly been criticized for the laconic pace of appointments to fill senior positions at the State Department.

But, it was his sharp differences with the President, which some of Tillerson’s critics contend crossed the line into insubordination, that ultimately prompted his ouster. Even after Tillerson was dressed down by Trump for his dovish remarks on North Korea, he did little to change his tune.

In a speech at the Atlantic Council in December, Tillerson reaffirmed his openness to dialogue with Pyongyang. “Let’s just meet. And we can talk about the weather if you want. . . . But can we at least sit down and see each other face to face?”

The problem, according to Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen, is not that Trump was undermining Tillerson, it was the other way around. “By projecting weakness to Pyongyang, Tillerson was undercutting Trump’s message of strength — and thus making war more likely,” Thiessen wrote this week. “The fact that Tillerson could not seem to grasp this or get on the same page as his commander in chief made his continued leadership of the State Department untenable.”

This is surely how Mr. Trump saw it as well. Whether you agree with Mr. Trump’s foreign policy or not, it is a sound basis for dismissal. Speaking last year after news broke of his “moron” remark, Tillerson told reporters that “President Trump’s foreign policy goals break the mold of what people traditionally think is achievable on behalf of our country,” unspoken was that it turns out he was one of those people.

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Why Demands for “Reciprocal” Trade Defy Basic Economics

Roughly Explained

March 7, 2018

By Scott Lincicome, orginally published by the Cato at Liberty Blog as “‘Reciprocal’ Trade Demands Defy Basic Economics and Common Sense.” Republished with permission of the author.

Despite the immense benefits that Americans have derived from free trade and globalization, as well as the far-reaching costs of protectionism, a “reciprocity” argument—that foreign protectionism against U.S. exports justifies current or even new U.S. protectionism against foreign imports—persists. Indeed, one of the primary justifications for President Trump’s proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum, as well as many other Trump administration trade policy proposals, rests on the notion that it is only “fair” that foreign trade barriers—low or high—be matched by America’s trade barriers. Leaving aside these arguments’ basic factual and historical errors (indeed, most countries’ average tariffs on U.S. iron and steel exports range between 0% and 5%—far less than Trump’s proposed 25%), the President’s reciprocity demands still suffer from many flaws:

Reciprocity illogically demands the United States injure its own citizens because other countries injure theirs. There is overwhelming evidence that protectionism distorts markets and reduces economic welfare. For example, last year I documented “a vast repository of academic analyses and contemporaneous reporting that show that American trade protectionism—even in the periods most often cited as ‘successes’—not only has imposed immense economic costs on American consumers and the broader economy, but also has failed to achieve its primary policy aims and fostered political dysfunction along the way.” President Trump’s own Economic Report concludes that “trade and economic growth are strongly and positively correlated…. a 1-percentage-point increase in the ratio of trade to GDP raises per capita income by between 0.5 and 2 percent.” In terms of specific products, a 2006 International Trade Administration study of U.S. sugar trade barriers found that “[f]or each one sugar growing and harvesting job saved through high U.S. sugar prices, nearly three confectionery manufacturing jobs are lost.” The study also found that sugar trade barriers had caused many sugar-using companies to close or move to foreign markets (e.g., Canada and Mexico) where sugar prices were lower. A 2013 Iowa State University report found that getting rid of the sugar program would save consumers up to $3.5 billion per year. The list goes on and on and on. It therefore defies basic common sense to argue that, just because a foreign country harms its citizens through protectionist policies, the United States should do the same.
Reciprocity cedes control of U.S. economic policy to other countries. The reciprocity argument maintains that the United States should not unilaterally dismantle protectionist programs while other countries maintain similar (bad) policies, but this approach cedes U.S. control over its own economic decisions to countries like China or the European Union. Yet the United States should remain free to improve its economy, without the need to wait for other countries to do likewise. It’s particularly odd to hear such an argument from “America First” proponents who decry “globalist” policies that supposedly cede control of U.S. “sovereignty” to foreign powers.
Reciprocity undermines reform—including through reciprocal trade agreements. The reciprocity approach also would likely prohibit trade reform in the United States—contrary to popular belief, the United States still maintains numerous tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade—or elsewhere. The WTO’s “Doha Round” of global trade negotiations, meant to update and expand the body’s trade-liberalizing agreements, spent over a decade trying, and failing, to produce an agreement among Members to reduce their trade barriers and subsidies. Among the reasons for this stasis was an unwillingness of any WTO Member (including the United States) to expend the political capital necessary to lead the way—a classic “prisoners’ dilemma.” Reciprocity promises the same inaction in the future—thus why many U.S. politicians and industries advocating import protection argue so loudly for reciprocity! Furthermore, new tariff “reciprocity” threats from the Trump administration are threatening to unravel U.S. trade agreements, like NAFTA, that actually have created reciprocal, free trade regimes—to the great benefit of all parties.
Reciprocity ignores the many tools that the United States has to address other countries’ protectionism without harming its own citizens. The reciprocity argument also ignores the fact that the United States could unilaterally eliminate many of its trade barriers and still have ample legal tools at its disposal to encourage others’ to follow suit. WTO negotiations, for either all Members or a select group of them (“plurilateral” talks), could introduce new, binding caps on tariff and non-tariff barriers, and the United States would, unlike the current situation, be in a superior moral and diplomatic position to demand them. The United States could also seek to renegotiate its own tariffs through the procedures set forth in GATT Article XXVIII, which would simply require it to lower U.S. tariffs on other products (or allow other Members to raise some of their own). Current and future U.S. free trade agreements could provide another venue for reforms. Finally, WTO and FTA dispute settlement disciplines permit (1) consultations with a foreign government over many of its trade-distorting measures; and (2) if such consultations fail, investigation of the alleged protectionism and eventual imposition of remedial U.S. tariffs on imports from the offending government. WTO dispute settlement has been particularly effective in this regard, as the President’s own 2018 Economic Report documents.

There is no doubt that some (but not all) nations impose higher barriers to imports of U.S. goods and services than the United States does in return. This is not, however, a weakness in the current system but rather a testament to sound American economic policy, which has generated undeniable benefits for the vast majority of Americans. In short, the United States should not start impoverishing its citizens because other nations lack the economic insight or political strength to stop impoverishing theirs. To do so would not only ignore common sense and basic economics, but also lead to higher trade barriers, fewer reforms and therefore a lower standard of living for us all.

The views expressed herein are those of Scott Lincicome alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of his employers.

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The Rev. Billy Graham and Civil Rights

Taylor Griffin

February 24, 2018

Graham MLK — PHOTO: Billy Graham Evangelical Association

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Since the evangelist Dr. Billy Graham died earlier this week, there’s been a stunning degree of historical revisionism about Graham’s record on civil rights. CNN’s takedown, “Where Billy Graham ‘missed the mark,'” asks “How can anyone call Graham a great pastor when he refused to take a clear, unequivocal public stand against the greatest moral evil America faced in his day: racial segregation?”

“There is no excuse ever for hatred. No excuse ever for bigotry,” Graham once said in a sermon. “We’ve got to love as God loved us.”

But, this downplays the important role Graham played as a moral voice opposing racism. Graham was preaching against segregation a decade before Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech.

“There is no scriptural basis for segregation,” Graham told a Mississippi crusade audience in 1952. “It may be there are places where such is desirable to both races, but certainly not in the church.” In Chattanooga, TN, a year later, Graham asked the usher to remove the ropes that had been erected to separate whites from blacks. When he refused, Graham walked down off the stage and took down the ropes himself. A small gesture by today’s standards, but in the south of the early 1950s, it was shocking. The head usher resigned.

Graham was an early supporter of Martin Luther King’s ministry and invited him to speak at a crusade in 1957. When King was arrested in the early 1960s, Graham bailed him out of jail. Of Dr. Graham, Martin Luther King said, “had it not been for the ministry of my good friend Dr. Billy Graham, my work in the Civil Rights Movement would not have been as successful as it has been.”

It is true that Graham was tepid about getting overly involved in political activism — something he later came to regret — nevertheless, Graham played an important role as a moral leader speaking out against prejudice and his advocacy was seen by many as radical by the standards of the 1950s South. It earned him the condemnation of fundamentalists preachers like Bob Jones, who forbade his students from attending Graham’s crusade when it came to South Carolina. Jones said of Graham’s insistent support of integration, “he is doing more harm to the cause of Jesus Christ than any living man.”

Graham used his influence with Presidents to encourage change. In 1957 he advised President Eisenhower to send in the National Guard to enforce integration of Little Rock Central High School. When he held a crusade there two years later, he came under intense pressure to hold segregated services. Graham refused, threatening to cancel the event rather than do so.

Many, including President Bill Clinton, credited Graham’s 1959 crusade in Little Rock with dismantling resistance to integration. People were “on the verge of violence,” Clinton said, “and yet, tens of thousands of black and white Christians together in a football stadium….It was the beginning of the end of the old south in my home state. I will never forget it,” Clinton said years later.

In the 1960s, Graham was speaking out against apartheid in South Africa before it was cool. He refused to hold crusades there in protest of the country’s policy of enforced racial separation.

In his autobiography, Just As I Am, Graham wrote: “Churches in another nation, South Africa, strongly urged us to come, but I refused; the meetings could not be integrated, and I felt that a basic moral principle was at stake.” Religion scholar Michael G. Long says Graham’s 1960 boycott blazed a trail for the many boycotts that followed.

However, Graham was uncomfortable with civil disobedience, preferring a more cautious approach. “No matter what the law may be—it may be an unjust law—I believe we have a Christian responsibility to obey it. Otherwise, you have anarchy,” Graham said. He worried that some civil rights leaders wanted to go “too far too fast,” he said in the early 1960s. “Only the supernatural love of God through changed men can solve this burning question.” And, although he believed his cause just, Graham declined to march with Dr. King.

“Despite an upbringing where the society around him placed a governmental stamp of approval on segregation, over his life Graham wrestled with the tension of racial justice in America,” says John Richards, the Managing Director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College.

“Because the culture around him felt this way, at times, Graham had to make a choice,” Richards says. “There were occasions when Graham relented when it came to the social norms of the day, allowing some segregated rallies for the sake of gospel proclamation.”

There was always a tension for Graham on race relations between the moral message and fear of going too far and turning off the people who needed to hear the message most. There is fair criticism here, and it is a criticism that Graham would later make of himself. According to friends, Graham deeply regretted that he didn’t do more. Still, that doesn’t change the fact that Billy Graham did a great deal.

“When it comes to his own feet of clay around issues of race,” Richards says. “Graham himself would likely say that he leaned on the same gospel he proclaimed. For grace when he didn’t get it right.”

What to Make (and not make) of Mueller’s Indictment of 13 Russians

Taylor Griffin

February 19, 2018

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of 13 Russian individuals and three Russian entities Friday marked the first charges directly related to the Kremlin’s scheme to interfere in the U.S. political process.

“The defendants allegedly conducted what they called information warfare against the United States, with the stated goal of spreading distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in a press conference.

The operation included hundreds of social media accounts that pushed disinformation and divisive messages into the American political collective unconscious. While the operation mostly favored Trump, the real objective was to turn Americans against one another by stirring up suspicions and racial animosities to destroy the common ground upon which American democracy can work. The operation sought an America divided against itself that would be paralyzed in countering Russian challenges to America’s interests abroad.

Nothing in the indictment alleges anything about Trump’s potential coordination with the Kremlin. According to the indictment, “some Defendants, posing as U.S. persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign.” President Trump and his allies read this as vindication.

“The defendants allegedly conducted what they called information warfare against the United States, with the stated goal of spreading distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

The White House issued a statement Friday noting that President Trump “has been fully briefed on this matter and is glad to see the Special Counsel’s investigation further indicates—that there was NO COLLUSION between the Trump campaign and Russia and that the outcome of the election was not changed or affected.”

But, it’s important to understand that this indictment is just one part of a complex and multi-faceted investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. political process. We should not draw any firm conclusions from what it doesn’t include. The indictment simply does not speak to the question of potential coordination between Trump and Russia.

The indictment also makes no judgments about whether the Russian operation affected the outcome of the election. The answer to that question may never be known. Mueller is certainly unlikely to settle it. There’s little practical reason to address this it. Even if Moscow did put Trump in the White House, Trump supporters would reject it and Hillary supporters would embrace it. Basically, we’d be right back where we started. There’s no constitutional mechanism to redo an election. Trump is still the President, regardless.

The Translator Project

The indictment does provide a wealth of detail about how the operation was carried out and financed. There was already an understanding that Russian propagandists used social media as a tool to influence the American political process. But, the indictment laid out details of how it was organized, financed and executed that were completely new.

It paints a picture of a large-scale, well-organized, well-funded operation. Through hundreds of fake social media personas draped in red, white and blue to look like Americans, the Kremlin mounted an unprecedented disinformation and propaganda campaign targeted at the heart of American democracy.

Beginning in 2014, the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) based in St. Petersburg began laying the groundwork for what it called “the translator project.” According to the indictment, the IRA was “headed by a management group and organized into departments, including a graphics department; a data analysis department; a search-engine optimization department; an information-technology department…; and a finance department to budget and allocate funding.” At its peak in July 2016, the IRA had 80 full-time personnel working on the initiative.

Two years prior to the 2016 election, the indictment says, IRA personnel cross-crossed the United States gathering intelligence to inform their effort. They visited at least nine states including Nevada, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Louisiana, Texas, and New York.

Later, IRA employees posing as Americans corresponded with grassroots activists. These conversations helped them to refine their strategy, focusing on purple states such as Florida, Colorado, and Virginia.

Personnel referred to as “specialists” created social media personas that appeared to be U.S. persons. Specialists were directed to create “political intensity through supporting radical groups, users dissatisfied with [the] social and economic situation and oppositional social movements,” the indictment alleged.

Specialists were encouraged to focus their attacks on Hillary Clinton while supporting Trump and Bernie Sanders with the overriding goal of “spread[ing] distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general.”

Irina Viktorovna Kaverzina, one of the Russian defendants explained in an email to a member of her family: “I created all these pictures and posts, and the Americans believed that it was written by their people.”

The operation wasn’t limited to online trolls. They also organized rallies to support Trump and oppose Clinton as well. After Election Day, they sought to heighten partisan animosities by organizing pro-Trump events and “Trump is not my President” events as well.

The indictment does not address what prompted Russia to undertake the operation, but the timeline it establishes does provide some suggestions. The decision to interfere in the U.S. election was made in May of 2014. It was around this same time that the Maidan uprising, in which thousands took to the streets to protest Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, was getting underway in Ukraine. Moscow saw viewed this as a U.S.-backed plot to cleave Ukraine away from its sphere of influence. Notably, Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State at the time. It’s reasonable to speculate that the decision to interfere in the U.S. election was retaliation for what the Kremlin viewed as American interference in the politics of Ukraine.

Unanswered Questions

The indictment gives a much clearer view of how this part of the Kremlin’s effort worked, but it leaves many questions still unanswered. The biggest of these is what role any Americans, including members of Trump’s campaign team, may have played in all this.

In his press conference, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said that, “there is no allegation in this indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity.” In response to a question, he repeated this statement almost verbatim.

“Again, there is no allegation in this indictment that any American had any knowledge of what the nature of the scheme was.”

Rosenstein’s phrasing seems deliberate and carefully qualified to limit his statement about no Americans being knowingly involved only to this particular indictment. This seems to leave open the possibility of future indictments of Americans.

Further, there’s something interesting about the charges leveled in the indictment that might foreshadow more to come as well. The indictment raises violations of the prohibition on foreign electioneering activity under Federal election law, yet Mueller does not charge any defendants directly for election law violations. Instead, Mueller chose to charge conspiracy to defraud the United States. This is odd. All the facts are there to support a case for prosecution of the defendants under the federal election statute.

One reason Mueller may have done it this way is that using the conspiracy to defraud statute would make it easier to charge any Americans who might have been complicit in the Kremlin’s scheme. While prosecution of foreigners for the election law violations outlined in the indictment is straightforward, how the statute applies to Americans in regards to foreign election influence is untested and not all that cut and dry.

Prosecutors would have to prove that the American involved either solicited an illegal foreign contribution or provided substantial assistance to the foreign national making it. But, what qualifies as “substantial assistance” is not entirely clear.

And there’s another problem too. The statute prohibits contributions by foreign nationals of money or anything of value. Which raises the question, how much of the Russian activities would qualify as a thing of value?

Mueller could easily have charged the foreigners under the campaign finance statute, but didn’t. A reasonable explanation might be that he is seeking to establish a more reliable legal framework to charge U.S. persons as part of the conspiracy down the road.

It is striking how much of the indictment was completely new information. Mueller is clearly holding his cards remarkably close. He and his team are not leaking. If this indictment is any indication of things to come, the biggest takeaway is how much we still don’t know.

What Would Christopher Hitchens Have Made of the Trump Presidency?

Taylor Griffin

February 19, 2018

Upon encountering this question on Quora, my instinct was that the late Christopher Hitchens would have been mortified by the idea of Donald Trump leading the country that he made his home, and came to love with that special kind of fervor of those who enrolled in the great American experiment by choice. Assuring myself of the accuracy of this assessment afforded me the sheer joy of reading loads of old Hitchens essays. For that, I am grateful, even if with it comes a sense of renewed, profound sadness for the loss of his contribution to the national discourse.

Some will point out that Trump and Hitchens share some similar views. Hitchens was a dogged antagonist of the conventions of political correctness that so animate the modern left. He was also unapologetic in his criticism of radical Islam. But, to the extent Trump and Hitchens are similar in these respects, the resemblance is superficial. They should give us no more cause to assume Hitchens would applaud a Trump Presidency than a shared opposition to communism should make Nazi Germany and America allies. Hitchens’ views on these matters were forged in careful, deeply reasoned thought informed by the accumulated knowledge of an extraordinarily well-read man. Trump’s were cobbled together from a detritus of Fox News segments and an instinct for the kind of boorish nativist populism that Hitchens reviled.

On the occasions when Hitchens wrote about Donald Trump in a political sense, he never took Trump seriously enough to deliver an opinion on his politics, which have evolved considerably in the intervening years anyway. But, when he did write of Trump, he mostly found him ridiculous.

Of Trump’s 2000 run for President, Hitchens wrote this: “Donald Trump — a ludicrous figure, but at least he’s lived it up a bit in the real world and at least he’s worked out how to cover 90 percent of his skull with 30 percent of his hair.“

To approximate Hitchens’ view of the present day Trump, we can turn to his views on earlier analogs in populist nativism, men like Pat Buchanan, who was savagely and regularly thrashed by Hitchens’ pen. “The strenuously nativist and isolationist Pat Buchanan still strikes me, as he always did, as chronically un-American,” Hitchens wrote in a 2005 essay.

And of Sarah Palin’s habit of entertaining zany conspiracy theories and then distancing herself from them, he wrote: “What price the courageous frontier huntress now — an empty-headed echo chamber for rumor-mongers and freaks who shoots from ambush and then runs away?”

One can only imagine what Hitchens might think of Donald Trump, who embraces such nonsense remorselessly.

Hitchens held an intense disdain for conspiracy theories. And he was particularly animated about the Obama birther trope, on the back of which Trump rose to political stardom as its most visible proselytist. Hitchens would find Trump’s complaints of persecution at the hands of the “Deep State” and FBI witch hunts absurd, and more than a little unsettling.

Hitchens saw conspiratorial thinking as a malignancy. He wrote about conspiracist Glenn Beck’s rise to prominence within the tea party movement with considerable foreboding.

”[A] whole new audience has been created…for ideas that are viciously anti-democratic and ahistorical. The full effect of this will be felt farther down the road, where we will need it even less…A large, volatile constituency has been created that believes darkly in betrayal and conspiracy. A mass ‘literature’ has been disseminated, to push the mad ideas of exploded crackpots and bigots…There was no need for this offense to come, but woe all the same to those by whom it came, and woe above all to those who whitewashed and rationalized it.”

Above all, Hitchens despised authoritarianism. He would find Trump’s illiberal tendencies unforgivable. He would have recoiled at Trump’s attacks on the press, the courts, and the FBI. Trump’s consistent admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin would have enraged Hitchens, who was raising the alarm about the threat presented by Russia under Putin long before it was cool.

While Hitchens may have looked on a Trump Presidency with horror, that does not mean he would have been enthusiastic for Hillary Clinton’s assuming the job either. Hitchens’ contempt for Hillary Clinton would not have been mitigated by Trump, it would have been deepened. Hitchens would have blamed Hillary and people like her in the elite political class for their contributions to creating the conditions that caused Trump’s rise. Still, while he would have hated her routine profligacy, he would have despised Trump’s.

During Christopher Hitchens’ life, the words President and Trump would never have been spoken in succession by serious people, or really anyone other than Trump himself. But even then, the underpinnings of Trump’s rise were becoming apparent, a development Hitchens met with considerable unease.

“One crucial element of the American subconscious is about to become salient and explicit and highly volatile,” Hitchens wrote in 2010. “It is the realization that white America is within thinkable distance of a moment when it will no longer be the majority.”

“…More recently, almost every European country has seen the emergence of populist parties that call upon nativism and give vent to the idea that the majority population now feels itself unwelcome in its own country…it will be astonishing if the United States is not faced, in the very near future, with a similar phenomenon. Quite a lot will depend on what kind of politicians emerge to put themselves at the head of it.”

It’s safe to say Donald Trump was probably not what Hitch had in mind.

Why Didn’t the Fed’s Quantitative Easing Program Cause Massive Inflation?

Taylor Griffin

February 19, 2018

In normal times, the Fed responds to economic downturns by lowering its federal funds rate target. This is the rate banks charge each other for overnight loans. But, by late 2008, the Fed had already cut the federal funds rate to zero. With the economy still reeling from the financial crisis, the Fed’s preferred mechanism for softening economic blows was maxed out.

To prevent the economy from sliding into depression, the Fed turned to a new tool, quantitative easing. It worked like this. The Fed purchased assets like mortgage-backed securities and U.S. Treasury notes from banks, crediting their reserve accounts at the Fed with new money created at the stroke of a computer key. Between 2008 and 2014, the Fed expanded its balance sheet by $4.5 trillion dollars in this way. Many feared that such a massive expansion would cause runaway inflation. But, many years down the road, those fears were never realized.

Quantitative easing provided banks more funds in excess of the minimum reserves banks are required to keep on deposit with the Federal Reserve. This gave banks access to more money, which in turn helped shore up banks’ precarious financial situations and encouraged them to make more loans.

One reason quantitative easing didn’t cause massive inflation is that much of the money the Fed created never actually made it out into the real economy. Inflation is simply a rise in prices. When more money is injected into the economy, there’s more cash sloshing around to buy stuff, and greater chance people will be willing to pay more for the stuff they buy. But, money that exists only as digital zeros and ones on computer servers doesn’t have much impact on the economy. It is only when banks loan those reserve balances out that they become high-power money that interacts with the real world.

The Fed publishes several measures of the money supply that help us to understand how this works. Excess reserves of depository institutions rose sharply during this period. But M2, a measure of the money actually out in the real world interacting with people and businesses rose at a more modest rate in line with historical trends.

The second reason that quantitative easing didn’t cause hyperinflation is that the economy was heading full-steam in the opposite direction — towards deflation. Asset prices at the time were plummeting. Left unchecked, the economy was heading into a deflationary spiral, which is the opposite of hyperinflation.

When prices are falling, people wait to buy things because they expect prices to fall lower. Why buy today that which will be cheaper tomorrow? Lack of buyers drives prices down further. The cycle continues and the economy grinds to a halt. The liquidity that the Fed injected through quantitative easing helped arrest the slide of asset prices, but it wasn’t enough that prices would rise uncontrollably.

Whether a massive liquidity injection will cause hyperinflation depends a lot on what’s going on in the economy at the time. If the Fed were to have injected trillions of dollars into the economy during a boom time, it certainly would cause inflation, and in the right circumstances, maybe hyperinflation. Banks, anxious to lend, would readily convert their bigger reserve balances into high-power money through expanded lending. Awash with money, people would buy up everything in sight, increasing demand and driving prices skyward. As prices soared, they’d keep buying, assuming that things will be more expensive later. Thus, hyperinflation.

At the height of the financial crisis, the problem was that asset prices were falling and banks were hoarding money as they hunkered down to weather the storm. The economy was seizing up. Like priming a cold engine, quantitative easing gave the economy a jolt to get it going again.

“We didn’t know what was on the other side, and the magnitude of what might happen if we did nothing was so frightening that we didn’t want to find out.”

Quantitative easing was arguably a risky move. Overdo it and the economy might cross a point at which deflation tips over into inflation, even hyperinflation. But, runaway deflation is far more dangerous. It seemed worth the risk.

As a U.S. Treasury official who served at the height of the crisis explained to me a few years ago, it was possible the economy would have come back on its own without all of the unprecedented interventions.

“But,” the official told me, “we didn’t know what was on the other side, and the magnitude of what might happen if we did nothing was so frightening that we didn’t want to find out.”

Carter Page, Christopher Steele and the Memos

Taylor Griffin

February 10, 2018

Whether or not there was collusion with Russia, Carter Page probably was, and still is, a dead end. A former volunteer foreign policy advisor to Trump’s campaign, Page was by all appearances a relatively minor player operating well outside of Trump’s inner circle. But, in the weeks before the 2016 election, as U.S. intelligence agencies watched an intensifying Russian effort to throw the vote into chaos with increasing alarm, Page was the best lead the FBI had.

When the U.S. intelligence community learned of George Papadopoulos’ drunken brag to Australia’s ambassador to Great Britain about Russia’s possession of emails damaging to Hillary Clinton, which established at least one member of the Trump campaign’s prior knowledge of Russia’s plans to release hacked emails, they were justifiably alarmed. By late summer of 2016, the CIA determined that the Russian hacks of the DNC were just one part of a massive effort to meddle in the November election being directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself. There was disagreement about whether they sought to simply sow chaos, a view favored by the FBI initially, or explicitly to help Donald Trump. Either way, it shook the U.S. intelligence community to its core.

“It was something that, I think, was worrying to all of us,” John Brennan, CIA director under President Obama told PBS Frontline. “particularly since we didn’t know the extent of what it is the Russians are engaged in, and we didn’t know how far they would go to really threaten the integrity of the election.”

It is in the context of this urgent concern about unraveling whatever it was the Russians were up to that the FBI sought, and received, a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant authorizing surveillance on Carter Page in late October 2016. Now, a pair of memos from Republican lawmakers has put that warrant squarely at the center of allegations of a purported FBI conspiracy to derail Trump.

The Memos

The first memo, prepared by Republican staff of the House intelligence committee at the direction of its chairman, Devin Nunes, claimed that the warrant was obtained principally by relying on an opposition research Dossier prepared by Christopher Steele, who had retired a few years earlier as the head of the Russia desk at Britain’s foreign intelligence service, MI-6. Steele’s research was paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee a fact, the memo alleges, was deliberately withheld from the court in order to bolster the Dossier’s credibility. Further, the memo said, the FBI failed to disclose Steele’s fervent belief that Donald Trump should not be President of the United States. Unmentioned is the reason for this view. Steele believed strongly that Trump had been compromised by the Kremlin.

A second memo, prepared by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham echoed the Nunes memo’s accusations, supported by greater detail. It also added concerns that Steele had not been forthcoming with the FBI about his interactions with the media. This, they said, suggests Steele misled the FBI in violation of section 1001 of the criminal statutes, which prohibit lying to federal officials, including the FBI.

For those inclined to believe that the FBI was out to get Donald Trump, the memos were taken as a triumphant vindication of Trump’s claim that the Russia investigation was a baseless partisan witch hunt. However, even Republicans who have seen the memos argue that’s a bridge too far.

Was the Dossier the only evidence presented to the Court? “No,” South Carolina Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy, one of the few members of Congress who has seen the FISA warrant application and was central to the drafting of the Nunes memo, told CBS’ Face the Nation. “It was not the exclusive information relied upon by the FISA court.” But, Gowdy maintains, the warrant would have never been issued without it.

Why Carter Page?

As the FBI sought to unravel what was going on, Carter Page seemed like an obvious first place to look. Page was on the FBI’s radar screen long before there was a Dossier, and long before his association with Trump. Several years earlier, as part of a counterintelligence investigation of a Russian spy ring in New York, the FBI intercepted wiretapped conversations between Russian spies talking about recruiting Page. Although the FBI concluded that the Russians didn’t succeed in that effort, in 2013, Page insisted in a letter to an academic journal that he was “an informal advisor to the Kremlin.”

Given Page’s history with Russia’s intelligence services, if there was coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, it’s reasonable to suspect that Page might be at the center of it.

After Page joined the Trump campaign in the spring of 2016, the Russians were likely to reach out and Page, whose affinity for Russia is no secret, was sure to receive such overtures warmly. At some point Moscow called, at least to extend an invitation for Page to deliver a speech at a Moscow university in July. Given Page’s history with Russia’s intelligence services, if there was coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, it’s reasonable to suspect that Page might be at the center of it.

By October of 2016, the intelligence community’s hair was standing on end. Russia’s intelligence services had been engaged for months in an aggressive clandestine effort to meddle in the election. Emails hacked from the DNC were leaking, disinformation supercharged by Russian troll networks was ricocheting around social media, and Russian hackers had been detected probing state election systems for vulnerabilities. In September, President Obama warned Russian President Vladimir Putin to cut it out. But, a month later, the Russian efforts were only getting more intense. As Election Day closed in, there was palpable fear of what they might be planning next.

The intelligence community understood bits and pieces of what was happening — cyberattacks probing election systems, hacked emails, Trump’s odd and unshakable affinity for Putin, Papadopoulos, Page. The Dossier provided context that tied it all together. It’s important to understand this context in evaluating the FBI’s response to the Dossier and the decision to seek a FISA warrant on Page.

Page’s July visit to Moscow was met with fawning converge in the Russian press, but the account of his trip that made it back to Christopher Steele was more sinister. According to the Steele dossier, Page met with Igor Sechin, one of Putin’s closest allies to discuss what the Russians wanted out of a Trump Presidency, namely the lifting of sanctions. Elsewhere in the Dossier, Russians allegedly suggested that Trump use his influence to quash Republican calls for arming Ukraine against Russian separatist rebels and raise complaints about allied defense commitments to NATO and willingness to fulfill the U.S.’s Article V mutual-defense obligations in the event of an attack on Baltic State NATO members and elsewhere along the Russian frontier — all of which Trump did. And other things tracked too. For example, tensions between Putin and his longtime chief of staff, Sergey Ivanov, reported in the Dossier foreshadowed Putin’s surprise decision to sack Ivanov in August 2016.

While the FBI had suspicions about many of the Dossier’s claims, there was enough that seemed to align with other sources that it was worth taking seriously, in spite of its political origins. Moreover, Steele’s past work with the FBI and well-established reputation for reliable reporting on Russia bolstered their bias towards considering his claims.

To recap: by late October the FBI was working feverishly to figure out what Russia is planning for Election Day; they were certain that at least one member of the Trump campaign, George Papadopoulos, knew about Russia’s plans in advance; and they had information from Steele, a source they thought credible, that suggested Carter Page was in the middle of whatever Putin had in store. And so they went to the FISA Court and applied for a warrant to surveil Page, someone they knew to have been targeted by Russian spies in the past and that had been in touch with Moscow during the campaign.

Legitimate Criticisms

There are legitimate criticisms of this decision. Was the FBI too credulous of Steele? Did the personal opinions about Trump among FBI agents cause them to be too quick to believe Steele’s claims? Did they properly consider the problems posed by Steele’s research on behalf of Trump’s political rival? The answer to all these questions might be yes. Yet, the allegations of an FBI conspiracy to get Trump is too far a leap. More likely, the FBI grasping for any lead that might help them figure out what Russia was up to in meddling in the election, rushed out a FISA warrant on Carter Page because he was their best chance to figure out Russia‘s plan and stop it.

It is hard to conclude that the FBI was engaged in an active conspiracy to derail Trump’s election when all their actions in the lead-up to the election had the opposite effect.

If the objective was to spy on the Trump campaign in order to help Hillary win, the FBI did nothing to affect that end. Quite the opposite, the FBI tamped down speculation about Trump and Russia in the lead-up to the election rather than stoking it and the FBI’s decision to reopen the Clinton email investigation boosted Trump’s election prospects, not Clinton’s. It is hard to conclude that the FBI was engaged in an active conspiracy to derail Trump’s election when all their actions in the lead-up to the election had the opposite effect.

In the weeks before the election, the FBI’s focus on coordination between Trump and Russia was rooted foremost in a concern about securing the integrity of the election. Criminal prosecution was, at best, a secondary concern. The grand conspiracy being alleged on Fox News each night, and implied by the Republican memos, ignores all of this to instead focus on the text messages between FBI agents who, like millions of other people, were not wild about the idea of a Trump Presidency. While there may be legitimate questions to be asked about how faithfully the FBI followed the processes and procedures of the FISA court, this is not what the current debate is about.

The Nunes Memo: A Quick Reference

Roughly Explained

February 9, 2018

A controversial memo penned by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee alleging Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuses at the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has created quite a stir and more than a little confusion. According to the memo, the FBI obtained a warrant to surveil a former Trump foreign policy advisor primarily based on an opposition research dossier prepared by a former British spy and ultimately paid for by the Clinton campaign and Democrats. Further, the FBI purportedly failed to disclose the Dossier’s political origins and deceived the court about its reliability. And this, the memo argues, was a big problem that demonstrated an abuse of investigative power motivated by political bias against then-candidate Trump. Unsurprisingly, DoJ and the FBI, as well as Democrats and some Republicans see it differently.

What is the Dossier?

A compilation of memorandums prepared by Orbis Business Intelligence Limited (“Orbis”), a company run by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, on behalf of Fusion GPS (“Fusion”), “formed an essential part,” the memo said, of the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) application for an October 2016 FISA warrant on Carter Page.

What is a FISA Warrant?

The FISA process was established in 1978 in responses to President Richard Nixon’s abuses of surveillance powers to spy on political enemies. In other words, the entire FISA process is designed to ensure that foreign intelligence surveillance cannot be abused to violate the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans. A principal concern of the FISC is to prevent exactly the kind of political abuse that is being alleged in the memo.

A FISA warrant is a special kind of warrant used for catching spies on American soil. In order to obtain a FISA warrant, the FBI and DOJ must present to a judge probable cause that a U.S. “person” is an “agent of a foreign power” who is “knowingly engag[ing]…in clandestine intelligence activities,” writes former FBI agent Asha Rangappa. A FISA warrant on a U.S. citizen must be renewed every 90 days. “[E]ach renewal requires a separate finding of probable cause,” according to the Nunes memo. In addition to the original Oct. 2016 warrant on Page, the FBI obtained three renewals. Each renewal was approved by the Deputy Assistant Attorney General (“DAG”) or Acting Deputy Attorney General.

Who are Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele?

Fusion retained Orbis, Steele’s research firm. in June 2016 “to prepare a series of confidential memoranda based on intelligence concerning Russian efforts to influence the US election process and links between Russia and Donald Trump,” according to court filings the company made in London. Orbis produced sixteen memoranda, with the last one produced in October 2016. After the engagement with Fusion ended, Steele produced a compilation memorandum that contained “raw intelligence” and has come to be known as the Steele Dossier. According to the memo, Steele was “was paid over $160,000 by the DNC and [the Hillary] Clinton campaign via the law firm Perkins Coie and [Fusion] . . .” for work that comprised the dossier.

Steele, on or about July 4, 2016, briefed the FBI about his findings to date. Steele told Fusion that, at the time he briefed the FBI, the agency had “an internal Trump campaign source . . .” After Steele briefed the FBI, the agency attempted to verify the information contained in the Steele Dossier. Assistant FBI Director Bill Preistap, who heads the Bureau’s counterintelligence division, was quoted in the Nunes memo as saying that “corroboration of the Steele Dossier was in its ‘infancy’ at the time of the initial Page FISA application.”

Who is Carter Page?

The FBI had known for at least three years that Carter Page was close to the Russian government. In an Aug. 25, 2013 letter Page sent to an academic publisher, reported by Time, in which he stated: “Over the past half year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin . . .” According to a CNN report, Page was also the subject of a [FISA] warrant in 2014. This followed a conversation between two Russian spies discussing efforts to recruit Page intercepted as part of an FBI investigation into a Russian spy ring in New York.

In March 2016, a year after the case was brought against the alleged Russian spies, Page was named a foreign policy advisor to then-candidate Donald Trump. Page made a July 2016 trip to Moscow where he acknowledged in Congressional testimony that he met with multiple Russian government officials. Page had planned a return trip to Moscow in December 2016. The July 2016 trip by Page “was a catalyst for the F.B.I. investigation into connections between Russia and President Trump’s campaign.” The FBI “received [the FISA] warrant to monitor Page’s communications after he [first] traveled to Russia . . .”

Who is George Papadopoulos?

According to court documents, on or about April 16, 2016 “an overseas professor” who “had substantial connections to Russian government officials” told George Papadopoulos, another Trump foreign policy advisor, “about the Russians possessing ‘dirt’ on then-candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of ‘thousands of emails’” Later that same month Papadopoulos told the Australian ambassador to the United Kingdom that the Russian government had “thousands of [hacked] mails that would embarrass” Clinton . . .” The ambassador passed that information to the FBI in May 2016. The “information [the FBI received about the Papadopoulos meeting with the Australian ambassador] triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016. . .” The October 2016 FISA warrant application on Page “also mentions information regarding . . . Papadopoulos . . .”

Did the FBI Hide the Dossier’s Political Origin?

In all of the Page warrant applications, the Nunes memo says, “material and relevant information was omitted” by the FBI and DOJ. Specifically, “[n]either the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts . . .” were disclosed.

Fusion was retained by two different clients to produce materials on Trump. The Washington Free Beacon was the first. and Perkins Coie a law firm representing the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign was the second. Steele briefed the FBI about portions of his dossier in July 2016. Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS, testified before the House Select Committee on Intelligence that, at the time that he met with the FBI, it is likely Steele did not know the identity of the client. It is not unusual for a research firm to maintain the anonymity of its clients.

But, it later emerged that it was not omitted after all. A footnote was included that obliquely disclosed the political origins of the dossier. Rep. Nunes acknowledge this when asked in a recent media appearance, but complained that it was not easily visible or sufficiently clear.

Who is Peter Strzok?

According to the memo, FBI Agent Peter Strozk “trigged” the July 2016 investigation into possible connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. Strozk later worked for the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and “was reassigned by the Special Counsel’s office for improper text messages” which, the Nunes memo alleges, “demonstrated a clear bias against Trump and in favor of [Hillary] Clinton, who Strozk had also investigated.”

The Intelligence Community Inspector General made a referral to the FBI in connection with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail server focusing on whether classified information was transmitted on that personal system.

FBI Director James Comey announced in July 2016 that while the agency had no “clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

Comey sent a letter to Congress less than two weeks before the 2016 election that the FBI was re-opening its investigation into Clinton’s personal e-mail server. Strozk was the primary author of the October 2016 letter that Comey sent to Congress. Clinton subsequently claimed the Comey letter, combined with other events, was the primary factor behind her loss to Trump.

SOURCES

Alekse J. Buraov, Websillza B.V., Webzilla Limited, XBT Holdings S.A. and Orbis Business Limited and Christopher Steele, “Defence,” High Ct, of Queens Bench Division (U.K), HQ17D00413, at 2., Apr. 3, 2017. [Hereinafter “Defence”].

Memorandum from House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence staff to Majority Members, Subject: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Abuses at the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Jan. 18, 2018. [Hereinafter “Nunes Memo”].

Asha Rangappa, “It Isn’t Easy Getting a FISA Warrant: I was an FBI Agent and Should Know,” Just Security, Mar. 7, 2017, https://www.justsecurity.org/38422/aint-easy-fisa-warrant-fbi-agent/ (last accessed Feb. 4, 2018).

50 U.S.C. §1805(d)(1).

Transcript of Interview with Glenn Simpson before House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Nov. 14, 2017. [Hereinafter “HPSCI Transcript”]; Transcript of Interview with Glenn Simpson before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Aug. 22, 2017. [Herein after “Senate Transcript”].

See: Massimo Calabresi, Alana Abramson, “Carter Page Touted Kremlin Contacts in 2013 Letter,” Time, http://time.com/5132126/carter-page-russia-2013-letter/ (last accessed Feb. 4, 2018); Nicholas Fandos, Adam Goldman, Charlie Savage, “G.O.P. Memo Leads to Fresh Jousting on Russia Inquiry,” New York Times, Feb. 3, 2018; Michelle Goldberg, “Don’t Believe The Liberal F.B.I.,” New York Times, Feb. 4, 2018.

See: Nicholas Fandos, Adam Goldman, Charlie Savage, “G.O.P. Memo Leads to Fresh Jousting on Russia Inquiry,” New York Times, Feb. 3, 2018; Michelle Goldberg, “Don’t Believe The Liberal F.B.I.,” New York Times, Feb. 4, 2018.

Foreign agents infiltrate U.S. government; where’s the outrage?

Hal Tarleton

February 4, 2018

COMMENTARY

You remember Tail-Gunner Joe, the senator who claimed he had lists of ___ (fill in any outlandish number) communists working in the State Department. McCarthy garnered a lot of publicity for himself without ever outing a single commie before the U.S. Senate finally censored him.

That was more than 60 years ago. Now the U.S. government faces another crisis of confidence in the institutions of government. Rep. Devin Nunes, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, has issued a four-page memo sowing doubts about the FISA court, which limits surveillance on American citizens, the Mueller investigation into Russian influence in the 2016 presidential campaign, the Justice Department and the FBI. Democrats failed to stop the release of the memo, which the FBI and the Justice Department have said is deeply flawed and misleading. President Trump seems to be egging on Nunes and his GOP colleagues in an effort to cast doubt on the Mueller investigation. Trump, Nunes and other GOP sycophants, do not appear to be concerned that their actions are harming public confidence in the FBI, the Justice Department, and other institutions.

Despite all of the back-and-forth over the release of the disputed memo, no one has pointed out what should be obvious: The Trump presidential campaign was infiltrated by individuals who were Russian agents or had clear links to the Russians. Carter Page, the Trump advisor who was the subject of a surveillance request (plus renewals) sent to the FISA court, had been on U.S. intelligence services’ radar for his Kremlin connections since at least 2013. (A friend with closer ties to Washington doubts that Page was ever a Russian agent, but he had been in contact with the Kremlin.) Michael Flynn, another Russia-linked Trump advisor, was fired by Trump after Flynn lied about his Russia contacts. Another Trump foreign policy advisor, George Papadopoulos, has admitted to lying to investigators about his contacts with Russian agents during the 2016 campaign. It was Papadopoulos’ contacts with Russian agents that first alerted U.S. intelligence agencies to Russian meddling and Page. Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had worked for the Kremlin-backed government of Ukraine. Even Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, was tainted by his Russian contacts during the campaign and had to recuse himself from overseeing the Mueller investigation.

Trump, meanwhile, seems to be considering firing FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, both of whom were hired by Trump, as a way of stalling or capsizing the entire Russia investigation under Robert Mueller. Trump has spent much of his presidency trying to derail or de-legitimize the Mueller investigation.

During the paranoia of the Cold War, any foreign influence into U.S. policy would have sparked an outcry from the public, an outcry McCarthy adroitly exploited, at least for a while. With the Cold War nearly 30 years in the grave, worries about Russian (no longer Soviet or Communist) infiltration into the highest ranks of government seems hopelessly anachronistic. But U.S. and other intelligence services say the Kremlin under Vladimir Putin is manipulating the electorate in Western Democracies in order to expand Russia’s own global influence and military strength.

Who will have the courage to channel Joe McCarthy and declare, “Mr. Chairman, I have here a list of four Russian agents who played active roles in the Trump presidential campaign.” This time, the list would have actual names (see above) of real Russian agents or sympathizers who advised Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign.

Now, what McCarthy did in the early 1950s and what needs to be done today are totally different. McCarthy needlessly inflamed public opinion to advance his own political career as he falsely alleged unnamed employees of the State Department were communists or communist sympathizers. What is needed now is someone who will point out the fact that the Trump campaign and the Trump presidency have attracted an extraordinary number of people with connections to the Kremlin. Whether there was collusion or coordination between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign may not matter as much as this question: Why have so many people with Russian ties ended up in the Trump campaign or administration? Russian agents or sympathizers have gained the ear of the president — something the Americans of McCarthy’s day would have considered treasonous.

Nunes tried to inflame public opinion about a surveillance court application while ignoring the far more serious and undisputed fact that a U.S. presidential candidate was depending on advisors who were or had been agents or advocates of a foreign power.

Hal Tarleton spent more than three decades as a working journalist and editor of The Wilson (NC) Daily Times. This post originally appeared on his blog, The Erstwhile Editor. His opinions are his own.

The Nunes Memo: 12 Things to Know

Taylor Griffin

February 2, 2018

The Nunes memo is a declassified memo alleging abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by the FBI to obtain a warrant authorizing surveillance against Carter Page, a former foreign policy advisor to President Donald Trump. The four-page memo was prepared at the direction of Rep. Devan Nunes by the Committee’s Republican staff and released with the blessing of President Trump, over the opposition of his own FBI Director, the Department of Justice, and the intelligence community. The FBI and others said that it was highly misleading and omitted material facts “that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”

Here are 12 quick things to know about the Nunes memo:

1. The Nunes memo is mostly things we already know, repackaged to fit neatly into the argument that the FBI is engaged in a politically motivated witch hunt.

2. The Nunes memo is about the validity of the information used to obtain a FISA warrant on one, not particularly consequential, former Trump advisor named Carter Page. Page was no longer associated with the Trump campaign when the FBI applied for the FISA warrant discussed in the memo, although according to press reports, there may have been other FISA warrants on Page as far back as 2014.

3. The Memo implies that the Steele Dossier was the principal grounds for the FISA warrant. There was almost certainly a great deal more. The FBI had other evidence about Carter Page it presumably would have presented to the FISA Court as well.

4. Carter Page was known to FBI Counterintelligence long before his association with Donald Trump. Page had been on the FBI’s radar at least since his involvement in a 2013 investigation of a Russian spy ring in New York.

5. Wiretaps in the 2013 case revealed Russian intelligence officers‘ efforts to recruit Page. Page was a cooperating witness for the FBI in the case and acknowledges that he is the consultant the Russians attempted to recruit that is referred to in the criminal complaint.

“Over the past half year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for their Presidency of the G-20 Summit next month, where energy issues will be a prominent point on the agenda,” Carter Page, letter Aug. 25, 2013.

6. Page resurfaced in the Dossier as a Trump campaign go-between with the Kremlin, which Page denies. Following the memo’s release, Time reported on a 2013 letter in which Page claimed to be an advisor to the Kremlin.

7. Page traveled to Moscow in July 2016. The Dossier alleges that during that trip, he secretly met with senior Kremlin officials on behalf of the Trump campaign. Page acknowledges he was in Moscow at the time and briefly spoke with deputy prime minister Arkady Dvorkovich, but not on behalf of the Trump campaign.

8. According to Congressional testimony by Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, the FBI also had a source in the Trump Organization. It is possible that the FBI had signals intelligence intercepts and other highly classified information that was not discussed in the memo as well. The information in the Dossier and what the FBI likely knew independently from other sources aligned in such a way that the FBI took it seriously.

9. The memo alleges that the FBI hid the Democrats’ links to the Dossier. It appears that this may be misleading. Recent reports suggest that the FISC was informed that the document was funded by Trump’s political opposition. However, it may not have discussed the specifics.

10. By omitting key details and misrepresenting others, the Nunes memo commits some of the same offenses of which it accuses the FBI.

12. It is impossible to reconcile an FBI scheming to derail Trump with the FBI that actively tamped down Trump-Russia speculation prior to the election, reopened the Hillary email investigation and arguably secured Trump’s victory in the process. Like all good disinformation, the memo, by design, takes us further from the truth, rather than closer to it.

NOTE: This post has been updated.

READ: Full Text of the Nunes Memo

Taylor Griffin

February 2, 2018

The House Intelligence Committee has released its highly classified memo alleging abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by the FBI against an aide to President Trump. The four-page memo was prepared at the direction of Rep. Devan Nunes by the Committee’s Republican staff and released with the blessing of President Trump, over the opposition of his FBI Director, the Department of Justice, and the intelligence community who feared its release could endanger sources and methods important to national security. But, what’s done is done. And we thought you should read it for yourself.

January 18, 2018

To: HPSCI Majority Members
From: HPSCI Majority Staff
Subject: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Abuses at the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of investigation

Purpose

This memorandum provides Members an update on significant facts relating to the Committee’s ongoing investigation into the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and their use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) during the 2016 presidential election cycle. Our findings, which are detailed below, 1) raise concerns with the legitimacy and legality of certain DOJ and FBI interactions with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), and 2) represent a troubling breakdown of legal processes established to protect the American people from abuses related to the FISA process.

Investigation Update

On October 21, 2016, DOJ and FBI sought and received a FISA probable cause order
(not under Title VII) authorizing electronic surveillance on Carter Page from the FISC. Page is a U.S. citizen who served as a volunteer advisor to the Trump presidential campaign. Consistent with requirements under FISA, the application had to be first certified by the Director or Deputy Director of the FBI. It then required the approval of the Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General (DAG), or the Senate-confirmed Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division.

The FBI and DOJ obtained one initial FISA warrant targeting Carter Page and three FISA renewals from the FISC. As required by statute (50 U.S.C. §1805(d)(l)), a FISA order on an American citizen must be renewed by the FISC every 90 days and each renewal requires a separate finding of probable cause. Then-Director James Corney signed three FISA applications in question on behalf of the FBI, and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe signed one. Then-DAG Sally Yates, then-Acting DAG DanaBoente, and DAG Rod Rosenstein each signed one or more FISA applications on behalf of DOJ.

Due to the sensitive nature of foreign intelligence activity, FISA submissions (including renewals) before the FISC are classified. As such, the public’s confidence in the integrity of the FISA process depends on the court’s ability to hold the government to the highest standard particularly as it relates to surveillance of American citizens. However, the FISC’s rigor in protecting the rights of Americans, which is reinforced by 90-day renewals of surveillance orders, is necessarily dependent on the government’s production to the court of all material and relevant facts. This should include information potentially favorable to the target of the FISA application that is known by the government. In the case of Carter Page, the government had at least four independent opportunities before the FISC to accurately provide an accounting of the relevant facts. However, our findings indicate that, as described below, material and relevant information was omitted.

1) The “dossier” compiled by Christopher Steele (Steele dossier) on behalf of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton campaign formed an essential part of the Carter Page FISA application. Steele was a longtime FBI source who was paid over $160,000 by the DNC and Clinton campaign, via the law firm Perkins Coie and research firm Fusion GPS, to obtain derogatory information on Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.

a) Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior DOJ and FBI officials.

b) The initial FISA application notes Steele was working for a named U.S. person, but does not name Fusion GPS and principal Glenn Simpson, who was paid by a U.S. law firm (Perkins Coie) representing the DNC (even though it was known by DOJ at the. time that political actors were involved with the Steele dossier). The application does not mention Steele was ultimately working on behalf of-and paid by-the DNC and Clinton campaign, or that the FBI had separately authorized payment to Steele for the same information.

2) The Carter Page FISA application also cited extensively a September 23, 2016, Yahoo News article by Michael Isikoff, which focuses on Page’s July 2016 trip to Moscow. This article does not corroborate the Steele dossier because it is derived from information leaked by Steele himself to Yahoo News. The Page FISA application incorrectly assesses that Steele did not directly provide information to Yahoo News. Steele has admitted in British court filings that he met with Yahoo News — and several other outlets — in September 2016 at the direction of Fusion GPS. Perkins Coie was aware of Steele’s initial media contacts because they hosted at least one meeting in Washington D.C. in 2016 with Steele and Fusion GPS where this matter was discussed.

a) Steele was suspended and then terminated as an FBI source for what the FBI defines as the most serious of violations-an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI in an October 30, 2016, Mother Jones article by David Com. Steele should have been terminated for his previous undisclosed contacts with Yahoo and other outlets in September-before the Page application was submitted to the FISC in October-but Steele improperly concealed from and lied to the FBI about those contacts.

b) Steele’s numerous encounters with the media violated the cardinal rule of source handling-maintaining confidentiality-and demonstrated that Steele had become a less than reliable source for the FBI.

3) Before and after Steele was terminated as a source, he maintained contact with DOJ via then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, a senior DOJ official who worked closely with Deputy Attorneys General Yates and later Rosenstein. Shortly after the election, the FBI began interviewing Ohr, documenting his communications with Steele. For example, in September 2016, Steele admitted to Ohr his feelings against then candidate Trump when Steele said he ”was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.” This clear evidence of Steele’s bias was recorded by Ohr at the time and subsequently in official FBI files-but not reflected in any of the Page FISA applications.

a) During this same time period, Ohr’s wife was employed by Fusion GPS to assist in the cultivation of opposition research on Trump. Ohr later provided the FBI with all of his wife’s opposition research, paid for by the DNC and Clinton campaign via Fusion GPS. The Ohrs’ relationship with Steele and Fusion GPS was inexplicably concealed from the FISC.

4) According to the head of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, Assistant Director Bill Priestap, corroboration of the Steele dossier was in its “infancy” at the time of the initial Page FISA application. After Steele was terminated, a source validation report conducted by an independent unit within FBI assessed Steele’s reporting as only minimally corroborated. Yet, in early January 2017, Director Corney briefed President-elect Trump on a summary of the Steele dossier, even though it was-according to his June 2017 testimony-“salacious and unverified.” While the FISA application relied on Steele’s past record of credible reporting on other unrelated matters, it ignored or concealed his anti-Trump financial and ideological motivations. Furthermore, Deputy Director McCabe testified before the Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information.

5) The Page FISA application also mentions information regarding fellow Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos, but there is no evidence of any cooperation or conspiracy between Page and Papadopoulos. The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok. Strzok was reassigned by the Special Counsel’s Office to FBI Human Resources for improper text messages with his mistress, FBI Attorney Lisa Page (no known relation to Carter Page), where they both demonstrated a clear bias against Trump and in favor of Clinton, whom Strzok had also investigated. The Strzok/Lisa Page texts also reflect extensive discussions about the investigation, orchestrating leaks to the media, and include a meeting with Deputy Director McCabe to discuss an “insurance” policy against President Trump’s election.

https://prodroughlyexp.wpengine.com/2018/01/release-the-memo/

After the State of the Union, Divisions Remain

Taylor Griffin

January 31, 2018

Pres. Donald J. Trump, State of the Union Address 2018 (White House Photo)

Continue

What Trump Needs to Accomplish in the State of the Union

Matt Mackowiak

January 30, 2018

Trump Joint Session — President Donald Trump delivers his Joint Address to Congress, February 28, 2017. (White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Only one time each year does the President of the United States command the undivided attention of a national television audience of more than 40 million people.

For President Donald Trump, that day is today, with his first State of the Union.

It comes at an interesting time, punctuating the end of a rollercoaster first year in office, and at the precipice of his second year, which will end with the midterm elections.

In my view, President Trump should achieve five strategic objectives with his speech tonight:

Explain how the achievements of 2017 made American’s lives better – His first year in office was a consequential one. He should detail why the tax reform law was worth doing and offer examples of how it is already benefitting the country. More than two million Americans are receiving bonuses because of it and hundreds of billions of dollars in new investment have been announced. The regulatory rollback has taken the boot off the neck of the private sector. The stock market keeps setting record highs. Unemployment is historically low, especially for African American and Hispanic Americans. The economy is a real strength and he should devote significant time to it. But there have been other successes. ISIS is almost entirely defeated across the Middle East. China and the United Nations Security Council have taken unprecedented steps to punish and isolate North Korea. President Trump’s record of judicial confirmations is restoring the federal judiciary to its rightful, constitutional role.
Describe a path to a legislative deal on DACA – President Trump needs to make clear that he wants a deal and that a deal can be reached if both sides come together. He took the first step to build that goodwill by offering his framework, which includes a path to citizenship for up to 1.8 million “DREAMers” over 10-12 years if they remain working, stay off welfare, and keep a clean record. This was a significant concession. He needs to specify how stronger border security is in America’s national security interest and how reforming our immigration system will benefit the country.
Offer a specific plan on infrastructure – The White House spent much of 2017 formulating their infrastructure plan, and they decided to wait until tax reform passed to unveil it. Congress has been eagerly awaiting this rollout. Many members want to know which projects will be green-lit and how much federal spending is committed. This issue offers a true bipartisan legislative accomplishment for 2018.
Honor the service of our national security, intelligence, and military professionals – Questions about rogue FBI agents have been swirling for weeks, but tonight President Trump should make clear that our intelligence community professionals and our military are doing extraordinary work to safeguard this country from significant terrorist threats. On behalf of a grateful nation, President Trump should personally thank them and highlight their good work.
Offer his vision for the future – Washington is more sharply divided that at any time in recent memory. For President Trump to succeed in 2018, he will need to bring the parties together for bipartisan legislative accomplishments on immigration, infrastructure and trade. Can he rise to the challenge? Can anything get done in an election year?

President Trump has a golden opportunity tonight to seize this moment, reset his presidency, and begin the New Year with a grand, bold, new vision.

Matt Mackowiak is the president of Austin, Texas, and Washington, D.C.-based Potomac Strategy Group, a Republican consultant, a Bush administration and Bush-Cheney re-election campaign veteran and former press secretary to two U.S. senators. His national politics podcast, “Mack on Politics,” may be found on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher and on the web at MackOnPolitics.com.

#ReleaseTheMemo and the New Politics of Disinformation

Taylor Griffin

January 25, 2018

The disinformation business is booming. Last year’s main product line, breathless speculation that Donald Trump was the instrument of Vladimir Putin’s conquest of the United States has given way to absurd conspiracies about the FBI and secret societies and insurance policies. And then there’s House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes and his secret memo purporting to expose an FBI conspiracy against President and its forthcoming counter-point from Rep. Adam Schiff which will purport to expose the opposite.

Rep. Nunes’ memo unexpectedly created a sensation on social media, complete with a trending hashtag #ReleaseTheMemo. Thousands of Trump supporters, most of whom were under the impression that the memo was some sort of revelatory Deep State manifesto, as opposed to a document concocted by Nunes, have demanded its release. Not to be outdone, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff is working on a memo of his own that promises to be no less of a pile of garbage.

The dueling memos are exercises in partisan perfidy that have less to do with getting to the truth than the choose your own reality politics of political partisans.

I suspect that the Nunes memo finds something related to the dossier that was part of the Carter Page FISA warrant application and spins a pretty good yarn of it while glossing over the more credible basis for the FBI’s interest in Page.

The Democrats’ memo will presumably do exactly the opposite. Instead, it will hype out of all proportion the more damning elements to paint Carter Page as a super spy (he’s not) and Trump Moscow’s Manchurian candidate.

The truth is that the FBI was plenty familiar with Carter Page long before Trump was in the picture. Russian intelligence tried to recruit Page back in 2013. But, the Russians judged him to be a buffoon.

Anyway, the FBI has all that from wiretaps in the 2013 NY Russian spy ring case and Page doesn’t deny it. Page ended up being a cooperating witness and wasn’t charged.

After Carter Page was named a foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign in the spring of 2016, it’s reasonable to suspect that the Russians would make another run at him.

If might have started as a soft approach from someone who represented themselves to Page as a businessman or academic, something like that. Spies don’t wear name tags after all and it might have looked innocent enough to Page. But, to the FBI, which perhaps was aware of the interlocutors’ ties to Moscow, it would have looked more troubling. And there’s a good chance the FBI had signals intelligence on the Russian side to corroborate.

Whether or not the Dossier had anything to do with it, between Page’s history with Russian intelligence and his continuing interactions with Russians, some of whom may have been associated with Russia’s intelligence services, the FBI likely had enough other reasons to suspect suspect something was fishy with Page to convince the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that there was sufficient probable cause to justify a surveillance warrant.

Of course, this is all speculation. We don’t know what the memos actually claim. Nor do we know on what basis the FBI sought permission to surveil Carter Page. But, we can be reasonably certain that neither Nunes’ “memo” nor Schiff’s are any kind of revelatory expose, and it’s a fair hunch that the real purpose of both to fire up their more credulous partisans and score themselves some hits on Fox News, or MSNBC, as the case may be.

The memos are but two examples of an emerging sub-genera of partisan disinformation in which something secret and nefarious is hinted at, but cannot be revealed and the imaginations of conspiracy theorists and partisans are expected to fill in the blanks. “Oh, it’s classified,” they say, “but I assure you it’s absolutely shocking, worse than Watergate, and/or traitorous.”

Text messages between two FBI agents, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who were involved in an extramarital affair. Their texts, which show a deep disdain for Donald Trump, have proven a treasure trove for Deep State conspiracists. Vague, out-of-context references become thread from which vast conspiracy theories can be spun. An analogy Strzok made to buying an “insurance policy“ becomes code for a plot to destroy Trump.

More recently, Rep. Ron Johnson and Rep. Trey Gowdy electrified conservative conspiracy media with claims that they had seen a text message referencing a “secret society” to take down Trump at the FBI. What is meant by that, no one knew. Johnson and Gowdy refused to release the text message itself. We might suspect that this could be because when viewed in context, it isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. It turns out that’s exactly right.

After ABC News got a hold of the text infamous “secret society” text and released it Wednesday night, it looked an awful lot like simple gallows humor.

The messages, which were sent from Strzok to Page the day after the election, lamented Trump’s victory. “Omg I am so depressed,” he wrote. In another, “Are you even going to give out your calendars?” Strzok asked Page. “Seems kind of depressing. Maybe it should just be the first meeting of the secret society.”

Whether the texts, the memos, or any of it is meaningful or not matters little. The thrill of forbidden knowledge and the giddy excitement of an imminent revelation under the weight of which political adversaries will crumble feeds a political base that is evolving to subside almost exclusively on nonsense.

And the conspiracies have fueled a ratings surge for the increasingly conspiratorial partisan media outlets that amplify them too. Fox News’ Sean Hannity and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow have struck ratings gold by catering to credulous partisans on the right and the left respectively.

But, all this comes with potential peril. What happens if the campaign to #ReleaseTheMemo actually succeeds? It risks exposing the real secret: the conversations animating partisans is mostly based in disinformation propagated by self-serving politicians and partisan media.

So sure, release the memo. But, release the FISA warrant application and underlying intelligence too. Maybe transparency will save us. At least until there’s a conspiracy for that too.

A Tale of Two Decisions

Tyler Cralle

January 23, 2018

Since his victory in 2016, President Donald Trump has made two high profile economic decisions. One failed miserably and the other could put America in the best financial position in decades.

After his upset victory in November of 2016 Donald Trump, possibly on a high from his surprise win, decided his first act as President-elect would be to save some jobs at a Carrier plant in the state of Indiana. This plant was somewhat high profile after a video of the plant announcing the layoffs had gone viral. President-elect Trump and Vice-President-elect Mike Pence headed to Indiana and in a very short time seemed to emerge with a win.

A deal was announced that would offer Carrier 7 million dollars in incentives from the state of Indiana and in return Carrier would keep over 1,000 jobs in the US that they had planned to ship to Mexico. Trump promised more deals like this when he became President. Luckily for the United States that has not happened. Over a year later that same Carrier plant has laid off over 500 employees and many of the workers feel betrayed by President Trump. Despite the initial fanfare, this deal was a waste and a failure. Luckily for President Donald Trump, he chose to end 2017 on a much higher note.

In December of 2017, President Donald Trump along with the GOP was able to pass one of the most significant tax reform bills in decades. It cut corporate and personal taxes and simplified the overall tax code. Along with massive regulatory reform, the tax plan has open the floodgates of capital investment in the US. Companies are repatriating, possibly, hundreds of billions of dollars, raising wages, and giving out bonuses. Some manufacturers are even looking at bringing jobs back because of the increased competitiveness of the US in the global economy. All of these results came from a traditional conservative laissez-faire approach to the economy.

Since Donald Trump was elected he has chosen two very different economic paths on two very different problems. One failed miserably and angered the very people he was trying to help and it cost the state of Indiana 7 million dollars in taxpayer money. The other has been praised by economists and has the potential to grow the entire economy with benefits to employers and employees.

Given the contrast between these two decisions, it is amazing that President Trump and his administration continues the rhetoric on trade and tariffs. Today, the White House announced tariffs on solar panels and washing machines. The same economists who praised Trump’s tax plan and push for deregulation derided these tariffs as bad for consumers and the overall economy. It’s hard to understand why President Trump would follow up his recent wins with a loser trade policy at which every president in the modern era has tried and failed.

Many trade deadlines from 2017 were postponed until this year, which means this is likely to be the first of many decisions this administration makes with regard to trade this year. For the sake of Trump’s legacy and the economy let’s hope this was the last bad decision of 2018 and not just the first.

The Government is on the Brink of a Shutdown, Here’s Why

Taylor Griffin

January 19, 2018

An impasse over immigration threatens the first government shutdown in four years. If the Senate doesn’t vote to pass a temporary bill to fund the government by midnight tonight, the federal government will be forced to close its doors.

Increasingly, the only legislating that gets done in Washington happens on the brink. It’s been years since Congress passed a regular budget to fund the government. Instead, last-minute spending bills called continuing resolutions (CRS) have been used to keep the government open temporarily at previous spending levels. Lawmakers have repeatedly walked up to the precipice of a shutdown over the last few years, but in the end, have managed to find enough votes to get a stopgap spending measure approved. But, this time looks to be different.

Governing on the Brink

This brinkmanship is a symptom of the broad distrust not only between the parties but within them. Although Republicans control Congress, intransigent factions within the party like the conservative Freedom Caucus have refused to support spending measures, forcing Republican leaders to rely on Democrats to cobble together enough votes to avoid a government shutdown. This time the votes from Democrats may not be there.

Over the past few years, the threat of a shutdown has become a source of leverage for lawmakers to press issues. The last time the government shutdown in 2013, conservative Republicans refused to vote for a spending bill unless Obamacare was defunded. This time, Democrats are refusing to vote for a funding measure unless it includes a permanent fix for President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, which allows undocumented immigrants that arrived as children to stay in the country.

But, GOP immigration hard-liners will only support a DACA fix as part of a broader immigration reform package that includes border security funding, including money for President Trump’s border wall; an end to so-called “chain migration,” the practice of allowing naturalized U.S. citizens to sponsor relatives to come to the United States; and a merit-based immigration system.

The House managed to pass a continuing resolution on Thursday night after members of the Freedom Caucus agreed to vote yes. But, in the Senate, things are much less clear. There, 60 votes are needed to pass the bill. With only 51 Republican votes, Senate leaders will need at least some Democratic votes. But, those votes don’t appear to be forthcoming.

Democrats have drawn a hard line over the DACA fix, and they’re under heavy pressure from liberal activists to not back down. Politically, Democrats calculate that they have a winning issue. The majority of the country, including a majority of Republicans, support a DACA fix. So, they reckon that they’re fighting on solid ground.

Republicans are not opposed to a DACA fix, but want broader immigration reforms in return. Last week, there appeared to be progress towards a compromise. But, things quickly unraveled when a controversy erupted over a crude remark allegedly made by President Trump.

Washington Melts Down

Democratic Senator Dick Durbin said that President Trump referred to African and Latin American nations as “sh—thole countries” in an immigration meeting at the White House last week. Washington promptly melted down.

Things were already plenty acrimonious on Capitol Hill. The back and forth over whether Trump is a racist further poisoned the well, leaving no one in any mood for compromise.

As prospects for a larger immigration deal faded, Republican leaders changed tack and mounted a last-ditch attempt to avert a shutdown with a temporary spending bill that would fund the government through February 16th. This, they hope, will allow more time to get the immigration talks back on track.

As a sweetener to Democrats and moderate Republicans, the CR includes a six-year extension of funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). CHIP provides health insurance to low-income children and enjoys wide bipartisan support. The program expired in September and is quickly running out of money.

But, the GOP’s proposed stop-gap spending measure does not include the DACA fix Democrats wanted. The CR only managed to attract 6 Democrats voting in favor. That doesn’t bode well for its prospects in the Senate.

Mixed messages from the White House have further complicated matters. The White House officially supports the CR. But, Thursday morning, a tweet from President Trump opposing the inclusion of CHIP in a temporary spending bill threatened to upend the plan. The reason for Trump’s Tweet is not altogether clear. But, with all but 11 House Republicans voting in favor of the CR including CHIP, its effect appears to have been limited.

By late afternoon Friday, Senate Republican leaders were scrambling to find some way to salvage the bill. But, with Democrats digging in their heels and at least one Republican, Sen. Rand Paul a declared “No,” it’s hard to see how.

Why a U.S. Missile Strike on North Korea Would End Badly

Taylor Griffin

January 9, 2018

The Wall Street Journal’s Gerald Seib reports that the Trump administration is considering a limited missile strike against North Korea. The “bloody nose” strategy would be to: “React to some nuclear or missile test with a targeted strike against a North Korean facility to bloody Pyongyang’s nose and illustrate the high price the regime could pay for its behavior.” The idea would be to destroy as much of North Korea’s nuclear capability as possible in an effort to convince Kim that negotiations are the only viable path forward. But, that is a huge gamble that could end in an open conflict on the Korean Peninsula neither side wants.

A U.S. Missile Strike Could Not Defang North Korea

A missile strike is unlikely to seriously diminish North Korea’s nuclear capability. The North has taken steps to minimize the vulnerability of its nuclear infrastructure. Much of it is hidden underground in hardened bunkers where cruise missiles alone would be ineffective. Larger bunker-busting bombs dropped from aircraft would probably be necessary. While much of North Korea’s military assets are outdated, many analysts believe its air defense systems are surprisingly capable. There’s no guarantee that U.S. aircraft could operate over North Korea without risk.

And this assumes we know where all of North Korea’s nuclear infrastructure is. America’s intelligence services do not have a wealth of assets inside North Korea. North Korea has several mobile erector-launchers that could be easily moved into hardened bunkers or otherwise hidden to survive an initial attack.

Limited missile strikes cannot realistically be expected to remove the threat of a North Korean retaliatory response and raises serious risks of igniting an open conflict on the Korean Peninsula. The consequences of a war with North Korea in terms of lives and treasure would be enormous.

North Korean Retaliation Very Possible

The pressure on Kim to respond would be enormous. The Kim family hangs its legitimacy on: 1) the purported threat of the “imperialist Americans”; and, 2) the idea that only the Kim family can protect against the American threat. Kim cannot allow that artifice to be punctured.All things being equal, a North Korean response that risks a more powerful American reply may seem foolish, but you cannot discount the importance of internal political calculations.

Young Kim Jong-Un is still consolidating power. It was never supposed to be him. He’s only leader because his brothers couldn’t cut it. He killed his older brother last year, his uncle before that. Old guard North Korean officials are still disappearing. It’s not certain that Kim is comfortable in his control.

Kim does not want an escalation with the U.S., but if his internal position is still not fully secure, he will be more willing to take that risk. Kim may calculate that not responding would make him appear weak, and thus threaten his grip on power. In North Korea, losing power is a death sentence.

A Lot to Gain

Kim Jong-Un is neither stupid nor crazy. It’s possible that he will conclude that hitting back is not worth it, but he’s got a lot to gain by staring down the Americans. His best-case scenario is a de-escalation counterstrike. Something big enough to convince the U.S. that further military action will come at too high a cost. Ultimately, the “bloody nose” talk will most likely be interpreted by Kim as a reminder of why a credible nuclear deterrent is a vital state priority.

https://prodroughlyexp.wpengine.com/2017/12/know-north-koreas-big-new-missile/

Political Purposes?

Papadopoulis and Page

A Difficult Position

Expectations Mismatch

The Reality

The Flaws

Emboldened Iran

Witness, Subject, Target

Impeachment Versus Criminal Prosecution

The Syria Strikes

The Confusion Track

The Aftermath

Syrian Denials

A Tough Position

Moscow’s Miscalculation

Why It Matters

What Happens Next?

The Best Laid Plans

A Red Line

The Translator Project

Unanswered Questions

The Memos

Why Carter Page?

Legitimate Criticisms

What is the Dossier?

What is a FISA Warrant?

Who are Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele?

Who is Carter Page?

Who is George Papadopoulos?

Did the FBI Hide the Dossier’s Political Origin?

Who is Peter Strzok?

SOURCES

COMMENTARY

Here are 12 quick things to know about the Nunes memo:

1. The Nunes memo is mostly things we already know, repackaged to fit neatly into the argument that the FBI is engaged in a politically motivated witch hunt.

2.

3. The Memo implies that the Steele Dossier was the principal grounds for the FISA warrant. There was almost certainly a great deal more. The FBI had other evidence about Carter Page it presumably would have presented to the FISA Court as well.

4.

Carter Page was known to FBI Counterintelligence long before his association with Donald Trump. Page had been on the FBI’s radar at least since his involvement in a 2013 investigation of a Russian spy ring in New York.

5.

Wiretaps in the 2013 case revealed Russian intelligence officers‘ efforts to recruit Page. Page was a cooperating witness for the FBI in the case and acknowledges that he is the consultant the Russians attempted to recruit that is referred to in the criminal complaint.

6.

Page resurfaced in the Dossier as a Trump campaign go-between with the Kremlin, which Page denies. Following the memo’s release, Time reported on a 2013 letter in which Page claimed to be an advisor to the Kremlin.

7.

8.

9.

The memo alleges that the FBI hid the Democrats’ links to the Dossier. It appears that this may be misleading. Recent reports suggest that the FISC was informed that the document was funded by Trump’s political opposition. However, it may not have discussed the specifics.

10. By omitting key details and misrepresenting others, the Nunes memo commits some of the same offenses of which it accuses the FBI.

12.

Governing on the Brink

Washington Melts Down

A U.S. Missile Strike Could Not Defang North Korea

North Korean Retaliation Very Possible

A Lot to Gain

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