RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
July 21 to July27 Special Counsel Robert Mueller's shockingly confused congressional testimony this week -- suggesting to many that he didn't write the report bearing his name -- won't be the last shoe to drop as America gets to the bottom of what really happened in Russiagate. The next shoe -- gumshoe? -- could be James Comey. As Paul Sperry reports for RealClearInvestigations, the Justice Department Inspector General is set to present evidence this fall that the fired FBI Director repeatedly misled Donald Trump to cover up what appears to have been a covert operation targeting the president -- including a Comey spy placed in the White House. Two U.S. officials briefed on the IG Michael Horowitz's report and other government sources tell Sperry that: - Comey added notes of numerous meetings and phone calls with Trump to the official case file of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, the FBI's code name for the Trump-Russia probe.
- Comey had an agent inside the White House, Anthony Ferrante, who reported back to FBI headquarters about Trump and his aides.
- The Trump National Security Council division supervisor "was not allowed to get rid of Ferrante," a former NSC official said. For months Ferrante worked "in direct conflict with the no-contact policy between the White House and the Department of Justice."
- Comey appears to have coordinated some of his efforts with President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and key Cabinet officials.
- Notable among those Obama-approved efforts wasComey'sso-called "defensive briefing" to President-elect Trump in January 2017 about allegations in the lurid Steele dossier. CNN andBuzzFeed used that briefing as a pretext to go public with the Democrat-commissioned political dirt from which theyhad previously held back.
Sperry writes that the revelations appear to clear up an enduring mystery: Why wouldn't Comey go public with what he was telling Trump privately, that he was not under investigation? Because, it seems, those private assurances were not true. Trump's growing frustration over Comey's reticence on that point ignited a chain of events that has consumed Washington for more than two years - including Comey's firing by Trump and the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated Comey's dismissal as obstruction of justice. It's still not clear whyComeytook the grave step of investigating a sitting president, given dubiousevidence of a Trump-Russia conspiracy.ButRepublicans think they know why:Comeywas among those who wanted to "stop" the Trump presidency. Read Full Article The Shaky Standing of Mueller's Footnotes
RealClearInvestigations
The Trump-Russiaaffairoffers a truly teachable moment - about the necessity of reading footnotes.The FBIfootnoted and obscuredthe fact that Hillary Clinton paid for opposition research used tojustify spying on theTrump campaign,and ever since footnotes have become prime spots to hide and discover key information. Latest illustration: the Mueller Report. Eric Felton of RealClearInvestigations finds that a close reading of its roughly 2,000 footnotes raises more questions than they answer: - Some footnotes show that key allegations often rely on the flimsy say-so of media accounts. One cites a Bloomberg report that Trump adviser Carter Page "had ties to a Russian state-run gas company" - itself sourced oddly to a Politico article that came to the opposite conclusion about Page.
- Some footnotes show credulity toward anti-Trump critics, especially James Comey. Mueller treats the former FBI boss's memos as unimpeachable evidence without noting that Comey was misleading the president and acting unethically, perhaps illegally.
- Some footnotes seem included just to smear people: Mueller quotes a deputy White House counsel who says he didn't believe a statement made by Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Mueller doesn't explain the basis for this mistrust or make any effort to see whether Flynn was telling the truth.
- Some footnotes are just places to air unfounded speculation: Because Mueller found no evidence of a conspiracy withRussia,he imagines that Trump might have tried to obstruct the probe by firingComeybecause he feared "other conduct" would come to light.ThenMueller says there is no evidence for this.
- Talk about unfounded speculation: One footnote posits what we'll dub Chessgate -- an unlikely furtive Trump visit to the World Chess Championship in lower Manhattan two days after his election. That would have required the President-elect to slip away from a fortified Trump Tower staked out by media, travel some six miles to the South Street Seaport, take in some chess, schmooze with some Russians, and return to midtown — all without being seen.
Mueller made clear before his testimony this week that he would not venture outside the "four corners" of his official report. But as it turned out he was evidently unfamiliar with much of that material too -- never mind the footnotes, wherethe strengths and weaknesses of the Mueller report are most clearly on display. Read Full Article The Trump Investigations: Other Top Articles What We Learned From Mueller's 7 Hours on Capitol Hill, New York Times
Five TakeawaysFromRobert Mueller's Testimony, Washington Post
Erratic Mueller Raises Questions on Probe's Handling, Washington Examiner
Republicans Aware of Mueller 'Frailty' Ahead of Hearings, WashingtonTimes
NYT Suggests AaronZebleyActually Ran Mueller Probe, New York Times
Weissmann'sOffer to Oligarch Could Boomerang onDoJ,TheHill
Barr's Investigator Goes Back to Mystery Man Mifsud,TheHill The Epstein Investigations: Top Articles Possible Epstein Suicide Bid in New York City Jail Cell, NBC News
Epstein in Clinton White House Multiple Times in Early '90s,DailyBeast
Dem Fundraisers Haven't Washed Hands of Epstein's Cash, CNBC
Epstein Spun Himself a NewImage,and These Three News Sites Bit, NY Times
Jeffrey Epstein's Deep Ties to Top Wall Street Figures, New York Times
The Girls Were So Young: Locals Dish on Epstein's Private Island, Vanity Fair
Jeffrey Epstein Got Unlocked Cell in Florida County Jail, Washington Post
Epstein Used Ties to Victoria's Secret Boss for Models and More, NY Times Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Iranians, Others Prepare to Interfere in 2020 Election
Washington Post
Everyone with half a brain knew that Russia wasn't the only country trying to disrupt our elections. But now that the Mueller probe is over, the mainstream media seems prepared to acknowledge that many other countries are also launching low grade attacks through social media. This article reports thata number of usual suspects - including Iran,Saudi Arabia, Israel, China, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela- are, well, suspects.This being the Washington Post, the reporters have to invoke some partisansnark: "The influence operations in these countries, however, do not allshareRussia's demonstrated preference for Trump and other Republicans. The Iranians, for example, typically oppose Trump in their disinformation messaging, criticizing his decision to pull the United States out of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran." It also fails to note that there is no evidence that any of these efforts have or will have an impact on the results. In Facebook Groups, Cops' Vile Words (Parts 1-3)
Reveal
A tiny fraction of active-duty and retired law enforcement officers from across the United States are members of Confederate, anti-Islam, misogynistic or anti-government militia groups on Facebook. These cops have worked at every level of American law enforcement, from tiny, rural sheriff's departments to the largest agencies in the country, such as the Los Angeles and New York police departments. They work in jails and schools and airports, on boats and trains and in patrol cars. This three-part series discovered 150 officers involved with violent anti-government groups. Estimates suggestthat there are about700,000full time police officers in the United States; it is not clear how many more retiredofficers there are. Trump Has Not Built a Single Mile of New Border Fence
Washington Examiner
The Trump administration has not installed a single mile of new wall in a previously fenceless part of the U.S.-Mexico border in the 30 months since President Trump assumed office, despite his campaign promise to construct a "big beautiful wall." U.S. Customs and Border Protectionsaysall the fencing completed since Trump took office is "in place of dilapidated designs" because theexisting fence was in need of replacement. The agency said projects to secure areas with no fence are still in the works. Neil Armstrong's Death and a Secret $6 Million Settlement
New York Times
When Neil Armstrong died in a Cincinnati hospital two weeks after undergoing heart surgery in 2012, his family released a touching tribute addressing the astronaut's millions of admirers around the globe. But in private, the family's reaction tohis death at 82was far stormier. His two sons contended that incompetent post-surgical treatment at Mercy Health - Fairfield Hospital had cost Mr. Armstrong his life, and even one expert retained by the hospital would find serious problems with his care. The hospital defended its handling of the case, but paid the family $6 million to settle the matter privately and avoid devastating publicity, documents show. Video Game Companies Build Tools for Chinese Surveillance
Los Angeles Times
It turns out the Chinese have the same problem we do: Their kids spend too much time playing video games. So the government is working with the makers of American hits such as "League of Legends," "Fortnite" and "World of Warcraft" to track playtime using national ID numbers. Those under 18 face heavy in-game penalties or outright expulsions if they play too long. Although it's Chinese policy driving the restrictions, data privacy advocates say American tech's role in creating these tools crosses a worrying new threshold. All this as Western politicians and parents are looking to control tech too. Brains of Diplomats in Cuba Mystery Attacks Are Different
NBC News
We still don't know whether Cubans used sonic warfare against U.S. officials - sending high-pitched signals to injure them. But University of Pennsylvania researchers report that those government workers have less white matter in their brains and less connectivity in the areas that control vision and hearing than similar healthy people. In 2018, similar incidents were reported among U.S. government workers serving in Guangzhou, China, and one American was "medically confirmed" by the State Department to have been affected. The Penn study was limited to 26 Americans who were in Cuba, none of whom have been publicly identified. The Harvard Professor and the Paternity Trap
New York Magazine
This may be the craziest story of the year.It's aboutHarvard Law professorBruce Hay, who teachesa class on "Judgment and Decision-Making" and might therefore be expected to know better. He allegedly impregnated a self-proclaimed lesbian andsubsequentlygot entangled in series of bizarre events with the woman and her friend, a transsexual woman doing graduate work in physics at Harvard. ReporterKeraBolonikwrites: Over the next four years, the law professor would be drawn into a "campaign of fraud, extortion, and false accusations," as one of his lawyers would later say in legal proceedings. At one point, Hay's family would be left suddenly homeless. At another, owing to what his lawyer has described as the "weaponiz[ation] of the university's Title IX machinery against Hay," he would find himself indefinitely suspended from his job. He would accrue over $300,000 in legal bills with no end to the litigation in sight. |
