RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
June 21 to June 27, 2020 Hardly a week goes by, it seems, without major media ignoring a big but inconvenient story. This week the New York Times has yet to report word one of the news of notes from Peter Strzok of the FBI placing President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden in the midst of the Michael Flynn affair before they left office (read more here and here). Also not noted by major outlets is this news in John Bolton's new memoir: The ex-national security adviser dashes Democrats' hopes that he would substantiate the core allegation in their failed impeachment of President Trump early this year - that Trump tried to strong-arm Ukraine into investigating Joe and Hunter Biden in a quid pro quo for military aid. Aaron Maté reports for RealClearInvestigations: - Bolton writes that instead of a sharp demand of a quid pro quo, Trump said only that "he wasn't in favor of sending [Ukraine] anything until all the Russia-investigation materials related to [Hillary] Clinton and Biden had been turned over."
- Demanding such unspecified "Russia-investigation materials" wasn't the issue in Trump's impeachment. He was impeached for allegedly trying to force Ukraine's President to open a wholly separate investigation of the Bidens and Burisma, the gas company where Hunter was given a lucrative board seat.
- Burisma is not even mentioned in Bolton's book - and Hunter Biden only in passing.
- Still, in the publicity blitz for his memoir, "The Room Where It Happened," Bolton has tried to keep alive the quid pro quo narrative that does not appear within.
- In the book, Bolton writes that his recollections are not precise because the Ukraine-related theories floating around the Trump administration "always seemed intermingled and confused, one reason I did not pay them much heed."
- Bolton also throws cold water on national security aide Fiona Hill's seemingly explosive testimony about Bolton's disdain for a Ukraine-related "drug deal" that Trump aides were "cooking up." He writes that referred not to leveraging any military aid, but to the timing of a meeting.
There apparently was at least one honest G-man in the scandalous Trump-Russia affair, Eric Felten reports for RealClearInvestigations. His name is Stuart Evans, and the story of his quietly intense battle with a law enforcement bureaucracy bent on spying on the Trump campaign is both encouraging and disheartening. Felten relates details that have slowly emerged in federal inquiries: - Evans, the Justice Department official responsible for vetting FBI applications to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in 2016, did not credulously embrace the now-discredited Steele dossier as so many others did.
- Evans demanded more information from the FBI. He wanted to know the motives of the ex-British spy behind the dossier's unsupported claims that Page was coordinating with Russia to throw the U.S. election to Donald Trump.
- As congressional inquiries later showed, Evans apparently was the only one asking essential questions no one else seemed to care about -- and putting up bureaucratic roadblocks until he got them.
- FBI officials and paramours Peter Strzok and Lisa Page saw Evans as an obstacle.
- Strzok texted Page: "Currently fighting with Stu for this fisa [surveillance warrant]."
- Page to her FBI boss, Andrew McCabe: "This might take a high-level push."
- "It seems like Stu Evans is the only guy in the whole rotten process who tried to slow things down and asked some questions about what was happening," a congressional staffer said. "But in the end, it looks like he got steamrolled."
- Evans is reportedly now cooperating with U.S. Attorney John Durham's probe of wrongdoing at Justice and the FBI. That investigation may prove to be a steamroller of an entirely different sort, Felten concludes.
Trump-Russia/2020 Election News FBI Notes: An Obama Role in Flynn Case Federalist
Strzok's Notes in Flynn Case Refer to Biden and Obama Daily Caller
Fired NY Prosecutor Ignored Biden-Ukraine Allegations in 2018 Just the News
DOJ Discloses Peter Strzok 'Explosive' Notes from Flynn Case Federalist
The Skripal Case and the Decline of Russia's Spy Agencies Guardian
8 Trump-Russia Probers You May Not Have Heard Of Daily Caller Other Noteworthy Articles and Series 9 Departments, Multiple Infractions for One New Jersey Cop
New York Times
Police Officer Ryan Dubiel was charged with assault for pepper-spraying a group of black youths in Woodlynne, New Jersey after a complaint that they were loitering. This article reports that although Dubiel is only 31, he is now working at his ninth police department: "He left one department after failing to meet its standards. At another, he racked up disciplinary infractions. He was fired from a third, yet succeeded in getting hired at another. .. [he] had a history of troubling social media posts and a pattern of arrests that resulted in the injury of the suspect." The article includes body-cam videos showing some arrests in which Dubiel is alleged to have used excessive force. Dubiel succeeded in getting hired in part because New Jersey remains one of only five states that cannot revoke a police officer's accreditation over misconduct. In separate articles, Vice News reports on "the Lewis list, a [secret] document naming police officers in Washington D.C. who are under investigation or have been found liable for misconduct"; the Wall Street Journal reports that many Minnesota police officers remain on the force despite misconduct police; and Mel Magazine offers a deep dive into "the secret lives of police wives - and the abuse they suffer in silence." Trump Didn't 'Send In the Troops.' They Were Already There.
New York Times
As protests swelled and thieves ransacked stores in multiple cities following the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police in Minneapolis, Army officials shifted paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division from barracks in North Carolina to a base outside Washington and summoned National Guard soldiers or aircraft from 13 states to the District of Columbia. While President Trump was criticized for this military response, New York Times reporter C.J. Chivers recalls how, when he was serving in the Marines, he helped quell violence in Los Angeles in 1992 - after the acquittal of police officers who had brutally beaten Rodney King, an unarmed black man. He argues that many states and cities don't need to call in the troops because police departments have undergone decades of arming up and mission creep. Victim and Killer: Lives of George Floyd and Derek Chauvin
Wall Street Journal
This article details the lives of two men born just a year apart, George Floyd and the Minneapolis cop under whose knee he died, Derek Chauvin. Floyd was a star athlete at his Houston high school who left college to help his family before struggling with addiction and then moving to Minnesota to try to turn his life around. Chauvin, reared in a suburb of St. Paul, moved through life as someone who didn't especially stand out, people who knew him say, and much remains unknown about his life. After high school, he worked two restaurant jobs until he found law enforcement. In his 19 years with the Minneapolis police force, Chauvin drew some commendations, as well as complaints that he overreacted. The article also notes that while the two men did work security at the same nightclub, they worked different shifts and probably didn't know each other. Florida: Lapses Let Saudi Shoot Up Navy Base
New York Times
When Second Lt. Mohammed Alshamrani of Saudi Arabia opened fire at the naval air station in Pensacola, Fla., killing three sailors and wounding eight other people, he exposed breakdowns in the vetting system used to approve foreigners for training in the United States. This article reports that the lapses are far more extensive than previously known. Even sophisticated antiterror systems developed after 9/11 failed to identify the future gunman, a 21-year-old Al Qaeda loyalist, who died in his December attack. American defense and intelligence officials said Lieutenant Alshamrani proved represented a new kind of terrorist - the self-directed agent who works largely on his own -- making him difficult to detect. This otherwise excellent article is marred by the effort to blame President Trump - it opens with his pledge to reform the vetting process - for challenges that have plagued the country since George W. Bush's presidency. Very Strange: Penny Lane Is in Ears and Eyes of Slavery Debate
Rolling Stone
Was Liverpool's most famous thoroughfare - the Penny Lane immortalized by the Beatles - named for a slave trader? After a press officer for National Museums, Liverpool, suggested that the lane honored the 18th century slave trader James Penny, vandals defaced street signs while Beatles fans and historians dug into the past. The Fab Four's fans carried the day, showing there was no evidence that the street was named for Penny. The song remains the same - for now - while inquiring minds wonder: Who was Eleanor Rigby? Coronavirus Investigations Internal Files Belie Trump's Upbeat View of the Virus at Bay NBC News
$1.4B in Corona Checks to 1.1M Dead People Washington Post
TSA Accused of Failing to Protect Staff, Endangering Passengers NPR
Public Toilets: Aerosols From Flushing Not Only Risk NatGeo
China-Tied Tech Firm Cashes In on Small Business Relief WFB
How Architecture Could Help People Adapt to Pandemic NY Times Magazine |
