"This is firing the F.B.I. director.... It is extremely dangerous to have a change in an F.B.I. director just after a change in administration."

Said an anonymous "law enforcement official," quoted in "Trump Says He Will Nominate Kash Patel to Run F.B.I./President-elect Donald J. Trump turned to a firebrand loyalist to become director of the bureau, which he sees as part of a ‘deep state’ conspiracy against him" (NYT).

Mr. Patel laid out his vision for wreaking vengeance on the F.B.I. and Justice Department in a book, “Government Gangsters,” calling for clearing out the top ranks of the bureau, which he called “a threat to the people.” He also wrote a children’s book, “The Plot Against the King,” telling through fantasy the story of the investigations into Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign’s possible ties to Russians.... 

In planning to remove Mr. Wray from atop the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, Mr. Trump would be echoing one of the most defining acts of his first term, his dismissal of James B. Comey as F.B.I. director as investigations of Trump associates began to heat up. That act led to the appointment of the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who spent nearly two years examining the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia....

ADDED:

Do you guys even understand how amazing this Kash appointment is?!

Let me remind you pic.twitter.com/nLo4aIFuDF

— Defender of the Republic 🇺🇸 (@realdefender45) December 1, 2024

AND:

🧵 of MSNBC Meltdowns tonight over Kash Patel 🤣

“The most dangerous nominee we’ve seen yet to our democracy” pic.twitter.com/QRhzfFUNOT

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) December 1, 2024

PLUS:

This is Kash Patel, Trump's nominee for FBI Director. The Deep State is f*cked. pic.twitter.com/cejy7hhioP

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) December 1, 2024

Let's look at the complaint in Noelle Dunphy v. Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Filed in yesterday in state court in Manhattan. I'm just going to extract some things that stood out to me, so I encourage you to do your own independent reading. My selections are entirely biased, as is this entire blog, toward what catches my attention: 

Giuliani worked aggressively to hire Ms. Dunphy, offering her what seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work as his Director of Business Development with a salary of $1 million per year.... He made clear that satisfying his sexual demands—which came virtually anytime, anywhere—was an absolute requirement of her employment and of his legal representation. Giuliani began requiring Ms. Dunphy to work at his home and out of hotel room, so that she would be at his beck and call. He drank morning, noon, and night, and was frequently intoxicated, and therefore his behavior was always unpredictable. Giuliani also took Viagra constantly.

"Roger Stone is a victim of the Russia Hoax that the Left and its allies in the media perpetuated for years in an attempt to undermine the Trump Presidency."

So reads the official White House statement about the commutation of the Stone sentence. I know — from my very slight dabbling in radio and TV news last night and this morning — that this issue is getting talked to death. It's the outrage of the day, blotting out whatever was the outrage of the day before, and soon to be blotted out by the next outrage. So I don't think my time is well used listening to any of that. If I know they're talking, I already know what they are saying — more or less. But I do think it's worth looking at the details of what the White House put in an official statement in this case. Most official statements are in bland officialese, though it can be interesting to try to read between the lines or just to translate it into plain English.

But this official statement is written in the style of Trump's rally rhetoric. Let's continue (the boldface is mine):

About those newly declassified Flynn transcripts...

At The Federalist, from Sean Davis: "Declassified Flynn Transcripts Contradict Key Mueller Claims Against Flynn/Newly released declassified transcripts of call transcripts and summaries between Flynn and Kislyak contradict key claims made against Flynn by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller." ("Although Obama officials claimed via leaks to the press that Flynn, a decorated combat veteran and retired three-star Army general, was illegally operating as a secret Russian agent, the transcripts show that Flynn’s primary focus throughout his conversations with Kislyak was ensuring that Russia and the U.S. could work together to defeat Islamist terrorist [sic] and the growing influence of ISIS throughout the Middle East. Obama officials never explained how working with international partners to defeat ISIS constituted a federal crime.")

At NY Magazine, from Jonathan Chait: "New Transcript Shows Trump Adviser Michael Flynn Colluding With Russia in 2016." ("Flynn’s discussions with Kislyak were not part of a criminal conspiracy. They were, however, part of a secret channel of communications, the premise of which was that the two parties had a secret common interest against the United States government. One word that might describe this relationship would be 'collusion.'")

At the NYT, from Julian E. Barnes, Adam Goldman and Nicholas Fandos: "Flynn Discussed Sanctions at Length With Russian Diplomat, Transcripts Show/The former national security adviser now says he does not remember those discussions as he fights a criminal charge he had previously pleaded guilty to" ("Critics of the Trump administration seized on the transcripts’ discussions as evidence that Mr. Flynn was undermining existing Obama administration foreign policy. They argued that the Constitution allows for only one president at a time and that if an incoming administration begins foreign policy negotiations before taking office, it confuses the issue of who holds power.... Conservatives have said that Mr. Flynn did nothing wrong and that it was in the public interest for him to represent the views of the incoming administration.")

"The Supreme Court blocked Congress from receiving grand-jury materials from Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election."

"The court, in a written order Wednesday, granted an emergency request by the Trump administration to keep the materials secret while it mounts a full high court appeal against their release. The high court’s action increases the chances that the information will remain shielded through the 2020 election.... The Justice Department argued that disclosure of the grand-jury materials would mean its secrecy would be irretrievably lost. For the grand-jury process to work, secrecy must be assured for witnesses to come forward and testify fully, the department said. It also said the committee hadn’t shown that the material was urgently needed 'for a hypothetical second impeachment.'"

The Wall Street Journal reports (without a paywall).

"New documents suggest that Flynn ‘was set up by corrupt agents’ who threatened Flynn’s son and made a secret deal with Flynn’s attorneys."

Writes Andrew McCarthy at National Review.

[L]ast Friday night, the DOJ provided some so-called Brady material — i.e., exculpatory information that prosecutors are required by law to reveal to defendants they have charged with crimes.... The information is still not public... But we can glean its outlines from a motion [Flynn's lawyer Sidney] Powell filed... [arguing that Flynn was] "deliberately set up and framed by corrupt agents."...

There was no good-faith basis for an investigation of General Flynn. Under federal law, a false statement made to investigators is not actionable unless it is material. That means it must be pertinent to a matter that is properly under investigation. If the FBI did not have a legitimate investigative basis to interview Flynn, then that fact should have been disclosed as exculpatory information. It would have enabled his counsel to argue that any inaccurate statements he made were immaterial....

"Trump campaign sues The New York Times for libel over Russia opinion article."

CNBC reports.

The lawsuit, which was filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, claims “millions” of dollars in damages, but does not give a specific monetary amount.

Filed in state court. The defendant could remove to federal court, however. The case arises under state law, but there's diversity jurisdiction. I'm trusting this NYT article, which says that Trump is now domiciled in Florida. [ADDED: As someone mentions in the comments, it may be that the named plaintiff isn’t Trump but the Trump campaign. The would change the jurisdiction analysis. I have trouble seeing how the campaign has a defamation claim.]

Here's the NYT article with the alleged defamation:  "The Real Trump-Russia Quid Pro Quo/The campaign and the Kremlin had an overarching deal: help beat Hillary Clinton for a new pro-Russian foreign policy" (March 27, 2019). It begins:

Collusion — or a lack of it — turns out to have been the rhetorical trap that ensnared President Trump’s pursuers. There was no need for detailed electoral collusion between the Trump campaign and Vladimir Putin’s oligarchy because they had an overarching deal: the quid of help in the campaign against Hillary Clinton for the quo of a new pro-Russian foreign policy, starting with relief from the Obama administration’s burdensome economic sanctions. The Trumpites knew about the quid and held out the prospect of the quo.

Run down the known facts about the communications between Russians and the Trump campaign and their deal reveals itself. Perhaps, somewhere along the line, Russians also reminded the Trump family of their helpful cooperation with his past financial ventures. Perhaps, also, they articulated their resentment of Mrs. Clinton for her challenge as secretary of state to the legitimacy of Mr. Putin’s own election. But no such speculation is needed to perceive the obvious bargain reached during the campaign of 2016.

From the CNBC article:

The lawsuit, in its opening sentence, noted the article’s subhead and Frankel’s lead paragraph. “The Times was well aware when it published these statements that they were not true,” the suit said.... “There was no ‘deal’ and no ‘quid pro quo’ between the Campaign or anyone affiliated with it, and Vladimir Putin or the Russian government,” the suit stated.

Eh. There was a "deal" and a "quid pro quo" in the special sense defined by the author. This is the same idea of "quid pro quo" that was relied on by the Democrats when they impeached the President. There didn't need to be any outward expression of a deal or a this-for-that. It was only within the President and the foreign leader's mind, and we can infer what it was. There's an immense difference, however, between a writer in private newspaper spelling out his inferences for readers who can proceed to think for ourselves and using the machinery of the government to force the President into a legal proceeding that would deprive the people of the leadership of the person we chose in the last election.

And by "we," I mean we as a group. I did not vote for Trump, but I respect the group effort —  the immense slog — of electing a President of the United States. We're going through the process again, and it's a mind-boggling, multi-year ordeal. It's horrible to think of messing with the result using an intra-congressional legal device.

This gets my "lawsuits I hope will fail" tag. Freedom of speech, you idiots.

"Why not indict McCabe on felony false-statements charges? That is the question being pressed by incensed Trump supporters."

"After all, the constitutional guarantee of equal justice under the law is supposed to mean that McCabe gets the same quality of justice afforded to the sad sacks pursued with unseemly zeal by McCabe’s FBI and Robert Mueller’s prosecutors. George Papadopoulos was convicted of making a trivial false statement about the date of a meeting. Roger Stone was convicted of obstruction long after the special counsel knew there was no Trump–Russia conspiracy, even though his meanderings did not impede the investigation in any meaningful way. And in the case of Michael Flynn’s false-statements conviction, as McCabe himself acknowledged to the House Intelligence Committee, even the agents who interviewed him did not believe he intentionally misled them.... "

From "Why Wasn’t Andrew McCabe Charged?" by Andrew McCarthy (National Review).

"The Steele dossier was central to obtaining the Page warrant, and the leaks about the dossier fanned two years of media theories about Russian collusion..."

"... that was one reason Mr. Mueller was appointed as special counsel. Mr. Mueller owed the public an explanation of how much of the dossier could be confirmed or repudiated. Instead he abdicated, and the mystery is why. Perhaps as a former FBI director, Mr. Mueller wanted to protect the bureau's reputation... A less generous explanation is that Mr. Mueller was more a figurehead as special counsel, and that the investigation was really run by his deputy Andrew Weissmann.... On the evidence in the Horowitz report, the special counsel team had to know the truth about the Steele dossier and false FBI claims to the FISA court, but they chose to look the other way."

From "Robert Mueller's Dossier Dodge," an editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

And also in the Wall Street Journal from "FISA Court Owes Some Answers" by Kimberley Strassel in the Wall Street Journal:

Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer... blasted the FBI for misleading the court ...  The order depicts a court stunned to discover that the FBI failed in its "duty of candor," and angry it was duped. That's disingenuous. To buy it, you'd have to believe that not one of the court's 11 members -- all federal judges -- caught a whiff of this controversy until now. More importantly, you'd have to ignore that the court was directly informed of the FBI's abuses nearly two years ago....

[The court is] predictably pointing fingers at the FBI, but the court should itself account for its failure to provide more scrutiny, and its refusal to act when [Congressman Devin] Nunes first exposed the problem [in February 2018, when he was chair of the House Intelligence Committee]. The FBI is far from alone in this disgrace.

"Barr and Durham Publicly Disagree With Horowitz Report on Russia Inquiry."

The NYT reports.

“The inspector general’s report now makes clear that the F.B.I. launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken,” Mr. Barr said in a statement.

John H. Durham, a federal prosecutor whom Mr. Barr appointed to run a separate criminal investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation, backed Mr. Barr’s findings in his own highly unusual statement. “Last month, we advised the inspector general that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the F.B.I. case was opened,” Mr. Durham said....

The statements from the Justice Department’s top official and one of his key investigators gave Mr. Trump’s supporters ammunition to dispute one of the key findings in the long-awaited report by Mr. Horowitz that excoriated the F.B.I.’s handling of a wiretap application used in the early stages of its Russia investigation... [and] exonerated former bureau leaders of accusations by the president and his allies that Mr. Trump was the victim of a politicized conspiracy to sabotage his campaign and his presidency.

Exonerated? I remember when "exonerated" had a strong meaning — back when the Mueller report was said not to have exonerated Trump because it did not prove Trump's innocence but only failed to prove guilt. Now, to fail to prove guilt is to exonerate? Ah, yes, it was in the text of the Mueller report: "While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."

Given the importance of the word "exonerate" in the Mueller report and its narrow meaning there, the press should refrain from using the word "exonerate" in the broad sense to mean that the inspector general merely could not find the evidence that FBI officials acted out of political bias. To be consistent with Mueller-talk, one ought to say that while the IG's report does not conclude that the FBI officials acted out of bias, it also does not exonerate them.

I just looked up "exonerate" in the OED. The relevant meaning it "To free from blame; to exculpate." But I was amused by this other (and obsolete) meaning: "To discharge the contents of (the body, an organ), esp. by evacuation. to exonerate nature, to exonerate oneself: to relieve the bowels."

1829 Health & Longevity 269 The bowels..ought to be exonerated at least once in two days.

And flush the toilet 10 times while you're at it.

"The impeachment inquiry Democrats launched last month may ultimately hinge on a simple question: Did President Trump try to force a foreign power (or powers) to help him take down a political opponent, Joe Biden?"

Writes Lee Smith at Real Clear Investigations.

My instinctive answer to the question "did he?" is: Why would he? Biden is not a strong opponent, so what's the point of taking him out? It's what other Democrats want to do. Why would Trump want to help them? My hypothesis is that Trump has a more complex game that his opponents do not understand and that they are therefore making awful blunders.

Back to Smith:

[T]he backdrop of [the Democrats] effort is far more complex and convoluted, connected not just to Trump’s phone call with the president of Ukraine and related evidence but the three-year war of attrition the Democrats have waged against the president. Their main instrument was the Trump-Russia collusion story... [but] Ukraine was always at the center of the Trump-Russia affair....

"What was the embittered left — Democratic presidential candidates and their media allies — supposed to do when their hopes of Russia-Trump collusion crashed on the boulevard of broken dreams?"

"Pivot. They had invested so much in their fantasy that President Donald Trump was a treasonous agent of Russian boss Vladimir Putin. But when special counsel Robert Mueller’s report came out, and there was no collusion, no crime charged, their fantasy collapsed. And so, after a brief spasm of despair, the left pivoted to their default position: race. Race. Race. Race. Race. Race.... In the short term, Democrats and their media allies are using race and charges of 'white supremacy' to herd those 60 million or so Trump voters back into Hillary Clinton’s basket of deplorables. But once you brand 60 million people as 'white supremacists,' and 'Nazis,' what can you do with them?"

Writes John Kass in The Chicago Tribune.

"Yo, proletariat: If the Democratic Party is going to be against chocolate, high heels, parties and fun, you’ve lost me. And I’ve got some bad news for you about 2020."

"The progressives are the modern Puritans. The Massachusetts Bay Colony is alive and well on the Potomac and Twitter. They eviscerate their natural allies for not being pure enough.... The politics of purism makes people stupid. And nasty.... The progressives’ cry that they don’t care about the political consequences because they have a higher cause is just a purity racket. Their mantra is like that of Ferdinand I, the Holy Roman Emperor: 'Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.' 'Let justice be done, though the world perish.' The rest of us more imperfect beings don’t want the world to perish. And maybe justice can be done, without losing the White House, the House, chocolate, high heels, parties and fun."

From "Spare Me the Purity Racket" by Maureen Dowd (NYT).

The top-rated comment over there begins "No" and includes: "why do you care if your high heels, parties and chocolates are criticized?... Democrats shouldn't back down on anything. This just says nothing matters anymore, not the law, not morality, not norms, not decency.... Democrats must fight, fight, fight to save our country."

Dowd is fighting back after she was criticized for eating chocolate with Nancy Pelosi and saying something nice about Pelosi's shoes as if they were "decadent aristocrats reveling like Marie Antoinette."

"When congressional staffers, prompted by repeated media inquiries, asked Mueller’s team about his cognitive acuity, they were told — three separate times — that he was okay...."

"After Mueller’s halting, sometimes confused testimony before two congressional committees Wednesday, some lawmakers are privately wondering whether there was some truth to the rumors — and whether they were right to force him to testify against his wishes....  Democrats lionized Mueller, believing his investigation to be their best hope at exposing wrongdoing by Trump.... After Mueller’s investigation concluded — and Democrats pressed him to testify — his staff communicated to Capitol Hill in no uncertain terms: Mueller did not want to do it.... For a time, Mueller’s team pushed for the hearings to take place behind closed doors, and they advocated aggressively to limit each of the hearings to two hours. Members also were perplexed that panel staffers wanted them to shape questions so they could be answered with a simple 'yes' or 'no.'...  Some Democrats recognized after the first hearing that Mueller was not as sharp as they would have liked. During a break, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), who sits on both committees, warned lawmakers on the second panel to slow down, shorten their questions and speak louder so Mueller could follow better.... Democratic lawmakers are divided about whether they made the right decision in forcing Mueller to appear. Some — and most committee staff members — say they had no choice. While saddened by the attacks on Mueller post-hearing, they say it will pay off in the long run for their investigations, as the public event allowed Mueller to publicly confirm unflattering facts about Trump that they can further explore."

From "Mueller’s team told Congress his acuity was not an issue. Some lawmakers privately worry it was" (WaPo)(relying on anonymous sources).

"President Trump was probably never going to be impeached by the House of Representatives before the 2020 elections."

"The testimony by Robert S. Mueller III, the former special counsel, makes that a near certainty," concludes Carl Hulse of the NYT:

The absence of an electrifying Washington moment in Wednesday’s two-stage testimony by Mr. Mueller not only deprived Democrats of the crystallizing episode they needed to drive public opinion on impeachment, but it also meant Republicans had no reason to budge from their anti-impeachment stance....

... Speaker Nancy Pelosi... has consistently said that she would allow the House to take it up only if there was bipartisan sentiment to open an inquiry. “Bipartisan” in that sense doesn’t mean most Republicans would have to be on board, but at least a few public backers would be required to give a bipartisan veneer to the highly charged proceedings.

Absolutely none surfaced after the hearings....

[T]he majority of House Democrats remain on the fence about impeachment — last week they split 137 to 95 against a symbolic impeachment vote. After the Mueller testimony, just one Democrat, Representative Lori Trahan of Massachusetts, immediately joined the call for at least beginning an impeachment inquiry, hardly the flood pro-impeachment lawmakers had hoped would be spurred by Mr. Mueller.

After a private party meeting, Ms. Pelosi pushed back against the argument by some of her colleagues that the stage had been set for beginning an impeachment inquiry. “I don’t know why they thought that,” said the speaker.... Privately, top Democrats said they viewed Mr. Mueller’s terse and occasionally halting testimony as a “nothingburger” that did not move the impeachment needle at all....

"If Mueller didn’t write report, as his disastrous testimony made clear, who did?"

Texted Rudy Giuliani (reported at Axios).

Not only didn't he write it, but as Alan Dershowitz says, Mueller was not "really in charge" or "very familiar with the contents of the report":



Dershowitz holds up the book and says: "We should no longer call this 'The Mueller Report.' This deserves to be called 'The Staff Report.'"

Why did Mueller accept being used as a figurehead? His dignity and honor were appropriated (or handed over).

ADDED: This would seem too cruel, but considering the massive power entrusted to him, it is gentle:

Mueller's testimony lasted 3 hours, and that was just the first question. pic.twitter.com/6k3k7CPawC

— Carpe Donktum🔹 (@CarpeDonktum) July 25, 2019

At last, it's Muellerday.

ADDED: I watched for the first 40 minutes, then bailed. Too much yelling by congresspersons. Too much stammering and "will you repeat the question" from Mueller. Mueller's testimony is the report. He's said that before and he's saying it again, over and over. With such a dull central character, the theatrical routine is boring and annoying.

"Mueller is...likely to be grumpy when you question him. And who can blame him? You would be grumpy too if you were being subjected to hours of unwanted hectoring by your colleagues, many of whom are not very bright..."

"... will not have done their homework, and will want to yell at the man and ask him things that would be wildly inappropriate for him to answer. But you are that rare thing: a diligent member of Congress who wants to use your time with Mueller to bring out important findings and nuances of the Mueller report. What do you do?"

Writes Benjamin Wittes in "If I Had Five Minutes to Question Robert Mueller." From the advice:

[A]sk him questions to which you know the answer. This is not an investigative hearing. It is an exercise in political and legal theater, and you are trying to provide a compelling elucidation of Mueller’s work and findings. Ask only questions you know he can answer and whose answers you know will reasonably contribute to the thread you are developing.

Wittes has a series of yes-or-no questions that end with:

So, to summarize, I take your report to state that you found substantial evidence of presidential obstruction of justice, which you chose not to analyze, because you were deferring to Congress on questions of impeachment and to federal prosecutors after President Trump leaves office on questions of criminality. Is that a fair reading?

"20 questions for Robert Mueller."

You should read this, from Jonathan Turley.

"As someone who defended Mueller’s motivations against the unrelenting attacks of Trump, I found his press conference to be baffling..."

"... and it raised serious concerns over whether some key decisions are easier to reconcile on a political rather than a legal basis. Three decisions stand out that are hard to square with Mueller’s image as an apolitical icon.... What is concerning is not that each of his three decisions clearly would undermine Trump or Barr but that his decisions ran against the grain for a special counsel. The law favored the other path in each instance. Thus, to use Mueller’s own construction, if we could rule out a political motive, we would have done so. This is why Mueller must testify and must do so publicly."

Writes lawprof Jonathan Turley.

The 3 decisions:

1. "Refusal to identify grand jury material. One of the most surprising disclosures made by Attorney General William Barr was that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein expressly told Mueller to submit his report with grand jury material clearly marked to facilitate the release of a public version...."

2. "Surprise letter sent to the attorney general. ...While Barr has described Mueller’s letter as 'snitty,' it was in fact a sucker punch."

3. "Refusal to reach an obstruction conclusion.... ... Mueller contradicted himself in first saying that he would have cleared Trump if he could have, but then later saying that he decided not to reach a conclusion on any crime.... If Mueller believed such conclusions are impermissible, why did he not submit the matter to the Justice Department inspector general?... It was an effort to allude to possible crimes without, in fairness to the accused, clearly and specifically stating those crimes."