"Handwritten notes from fired former FBI agent Peter Strzok show that Obama himself directed key aspects of the campaign to target Flynn during a Jan. 5, 2017 meeting in the Oval Office."

The Federalist reports.

The new notes, which record Comey’s accounting to Strzok of the meeting’s substance, constitute definitive evidence that Obama himself was personally directing significant aspects of a criminal investigation into his political enemy’s top foreign policy adviser.

NSA-D-DAG = [illegible] Other countries
D-DAG: lean forward on [illegible]
VP: “Logan Act”
P: These are unusual times
VP: I’ve been on the intel cmte for ten years and I never
P: Make sure you look at things — have the right people on it
P: Is there anything I shouldn’t be telling transition team?
D: Flynn –> Kislyak calls but appear legit
[illegible] Happy New Year. Yeah right

“Make sure you look at things and have the right people on it,” Obama is quoted as saying.

The Tuesday sunrise, photographed at 7:13.

1. The actual sunrise time was 7:12. The truth is that the best time for a photograph was about 7:00, when there were some vaguely rounded pink rectangles. If I'd delayed the start of the run, I could have captured that unusual sight, but I had it for my personal, private viewing as I ran the first half of my out-and-back. The half run took about 12 minutes, and that's where I stopped and got out my iPhone, and that's the best picture of the morning.

2. At 7:00, I didn't know it wasn't going to get better, so it was hard to decide whether to stop or or to try to get out to the best vantage point sooner. It was cold, so maybe getting out there later would have been better, because once I got out there I ended up waiting, thinking the light would become more dramatic. Post-run, Meade said: "I told you you should take picture at the beginning." I said: "Why didn't you take a picture?" He said: "That's not my thing." I said: "Who was it who was just saying 'That's not my thing'?" Meade, joking, said: "Zabriskie." Ah, yes! Zabriskie Point, site of some of my best sunrise photography (from back when I had no idea I'd be going out for all the sunrises):



3. It was Zelensky, the President of Ukraine. He said: "Look, I never talked to the president from the position of a quid pro quo. That’s not my thing." And I wondered aloud — as we drove back home — how it is that he used the colloquial expression "That's not my thing"? Meade said: "He speaks good English." Which naturally caused both of us to switch to our Bob Dylan voice: "He speaks good English as he invites you up into his room."

4. The Bob Dylan song is "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues": "Sweet Melinda/The peasants call her the goddess of gloom/She speaks good English/And she invites you up into her room/And you’re so kind/And careful not to go to her too soon/And she takes your voice/And leaves you howling at the moon." There was some confusion over the line "careful not to go to her too soon." Maybe it was "careful not to come to her too soon." There was a long involved discussion about whether the line referred to the male orgasm, which got tangled up with the subject of Trump's imitation of Peter Strzok's orgasm. Even if the word were "come," I think the idea is about accepting the invitation and coming up into the goddess of gloom's room, but you never know about poetry. A woman's room could be her womb, her womb-room. Who knows where Sweet Melinda was inviting Bob Dylan and why it was kind for him to delay? But anyway, she got whatever counts as his voice that somehow didn't render him silent. He could howl. Howl at the moon. Moon, room, gloom, soon.

5. That conversation gets us all the way home. It's only a short drive. It's not as though we dragged out those musings. I had a big handful of mittens and gloves as I walked from the car back to the house. And then I thought I'd lost one of the gloves. (I wear iPhone-sensitive liner gloves — these, at Amazon — with fleece mittens over them when the weather is as cold as today (27°)). But I looked again through the handful of handwear and found it. When you're afraid you've lost something, it's usually best to check to make sure you've lost it before you go looking for it.

6. I wanted to express that principle of lost things in the style of Dorothy from "The Wizard of Oz." What is it? If you haven't something something something then you haven't really lost it at all? I try about 12 variations before I look up the text in the script:  "If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard, because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with." That's not really apt when it comes to losing a glove. If it's not here in the house, I never really lost it? Makes no sense. I just wanted to say, it might be right here with me, and it's most efficient to look here first, before going outside.

7. But why did Dorothy's line ever make sense? Suddenly, I see the sense of it. She's not talking about searches for all sorts of things. She's only talking about the search for her "heart's desire," and the desire is always in the heart. The desire is not the thing that is desired. The desire is the desire. If the desire is not there in your heart, then you don't have the desire in the first place. There is the desire to desire. As soon as you think you need to look for your "heart's desire," you have the desire to desire. It's there and you have not lost it.

8. "The Desire to Desire" is the title of a book I had on my office shelf for many, many years. Something feminist. What was it? Ah, here: "The Desire to Desire: The Woman's Film of the 1940s (Theories of Representation and Difference)." There was a time when I had the desire to desire to read "The Desire to Desire." That book has 2 reviews — useless, spammy reviews — "I'm very happy with this book. I was glad to purchase it. There is always wonder in the pages of it. Thank you seller!" and "Thank you for the great book, it was better than I thought it would be for my very first used book order online. Thank you so much."

9. There is always wonder in the pages of it...

Lisa Page talks like Trump.

That's the way things look at The Daily Beast.

For the nearly two years since her name first made the papers, she’s been publicly silent (she did have a closed-door interview with House members in July 2018). I asked her why she was willing to talk now. “Honestly, his demeaning fake orgasm was really the straw that broke the camel’s back,” she says. The president called out her name as he acted out an orgasm in front of thousands of people at a Minneapolis rally on Oct. 11, 2019.

Yes, it was that fake orgasm! That was the last straw! Did he really do that? I had to track down the video myself. Here (I think the "orgasm" is between 1:20 and 1:32):



Anyway, it was the headline that got me. Page is talking like Trump. I did nothing! No crime! But the "orgasm" motivation icing on the cake.

ADDED: Big Streisand effect on that fake orgasm. I had forgotten it, and now I'm watching it over and over and laughing a lot. Maybe Page thinks she can get women stirred up on her behalf, because the fake orgasm was "demeaning." But Trump was imitating Strzok, the man, so let's just see if the men of America take umbrage that Trump did a comical male orgasm.

"So we released the transcript of the call, which was so good that that crooked Adam Schiff, this guy is crooked, he had to make up a fake conversation that never happened... and he delivered it to the United States Congress and the American people."

"It was a total fraud. And then Nancy Pelosi said, 'Oh, I think the president said that.' These people are sick. I’m telling you, they’re sick. And you know what? Had they waited one day longer, they would have had the transcript of the actual call, word for word. It would’ve been perfect. Instead, they released it, they went early, they said all these horrible things. You know why? Because they never thought in a million years that I was going to release a transcript of the call."

Said Donald Trump at his Minneapolis rally last night, just a few minutes after he made up a fake conversation:

Months earlier, Peter Strzok, remember, he and his lover, Lisa Page. What a group. “She’s going to win 10 million to one. She’s going to win. I’m telling you, Peter. I’m telling you, Peter, she’s going to win. Peter. Oh, I love you so much. I love you, Peter.”

“I love you too, Lisa. Lisa, I love you. Lisa, Lisa, oh God, I love you, Lisa. And if she doesn’t win, Lisa, we’ve got an insurance policy, Lisa. We’ll get that son of a bitch out. We got an insurance policy.”

And we’re living through the insurance policy. That’s what it is. The phony Russia hoax. "Lisa, I love you.”

I've already written — approvingly — of Trump's "I love you, Lisa" routine, but I want to ask when is it okay to make up quotes and put them in the mouths of real people? Obviously, it's comedy, but it's comedy that's based on something that happened in real life, something that we may not remember exactly, and the comic exaggeration may distort memories of what really happened.

Here's my post from last week about Schiff's satirical paraphrase of Trump's phone call to the Ukrainian President. Schiff — you may remember — said:

"I’m going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good, I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand, lots of it, on this and on that...."

The real-life statement by Trump was:

"The other thing, there's a lot of talk about Biden's son, Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me."

Nothing about asking that "dirt" be "made up." And there's a firm grounding in specific facts that were well-supported by Joe Biden's own public bragging. The more I go back to Trump's original statement, the more it seems like something a President ought to do. If you look only at Schiff's comic restatement, you can't see any of the basis for thinking what Trump did was acceptable! It sounds more like Trump wanted the President of Ukraine to put together something like the Steele dossier.

If Trump wants to take Schiff and Pelosi to task for their self-serving paraphrase of him, shouldn't he be careful about creating a dialogue like his highly amusing Page-and-Strzok shtick?

One answer is that Schiff was speaking in Congress, in his role as chair of the House Intelligence Committee, while Trump was speaking a political campaign rally. But if you think the line should be drawn there, what motivated you — neutral principles of line-drawing or a desire to find Trump right and Schiff wrong?

"Lisa, I love you!" — Trump at his comic best.

This is not the behavior of a normal person. pic.twitter.com/Iyi8Sq2rTa

— Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) October 11, 2019

ADDED: I saw that this morning when Scott Adams tweeted it with "It's a feature, not a bug. #NotNormal." But I watched the whole speech last night. That was one of the most amusing parts, and I would prefer a longer clip.

AND: Here's the whole thing:



PLUS: With the help of this transcript, I was able to find the longer segment I wanted you to watch:



Text:

"It is truly the deep state house of cards collapsing — as I have been predicting — right before our very eyes."

Said Sean Hannity on Fox News just now (my transcription).

He's talking about tonight's statement from the White House press secretary:

At the request of a number of committees of Congress, and for reasons of transparency, the President has directed the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Justice (including the FBI) to provide for the immediate declassification of the following materials: (1) pages 10-12 and 17-34 of the June 2017 application to the FISA court in the matter of Carter W. Page; (2) all FBI reports of interviews with Bruce G. Ohr prepared in connection with the Russia investigation; and (3) all FBI reports of interviews prepared in connection with all Carter Page FISA applications.

In addition, President Donald J. Trump has directed the Department of Justice (including the FBI) to publicly release all text messages relating to the Russia investigation, without redaction, of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bruce Ohr.

"Just fired Agent Strzok, formerly of the FBI, was in charge of the Crooked Hillary Clinton sham investigation. It was a total fraud on the American public and should be properly redone!"

Tweeted Trump.

"What is the point of arguing with Peter Strzok for ten hours about whether he was biased against Donald Trump?"

"The texts speak for themselves, illustrating beyond cavil that he was biased. In fact, his absurd caviling to the contrary suggests he’d be an easy witness to demolish if a competent examiner had the documentary ammunition. Bias is a dumb thing for Strzok to get uppity about. In 20 years of investigating people, I can’t tell you how many of them I developed a healthy bias against. Bias is a natural human condition. It is something we tend to feel about people who do bad things. There is, and there could be, no requirement that an investigator be impartial about the people he reasonably suspects of crimes. Am I supposed to be impartial about a terrorist? An anti-American spy? A corrupt politician? Seriously? The question is not whether the investigator is biased, but whether bias leads the investigator to do illegal or abusive things. In the case of Strzok and his colleagues, the questions are whether they applied different standards of justice to the two candidates they were investigating; whether, with respect to Trump in particular, they pursued a counterintelligence probe in the stretch-run of an election, premised on the belief that he was a traitor, based on information that was flimsy and unverified. These questions cannot be answered without the documents that explain the origin of the investigation. If the committees are not willing or able to hold government officials in contempt for stonewalling, and President Trump is not willing to order that his subordinates cooperate, it would be better to shut the investigations down than to further abide a farce."

Writes Andrew McCarthy (National Review).

Trey Gowdy on the Strzok hearing: "Public hearings are a circus... I mean it's a freak show."

"I mean the private interviews are much more constructive. But I would also say this — I mean put yourself in President Trump's shoes for just a second. Jim Comey thought that impeachment was too good for you. John Brennan says you should be in the dustbin of history. Those are not insignificant people, one headed the FBI the other headed the CIA when you were under investigation. The lead FBI agent said that you would be destabilizing for the country and promise to stop your candidacy. I mean, Margaret if you were being investigated by people who had that level of bias and animus against you I think you would be concerned as well. What I would tell the president is no American has been indicted for conspiring to hack the DNC but Russia did attack us...."

On "Face the Nation" this morning.

ADDED: I chose to blog this quote because "It's a freak show" felt so close to what I thought when I watched the hearings. As I blogged on the 13th: It was "some of the most ridiculous political theater I've ever seen."

What was Strzok thinking?

That's what the hearing yesterday went on and on about in some of the most ridiculous political theater I've ever seen. Strok seemed intent on sternly insisting that his texts expressed political opinions that he kept strictly separate from his professional work and how dare anyone suggest that he was not a professional who did exactly what he's telling you he did — how dare you impugn the integrity of the FBI!

But sometimes the mask slipped, and when it did, it was really weird:

I foresee this being used as a meme or gif. #Creepy #Strzok #FoxNews pic.twitter.com/uUHC7wv7EP

— Holly Bowie (@Hollybowie) July 12, 2018

Via Instapundit.

As for what Strzok was thinking when he wrote those texts, I'll set that aside for a moment and asked what was Strok thinking when he made that smirking face and whole-body jiggle? My guess: I'm getting away with this.

"Strzok isn’t just any rank-and-file guy spouting off in one ill-advised email. His fingerprints were on every FBI investigation..."

"... that stood to impact Clinton’s presidential candidacy or to hurt Trump before and after the 2016 election. He was chief of the FBI’s Counterespionage Section and number two in the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division. He led the team of investigators in the Clinton classified email probe and led the FBI investigation into alleged Russian interference in the election. He was involved in the controversial anti-Trump 'Steele dossier' used, in part, to obtain multiple secret wiretaps. He was the one who interviewed Trump adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who pled guilty to lying to the FBI only to later learn that agents reportedly didn’t think he’d lied. And Strzok was the 'top' FBI agent appointed to work on the team of special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate alleged Trump-Russia collusion. The earth-shattering finding on Strzok by the inspector general (IG) confirms a citizenry’s worst fears: A high-ranking government intel official allegedly conspired to affect the outcome of a U.S. presidential election...."

Read "What did Peter Strzok do?" by Sharyl Attkisson.

"Just went to a southern Virginia Walmart. I could SMELL the Trump support...."

A text from Peter Strzok, dated August 26, 2016. From a list of "text messages of a political nature commenting on Trump and Clinton" by Strzok and Lisa Page quoted in the IG report at pages 399-400.

Also:

February 12, 2016, Page: “I’m no prude, but I’m really appalled by this. So you don’t have to go looking (in case you hadn’t heard), Trump called him the p-word. The man has no dignity or class. He simply cannot be president. With a Slur for Ted Cruz, Donald Trump Further Splits Voters http://nyti.ms/1XoICkO.”

She's no prude, but she can't write the word "pussy" in a text to her paramour? She had to write "p-word." And:

March 3, 2016, Page: “Also did you hear [Trump] make a comment about the size of his d*ck earlier? This man cannot be president.”

She can't write out "dick" in a text to her dick-having sexual partner?!

March 12, 2016: Page forwarded an article about a “far right” candidate in Texas, stating, “[W]hat the f is wrong with people?”...

Oh, for fuck's sake.

July 18, 2016, Page: “...Donald Trump is an enormous d*uche.”

But enough about Page. I want to talk about Strzok and his detection of odor among the deplorable people who shop at Walmart... in southern Virginia.

"Former FBI Director James Comey 'deviated' from bureau and Justice Department procedures in handling the probe into Hillary Clinton, damaging the agencies’ image of impartiality..."

"... even though he wasn’t motivated by politics, the department’s watchdog found in a highly anticipated report. 'While we did not find that these decisions were the result of political bias on Comey’s part, we nevertheless concluded that by departing so clearly and dramatically from FBI and department norms, the decisions negatively impacted the perception of the FBI and the department as fair administrators of justice,' Inspector General Michael Horowitz said in the report’s conclusions, which were obtained by Bloomberg News."

ADDED: The NYT reports:

[T]he report paints an unflattering picture of one of the most tumultuous periods in the 110-year history of the F.B.I.... The report criticizes the conduct of F.B.I. officials who exchanged texts disparaging Mr. Trump during the campaign. The officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, were involved in both the Clinton and Russia investigations, leading Mr. Trump’s supporters to suspect a conspiracy against him. Many of those text messages have been released, but the inspector general cites a previously undisclosed message in which Mr. Strzok says the F.B.I. “will stop” Mr. Trump, according to two of the officials.

The inspector general said that, because of his views, Mr. Strzok may have improperly prioritized the Russia investigation over the Clinton investigation during the final weeks of the campaign. The F.B.I. officials “brought discredit” to themselves and sowed public doubt about the investigation. But the report did not cite evidence that Mr. Strzok had acted improperly or influenced the outcome of the investigation, the officials said....

The findings sharply criticize the judgment of Mr. Comey....

ALSO: CNN:

The report from Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded that the prosecutorial decisions in the Clinton case were "consistent" and not affected by bias or other improper actions. But it said that senior leaders' handling of the Clinton case cast a cloud over the bureau and did lasting damage to the FBI's reputation.

"The damage caused by these employees' actions extends far beyond the scope of the Midyear (Clinton) investigation and goes to the heart of the FBI's reputation for neutral factfinding and political independence," the report states.

A key finding: Comey erred in his decision not to coordinate with his superiors at the Justice Department at key moments in the Clinton email investigation. Horowitz said that Comey was "extraordinary and insubordinate," and did not agree with any of his reasons for deviating from "well-established Department policies.",,,

The report found that the Strzok and Page texts "cast a cloud" over the credibility of the investigation, although they found no evidence "that these political views directly affected the specific investigative decisions that we reviewed."...

The report faults Lynch for her meeting with Clinton on a Phoenix airport tarmac. But it says there was no evidence that Lynch and Clinton discussed the investigation into Hillary Clinton or any other inappropriate discussions.

"Page wrote to Strzok on Sept. 2, 2016, about prepping Comey because 'potus wants to know everything we're doing."

"According to a newly released Senate report, this text raises questions about Obama's personal involvement in the Clinton email investigation."

From "FBI lovers' latest text messages: Obama 'wants to know everything'" (Fox News).

"If Clinton had been charged, Obama’s culpable involvement would have been patent."

"In any prosecution of Clinton, the Clinton–Obama emails would have been in the spotlight. For the prosecution, they would be more proof of willful (or, if you prefer, grossly negligent) mishandling of intelligence. More significantly, for Clinton’s defense, they would show that Obama was complicit in Clinton’s conduct yet faced no criminal charges. That is why such an indictment of Hillary Clinton was never going to happen. The latest jaw-dropping disclosures of text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and his paramour, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, illustrate this point."

"Clinton–Obama Emails: The Key to Understanding Why Hillary Wasn’t Indicted" by Andrew McCarthy (National Review).

"Was Lynch coordinating with Comey in the Clinton investigation?"

Asks Sharyl Attkisson (at The Hill).

Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch knew well in advance of FBI Director James Comey's 2016 press conference that he would recommend against charging Hillary Clinton, according to information turned over to the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Friday.

The revelation was included in 384 pages of text messages exchanged between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and it significantly diminishes the credibility of Lynch's earlier commitment to accept Comey's recommendation — a commitment she made under the pretense that the two were not coordinating with each other.

And it gets worse. Comey and Lynch reportedly knew that Clinton would never face charges even before the FBI conducted its three-hour interview with Clinton, which was supposedly meant to gather more information into her mishandling of classified information...

Read the whole thing.

"FBI officials’ text message about Hillary Clinton said to be a cover story for romantic affair."

What a crazy story, dropped last night in The Washington Post. Excerpt:

“So look,” the text from Page to Strzok reads, “you say we text on that phone when we talk about Hillary because it can’t be traced, you were just venting [because] you feel bad that you’re gone so much but it can’t be helped right now.”...

People familiar with the matter said that, although Page’s message may appear to suggest that she and Strzok used a separate communications channel for discussing the Clinton case, the point of her text was to advise Strzok how to explain to his wife why the two of them had been texting each other.

Page and Strzok used their work on the Clinton case as a cover story for the affair, these people said, adding that there was not a separate set of phones for untraceable discussions of the Clinton case. The text had nothing to do with the Clinton investigation, these people said.

We're talking about a senior FBI lawyer and a senior counterintelligence agent.

“What people are forgetting is the human foible of a having an affair — they forget that the system itself will betray you and your texts,” said David Gomez, a former FBI counterterrorism official. “Using language like that is something a lot of people who have affairs do, but it does create problems with people who are conspiracy minded.’’

We're asked to believe sex made them this stupid. And we're asked not to look too hard because it must have been about sex, and we're "conspiracy minded" if we see anything but their getting stupid because of sex. But their sexual desire — however profound and stupid-making it may have been — doesn't make us stupid. Keep looking.

And Washington Post, come on. You need to do better. The second-to-last paragraph of this story is an embarrassment:

The issue has come up before. In 2014, an FBI agent was caught texting on the witness stand at a trial and then lied under oath about it. She killed herself hours after the incident. Law enforcement officials said her texts were innocuous messages exchanged with her husband while passing time in court.

I'm not saying you ought to kill yourself over that, and I'm sorry for family of the woman who killed herself over lying on the witness stand about texting in 2014, but that's a cheap, lame, overreaching effort to make us lay off Strzok and Page. "The issue has come up before" — what issue?

"We knew the FBI was involved in Trump dossier during campaign. Now we learn knowledge of dossier reached into highest levels of Obama Justice Department."

"The Ohr revelation comes not long after word that top FBI agent Peter Strzok was removed from the Mueller investigation for anti-Trump text messages he exchanged with a top FBI lawyer who had also worked for the Mueller probe. Now, with news of Ohr’s contacts with Steele and Simpson, Republicans on Capitol Hill — and perhaps some Democrats, too — will wonder just how far the Obama Justice Department officials went in the effort to stop Trump."

Instapundit, quoting Byron York.

It's especially disturbing to read about this right after the reading about the Wisconsin DOJ report on John Doe investigation. Both stories are about Democratic partisans using the machinery of government to go after their Republican rivals.

"Neither of the Clinton associates, Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, faced legal consequences for their misleading statements, which they made in interviews last year with former FBI section chief Peter Strzok."

The Daily Caller spells out what is hard to see as anything other than political bias.

The starkly different outcomes from Strzok’s interviews — a felony charge against Flynn and a free pass to Mills and Abedin — are sure to raise questions from Republicans about double-standards in the FBI’s two most prominent political investigations....

Strzok was also a prominent part of the Clinton investigation, so much so that he conducted all of the most significant interviews in the case....