"Patel, Bongino and the other leaders are caught in a trap of their own making. The world they helped create, a world in which conspiracy destroys facts, is now the world they have to inhabit."

Said politics professor Russell Muirhead, quoted in "Once Champions of Fringe Causes, Now in a ‘Trap of Their Own Making’/Top leaders at the Justice Department and the F.B.I. are struggling to fulfill Trump campaign promises often rooted in misinformation and conspiracy theories" (NYT).

From the article:

The tension between practicing politics based on conspiracy theories and having to govern extends far beyond the F.B.I. and Justice Department’s problems with the Epstein case.... Days after the backlash over his Epstein comments, Mr. Bongino offered other promises — new investigations into other episodes that have gripped the president’s base: the discovery of cocaine in the West Wing during the Biden administration, the leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion overturning abortion rights in 2022 and the discovery of pipe bombs near Republican and Democratic Party headquarters before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, an unsolved crime that has already consumed significant law enforcement resources.... 

Emerald Robinson, a former White House correspondent for Newsmax, made her frustration clear on social media. “Dan Bongino & Kash Patel know they destroyed their credibility by claiming that ‘Jeffrey Epstein killed himself’ so now they’re trying to offer up three investigations you don’t care about to misdirect you from the Epstein files you do care about,” she wrote. “Sad!”

Interesting! Suddenly, there's a leak from the inspector general the day after Rush Limbaugh ascribed importance to the lack of any leaks.

ABC reports:

The Justice Department's internal watchdog has concluded that James Comey defied authority at times during his tenure as FBI director, according to sources familiar with a draft report on the matter.

One source told ABC News that the draft report explicitly used the word "insubordinate" to describe Comey's behavior. Another source agreed with that characterization but could not confirm the use of the term.

In the draft report, Inspector General Michael Horowitz also rebuked former Attorney General Loretta Lynch for her handling of the federal investigation into Hillary Clinton's personal email server, the sources said.

Here's Rush Limbaugh today:

The one thing I pointed out yesterday — I find this fascinating — the day after I point out that there hasn’t been a single leak from this thing circulating in front of all kinds of eyeballs at the Department of Justice and who knows wherever else, not one leak. And then the very next day, today, we have a leak to ABC News that ends up one of the lead items on the Drudge Report....

But the fact that there haven’t been any leaks, the thing I mentioned yesterday, the fact there haven’t been any leaks when everything else in this town is leaking and every other leak in this town is an anti-Trump leak or an anti-Trump attack, the fact that there have been no leaks from this thing told me — and I mentioned it yesterday — that it must be pretty bad for the people who are named in this thing. They wouldn’t want it out there, and so it isn’t. Except now it is....

I vehemently disapprove of myself for clicking on "A stunning leak rattles Trump and his aides."

I knew it was hype/fake, but I was overcome by curiosity about the details. Don't do that! I hate to compound the error of clicking by linking, but I will. It's Axios.

The "stunning leak" was the information that Trump was advised not to congratulate Putin on his election victory. The leak went to the Washington Post, which published what to me is a nonstory: "Trump’s national security advisers warned him not to congratulate Putin. He did it anyway."

Axios seems to have a leak about the leak:

The speed and sensitivity of the leak prompted immediate finger-pointing within the administration, as aides reeled from a leak that could only have come from a small group of people, each of whom is trusted with sensitive national secrets....

Are they really reeling or do they just want to create the factoid that Trump did it on his own? In which case it's not really a leak at all. For all I know, Trump himself divulged that his aides told him not to congratulate Putin... and maybe that was a lie. This is why I consider it a nonstory. The whole thing is a phantom.

"Mueller Weighs Putting Off Trump Obstruction Decision/Delay would let him wrap up less explosive parts of inquiry/Obstruction decision might undercut probe, one way or another."

Headline and subheadlines at Bloomberg this morning.

I'm a little skeptical of this presentation...

The revelation is a peek into Muller’s calculations as he proceeds with his many-headed probe, while pressure builds from the president’s advisers and other Republicans to show progress or wrap it up....

So who needs to be prodded to wrap it up, just the Republicans? But Mueller breaks the investigation in two because he's choosing to wrap up part of it, but strategically extends the other part on and on, to where? No "pressure build[ing]" about that?

But even if Trump testifies in the coming weeks, Mueller may make a strategic calculation to keep his findings on obstruction secret, according to the current and former U.S. officials, who discussed the strategy on condition of anonymity.

Isn't this leaking worse than any of the substance of what could be called obstruction?

I chose not to read the whole weird article, which is by Chris Strohm and Shannon Pettypiece, so I'll close by saying — and this is knocking me in the head after quoting Charles Dickens in the previous post — I love that name "Pettypiece." Perfect!

Donald Trump is lashing, rupturing, imperiling, imploding, plunging, laboring, brooding and — to quote Senator Corker — "on the path to World War III."

As reported by Robert Costa, Philip Rucker, Ashley Parker in The Washington Post.

If we scroll halfway down the long page, we see that what's prompting the leakage to the press is not so much the threat to America and the world but the threat to the Republican Party:

"We have been watching the slow-motion breakup of the Republican Party, and Trump is doing what he can to speed it up," said Patrick Caddell, a veteran pollster who has worked with Stephen K. Bannon, Trump's former chief strategist, who now runs Breitbart News, a conservative website.

"Trump is firmly placing himself on the outside, trying to become an almost independent president," Caddell said. "He knows that many people will be with him, that he helps himself when he's not seen as the Republican president. But what about his program? That's the question — and possibly the cost of what he's doing."...

The president has groused to numerous White House aides about his concerns over his popularity with "my people" — his base. He blames the Republican establishment and others for failing to enact his agenda and making him look feckless...

Trump's political calculus is complicated by Bannon's return to his previous role at the helm of Breitbart. Now working to forward a nationalist agenda from outside the confines of the administration, Bannon has vowed war against any Republican lawmakers he believes are insufficiently conservative or who fail to help push through the agenda he and Trump outlined during the campaign....

"WikiLeaks Declares War on The Intercept," according to The Daily Beast.

"The FBI says a reporter led it to an NSA leaker. Julian Assange says that person, whom he suspects is an Intercept reporter, is a ‘menace’ to sources, journalists, and democracy."

It's hard to get past that name — Reality Winner....

But this is, I presume, serious.

On Monday evening, the Intercept published what appears to be a May 5 intelligence report from the National Security Agency that describes two cyberattacks carried out by Russian government hackers against employees of a company that provides technical support to state voting agencies, which occurred shortly before the 2016 election. (The Intercept’s Sam Biddle noted, “There’s nothing in the NSA report indicating the actual voting machines or vote tabulations were compromised” — though this certainly opens up a whole new dimension in the ongoing investigation into Russia’s election meddling and potential contact with the Trump campaign.)

About an hour after the report was published, the Justice Department announced that 25-year-old Reality Leigh Winner, a government contractor, has been charged with taking classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet.....

"There's nothing worse for the credibility of all of Washington than an intel 'leak off' — entering a potentially destructive phase."

There's nothing worse for the credibility of all of Washington than an intel "leak off" -- entering a potentially destructive phase.

— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) March 22, 2017

ADDED: "President Donald Trump said he felt 'somewhat' vindicated on his wiretapping claims against former President Barack Obama after House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said he had seen evidence that members of the Trump transition teams were surveilled following November’s election."

Thanks for using my "Tunnels" post to say whatever you had to say about the to-do about Donald Trump's 2005 tax return.

It's of some interest, but it was horrific hearing Rachel Maddow exaggerate everything. I was averting my eyes, but Meade had some video on and I kept thinking it would end so it wasn't worth the trouble to go in search of earplugs.

I'll give you one link: Chris Cillizza, "This 2005 Donald Trump tax return is a total nothingburger."

[B]ecause of Trump's refusal to release his tax returns, there has long been speculation that he may not have paid any taxes from the mid-1990s — when we know he reported more than $900 million in losses on his tax returns — until the mid-2000s. (For much more on that, check this out.)

The 2005 tax return shows that the latter supposition is simply not true. Trump paid $38 million in taxes, not $0. And the return also suggests that Trump, as he said, did what he could to lower his tax burden. He paid an effective tax rate of 25 percent, far below the top tax bracket — 35 percent — for individuals at that time.

In short: We didn't learn anything we don't already know about Trump. Yes, he is very wealthy. Yes, he — like virtually all very wealthy people — looks for holes in the tax code to lower his overall taxable income.

Now, wait. We did learn something we didn't already know: The "speculation that he may not have paid any taxes from the mid-1990s" is false. This is a big pro-Trump data point. Maybe all those other years are different and the 2005 return was leaked by pro-Trump forces. But it's the data point we've got, and speculation now will be that Trump paid his taxes in the normal way: using the tax code as it is written to take advantage of the incentives and breaks and paying what the law said he owed.

These are not "holes" in the code. The code is deliberately written by human beings who are trying to achieve something, and these people should be held responsible for what they have done. "Looking for holes" makes the taxpayer sound like the agent of unfairness.

The White House says Trump's talk for sending the U.S. military to deal with "bad hombres down there" in Mexico was just "lighthearted."

AP reports through a White House official who "who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the details publicly."

The leaked transcript of the phone conversation had Trump saying:

"You have a bunch of bad hombres down there. You aren't doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isn't, so I just might send them down to take care of it."

The unnamed source says that was "part of a discussion about how the United States and Mexico could work collaboratively to combat drug cartels and other criminal elements, and make the border more secure." That conversation, we're told, was "pleasant and constructive."

How did this conversation get leaked? I can see the value to Trump. I invite you to entertain the idea that Trump wanted it leaked.

Wanted the conversation with the Australian prime minister leaked too, but I'll put that in a second post.

ADDED: On proofread, I don't like the word "just" in the post title. I don't think it could have been just lighthearted. Humor is also serious, especially in a situation like this. I can believe Trump was trying to loosen up President Nieto and create a man-to-man relationship through humor, humor relevant to the very real problems. We know that Trump has seriously said Mexico will want to help him with his border-security project as they understand the benefits to Mexico, especially in fighting criminal gangs that harm both countries at the border. The "lighthearted" statement gets at that problem and why Nieto should work with Trump.

Now, whoever leaked the transcript has cued up this very controversy, crime across the border with Mexico. The press must pick up this story, because the irresistible candy coating is Trump saying something bad again. But to digest that story, you've got to talk about the crime problem and how anyone other than Trump has a way to solve it. "I alone can fix it," Trump has said. And is it not true? Does anyone else have a way to fix it? Having swallowed the yummy Trump-said-something-bad story, the country will take a close look at Dr. Trump's Remedy.

Trump made us talk about that. I mean, whoever leaked that story is making us talk about that.

ALSO: Consider the special problem of using humor across a language barrier. How could Trump expect nuances of tone — from lighthearted to threatening — to pass through translation correctly? Maybe you think President Enrique Peña Nieto speaks English. I looked it up. He claims to speak English, but from what I've seen, he only speaks it very poorly, not well enough to communicate with any sophistication.

In 2014, on a visit to California to address the state legislature, he offered to speak only Spanish and with no translator, because "I believe that most of you speak Spanish."

MORE: I meant to say, in that last update, Trump, in his humor/"humor" used a Spanish word, "hombre." I have no idea how that felt to Spanish-speaking Nieto. To an American, it's reminiscent of old cowboy movies, and "hombre," even without the "bad," has a negative connotation. Beyond the old cowboy context, "hombre" sounds funny to us, but it wouldn't have automatic funniness to a native Spanish-speaker. Yet, if Nieto was listening to a translator, he wouldn't even know that Trump had used the Spanish word, would he?

IN THE COMMENTS: Quoting my, "I invite you to entertain the idea that Trump wanted it leaked," Balfegor says:

Ah, I see -- perhaps the White House official spoke on condition of anonymity because it was John Miller.