Marcy Wheeler is an independent journalist writing about national security and civil liberties. She writes as emptywheel at her eponymous blog, publishes at outlets including Vice, Motherboard, the Nation, the Atlantic, Al Jazeera, and appears frequently on television and radio. She is the author of Anatomy of Deceit, a primer on the CIA leak investigation, and liveblogged the Scooter Libby trial.
Marcy has a PhD from the University of Michigan, where she researched the “feuilleton,” a short conversational newspaper form that has proven important in times of heightened censorship. Before and after her time in academics, Marcy provided documentation consulting for corporations in the auto, tech, and energy industries. She lives with her spouse in Grand Rapids, MI.
In an attempt to sustain his argument that the FBI was overly hasty in opening an investigation into Trump’s Coffee Boy, John Durham whitewashed many of the details about George Papadopoulos, including that he himself found the Coffee Boy’s communications with Sergei Millian to be “creepy.”
A list of interviews cited in the John Durham report suggests he never really investigated the things he claimed to be investigating — like the problematic Carter Page FISA applications or the two false statements cases he did charge — because starting no later than February 2020, he was too busy pursuing a baseless attempt to claim Hillary tried to frame Donald Trump.
Along with a note showing that Trump discussed firing Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, and Andy McCabe in February 2018, Strzok just docketed another note John Kelly took as Chief of Staff, showing that Rand Paul was discussing the FBI officials between the Helsinki meeting and his trip to Moscow to carry a letter from Trump to Putin.