Bill Barr was supposed to get an interview directly with Joseph Mifsud. But because he acted even more stupidly than coffee boy George Papadopoulos, he didn’t get what he would really need to test Mifsud’s claims about being a Western rather than a Russian asset.
A comment from Sidney Powell in the September 10 status hearing raises questions about whether Bill Barr is already using coerced “evidence” to undermine his own DOJ.
A key part of the whistleblower allegation is that Trump abused the classification system to try to hide his crime. It turns out that DOJ did the same thing.
They key point of the NYT story revealing Courtney Simmons Elwood’s role in the cover-up of the Ukraine whistleblower complaint is not that the whistleblower worked at CIA, but that she — CIA’s General Counsel — took steps that allowed for the possibility of a cover-up.
Trump really is after something with his Ukraine story.
Bill Barr continues to excel at placing carefully worded self-exonerations in the press. A widely-quoted AP story tells us everything we don’t need to know about the circumstances of his non-recusal, but does tell us that he was surprised to be implicated.
Reports say Nancy Pelosi is considering narrowly crafting impeachment to cover just the latest Ukrainian corruption. Leaving off Trump’s abuse of the pardon power — and continuing to let Presidents believe they can abuse the power with impunity — would be a catastrophic failure.
Last year, Roger Stone threatened to sue emptywheel because I laid out Don McGahn’s efforts to protect Roger Stone’s rat-fucking. It turns out the government believes Stone lied about that topic to HPSCI, and his lawyers are trying to prevent that lie from being submitted at trial.
An entire hearing on the whistleblower complaint transpired without members of Congress hitting on most of the key threats to the intelligence community presented by the alleged (and confirmed by the call summary) actions.
The memorialization Andrew McCabe made of opening the investigation into Donald Trump makes it clear he cared first and foremost about protecting America, not crimes. That has been lost in the ensuing 2.5 years.
