Over 350 pages of memos on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s sprawling investigation into Russian election interference and President Donald Trump’s potential obstruction were released on Thursday evening.
So does this make any difference?
How will the missile attack in Iraq affect Trump.
I have only just begun to read, but this part here seems almost like an intentional parody of the censorship process. Like the great “his Excellency has just referred to the Jewish people” line in Chaplin’s The Great Dictator.
2020 is going to be the worst year of Trump’s life, worse even than those years he had to declare bankruptcy.
His own Administration staffers are leaking like sieves to cover their asses, Impeachment still looms like a dark cloud about to burst over his head, and, I think, the Courts will eventually open the floodgates regarding his taxes, the Mueller Report, and other matters.
Now he’s in a real international fight that’s high pressure with a country that has significant resources at its disposal and with significant stakes…with little Jared as his go-to advisor. And we all know Trump handles pressure about as poorly as humanly possible. If Republicans had any sense of patriotism, they’d do what needs to be done before this escalates into an uncontrollable firefight. Not at all a comfortable situation.
…they wouldn’t be Republicans.
Who knows? Since they think Trump is the “Chosen One”, I’ll bet there are at least a few Evangelicals happy that the “end” may be near, and some people get whisked up to Heaven or something like that. Those people should not be anywhere close to government leaders, but here we are.
Following up to myself is bad form, I know, I know.
Spoiler alert: Redactions continue at an absurd rate. Many of the interviewees are pretty much all “this person was interviewed; end of file on device.”
But even so, there’s interesting stuff in here. I’m putting a few notes here, based on what struck my layman’s eye. All page references are as Adobe counts them.
Manafort’s interview starting on page 13 is less redacted than most, but much or what’s left legible is him regurgitating Trumpish conspiracy crap. (As in “Manafort truly believed that Lynch and Bill Clinton’s meeting on the tarmac was engineered in order for Lynch to give Bill Clinton the questions that would be asked in the interview of his wife.” [p. 20])
The interview with K. T. McFarland [p. 86 ff.] was originally classified SECRET (obviously only in its un-Bowdlerized form). That’s striking. Given that the few unredacted gems we can glean from this doc include the following:
[p. 92] At some point, Trump asked her if the “Russians did it” and she said yes. [REDACTED] Trump repeated he was not sure [REDACTED] He said he had reason to doubt it was the Russians [REDACTED]
and so on, it makes me wonder how many foreign (comma damning) intelligence intercepts might be part of her complete testimony. And that was in the pre inauguration section of the interview.
Post inauguration, of course, things didn’t go so smoothly. Starting on page 101:
On Wednesday, February 22, 2017, McFarland was called to Priebus’ office, and when she got there, Bannon was also there. [REDACTED] He told her Trump wanted her to resign. [REDACTED] Priebus asked if she wanted to be an ambassador, [REDACTED] Bannon suggested Singapore [REDACTED]
Followed by:
McFarland did not say yes or no to this request. She called Eisenberg and told him she had been fired from her job as Deputy NSA and offered the job in Singapore, but they wanted this letter from her. [REDACTED] However, he offered his opinion it was a bad idea for her to write the letter because it was awkward and looked like a quid pro quo situation. [REDACTED] Priebus [REDACTED] he came to her office and told her not to do the email and to forget he even mentioned it.
I’m only one third of the way through. Who knew it took so long to read mostly blank pages?
Unfortunately for us, the War Powers Act (50 US Code §§1541-1548) gives the president, as C-in-C, the right to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances . . . [including] a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces." Trump has already called the Iraq embassy fiasco an attack on the US by Iran. The airstrike near the Baghdad airport was step one in his response.
According to a report in WaPo, Defense Secretary Esper said “And we’re prepared to do what is necessary to defend our personnel and our interests and our partners in the region.” He said that could include military action to preempt militia attacks if U.S. officials learn about them ahead of time.
This IS going to go sideways, and in a relatively quick timeline. This won’t just be US vs. Iran in a national conflict sense (its going to directly involve Russia and China), its also going to go religious…Sunni vs. Shia, guaranteed…with a little Judaism and End Times Christianity throw in for extra spice.
And just to be the “I told you so” record…Democratic debates are still completely oblivious to FP concerns, and have made healthcare…AGAIN…the major focus.
The specifics were unknown, the inevitability of something like this was entirely predictable.
First pass complete. All typos and copious oversights, omissions, and misunderstandings are mine alone.
Here are some bits from the Cohen interview starting on p. 105 referring to Trump Tower Moscow (TTM).
[p. 107] The financial benefit was enormous. The signed LOI [REDACTED] The TRUMP ORG was in a position to make hundreds of millions of dollars [REDACTED]
[p. 119] When JUNIOR said he had a meeting to get some dirt on CLINTON, to COHEN, it did not sound like the first time TRUMP had heard about it.
Second Cohen interview starts on p. 121, with lots of unredacted bits about things like his relationship with Felix Slater and other various entanglements, and another starting on p. 136 with more stuff that I don’t have the patience or focus at this point in the evening to decode.
We resume the regularly scheduled [REDACTED] show with the interview starting p. 141 with Sarah Huckabee Sanders. I can’t imagine that we’re missing much in the redacted portions of her testimony, because it’s not as if she ever bothered to say anything that was both relevant and truthful at the same time anyway. Even the few unredacted parts are completely in character:
[p. 143] Sanders described her comment [REDACTED] about the rank-and-file of the FBI having lost confidence in Comey as something she said “in the heat of the moment” that was not really founded in anything.
[p. 144] she said “Look, we’ve heard from countless members of the FBI that say very different things.” Sanders said that her use of the word “countless” was a slip of the tongue.
Truly beneath contempt.
One of the most amazing parts of the document is the interview, on pages 169-199, of [REDACTED].
No, really, we don’t even get this person’s name! And except for parts of the start-of-interview boiler plate, the whole damn thing is blanked out, from start to finish.
Someone named John Kinney Mashburn, identified as a Trump campaign worker with responsibility for domestic, not foreign, policy issues, gets interviewed twice. Interesting contrast between the two. In the first, starting on p. 228, much is unredacted, and it appears that Mashburn gets involved in the business with an RNC campaign plank change, which I have to imagine is the one regarding Ukraine.
The second interview, starting on p. 233, is entirely redacted after the initial paragraph.
On p. 239 we once again find K. T. McFarland. Like her first interview, and unlike any others (so far), this was declassified from SECRET.
Page 254 starts an interview with one Dimitri Simes of the Center for the National Interest (CNI), a conservative think tank, whose flagship publication The National Interest, I note in passing, carried an article by one Mariia Butina (yes, the NRA Russian chick) in 2015.
In the middle of a sea of near-total white-out, this interview includes:
[p. 258] [REDACTED] The last thing SIMES wanted was for CNI to be seen as an intermediary between the Russian government and a U. S. Presidential administration. [REDACTED]
followed a page later by:
[p. 259] [REDACTED] KUSHNER gave SIMES the impression that the information was “old news.” [REDACTED]
I’ll just let that stand without further comment. In fact, since the entire rest of the interview through page 273 is redacted, I have little choice.
A second interview with Simes starts on page 274. It’s also nearly entirely redacted. I did bark my shins on this bit, though:
[. 292] Approximately one week before TRUMP’s foreign policy speech event, [REDACTED] SIMES told KISLYAK about the event. SIMES told KISLYAK that he would include him on the list of invitations for the event, as well as the pre-speech reception. SIMES also told KISLYAK that he (KISLYAK) would have an opportunity to meet TRUMP. [REDACTED]
Wouldn’t you say that, if you don’t want “to be seen as an intermediary” that you shouldn’t, you know, mediate like that? Asking for a friend, of course.
Question for the legal beagles reading this – what would you think if your client said something like the following? It’s from the second paragraph of conspiracy merchant Jerome Corsi’s interview, one of several in a row, on page 326:
Corsi thanked the interviewing individuals for the opportunity to think about his testimony overnight and said he did a lot of soul searching. Corsi said he did not remember a lot of what had been shown to him the previous day and realized that the way he wanted to remember things was not actually how things happened.
Followed of course, by [MAGNA CUM REDACTIA].
My quick superficial take is that this doc is about 95% redacted. For completely legitimate and non-nefarious reasons throughout, I’m sure.
“Honest? As honest as the day is long.”
I am now going to read a Dr. Seuss book to the little one. It’ll make a lot more sense than this crap.
Rent-an-Official
Am i supposed to read these memos… or color within the lines?
There’s a lot of white space here.
I wish they’d put their money where their mouths are and commit … fully.
When you get done with this can you explain Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky? I imagine it won’t take that much time compared to pages of redactions.
You answered your own first question.
Impeachment discussions just got put on the back burner. Immediately, with talking heads on every network. Within a month…and probably sooner…with every American voter.
Thank you for reading and reporting. Follow up on yourself as often as you feel the need to.
It’s January 2, only 12 days since winter solstice…
I did my best to wade through the occasional unredacted bits of useless information. And they call this release a response to a freedom of information act petition? BS!!! What a farce. Orwell would be very proud of his prescience.
I agree, that was the (transparent) intent. I don’t however think that will be the outcome. Trump and his band of evil morons will fuck this up royally like everything else…
His modus operandi is to sow chaos.
In this he is spectacularly successful.
