Politics

The OIG Report

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The OIG Report os over 600 pages and I have neither the time nor the interest (my CCW class is later this morning) to read the whole thing. Andy McCarthy does have several serious columns on the topic this week.


The Ethos of Law Enforcement
It has become a refrain among defenders of the FBI and Justice Department that critics are trying to destroy these vital institutions. In point of fact, these agencies are doing yeoman’s work destroying themselves — much to the chagrin of those of us who spent much of our professional lives proudly carrying out their mission.

The problem is not the existence of miscreants; they are an inevitable part of the human condition, from which no institution of any size will ever be immune. The challenge today is the ethos of law-enforcement. You see it in texts expressing disdain for lawmakers; in the above-it-all contempt for legislative oversight; in arrogant flouting of the Gang of Eight disclosure process for sensitive intelligence (because the FBI’s top-tier unilaterally decides when Bureau activities are “too sensitive” to discuss); in rogue threats to turn the government’s law-enforcement powers against Congress; and in the imperious self-perception of a would-be fourth branch of government, insulated from and unaccountable to the others — including its actual executive-branch superiors.

I have been reading some of the OIG Report and here is an interesting section:

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The Truth is Starting to Seep Out about the Spy in the Trump Campaign

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Way back during the transition from the Obama Administration, the evidence of illegal surveillance of the Trump Campaign began to appear. First, Admiral Mike Rogers warned Donald Trump, the president-elect, that he was under surveillance by the Obama Administration.

June 2016: FISA request. The Obama administration files a request with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to monitor communications involving Donald Trump and several advisers. The request, uncharacteristically, is denied.

October 2016: FISA request. The Obama administration submits a new, narrow request to the FISA court, now focused on a computer server in Trump Tower suspected of links to Russian banks. No evidence is found — but the wiretaps continue, ostensibly for national security reasons, Andrew McCarthy at National Review later notes. The Obama administration is now monitoring an opposing presidential campaign using the high-tech surveillance powers of the federal intelligence services.

On Tuesday November 8th, 2016 the election was held. Results announced Wednesday November 9th, 2016.

On Thursday November 17th, 2016, NSA Director Mike Rogers traveled to New York and met with President-Elect Donald Trump.

Trump moved his transition team to his private golf course immediately.

The other Mike Rogers, a Republican who was deeply compromised by the Benghazi matter, was quickly dropped from the Trump transition team.

This worried the DNC mouthpiece WaPoo. Admiral Rogers probably also warned Trump about the former Intel Committee Chair.

The FBI surveillance and CIA complicity has continued with the appointment of insider Mueller.

Then they took down Mike Flynn who had once written a letter supporting the complaint of a woman named Robyn Gritz, an FBI agent who had worked with McCabe’s team, and accused him of sexual harassment.

In 2013, she filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaint against her FBI supervisors alleging sexual discrimination and hostile work environment. In 2014, she amended her complaint by averring that she suffered “a hostile [work] environment, defamation of character through continued targeting by Andrew McCabe.”

The FBI’s response claimed that she had become “underperforming, tardy to work, insubordinate, possibly mentally ill…”

She was forced out.

In May 2014, Flynn provided a letter on Pentagon stationery which stated that Gritz “was well-known, liked and respected in the military counter-terrorism community for her energy, commitment and professional capacity, and over the years worked in several interagency groups on counter-terrorism targeting initiatives.” He added, “Her work consistently produced outstanding results in the most challenging environments.”

That is the back story of why the FBI went after General Flynn. Plus, of course, he had resisted Obama’s out reach to Muslims.

Despite his underlings’ concerns, McCabe’s plan of retaliation against Flynn proceeded apace. According to Joseph diGenova, the newest member of President Trump’s legal team, McCabe set up Flynn for the interview that led to the general’s indictment for lying to the FBI. One of the agents who was tasked with this maneuver sought private legal advice.

Now, the New York Times, at last, admits the presence of a spy in the Trump campaign. Of course, the Times’ version is the FBI/CIA version with enough spin to make the left feel justified.

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The Russia Collusion story is becoming more clear.

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I was a little late coming to the Trump supporters, but it was interesting almost back to the beginning.

Then it began to form a preference cascade.

Can the GOP really be so out of touch with the legions of out-of-work Americans — many of whom don’t show up in the “official” unemployment rate because they’ve given up looking for work in the Obama economy? With the returning military vets frustrated with lawyer-driven, politically correct rules of engagement that have tied their hands in a fight against a mortal enemy? With those who, in the wake of the Paris and San Bernardino massacres by Muslims, reasonably fear an influx of culturally alien “refugees” and “migrants” from the Middle East?

April 2016:
Trump is a coward, four time bankrupt loser, con artist, bully, 12 time business failure, WWE character, hypocrite, liar, dullard, loose cannon and has very poor character. He will lose in November and people need to wake up to that fact. Otherwise, hello President Hillary.

A year later, that commenter is a supporter.

Trump was in touch with them.

The result was “Deep Confusion.”

I left Queens for Brooklyn to meet Dany L. Esquilin, a Republican I met in the first week of this assignment, aboard a train to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

Mr. Esquilin was not a stereotypical Trump supporter. His parents were born in Puerto Rico, he is black and he had once been a Democrat. (Then again, so had Mr. Trump.) A retired private investigator, Mr. Esquilin worked to marshal Republican votes from Jews, Russians and Chinese-Americans.

Oh Oh.

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We are in uncharted territory.

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On October 18, 2016 Barack Obama ridiculed anyone who could think the election could be rigged.

OBAMA: I have never seen in my lifetime or in modern political history any presidential candidate trying to discredit the elections and the election process before votes have even taken place. It’s unprecedented. It happens to be based on no facts. … [T]here is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America’s elections, in part, because they are so decentralized and the numbers of votes involved. There is no evidence that that has happened in the past or that there are instances in which that will happen this time. And so I’d invite Mr. Trump to stop whinin’ and go try to make his case to get votes.

Then Hillary lost.

In December 2016, Democrats were still trying to figure out what happened.

This process, which is a form of what’s called confirmation bias, can help explain why Trump supporters remain supportive no matter what evidence one puts to them—and why Trump’s opponents are unlikely to be convinced of his worth even if he ends up doing something actually positive. The two groups simply process information differently. “The confirmation bias is not specific to Donald Trump. It’s something we are all susceptible to,” the Columbia University psychologist Daniel Ames, one of several scholars to nominate this paper, said. “But Trump appears to be an especially public and risky illustration of it in many domains.” (Ames and his colleague Alice Lee recently showed a similar effect with beliefs about torture.)

One of those was a good observation. But what about the “Russia Collusion” story?

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Civil war or just uncivil society?

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It seems that at least once a week I read an article predicting that the extreme political divisions in our country will lead to an actual civil war. “The country hasn’t been this divided since 1860!” is a common refrain.

Divided, yes. But leading to war? I don’t think so.

Those who actually know all about our Civil War may wish to correct me; I admit that discussion of this topic in my Georgia high school was so frequent and so prolonged that I did my best to sink into a coma whenever the subject came up. Even so, I think I grasped a few general points about that war which differentiate it from the present situation.

(1) The war was driven by one major moral/economic dispute, even if the two sides described it differently. (North: “Slavery is wrong.” South: “Our economy depends on slavery. Besides, states’ rights.”)
(2) The opposing sides were (mostly) geographically divided.
(3) There were, on both sides, people who were willing to actually fight with something more lethal than a sarcastic Tweet.

Now look at the current mess.

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