Garrett M. Graff
@vermontgmg
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Journalist & Historian. Dir, @aspencyber. Contributor, @WIRED. Leadership Columnist @postopinions; Fmr ed, @PoliticoMag. garrett.graff AT gmail OR ProtonMail.
The Green Mountains
Joined March 2007
The FBI raiding Mar-a-Lago on August 8th, the anniversary of Richard Nixon announcing he’s resigning, has a certain poetry to it.
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Reminder that as this crisis escalates, we have no Director of National Intelligence, no Dep Dir, no Homeland Security Secretary, no Dep Sec, no head of CBP or ICE, no State Dept Under Sec of Arms Control, no Asst Sec for Europe, and no Navy Sec.
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THREAD: “What’s the difference between this and Watergate?” Donald Trump raged in a statement Monday night after FBI agents. Well, as a Watergate and FBI historian, four things stand out to me:.
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Stories you’ve forgotten about from this week:. * Brad Parscale taken into custody, under investigation for $25M+ theft from the campaign . * Trump paid just $750 in taxes (!). * Fox paid $4M to settle accusations of sexual harassment by Don Jr.’s girlfriend’s. * Melania’s tapes.
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Did anyone see the tweet when the President thanked the FBI for their hard work stopping terrorists from attacking an elected leader? I’m sure that a president would have done that today. .
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4) Taken together, this is one of the most significant, sensitive, and politically explosive actions the US Justice Department and FBI has ever taken—one of a tiny handful of times it's ever investigated a president. Bottom line: The FBI & DOJ must've known they had the goods.
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Angry about Portland? Remember none of the DHS leaders were Senate confirmed. We have an acting Sec, acting Dep Sec, acting head of CBP, acting head of ICE. It’s been that way for over a *year*.
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Let’s not forget as we enter the week that the US Army felt it necessary to give on-the-record statement denying that it would participate in a coup this weekend. That’s not normal. And not something we should look past.
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I'm disgusted at how news coverage today is soft-pedaling @SecPompeo's RNC speech as "breaking a norm." It was, according to Pompeo's own State Department, *illegal*. It shouldn't just be an aside in the coverage roundups; Trump is weaponizing the US government for his campaign.
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So am I correct that the GOP’s official position is the Dems carried out a massive, sophisticated, multi-state election fraud—with the help of dozens of GOP election administrators and US intel agencies—but forgot to also rig the House and Senate & thus lost all 27 toss-up races?.
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As a reminder, ten million Americans lost their jobs in March. South Korea, which recorded its first COVID case the same day the US did, handled this pandemic without an economic shutdown because its government took the virus seriously from day one. This didn’t have to happen.
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The Flynn pardon is a corrupt abuse of power, a move even Richard Nixon knew he couldn’t get away with for his co-conspirators. This is one of the most corrupt actions ever by a US president. Full stop.
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Seeing in print in the @WSJ this list of Republican national security officials endorsing Biden is really something. This is basically every GOP luminary of the last 30 years, saying “enough” to Trump. Stunning, really.
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Do you think we should tell @DonaldJTrumpJr that there’s a typo on his book cover? He means “the Democrats’ defense of the indefensible.”
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Man, I imagine Susan Collins is super disappointed today. She’s probably even troubled.
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One thing worth keeping in my mind today: There’s a straight line from Russia’s attack on the US election in 2016 to 1/6 to today’s new invasion of Ukraine. The chaos that Russia unleashed with the election of Trump weakened us to the point Putin feels confident invading Europe.
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1) The idea the FBI launched a raid on a former president would have been approved and monitored at the highest level of the Justice Department; hard to even imagine how high the bar of probable cause must've been for the Bureau to initiate such a politically sensitive search. .
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3) The fact the search apparently didn't leak until basically when word came from Donald Trump himself shows the FBI and the Justice Department conducted this search by the book and a high degree of integrity. No leaks? Impressive. Surely only a small team knew inside DOJ. .
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I'm always struck by how much media coverage and Democratic politics is aimed expressly at not offending Republicans, while so much of Republican politics is expressly about offending Democrats and the media. It's the worst—and most self-destructive—asymmetric political warfare.
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2) A search warrant means an independent federal judge ALSO signed off on the probable cause and, independently, believes evidence there was likely a crime committed AND that more evidence would be found at Mar-a-Lago. That's huge too.
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You should be angry this morning that the GOP Senate, which has chosen not to pass coronavirus relief for nearly five *months*—amid an unprecedented economic and health crisis—evidently plans to push through a Supreme Court nominee in just 45 *days*.
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Speaking as a Watergate historian, there’s nowhere on thousands of hours of Nixon tapes where Nixon makes any comment as clear, as clearly illegal, and as clearly self-aware as this Trump tape.
The Trump audio:. "See as president I could have declassified it. Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret.". "Now we have a problem," a staffer responds.
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Can someone in law enforcement explain the strategy behind this? I’d like to assume there’s some reasoning behind it, but it sure looks like sheer malice.
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Credit where it's due: @GaSecofState Brad Raffensperger did an amazing job handling what his own party made into an impossible politicized count. I'm grateful he stood as tall as he did as an American & put the country, our history, and the Constitution first. We owe you thanks.
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THREAD: I want to take a moment to elaborate why we should be so concerned that Jim Clapper, John Brennan, Admiral McRaven, Mike Hayden, and other officials feel it necessary to speak out against Trump:.
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It’s stunning the extent to which Baby Boomers thrived under the American Dream—college, social safety net, housing, pensions, climate, etc.—then consciously decided to not pay it forward, leaving future generations screwed.
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I recognize it’s the important right of any American to take the Fifth, but it’s worth noting how Hillary Clinton say through 11 hours of public Benghazi testimony and sat with the FBI for 3.5 hours amid her emails—and when Trump faces questions, he takes the Fifth.
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Man, I’ll bet Susan Collins is super concerned tonight. She might even be disappointed!.
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It’s wild to me that one political party has all but abandoned democracy and been overtaken by wild conspiracy theories and the media is still covering the fall midterm elections like, “LOL. The GOP will win in a landslide because gas prices are up and there are CRT kids books.”.
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I know a lot about how 1/6 unfolded. I watched it live on TV at that time and have read 1000s of pages about it since. And still at the end of each of these hearings, I remain shell-shocked by the new evidence, the mendacity, the violence, and how close we came to disaster.
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I wrote a history of Watergate that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize last year. And let me tell you: When Nixon said “if the president does it, it’s not illegal,” no one believed that was true.
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THREAD: With the clear projection of AZ for Biden last night, it's time for the media—and nation's leaders—to dramatically change their tone about Trump's refusal to accept Biden as the president-elect. This isn't him being in denial anymore; he's hoping to overturn an election.
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During the last 100 hours of the Trump administration, the capital has been sealed off and flooded with 25,000 military troops to keep the president’s own supporters from attacking and disrupting the transfer of power. America can never forget that.
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Incredible to watch this presentation from Liz Cheney, of all GOPers. One of the most amazing—yet most basic—profiles in political courage we’ve seen in our lifetimes.
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We've read tens of thousands of Hillary's emails; FBI spent a year investigating too. Not a single speck as troubling as Don Jr's one email.
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Your Memorial Day reminder that two soldiers have been killed in the US by domestic extremists in the last week & POTUS hasn't said a word.
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Holy moly. The indictment lays out a pretty open-and-shut case. And it involves VERY highly classified intel—some of the code names/restrictions so highly classified they’re redacted in the indictment itself. This isn’t small potatoes.
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The amazing thing is that when historians someday write about this week in US politics, they probably won't even mention Trump's Georgia phone call—which in-and-of itself would be the greatest scandal of any other presidential administration.
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I’m really struck by the parade of respected, nonpartisan professionals—from Jim Clapper to John Brennan to Mueller to, now, Amb. Taylor and Fiona Hill—who have rung the alarm bell on Trump, and yet the GOP won’t listen at all. .
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Historians are going to be really puzzled trying to understand how the US let the Coronavirus get out of control because GOP governors and public health officials wanted to avoid hurting Donald Trump's feelings and because Americans refused to wear masks to "own the libs.".
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I wrote Robert Mueller's biography, spent more time studying his history than anyone, and dug for any dirt I could find. I've *NEVER* heard even a whisper of women problems around Mueller.
"The FBI has been asked to investigate claims that women have been offered money to fabricate sexual-harassment allegations against Special Counsel Robert Mueller." — @NatashaBertrand
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To sum up today's news: We have the president on tape saying he lied to the American people about the severity of the Coronavirus *and* we have a senior DHS official saying he was ordered to lie about the extent of Russia's interference in the current 2020 election. That right?.
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The only story in the US media today should be how the president is engaged in an outright coup, an attempt to overturn the vote in a free & fair election—and he's set to host Michigan GOP members to try to make it happen. Let's call this what it is: A lazy coup, yes, but a coup.
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So the race ends as the President golfs—and his pathetic aides stage a shambolic press conference at a landscaping company next to a dildo store. I couldn’t have precisely predicted this, but it seems inevitable really.
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By contrast: Robert Mueller had a physical in 1966, was told his knees were too busted to deploy, spent a year repairing them, and deployed to Vietnam in 1968. More here:
Trump had a physical in 1966 and was declared available for service. Then in 1968, he was suddenly diagnosed with bone spurs that allowed him to dodge the draft. Enter Dr. Larry Braunstein, a foot doctor who rented his office from Trump’s dad, Fred Trump.
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Beyond the fact that Graham and the GOP had little trouble impeaching Clinton on Linda Tripp’s second-hand info, the allegations now are in the document released by the White House ITSELF. Trump *himself* told us he did this! He said he ordered the Code Red!.
In America you can’t even get a parking ticket based on hearsay testimony. But you can impeach a president?. I certainly hope not.
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Incredible to see all the hubris drained from Cohen. I've been personally screamed at by Cohen on the phone before and know how much bravado he once had. This is a man with nothing left, with no reason to lie or obfuscate at all. Humbling, in its way.
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Remember just a few Trump scandals ago when the President excused a Navy SEAL for a war crime, then the Navy tried to fire the SEAL anyway, Trump tweeted “no,” and the Navy Sec either was fired or resigned after getting an illegal order? And we all moved on?.
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Trump’s Walter Reed joy ride was stupid and reckless, yes—but what should really worry us is that there’s no one around the president who could convince him otherwise. The fact that he’s so poorly staffed, day in day out, is the true crisis for America.
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Weird how all the people who didn’t want to impeach Trump because “the courts were the right place to hold Trump accountable” are now ALSO against the courts prosecuting Trump. It’s almost as if maybe they never wanted to hold Trump accountable in the first place….
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You are literally watching the Trump cult turn into a suicide cult.
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I can’t get over how thoroughly the Capitol Police, one of the nation’s largest and best funded police forces, failed today. Their utter abdication of their most basic role—hold control and secure the Capitol building—endangered every person inside, from the Vice President down.
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Nothing is *less* patriotic or more insulting to the true heroes of the US military than pardoning actual war criminals. The fact that Trump still doesn’t understand shows how manifestly unfit he is to be commander-in-chief.
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Republicans nationally increasingly treating elections as valid only if they win. That's terribly dangerous for democracy.
AP: Wisconsin GOP uses rare session to weaken incoming governor
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Remember: Every GOP Rep and every GOP Senator but Romney voted for this path. They had a chance to hold the president accountable for misconduct and mismanagement and chose to protect him, rather than the country.
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Guys, I kind of feel like if President Obama had paid hush money to a stripper just before his election and then she sued him, the GOP in Congress might have held a hearing about that.
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Life tip: If as an adult you ever find yourself picketing literal children walking to school, you’re probably doing life wrong.
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It's so depressing to realize how badly the media will screw up the Mueller Report release tomorrow. Advice for everyone talking about it: Go slow, be careful, use precise language, don't rush to speak. It's a big document and Mueller's team surely chose their words carefully.
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I’ve spent the last year writing a book on Nixon and Watergate—and I’m constantly amazed in going over that history that Trump is, in every worse, far far worse. More dangerous, more criminal, more damaging to American democracy.
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The GOP is simultaneously arguing that early ballots can’t be counted early—but also the only valid count is on election night. Be clear: They’re actually just trying to steal the election.
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Interesting fact: Pompeo forced his way into military base housing in DC, a first for a Secretary of State, displacing a military family who had been expecting to receive base housing. His office refuses to release whether and how much rent he is paying.
Susan and I are staying in and doing a puzzle this afternoon. Pro tip: if you’re missing the beach, just throw on Top Gun! 🔫🏐 #StayAtHome
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This alone would be one of the most inappropriate comments any president has made about the FBI and the independence of the rule of law since Nixon—and yet it won’t even register as more than a single line in a major news story (if that) tomorrow.
In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong. Instead, the FBI & Justice should be investigating the terrorists, anarchists, and agitators of ANTIFA, who run around burning down our Democrat run cities and hurting our people!.
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A friendly reminder that the chances are not zero that the President suffered some sort of non-minor medical event over the weekend and that the White House is lying about it—and it’s not even one of the biggest stories by the end of Monday. .
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The big question to remember for today: Donald Trump has a copy of the FBI search warrant now. It would tell us a lot—including if there’s a weak pretext for the search. If it’s such a political prosecution, why isn’t Trump posting the search warrant publicly?!.
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The US will soon have an Acting Labor Sec, an Acting DHS Sec and no Dep Sec, an Acting Defense Sec and no Dep Sec, an Acting White House Chief of Staff, an Acting CBP Commiss., an Acting ICE Dir, an Acting USCIS Dir, an Acting UN Ambassador, an Acting FDA Commiss.,. .
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Little known fact: Comey and wife are huge foster parents. Even foster-parented babies while he was FBI director.
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Think of all the professional White House staff Trump has endangered this week—the butlers, the housekeepers, the cleaners. All the quiet professional staff—and their families—he treated recklessly this week.
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The thing I can’t ever get over is how little Donald Trump wants to do with his presidency. Imagine getting all this power, the chance to reshape history, and all you want to do is watch Fox & Friends?.
Congratulations to great guy Pete Hegseth and wonderful Jenny Cunningham on their engagement. They will have a fantastic life together! @foxandfriends.
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The idea that @neeratanden's nomination failed while so many of the jokers and clowns of the Trump admin were confirmed (hi @RichardGrenell!) is a testament to a cynical, broken, sexist system.
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I’m struck at the end of these hearings by how straightforward the President’s wrongdoing is. The witnesses are remarkably consistent, the documentary evidence strong (both contemporaneous and recollected), the defense basically perfunctory. You don’t often see cases this strong.
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Mueller is, in his own Mueller-like way, screaming for presidential impeachment proceedings. But he's too respectful to say it as directly as America (and Congress) evidently needs him to say it.
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I broke down precisely how many investigations are targeting Donald Trump—and what they are. Answer: There are *17* distinct investigations into Donald Trump's world, as prosecutors probe almost every aspect of how money flowed in and out of his orgs.
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How huge was this last week? Last Sunday, the NYT hadn’t published its massive tax scoop, the debate hadn’t happened, Melania’s tapes hadn’t been leaked, and—of course—the President hadn’t been hospitalized with the very disease he’s long mismanaged. It’s a month to the election.
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It kind of seems like a big deal that Donald Trump is just *inventing* phone calls with a key foreign adversary. If this is true, this seems a serious escalation of his lying—and bodes poorly for a future crisis.
JUST IN: China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang says has no info on phone calls to U.S. cited by Trump, adding later “I can tell you clearly that I haven’t heard of such a thing”.* Says China will protect itself on trade if U.S. persists with current approach.
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Can’t get over how different the report itself is from Barr’s summary. Did they didn’t think America would ever read the real report?.
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Today should mark the start of an all-out press by the DC media to force the GOP to accept or repudiate Trump’s comments on foreign interference. Trump isn’t the Dems’ problem; he’s the GOP’s problem.
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Former CIA executive—this is the kind of warning we should listen to:.
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Just a friendly reminder that we have an acting defense secretary, acting attorney general, acting White House chief of staff, and acting interior secretary.
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As a Watergate historian, it’s worth noting that nothing Nixon did—and he had plenty of crimes and conspiracies, involving more than 60 people criminally charged—approached the scale and severity of Trump’s assault on American democracy.
As that process begins, I encourage everyone to read the indictment, to understand the very serious allegations being made in this case.
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Does anyone doubt this Trump mob would have killed Pence and Pelosi if it had reached them? The more we learn, the more it’s clear the president incited an attack on not just his own Vice President, not just on a co-equal branch of govt, but the Constitutional line of succession.
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Weird, and who do you think created the false narrative that Hillary did this?!
Most Republicans believe we live in a country where Hillary Clinton did very similar things and nothing happened to her.
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11) They are telling us this is a dark and dangerous time. And they have spent their lives, devoted their entire careers, to protecting the country from just these sorts of events overseas. That they're warning us we're under threat at *home*. That's a warning worth listening to.
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I remain amazed at how the GOP has stared down the nation’s changing demographics and rather than adjust its policies doubled-down on systemic voter suppression and intimidation. This should be the main topic of all political coverage in the next 48 hours.
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THREAD: In @SenatorLeahy's new memoir, there's a wild story in it that I haven't ever seen before—a rare glimpse into the shadowy way that the intel agencies interact with Members of Congress. It feels ripped from a political thriller movie. :
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This is a really important point by @emptywheel, often overlooked by GOP critics. The original FBI Russia probe was meant to *PROTECT* the Trump campaign, to protect against Russians trying to penetrate it. The horror arrived when the FBI realized Trump wanted the help.
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Lot of WH aides are probably weighing this weekend immunity vs. six-figure legal bills ahead. .
First mover advantage in confessions from White House officials past and present will be tangible. The rest of you mfers need to lawyer up.
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This is a literal lie. The Obama admin literally left a “Pandemic Playbook,” here in PDF form, that Trump ignored. They literally did leave a “game plan.”
Tonight's Team Trump Livestream features Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who, talking COVID-19, tells Lara Trump, "clearly the Obama administration did not leave to this administration, any kind of game plan for something like this."
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Before becoming DNI, Jim Clapper had worked in U.S. intelligence for nearly fifty years and personally headed two of the nation's 17 intel agencies. By comparison, John Ratcliffe was the mayor of Heath, Texas, pop., 8000.
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We are watching the Republican Party willingly burn the trust and legitimacy of our democratic system to the ground to avoid hurting the feelings of the president who just lost, badly. This damage will be hard to undo.
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Reminder: Ken Starr took three times as long as Mueller to find far fewer crimes than Mueller has already found. .
Judge Ken Starr, former Solicitor Generel & Independent Counsel, just stated that, after two years, “there is no evidence or proof of collusion” & further that “there is no evidence that there was a campaign financing violation involving the President.” Thank you Judge. @FoxNews.
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I can’t believe how bad the media’s coverage of this week’s legislative agenda is. Total, contextless focus on cost without any meaningful coverage of what the bills would do and what policies are included. Let’s debate the policy, not the dollars.
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The extent the US media (and politics) has moved past Puerto Rico astounds me. If Iowa was 85% without power, would still be 24/7 news.
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The entire Trump administration is a lesson in what happens when we don’t prosecute white collar crime. Manafort, Cohen, Ivanka, Don Jr., Eric, and Donald himself all should have been sidelined years ago by prosecutors—and now each has faced white collar sanctions since 2018.
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An honest question: Has a single pundit anywhere over this last week outlined a concrete and realistic plan for a better path forward in Afghanistan? For all the hand-wringing and pearl-clutching, I haven't seen anyone knowledgable offer a better solution.
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This should be seen as a critical, embarrassing, humiliating failure by every political journalist in Washington and New York, except for like six of them who have figured out how to call politics accurately in these times.
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To be clear: The GOP is rejecting Liz Cheney because she (a) accepts the outcome of the election and (b) is anti-insurrection. That’s a remarkable indictment of the party’s core rot.
"I have heard from members concerned about her ability to carry out the job as conference chair, to carry out the message" -- Kevin McCarthy indicates on Fox & Friends that Liz Cheney is likely toast as House Republican Conference Chair
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Reporters need to resist the "extremists on both sides" frame, equating @mtgreenee or @CawthornforNC as the GOP foil to @AOC & "The Squad." They're not. Like her or no, @AOC is a serious policy thinker. @mtgreenee is a gutter-dwelling conspiracist with no place in public life.
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Chuck Rosenberg is one of the most sober, straitlaced public servants around. For him to say this, that causes my head to snap around. Be awed by this statement coming from him.
Chuck Rosenberg: There are enough pieces in the public record already for someone to be charged with a conspiracy to coordinate or receive assistance from a hostile power.
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It is insane, and against all manner of common decency and the code of true intelligence professionals, that the Acting DNI declassified info specifically so it could be leaked for illegitimate partisan purposes. Full stop.
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