I mentioned yesterday or the day before that I was throwing in the towel. Participating in or viewing the world of online news strikes me as unhealthy and a waste of time. I’m sure it’s always been like this, but the internet puts it all on display, and sometimes it’s hard to look away.
Have you read the Horowitz IG report about the…there are so many investigations right now I don’t know what it was called.
I’ve read some recaps, analyses, reviews, etc., but I haven’t read the actual report. I’ve been critical of The New York Times recently, but I thought one of their overviews was informative and well-written. The FBI does not come out looking good. That Steele dossier makes everyone look bad.
The part I kept focusing on was the Carter Page investigation. The FBI botched that, and that should frighten all of us. We hear all the time from former FBI personnel how difficult it is to get a FISA approval (not sure if that is the correct term) on a U.S. citizen. Well, it didn’t look difficult to get one on Page. Alter an email, leave out a very important piece of the puzzle from the CIA, and bam - you’re turning the full investigative power of the USG on a citizen. How much money did Page have to spend out of pocket to address the allegations?
I titled this Deceptive Writing, so I should get back to that. I’m too lazy to reassess my choices in paragraph order.
I started this post after reading an opinion piece from Fox News’ Jason Chaffetz.
Jason Chaffetz: The damage James Comey did to our country, the drama and expense is truly breathtaking
I knew what his take would be before I opened his opinion piece, but I was curious about how he’d word it. I suspected that part of his aim would be to further erode his readers’ trust in the federal employees who make up the U.S. government’s bureaucracy, agencies, departments, etc.
It’s mainly a long diatribe against Comey. It’s all black and white to the Fox News crowd - Comey is evil. I think it’s grey - Comey made some really bad and questionable decisions, but he was trying to lawfully navigate through a political minefield. He reached the other side safely, but he set off all the mines. He may have even doubled back to trip some of the mines he initially evaded.
Here’s the line in Chaffetz’ piece that really bothered me. (I added the bold.)
The latest IG report added more damning assessments: “At best the FBI looks to be incompetent and negligent, but at worst they look political and calculated to deceive the FISA court,” said Brett Tolman a former U.S. Attorney for Utah and Senate Judiciary Chief Counsel over Crime and Terrorism.
The IG report added…when you read that, doesn’t it sound like that’s an assessment from the actual report? But if you read until the end, you’ll see that it’s a quote from Brett Tolman, a former U.S. Attorney. I looked up Tolman. He tweets and appears on O’Reilly’s show. I don’t think he was involved in writing the Horowitz IG report. And that’s not how Washington works. These guys try to keep things faceless. Want to get a principal to talk about the Horowitz report or the Mueller report? You’re going to have to get Horowitz or Mueller to talk about them. If I’m wrong, and Tolman’s quote is actually in the report, let me know. If I’m right, “added” should be changed to prompted.
I’ll close with some of my biases. You can decide if I’m full of shit or not. I think Trump is a terrible president and disastrous for the country. I don’t think he’s a Russian asset. If someone has information on you, and you fear that information, why would you put yourself in a situation where the revelation (revealing?) of that information would increase your risk exponentially? There is no Deep State. That doesn’t mean there isn’t abuse, corruption, incompetence, and wrong-doing. I worked in the USG for a long time, so perhaps I’m a Deep Stater trying to tell you that these are not the droids you’re looking for. That’s it for me today, off to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters. (Or the auto parts store to buy a portable jumper to charge my dead battery.)