We just found out Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe received treatment from President Trump that has become oh-so-familiar to leading law enforcement officials: They are asked to do or respond to something with clear political and personal overtones, and are left uncomfortable about the whole thing.
The list of those who have similar stories is long, and it’s getting significantly longer this month. It includes James B. Comey, Sally Yates, Preet Bharara and Jeff Sessions. And before the news about McCabe this week, there was yet another FBI director — the current one, Christopher A. Wray — who resisted Trump’s efforts to get him to push out McCabe. So just to sum up, that’s now all three of Trump’s FBI directors (including an acting one), along with both of his attorneys general (including one acting one). Noticing a pattern?
.. Trump asked McCabe about whom he voted for in the 2016 election and pressed him on his wife’s Democratic campaign for Virginia state legislature right after Trump dismissed Comey:
The Oval Office meeting happened shortly after Trump fired Comey following failed efforts by the president to get the FBI director to back off from the Russia probe. Before the May 9 dismissal, Trump had also sought a loyalty oath from Comey and was annoyed that the FBI director would not state publicly at the time that Trump was not personally under investigation.
If there was one moment in Trump’s presidency in which his apparent efforts to affect the Russia investigation came to the fore, the firing of Comey was it. The White House quickly struggled to explain the firing, giving conflicting signals. And then Trump told Lester Holt of NBC News that he fired Comey with the Russia probe on his mind.
.. It was at this juncture that Trump decided to invite McCabe, the man in line to serve as Comey’s temporary replacement, to the Oval Office and decided to do almost precisely what Comey said Trump did to him: Hint at the idea that an FBI director should be loyal to the president. The parallels are striking.
George Papadopoulos is the ‘John Dean’ of the Russia investigation, his fiancee says
He has been mocked by President Trump as a “low level volunteer” and “proven to be a liar.”
But the fiancee of George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign adviser who pleaded guilty in October to lying to the FBI about his Russia contacts and is cooperating with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, says he is being miscast.
“I believe history will remember him like John Dean,”
.. she indicated in an interview that she believes he ultimately will emerge as more than a bit player in the Russia probe — and that his decision to cooperate after he was arrested getting off an airplane at Dulles International Airport in July was a key turning point.
.. Without offering specifics, Mangiante said there is much more that has not yet been told publicly about Papadopoulos’ 10 months as an informal national security adviser to Trump and his interactions with a London-based professor who told Papadopoulos, according to court filings, that the Russians had “dirt” on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
.. Mangiante said she has been extensively interviewed by Mueller’s team, who asked about her own brief stint working for Joseph Mifsud, the same London professor who offered to connect the young Trump aide with the Russians.
.. Mangiante accepted in July 2016 but said she only worked for the group for three months, quickly concluding that it was “a facade for something else.”
She said she never heard Mifsud discuss Russians but quit when she was asked by his partner to attend a secret meeting to discuss Iraq in Tripoli. “I thought it was very suspicious,” she said.
Steve Bannon Will ‘Tell All to Mueller’
Special counsel subpoenas estranged Trump confidant Steve Bannon in Russia probe
declining to answer questions about his White House and presidential transition tenure in the House inquiry.. Mr. Bannon refused to answer some questions from Congress despite having been subpoenaed by the House committee while he was giving testimony... Mr. Bannon told lawmakers that he was willing to answer questions but that he had been asked by the White House not to disclose details about his time in the administration and the presidential transition between administrations.
.. Though his appearance before the House committee was at first voluntary, he was issued a mandatory subpoena by the committee in the middle of the meeting to force him to testify. Even after being issued the subpoena, Mr. Bannon remained unwilling to answer some of the questions, citing a request from White House attorneys
.. The White House is claiming that executive privilege governs any information Congress wants from Mr. Bannon’s stint in the White House and the presidential transition, the person close to Mr. Bannon said.
.. Mr. Bannon’s stance is that no executive privilege exists “within” the executive branch, given that Mr. Mueller, appointed by the Justice Department, “is part of the executive branch.”
Coreligionists in Kleptocracy
What Russia and Iran have in common is someday their people will say ‘enough.’
.. Vladimir Putin must get a clammy feeling from the logic of Iranians taking to the streets against a corrupt government conducting costly adventures in places like Syria.
.. The average Iranian in the street doesn’t think the benefits of the nuclear deal failed to materialize. He thinks they were hijacked and hoarded by regime cronies.
.. Widely reported was the Obama administration’s shipment of $1.7 billion in untraceable cash, via cargo plane, directly to Iran’s leaders. Of 110 international business deals touted in the Iranian press as the fruit of sanctions relief, a Reuters accounting showed that 90 went to companies controlled by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or other top officials.
.. the average Russian has seen his real income continue to shrink, no end to sanctions
.. Nor can the Kremlin shield him from the growing phenomenon of internet-based reporting on the absurd luxuries enjoyed by such regime favorites as Rosneft Chairman Igor Sechin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, much less the astonishing offshore wealth of Mr. Putin’s personal “friend,” the cellist Sergei Roldugin.
.. In both countries, normal, patriotic feeling has clearly begun leaching away from leaders whose defining quality is hypocrisy.
.. Under current leadership, 100% of everything is gobbled up in the corrupt power rivalries and overseas adventures of the leadership class (e.g., the Syrian war).
.. Nobody predicted the Arab Spring, the Ukrainian revolution that overthrew his ally Viktor Yanukovych, or the roadside execution of Gadhafi, an omen that Mr. Putin reportedly dwells on.
.. He was angry at Hillary Clinton for what he considers her efforts to foment a coup against him personally.
.. What the U.S. has over such countries is stable institutions in which to contain unpredictable events and forces.