Recoiling from Russiagate

It’s Not Over ‘Til He Pops The Question

John Crudele asks an interesting question: Why haven’t cheating FBI lovebirds been fired yet?

I find it amazing that Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, those Trump-hating, spouse-cheating FBI lovebirds, haven’t been fired yet — even though they greatly compromised the probe into Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of her government emails.

What’s even more astounding is that a source tells me that neither has lost security clearance despite being demoted. I’m told that clearances are routinely pulled even when someone is caught having an extramarital affair.

It's not like they can be blackmailed anymore. I suspect it's because they're singing to the Inspector General.

David Harsanyi: Democrats, get set to lose your ‘collusion’ delusions The thing about delusions is that reality is never the point. Matthew Walter: The media's Mueller speculation has reached a new level of lunacy

Did you hear the news? On Wednesday an obscure Dutch lawyer who is "tied" — one of my favorite journalistic weasel words, along with "linked" and "blasted" — to the deputy chairman of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign has been sentenced to 30 days in jail for initially failing to forward all of his emails to Bob Mueller. I have heard of stiffer sentences for jaywalking in Manhattan and failing to register a cocker spaniel, but I'm sure it's a very big deal.

Ripped off from Theo

Here is what it all really means: nothing.

Nothing at all except that among a certain segment of our supposedly educated upper-middle-class there is apparently an endless appetite for therapy-tainment. The Mueller investigation has seemingly nothing to do with collusion between Trump and Moscow, of which there is still as much evidence as there was in January 2017, i.e., none. It's Bircherism for people who know what "green juice" is, a way to explain how the wealthiest political campaign in history lost to a quasi-literate lowbrow TV star and cope with this ongoing reality. This is why some recent takes don't even make a pretense of mentioning Russia. Long ago the whole thing morphed from being an investigation of treasonous election meddling to one of supposed obstruction of an investigation into the aforementioned non-event. People are still clicking.

Rich Lowry Gets Stampeded Onto The Trump Train "Rich Lowry just wrote off the NeverTrump movement as 'deluded.' Yes, the same Rich Lowry who compiled the 'Against Trump' issue of National Review."

Rich Lowry: Don’t Talk to Mueller, Mr. President. I still want the President to put Mueller under oath and ask him probing questions about deep state collusion. And while he's there, he might ask him why he railroaded Steve Hatfill.

Mueller was supposed to be conducting a counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the election, which immediately also became an investigation of obstruction of justice. The Washington Post reports that Mueller now plans to issue a report on obstruction before he finishes what was his original mission. Trump’s attitude should be, “Come and get me, copper—if you have an case for obstruction, make it, but I’m not incurring any additional legal jeopardy by sitting down and talking to you.”

Guess Who Created Andrew McCabe’s GoFundMe Drive

None other than a K Street PR and consulting firm with ties to the Obama administration called The Bromwich Group.

Melissa Schwartz serves as McCabe’s current spokesperson and is the current chief operating officer of the firm, which was started by Michael R. Bromwich, former director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management under President Barack Obama (and Inspector General for the Department of Justice under President Bill Clinton, for what it’s worth).

Oh, and this part, reported by Dan Abram’s Law & Crime, will turn out to be important: “Employed by the law firm Robbins, Russell, Englert, Orseck, Untereiner & Sauber LLP, Bromwich also currently serves as Andrew McCabe’s lead attorney.”

But there may be a hitch, according to Law & Crime, to Andy’s friends setting up fundraising accounts, given they are ultimately raising money to pay themselves:

Ben Mathis-Lilley, writing in Slate, noted a potential conflict of interest here. He writes:

In other words, the PR and lobbying firm Andrew McCabe’s lawyer founded is helping promote the small-donor fundraising effort to pay Andrew McCabe’s lawyer.

Law&Crime reached out to both Schwartz and The Bromwich Group. Schwartz disputed that The Bromwich Group was a lobbying firm of any sort–no registered lobbyists are currently employed there and Schwartz said the firm doesn’t engage in any unofficial lobbying either.
But who is the “we” that started the legal defense fund? Schwartz confirmed in an email that The Bromwich Group did assist in setting up the GoFundMe on McCabe’s behalf.

The entire Law & Crime report is worth a read. But the money shot is definitely this nugget at the end:

“When asked to whom exactly the raised [GoFundMe] funds would go – if not Bromwich – Schwartz declined to answer.”

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry: America is seriously overreacting to Putin

Putin is the ruler of the world's largest country, which has the world's biggest nuclear arsenal, and he has shown contempt for international norms. Of course we should worry about him. But that doesn't mean we should turn him into a bogeyman.

Take Russia's role in the U.S. presidential election. Did Russia attempt to influence the election against Hillary Clinton? Absolutely. But according to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report, Russian interference mostly amounted to publishing a few Facebook memes. If you want to talk about swinging an election, as The New York Times' Ross Douthat points out, you might want to talk about the estimated $2 billion in free advertising that the major news channels gave to Donald Trump, a decision that was completely free of Russian interference.

If you know anything about Putin, you know that he's a KGB man through and through. That means that he's a master of deception and manipulation. Why was the Russian 2016 operation, whatever its true code name, a success for him? Not because of the election results, which he is too smart to believe he swung. It's because of the perception in the West that he swung the election, or at least played a major role in it. A KGB man knows fear is one of the most powerful levers there is.
. . .
But the election of Trump has given Putin one major benefit: fear. The West used to see Russia as a joke; now the West sees Russia as a dangerous threat.

This makes Putin happy. That's an amazing return on investment for a few Facebook ads.