Wednesday, August 6, 2025

Losing The Plot?

There's a segment of MAGA that thinks much of the Trump administration is just same old-same old, for instance at Conservative Treehouse:

Unfortunately, we have a long and painful history with the Trump-era Main Justice system, intentionally leaking information to satiate the MAGA base and tamp-down demands for reform and accountability. For seven years various Trump officials have claimed to be working to bring accountability. None has been delivered.

Also unfortunately, the pattern of bread and circuses is repeating. The Dept of Justice leaked a letter to The Federalist, in order to affirm their performance.

. . . The DOJ providing this letter directly to The Federalist, indicates the purpose of Pam Bondi’s DOJ action is performative; not substantive. If the DOJ does not want to compromise their grand jury case, then why are they leaking their letters? Simply, think about it.

. . . It’s likely the DOJ knows the challenge of the [Russiagate] case is a very high bar and they are unlikely to clear it. So, what they are doing is appeasing the ‘Russiagate’ crowd, with the performance of the investigation itself.

Certainly the Democrats and legacy media are claiming the Russiagate case is unlikely to clear a high legal bar, but the opinion isn't unanimous -- I've already linked to Jonathan Turley, who's said,

“It does appear a couple of these figures may have committed perjury. I think the most vulnerable may be Brennan, who is, like, a 30-point buck in the open,” Turley said. “This stuff goes directly to information that he gave to Congress and seems to be in contradiction, and so there are real questions here.”

In other words, there's substance here, at minimum with clear-cut perjury. Paul Sperry, who writes for Real Clear Investigations, reported a month ago,

Explosive new evidence suggests that some of the highest-ranking officials in the Obama-era CIA and FBI perjured themselves regarding their claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin helped Donald Trump secure his victory in 2016.

A newly released CIA review challenges their sworn denials to Congress that the Steele dossier – a discredited set of allegations about Trump funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign – was used as the basis for the years-long Russiagate probe that hamstrung President Trump’s first term.

. . . The CIA’s “lessons-learned” report contradicts Obama administration officials’ claims – most of which were made under oath – that they did not use the since-debunked dossier.

Former CIA Director John Brennan, for one, insisted in his sworn May 2017 testimony before Congress that the Steele dossier was not “in any way” used as a basis for the so-called ICA completed in late December 2016.

. . . Likewise, then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper said in an official January 2017 statement that “we did not rely upon [the dossier] in any way for our conclusions.” Several months later, he assured Congress the dossier was “not a formal part of the Intelligence Community Assessment.”

More recently, Clapper also swore, "We didn't use [the dossier] in our Intelligence Community Assessment" and "We didn't use it for the Intelligence Community Assessment, we didn't draw on it." [Emphasis added.]

. . . While testifying in a December 2017 deposition, moreover, former deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe asserted that although a written summary of the dossier was appended to the classified version of the ICA, it was never referred to “in the main body” of the intel report.

. . . McCabe’s boss, former FBI Director James B. Comey, swore the same thing during a September 2020 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing: “It was significant enough and consistent enough with other intelligence that it ought to be included, but it wasn’t sufficiently corroborated to be in the body of the Intelligence Community Assessment.”

The CIA review shows that the unverified and now-debunked dossier was used as support for the intelligence analysis, not just as a sidebar as Obama officials have maintained.

Sperry has also posted that other inquiries are in process: With the grand jury apparently empaneled in Miami, this would be an indication that the Mar-a-Lago raid will be used as an action in furtherance of an overall conspiracy: On top of that are the puzzling developments surrounding Ghislaine Maxwell's meeting with now-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who represented Trump in his 2024 criminal trial in New York City. Although Trump appears to keep his distance from any day-to-day developments in this and other cases, we may assume that this matter has a high priority with both Trump and the Justice Department.

Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell handed authorities documentation alleging that at least “100 different people” were within the late pedophile’s orbit, a bombshell disclosure that comes after two meetings with a top official from the U.S. Justice Department.

. . . By offering up the evidence, Maxwell has laid all her cards on the table, making good on a promise to deliver new information to the DOJ in exchange for consideration around a reduced sentence.

Within days of this meeting, she

was moved to a minimum-security federal prison camp in Texas, prison officials said Friday.

Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for her role in recruiting and trafficking minors for sex, was being held at a low-security facility in Tallahassee, Florida, that housed men and women.

The camp in Bryan, Texas, houses only women. A majority of its inmates are serving time for nonviolent offenses and white-collar crimes.

. . . Sex offenders must be in at least a low-level security prison like FCI Tallahassee, unless she received a waiver.

Only the administrator of [the Bureau of Prisons'] Designation and Sentence Computation Center can make that decision, according to the waiver policy.

Also subsequently,

The Trump administration is considering publicly releasing the transcript of a Justice Department official's two-day interview with Ghislaine Maxwell last month, a source familiar with the matter told NBC News on Tuesday.

“We’re leaning toward transparency,” the source said.

In what doesn't seem coincidental,

The House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas Tuesday to a slew of former attorneys general and FBI directors, as well as former President Bill Clinton, for testimony about the case involving convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The subpoenas seeking depositions from the former Justice Department officials were issued after Republicans and Democrats on a House Oversight subcommittee approved measures to authorize the demands last month as part of efforts by Congress to obtain more information about Epstein.

. . . The committee is seeking testimony from Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as from officials spanning the past four presidential administrations: former Attorneys General Merrick Garland, Bill Barr, Alberto Gonzales, Jeff Sessions, Loretta Lynch and Eric Holder, and former FBI Directors James Comey and Robert Mueller. Sessions and Barr led the Justice Department during President Trump's first term. Lawmakers are seeking information from the Clintons because of the former president's past ties to Epstein and Maxwell in the early 2000s.

None of this strikes me as "performative". Instead, it looks like consistent progress toward a goal, moving at fairly high speed. In response to the Epstein controversy last month, Trump repeatedly said he thought Attorney General Bondi was doing a good job, and just looking at the evidence that's been coming out, I've got to conclude that she, Blanche, and Patel are doing exactly what's expected.

posted by test @ August 06, 2025   0 Comments