In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Last week, I noted that although he's kept a low profile ever since, Devin Nunes resigned from Congress, where he'd been on the House Intelligence Committee, in late 2021, and Trump, out of office, hired him to be CEO of Trump Media & Technology in January, 2022. After the 2024 election, Trump named him Chair of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board. In that post, I speculated that Trump never intended Nunes just to run Truth Social; he was there in effect to run a shadow intelligence operation and plan for that side of Trump's return to office. In the video above, Nunes finally steps out from behind the curtain and in an interview with Maria Bartiromo, speaks in his voice as Chair of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board. Below are excerpts from the interview, starting at about 2:00: The President has asked myself and all the people he's put into these law enforcemeent roles, he just wants it cleaned up. . . . He just wants to clean ...

There was a N ew York Times story (behind a paywall) that didn't get much attention two weeks ago, but when I ran across it the other day, it had me saying "hmm". The MSNBC story embedded above carries the gist: The New York Times is reporting former FBI Director James Comey was tracked by the U.S. Secret Service after his “86 47” Instagram post. They tailed Comey in unmarked cars and tracked his cell phone. The DOJ has also opened criminal probes into both Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan as part of a separate investigation. NBC News’ Ken Dilanian, New York Times Investigative Reporter Michael Schmidt and Staff Writer at The Atlantic Ashley Parker join Chris Jansing to discuss. At 0:51: So the night that Comey posted that and took it down, he was interviewed by the Secret Service, and he explained to them that he didn't know that the arrangement of the seashells had a violent connotation, and that he had no intention of harming the president. ...

Gee, d'ya think? George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Thursday former CIA Director John Brennan could face criminal charges in the wake of new documents regarding the “Russiagate” scandal. . . . “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.” During Congressional testimony, Brennan claimed he did not approve including the so-called “Steele dossier” in intelligence assessments about allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election. “People talk about, well, you can’t charge Obama. That is very likely the case that he is protected,” Turley continued. “But these individuals, whether Comey or Brennan, are not protected from perjury charges if the statue of limitations have not run...

Largely unmentioned in yesterday's news , President Donald Trump took executive action on July 24 making it easier for cities and states to remove homeless people from the streets. Trump signed an order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek to reverse federal and state judicial precedents and end consent decrees that limit local and state governments' ability to move homeless people from streets and encampments into treatment centers. . . . Trump's action comes after the Supreme Court ruled in June [2024] that that people without homes can be arrested and fined for sleeping in public spaces, overturning a lower court’s ruling that enforcing camping bans when shelter is lacking is cruel and unusual punishment. The USA Today link is typically slipshod in not mentioning that the case was decided last year, not this past June, and it neglected to cite it by name. Here's more information on CITY OF GRANTS PASS, OREGON v. JOHNSON ET AL. : The Supreme...

At 7:45 in the video of Mark Halperin's Morning Meeting show embedded above, he poses a question to his co-host Sean Spicer, "Sean, name the person and the crime that Tulsi Gabbard says might have been committed leading to a Justice Department strike foice." Halperin concludes he can't come up with either, and Spicer is pretty vague in reply as well. In fact, it hasn't been well covered in this morning's news, but as of yesterday : the Department of Justice announced the formation of a Strike Force to assess the evidence publicized by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and investigate potential next legal steps which might stem from DNI Gabbard’s disclosures. This Department takes alleged weaponization of the intelligence community with the utmost seriousness. My view, which I've been explaining over the past week or so, is that the details have been hiding in plain sight since 2016, and a key episode that nobody seems to think is im...

There's little particularly new in what commentators have divined in the past week's revelations in the documents sent to the Justice Department from the CIA and the Director of National Intelligence. In fact, I'm convinced that Trump himself was fully aware of everything contained in those documents at the time they were written, and he'd prepared an agenda to address the situation during his interregnum. For example, he hired former Rep Devin Nunes to become CEO of Trump Media in January 2022. Nunes had been Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, but according to CBS News, "he was forced to recuse himself from that committee's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election amid an investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics into whether he had leaked classified information." In other words, he was one of the key people who knew everything about the "Russian meddling" when the whole scheme was being cooked...

Newsweek reports , The first six months of Donald Trump's second presidency have been the most "successful" of any American president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, according to an analysis conducted by Newsweek using AI. But it isn't Newsweek at all, it's ChatGPT. Newsweek asked ChatGPT to rank the accomplishments of 20th and 21st century U.S. presidents in their first six months, taking account of the level of support they enjoyed in Congress. The model gave Trump an overall score of "very high," thanks to legislation such as the One Big Beautiful Bill and Laken Riley Acts. But aren't legislative accompliahments just one side of the story? He was also fighting rogue district judges who tried to impose restraining orders on the whole country. Congress had nothing to do with it. And even with Congress, in his first term, he seldom could get Mitch McConnell's cooperation as Senate Majority Leader, much less Paul Ryan's as Speaker....