"You Don’t Have The Cards Right Now."

Before Zelensky showed up in Washington Friday, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer arrived the day before carrying an invitation from King Charles for a state visit. Now, Charles is also hosting Zelensky for his own state visit. According to the UK Independent,

King Charles is to meet Volodymyr Zelensky at Sandringham on Sunday in a rare and dramatic sign of royal support.

The King’s invitation to the Ukraine president came a day after Donald Trump sparked worldwide outrage by insulting and abusing Mr Zelensky at the White House.

And it is only two days after Mr Trump accepted an invitation from the King for an unprecedented second state visit to Britain – delivered to him personally by Sir Keir Starmer.

The king, of course, has no direct power over much of anything in the UK or anywhere else, and his utterances are normally limited to anodyne remarks on topics like the weather. Apparently Starmer feels Charles's prestige alone will mevertheless be sufficient to carry his program:

UK Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer said ahead of a Lancaster House summit on Sunday that Britain and France will work to craft a Ukraine ceasefire deal that would be presented to the United States.

Echoing the language of former U.S. President George W. Bush, the Labour Party leader said that London and Paris will seek to build a “coalition of the willing” to enforce a peace in Ukraine.

The UK and France have already committed to sending troops into the former Eastern bloc nation to act as peacekeepers, but other European nations, notably Italy, Germany, and Poland, have so far shot down the idea.

. . . The British leader said that he would work with French President Emmanuel Macron to craft a “plan” for peace in Ukraine that they would present to the United States.

Attempting to throw his weight around, President Macron appeared to demand that Europeans be given a voice at the negotiating table, saying per The Times: “If the United States settled a ceasefire solely with Russia, it would breach international law. For a permanent member of the UN Security Council, that would be a profound break.

The link continues,

However, despite the tough talk from Starmer and Macron, it is unlikely that they alone could actually provide the security garuntees needed to prevent Ukraine from being invaded in the future.

Former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander at NATO, General Sir John McColl, said: “There is absolutely no way that the European nations without American support can provide any form of security guarantee for Ukraine.”

“It can either be a peace support operation, which means you simply report if there is an incursion, or it can be a peace enforcement operation, which means you fight if there is an incursion. If it’s the latter, then Europe simply does not have the capabilities to be able to do that on its own.”

So the US de facto position has been, and now has been expressed directly, that Ukraine can't become a member of NATO.

Stating that the U.S. does not believe NATO membership for Ukraine would be a "realistic" outcome of any negotiated peace settlement with Russia, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, today, called on NATO allied countries to increase their defense spending and take the lead in providing for Ukraine and Europe's security.

The problem is that Starmer, Macron, Zelensky, and King Charles don't have any cards. The NATO countries without the US aren't a credible military force. and they could not become one for generations. On the European continent without US boots on the ground, these are cards that Putin holds. Yet politicians like Canada's Chrystia Freeland propose a fantasy that NATO without the US could be a balancing force, presumably against both Putin and Trump:

I would start with our Nordic partners, specifically Denmark, which is also being threatened, and our NATO European allies. I would be sure that France and Britain were there who possess nuclear weapons and I will be working urgently with these partners to build a closer security relationship that guarantees our security in a time when United States can be a threat.

If they're fully aware they can't be a peacekeeping force in Ukraine without US guarantees, how can they think they can face off against the US without US backing? Right now, Starmer, Macron, and whatever reluctant allies they may have in the pro-Ukraine coalition have the problem of Zelensky. Opinion in the US is increasingly that Zelensky is the Gordian knot of Ukraine negotiations, and Trump's goal is now to cut the Gordian knot. Friday's confrontation simply made this more public; a week earlier, this was already the prognostication:

“Trump’s administration obviously doesn’t like Zelensky and does everything to let everyone know that,” said a Ukrainian political analyst and active-duty soldier who asked not to be identified by name.

“Recent remarks by the US president show that he wants Ukrainian elections ASAP and Zelensky replaced by someone more negotiable. This can be some who Trump and his allies trust: military leader or businessman.”

Washington insiders say there’s no obvious contender whom Trump would prefer if Ukraine were to hold elections, as Trump and his allies like Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk insisted this week should happen.

It's clear that Fiday's confrontation was something that had been simmering for some time, and it worked to Trump's benefit, since it will solidify domestic suppoprt for his Ukraine agenda. Neither Zelensky nor the pro-Ukraine NATO leaders have any cards to play -- certainly not the king.

Bondi And Patel Have A Problem

The fact that the Epstein files haven’t yet been released demonstrates that the President doesn’t yet have operational control of the DOJ and FBI.

It could take a while to establish, or as with his first term, it might never be established.

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) February 28, 2025

Opinions are divided on Attorney General Bondi, but the Epstein Files fiasco isn't turning out well. Sundance at Conservative Treehouse has never been a fan of either Bondi or Patel:

AS PREDICTED, don’t expect the DOJ/FBI silos to be anything except a hot mess. The appointed leaders have all the support needed, but the nominated heads generally do not seem to have any idea how to get their “arms around” the problems. The DOJ/FBI reform agenda is not likely to go anywhere.

Celebrate all the success in the areas where serious people are operating strategically. But be practical in looking for DOJ/FBI structural silo changes; that really is unlikely to happen. The Bondi/Patel partnership are the wrong leadership people for that type of change.

Ben Shapiro, not much trusted in alt media, nevertheless has a similar take:

Remember the scene from the TV special “The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults” in which Geraldo Rivera tried to open Al Capone’s vault, finally did, and there was nothing inside?

The reveal of the Epstein files was like that. And this has led to speculation that the Epstein files are still secretly somewhere, and the lack of justification for more material being out there is demonstrated by the lack of material.

This sort of stuff is annoying. I want all the Epstein files exposed, every single piece of them — all of it unredacted as much as humanly possible. Theoretically, the only information that should be redacted is information to protect the victims, certainly nothing to protect the allegations against perpetrators.

I want to know exactly who Jeffrey Epstein was, who was opping him — because the question of how he made his money is a serious question — and why law enforcement basically allowed him to gallivant around performing atrocities against young women on behalf of powerful men with his girlfriend, paramour, and co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell.

But that did not happen on Thursday, and I think these distractions are not great for the Trump administration.

Luckily, the Oval Office blowup with Zelensky yesterday took the focus off the Epstein files, at least briefly. Elsewhere,

Laura Loomer, a political activist and prominent right-wing personality, didn’t mince her words over the farcical nature of the rollout and also called on Bondi to resign. “I hate to say it, but the American people can’t trust the validity of the Epstein files released today,” Loomer wrote on X. “It was released in an unprofessional manner with paid, partisan social media influencers to curate their binders for us. I can’t trust anything in the binder.”

Loomer also took shots at the influencers who received the documents, writing in another post, “Most of the influencers took selfies of themselves holding the binder and said ‘exclusive’ and then proceeded to not post online for hours. That’s called gate keeping.”

Possibly in an effort to cover for the binder blunder, Bondi then almost immediately insisted that the real files were still being hidden by the FBI:

Attorney General Pam Bondi revealed Thursday that “thousands of pages” of documents in the FBI’s investigation into the sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein were withheld from her.

And she’s demanding that they be turned over by Friday morning.

Bondi, 59, disclosed in a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel a tipster said that all but “approximately 200 pages of documents” were still being kept secret at the FBI’s office in New York — despite her repeated requests for the “full” Epstein files.

The initial batch included flight logs, phone numbers and the names of victims, but a source in the FBI’s New York office reached out and said that hundreds additional documents were not included.

“By 8:00 a.m. tomorrow, February 28, the FBI will deliver the full and complete Epstein files to my office, including all records, documents, audio and video recordings, and materials related to Jeffrey Epstein and his clients, regardless of how such information was obtained,” Bondi said.

But as of yesterday morning, there was no indication that any of those allegedly missing Epstein items had been delivered -- or, alternatively, that any recalcitrant FBI officials had been fired. And where was Director Patel? If the allegation was that the New York office was sitting on those files, wouldn't you expect Patel to be up there, commandeering a conference room, and asking hard questions? Apparently not. This is what we actually heard from him yesterday:

In a rare and extraordinary pushback, new FBI Director Kash Patel said Friday night that media reports claiming a female agent ran a “honeypot” operation against Donald Trump during the Obama years was not true and unfair to the agent.

“A female agent was falsely referenced in the media this week as part of an alleged whistleblower disclosure- she was NOT a honeypot,” Patel wrote in a post on the social media platform X.

“I have reviewed the matter, again, and she did the limited job assigned to her. These actions were also reviewed by Special Counsel John Durham and he found no evidence of any wrongdoing by her,” the director said. “This agent has dedicated her life to public service, and I will have her back for it.”

The statement by Patel was extraordinary since he was a critic of the FBI before he took over as its director, and helped unravel the misconduct of the FBI during the unfounded Russia collusion case known as Crossfire Hurricane brought against Trump during the 2016 campaign.

Wait a moment. In her letter to Patel on Thursday regarding the allegedly missing Epstein material, which she demanded by yesterday morning, she also said, "I am also directing you to conduct an immediate investigation into why my order to the FBI waws not followed. You will deliver to me a comprehensive report of your findings and proposed personnel action within 14 days."

Except that, having presumably received this letter by fax or hand delivery on Thursday, Patel seems to have spent yesterday preparing his announcement that there was no such thing as a Comey honey pot so they could get it out for the Friday afternoon bad news dump. If I had gotten an e-mail or letter from my boss saying I was "directed to conduct an immediate investigation", I would take that as an expectation that I should drop everything else and get on the project, and probably sleep on my office floor until it was done.

Apparently Patel didn't see it that way. Instead, he apparently spent that afternoon working on a statement about how John Durham had found nothing suspicious in all his months of work, and he saw things the same way. Meanwhile, other questions keep turning up:

It’s been almost nine months since a seemingly mild-mannered 20-year-old attempted to assassinate then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at a rally in Butler.

And we still have no good reason why.

Sources told The Post the FBI has obstructed efforts to solve the mystery of why Thomas Matthew Crooks, who left no manifesto, did what he did. It’s left local law enforcement as well as Crooks’ former friends, classmates and teachers frustrated.

. . . “By the way, why do we know nothing about that guy in Butler?” Elon Musk yelled out to the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference last week, before warning that FBI Director “Kash [Patel] is going to get to the bottom of it.”

Yup, Director Patel is gonna get to the bottom of everything, just you wait. But first, he's gotta toughen the agents up:

Kash Patel just took over as FBI director, and he’s already working on a big idea, partnering with the UFC to toughen up his agents. As per Reuters, he shared this plan during a call with all 55 FBI field office leaders this past Wednesday, suggesting UFC fighters and coaches could teach better fighting skills. He also mentioned fitness plans to keep agents in top shape for their jobs.

His deputy, Dan Bongino, a big UFC fan picked by President Trump, sparked this whole thing. Bongino’s love for the sport got Patel interested, and now the Indian-American lawyer turned FBI chief wants to mix some cage-fighting edge into law enforcement.

. . . He’s only been in charge a few days, so nothing’s final yet. No word on how soon he’ll push this UFC plan. Picture FBI agents learning punches and kicks from pros, it could change things big time. Whether it happens fast or slow, it’s a story worth watching. Could UFC fighters really make our cops tougher? We’ll find out soon enough.

No word on whether the investigation into the Epstein files will put this key reform on hold. I sure hope it doesn't!

Let's Take Another Look At Peter Strzok

Information about Peter Strzok, best known for his thousands of e-mails to his FBI office girlfriend Lisa Page, has come out piecemeal over the years, with little overall context. The e-mails and texts in many ways make Strzok look like a comical figure -- as a radio host put it at the time, "Imagine being in junior high school with a name like Strzok."

Among the most controversial of the texts was Strzok's response to Page's query asking if Trump could be elected. To which Strzok replied, "No, we'll stop it."

. . . During the texts with Strzok, Page also said, Hillary Clinton "just has to win now," and "This man cannot be president."

The texts were made public in December 2017, and resulted in both Strzok and Page being removed from their posts as part of then-special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Strzok was eventually fired by the FBI, while Page left her position in May 2018.

In fact, Strzok's Wikipedia entry suggests Trump's suspicions of Strzok were a conspiracy theory:

News of the text messages led Trump, Republican congressmen and right-wing media to speculate that Strzok participated in a conspiracy to undermine the Trump presidency.

But as they say, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. In yesterday's post, I linked to a 2020 Politico story that described an otherwise unremarked Oval Office meeting on January 5, 2021. Obama and Biden, with a little over two weeks to go before Trump came in, were meeting with FBI Director Comey on the path forward. But who should be there with Comey to take notes but Peter Strzok? This if nothing else suggests that Comey had a great deal of trust in Strzok's absolute discretion.

The first mention of Strzok working with Comey in Strzok's Wikipedia entry is in the context of the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's e-mail server. Strzok had been with the FBI since 1996, while Comey was appointed FBI Director by Barack Obama in 2013.

Strzok led a team of a dozen investigators during the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email server and assisted in the drafting of public statements for then-FBI Director James Comey. He changed the description of Clinton's actions from "grossly negligent", which could be a criminal offense, to "extremely careless". The draft was reviewed and corrected by several people and its creation was a team process. In his statement to Congress, Comey said that "no reasonable prosecutor" would bring charges based on available evidence. Later, when additional emails were discovered a few days before the election, Strzok reportedly supported reopening the Clinton investigation. He then co-wrote the letter which Comey used to inform Congress, which "reignited the email controversy in the final days" and "played a key role in a controversial FBI decision that upended Hillary Clinton's campaign."

But not only was Strzok serving as Comey's catspaw in the Clinton e-mail investigation, he was the agent who singlehandedly started the Crossfire Hurricane investigation in July 2016:

To the untrained eye, the FBI document that launched Crossfire Hurricane can be confusing, and it may be difficult to discern how it might be inadequate. To the trained eye, however, it is a train wreck. There are a number of reasons why it is so bad. Two main ones are offered below. . . :

First, the document is oddly constructed. In a normal, legitimate FBI Electronic Communication, or EC, there would be a “To” and a “From” line. The Crossfire Hurricane EC has only a “From” line; it is from a part of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division whose contact is listed as Peter Strzok. The EC was drafted also by Peter Strzok. And, finally, it was approved by Peter Strzok. Essentially, it is a document created by Peter Strzok, approved by Peter Strzok, and sent from Peter Strzok to Peter Strzok.

On that basis alone, the document is an absurdity, violative of all FBI protocols and, therefore, invalid on its face. An agent cannot approve his or her own case; that would make a mockery of the oversight designed to protect Americans. Yet, for this document, Peter Strzok was pitcher, catcher, batter and umpire.

In addition, several names are listed in a “cc” or copy line; all are redacted, save Strzok’s, who, for some reason, felt it necessary to copy himself on a document he sent from himself to himself.

Names on an FBI document are always listed in cascading fashion, with the most senior at the top and on down to the least senior. On this EC, Strzok is listed last, so the redacted names should be more senior to him. Those names could well include then-FBI Director James Comey, then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and then-Counterintelligence Assistant Director Bill Priestap. The document also establishes these redacted names as “case participants.”

It's hard to avoid thinking Strzok was doing Comey's bidding in this, in addition to the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation. The first phase of the e-mail investigation ran from May to July 2016, ending with Comey's ghostwritten "no reasonable prosecutor" statement Strzok wrote for him. Yet by July, Strzok was also the key actor who initiated Crossfire Hurricane. When more Hillary classified e-mails surfaced in October, Strzok was again on that job.

Nevertheless, throughout this period, Strzok was exchanging thousands of e-mails with Lisa Page on the FBI system. It's hard to imagine how Strzok found time for the political side of his job, but he clearly did. According to Wikipedia,

From late July to November 2016, the joint effort between the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Security Agency (NSA) examined evidence of Russian meddling in the presidential election. The FBI's team enjoyed a large degree of autonomy within the broader interagency probe.

"The FBI's team" would basically have been Peter Strzok, as far as I can see, and he would have been communicating regularly with Comey and the other FBI chiefs. So with a short break for the holidays, he's in the Oval Office on January 5 talking about using the Logan Act against General Michael Flynn. Strzok's Wikipedia entry says, "He oversaw the bureau's interviews with then-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn; Flynn later pled guilty to lying during those interviews."

There was a series of meetings between Trump and Comey from February 2017 to Trump's firing of Comey as FBI Director in May, in which Trump repeatedly inquired about the investigations of Flynn, Crossfire Hurricane, and other matters. It's hard to avoid thinking that Strzok was closely apprised of all these.

Following Trump's firing of Comey in May,

The Robert Mueller special counsel investigation was an investigation into 45th U.S. president Donald Trump regarding Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and was conducted by special prosecutor Robert Mueller from May 2017 to March 2019.

. . . The dismissal of James Comey was a factor in the decision to use a Special Counsel. The Mueller investigation took over the FBI's investigation, Crossfire Hurricane. The Mueller investigation's scope included allegations of "links and/or coordination" between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign.

But then, remarkably, via Strzok's Wikipedia entry,

In July 2017, Strzok became the most senior FBI agent working for Robert Mueller's 2017 Special Counsel investigation looking into any links or coordination between Trump's presidential campaign and the Russian government. He served in that position until August 2017, at which time he was moved to the Human Resources Branch.

. . . Strzok left the investigation in late July 2017 after the discovery of personal text messages sent to Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer, during the 2016 election campaign, which criticized Trump and said he would "stop" Trump.

Strzok stayed with the FBI for another year in what the Japanese call a "window seat", but it appears that he was removed from direct involvement in anti-Trump skulduggery in July 2017. I suspect that there's a great deal more that Trump already knows, and probably more than that he has still to learn. I have a feeling more will come out in the near future.

Let's Revisit L'affaire General Mike Flynn

Flynn to Comey: "Jim, If you get this message, Get ready. You’re going jail -- Unless you give up someone bigger and deeper in this than even you.

Jim, you know exactly who I'm talking about..."

Holy crap! Nice job, @bennyjohnson pic.twitter.com/1OkGZl5Mgm

— L A R R Y (@LarryOConnor) February 27, 2025

General Mike Flynn, an early casualty of the Get Trump campaign, has briefly popped back up in the news lately. Most recently, it was in the dark warning to former FBI Directior James Comey that surfaced yesterday on X. He was also the subject of intriguing remarks by President Trump last week:

On Tuesday night [February 18], Trump made an appearance at his private Florida beach club, Mar-a-Lago, which played host to a gala for America’s Future, a right wing organization chaired by retired Gen. Michael Flynn. TPM reviewed portions of Trump’s remarks, during which the President declared he was eager to see Flynn, who had a short and scandalous stint as White House national security adviser in 2017, make a return to government.

“Let me tell you, this guy, he’s the real deal,” Trump said with a beaming Flynn at his side. “He’s a real general and I told him — I offered him about ten jobs.”

. . . “I think he’s doing so well he doesn’t need them, but I offered,” Trump explained. “I said, any time you want to come in, you know that Mike, OK?”

So what was the context of Flynn's message to Comey on X that he's going to jail? Let's take a look at the Flynn saga, at least as we know it:

Michael Thomas Flynn (born 24 December 1958) is a retired United States Army lieutenant general and convicted felon who was the 24th U.S. national security advisor for the first 22 days of the first Trump administration. He resigned in light of reports that he had lied regarding conversations with Russian ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak.

. . . In February 2016, Flynn became a national security advisor to Trump for his 2016 presidential campaign. . . . On 22 January 2017, Flynn was sworn in as the National Security Advisor. On 13 February 2017, he resigned after information surfaced that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and others about the nature and content of his communications with Kislyak. Flynn's tenure as the National Security Advisor is the shortest in the history of the position.

In December 2017, Flynn formalized a deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller to plead guilty to a felony count of "willfully and knowingly" making false statements to the FBI about the Kislyak communications, and agreed to cooperate with the Special Counsel's investigation. In June 2019, Flynn dismissed his attorneys and retained Sidney Powell, who on the same day wrote to attorney general Bill Barr seeking his assistance in exonerating Flynn. Powell had discussed the case on Fox News and spoken to President Trump about it on several occasions. Two weeks before his scheduled sentencing, in January 2020 Flynn moved to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming government vindictiveness and breach of the plea agreement. At Barr's direction, the Justice Department filed a court motion to drop all charges against Flynn on 7 May 2020. Presiding federal judge Emmet Sullivan ruled the matter to be placed on hold to solicit amicus curiae briefs from third parties. Powell then asked the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to compel Sullivan to drop the case, but her request was denied. On 25 November 2020, Flynn was issued a presidential pardon by Trump On 8 December 2020, Judge Sullivan dismissed the criminal case against Flynn, stating he probably would have denied the Justice Department motion to drop the case.

Exactly what happened with the FBI and Flynn has never been completely clear. According to this October 2020 Politico story, then-FBI agent Peter Strzok made notes summarizing a January 5, 2017, "Oval Office meeting at which President Barack Obama, FBI Director James Comey and other national security officials discussed Flynn’s contact with Russian officials." Based on the context of the story, then-Vice President Biden was also in the meeting.

Strzok’s notes indicate that Biden mentioned the Logan Act — a little-used 18th Century law that criminalizes efforts by private citizens to conduct U.S. foreign policy. The FBI internally discussed using the Logan Act as a basis for its decision to interview Flynn a few weeks later as it investigated his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the United States. Ultimately, FBI and DOJ officials say the interview was conducted as part of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Strzok’s notes provide no context about why Biden raised the Logan Act, if it was in response to anyone else or how any officials responded. Biden has previously acknowledged being present in the Oval Office during the discussion of the Flynn matter and indicated he was broadly aware of the FBI investigation.

. . . other documents released by the DOJ indicate that the notion of pursuing a Logan Act charge against Flynn first emerged inside the FBI on Jan. 4, 2017, a day before the Oval Office meeting occurred. Messages exchanged between Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page on that day reveal a discussion of the obscure law. Strzok provided the text of the statute to Page, as well as an analysis by the Congressional Research Service that noted the Logan Act had been in relative disuse for more than 200 years and could be unconstitutional.

. . . Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to FBI agents about his contacts with Russia’s U.S. ambassador in the weeks before Trump’s inauguration. Though he cooperated with special counsel Robert Mueller for a year, he has since moved to rescind his guilty plea and allege misconduct by the FBI and prosecutors, who he accuses of coercing his initial plea to pursue a case against Trump. Attorney General William Barr ordered a review of the case in January and ultimately agreed to drop in in May. But Sullivan has so far resisted acting quickly, instead appointing an outside adviser, who has accused Barr of acting overtly to shield an ally of the president.

Comey testified last month that he had no recollection of Biden raising the Logan Act during that Jan. 5, 2017 meeting and isn’t sure why Strzok’s notes included the notation.

“I would remember it because it would be highly inappropriate if a president or vice president suggested prosecution or investigation of anyone. And it did not happen,” Comey said.

The transcripts of the Flynn-Kislyak calls were released on May 29, 2020. Key passages involve an exchange over whether last-minute actions by the outgoing Obama administration could lock the Russians into responses that would damage relations with the incoming Trump administration:

Kislyak then requests that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump have a video meeting on a “secure video line,” so that Putin can “congratulate” Trump and “discuss a small number, briefly, of issues that are on his agenda,” for Jan. 21, 2017.

Flynn says: “OK,” before telling Kislyak: .“What I would ask you guys to do — and make sure you, make sure that you convey this, okay? Do not, do not uh, allow this administration to box us in right now, okay?”

Flynn is referring to the Obama administration’s move to sanction Russia and expel dozens of Russian diplomats due to what he calls “cyber stuff,” and urges Kislyak not to escalate further.

“What I would ask Russia to do is to not—is—is—if anything—because I know you have to have some sort of action—to, to only make it reciprocal,” Flynn said. “Make it reciprocal. Don’t-don’t make it-don’t go any further than you have to. Because I don’t want us to get into something that has to escalate, on a, you know, on a tit for tat. You follow me ambassador?”

Certainly in hindsight, this comes off as an entirely appropriate discussion between the Russian ambassador and the US national security adviser-designate only weeks before his administration would come into office. It was intended to ease the transition. The Logan Act, seldom invoked and probably unconstitutional, would have been irrelevant, but it was used as a predicate for an FBI investigation in which flynn was accused of "lying" to agents.

L'affaire Flynn looks now as if it was part of an ongoing effort by Comey to undermine Trump, particularly in the context of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation:

Crossfire Hurricane was the code name for the counterintelligence investigation undertaken by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from July 31, 2016, to May 17, 2017, into links between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russia and "whether individuals associated with [Trump's] presidential campaign were coordinating, wittingly or unwittingly, with the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election". Trump was not personally under investigation until May 2017, when his firing of FBI director James Comey raised suspicions of obstruction of justice, which triggered the Mueller investigation.

The Mueller investigation then led to an investigation by the Justice Department Inspector General, who unsurprisingly found no political bias by the FBI. But this led then-Attorney General William Barr to assign John Durham to lead an investigation into Crossfire Hurricane, which Durham slow-walked into irrelevance.

The result up to now is that, although we have a pretty good record of Comey working closely with the outgoing Obama administration to continue bogus investigations of Trump after his first inauguration, so far, there hasn't been a good accounting of Comey's and the FBI's full conduct. Flynn's cryptic remarks, especially in the wake of the Comey "honey pot" allegations, make me wonder if this could change. Who's the one bigger than Comey that Flynn refers to on X? Well, both Obama and Biden were in the January 5, 2017 Oval Office meeting, where Comey himself said "it would be highly inappropriate if a president or vice president suggested prosecution or investigation of anyone."

Right.

That Was Quick

TULSI GABBARD ANNOUNCES SHE HAS TERMINATED ALL 100+ NSA EMPLOYEES INVOLVED IN TRANSGENDER SEX CHATS.pic.twitter.com/231wPk02a4

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) February 26, 2025

The post above, reporting on Director Gabbard's announcement on the Jesse Watters show at 10:45 PM, followed the one below, timestamped 3:26 PM.

Memo sent. We know who they are. Action is underway. https://t.co/dC3fV1D9ZO

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) February 25, 2025

It appears that someone sent Christopher Rufo, co-author of Monday's City Journal article that broke the story, this screen shot of an NSA trans chat thread from this past December 20. If they didn't see this coming, they certainy should have.

EXCLUSIVE: In a secret NSA chatroom, NSA, DNI, and SpaceCom officials claim that @TulsiGabbard is "fervently anti-queer," a "Russian agent," and a member of the MAGA "cult." These employees, including at least one "they/them," are attempting to undermine Gabbard from within. pic.twitter.com/Z5HGfdSx2Y

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) February 25, 2025

As someone who's written corporate policies on authorized use of IT resources, the apparent NSA policy reported in the City Journal article is pretty standard:

According to an NSA press official, “All NSA employees sign agreements stating that publishing non-mission related material on Intelink is a usage violation and will result in disciplinary action.”

A firing for this sort of thing by a non-government employer would probably stand up in court. A difficulty here might arise if the fired NSA employees claimed this use was specifically authorized:

[T]hey did so with the full support of NSA leadership, which declared that DEI was “not only mission critical, but mission imperative.”

On the other hand, anyone in NSA leadership who said this would be fired himself. It looks like similar purges will be under way in the FBI:

FBI leadership is starting an investigation into the origins of the agency’s plan a decade ago to infiltrate the campaign of presidential candidate Donald Trump using two female undercover “honeypot” agents.

The off-the-books investigation, launched in 2015 by FBI Director James B. Comey, was revealed by an agency whistleblower in a protected disclosure to the House Judiciary Committee last year and first reported exclusively by The Washington Times in October.

In the intelligence community, a honeypot commonly refers to an undercover operative, usually a woman, who feigns sexual or romantic interest to obtain information from a target.

. . . The whistleblower agent “personally knew” that Mr. Comey ordered an FBI investigation into Mr. Trump and that Mr. Comey “personally directed it,” according to the disclosure.

The investigation did not appear to target a specific crime but was more of what agents would describe as a fishing expedition to find anything incriminating against Mr. Trump.

. . . “The case had no predicated foundation, so Comey personally directed the investigation without creating an official case file in Sentinel or any other FBI system,” according to the whistleblower’s disclosure. “The FBI has multiple methods of protecting highly sensitive investigations, so Comey did not have a legitimate reason not to officially create an official investigation file or have a file number.”

. . . The investigation was eventually closed because a major newspaper obtained a photograph of one of the undercovers and was about to publish it, but the FBI press office told the outlet that the photograph was an FBI informant who would be killed if the photograph was publicly released.

In fact, it was a photograph of the FBI undercover employee.

The FBI whistleblower employee noted in the disclosure that one of the undercovers agreed to be transferred to the CIA so she would not be available as a potential witness.

. . . The other undercover employee was rewarded for her activities through a promotion in the bureau and is now a high-level FBI executive in a major field office.

The whistleblower employee observed one or more employees in the FBI being directed to never discuss the operation with anyone ever again, including other people involved in the 2016 Trump campaign infiltration operation.

It looks like Trump's appointees are moving very quickly over cases like this. And if one set of FBI executives can tell employees never to mention it, a new set can tell them to explain it all, in detail. This should be juicy.

Many visitors have probably noted that Blogger put up a flag on yesterday's post warning users that it had sensitive content. It seems that this only demonstrated the Streisand effect yet again:

Streisand effect, phenomenon in which an attempt to censor, hide, or otherwise draw attention away from something only serves to attract more attention to it. The name derives from American singer and actress Barbra Streisand’s lawsuit against a photographer in 2003, which drew attention to the photo she was suing to have taken off the Internet.

It spiked my traffic yesterday and today. Maybe Blogger will do it some more -- I hope so!

Thoughts On The NSA Trans Chat Rooms

There's been a lot of reaction on alt media yesterday and this morning to a City Journal piece by Christopher F. Rufo and Hannah Grossman, The NSA’s Secret Sex Chats.

We have cultivated sources within the National Security Agency—one current employee and one former employee—who have provided chat logs from the NSA’s Intelink messaging program. According to an NSA press official, “All NSA employees sign agreements stating that publishing non-mission related material on Intelink is a usage violation and will result in disciplinary action.” Nonetheless, these logs, dating back two years, are lurid, featuring wide-ranging discussions of sex, kink, polyamory, and castration.

You can go to the link and the various stories on alt sites for the lurid details, and I don't see much point in belaboring them here. The UK Daily Mail carried the reactions from the Trump administration:

[Director of National Intelligence Tulsi] Gabbard, who oversees the 18 American spy agencies, responded to the report promising to clean house and confirmed the existence of the chats, which have been destroyed.

'This behavior is unacceptable and those involved WILL be held accountable. These disgusting chat groups were immediately shut down when @POTUS issued his EO ending the DEI insanity the Biden Admin was obsessed with. Our IC must be focused on our core mission: ensuring the safety,' she wrote.

Elon Musk also had a crack at the news and referenced his email asking workers to explain their duties each week: 'Well... at least we know what they did last week.'

. . . An NSA spokesperson told Rufo that the chats were real and that they're 'taking actions against any and all employees who abused this system.'

Several questions came up for me concerning the details of the chats. First, just to establish the context here, I double-checked the numbers. An NIH study estimates the number of transgender individuals in the US as 390 adults per 100 000, or almost 1 million adults nationally. This comes out to .002% of the US population of 340 million. Many of the chats in the City Journal story purport to cover male-to-female bottom surgery.

However, according to UVA Health,

Gender reassignment (confirmation) surgery is more common in transgender men (42 to 54%) than transgender women (28%). Top (chest gender confirmation) surgery is performed approximately twice as often as bottom (genital) surgery. In studies that assessed transgender men and women as an aggregate, top surgery accounts for 8 to 25% and bottom surgery accounts for 4 to 13%.

Just for convenience, then, let's say 10% of trans men have had bottom surgery -- at least we're getting some idea about order of magnitude. So if there are maybe 1 million trans men in the US, although this is using the total for both genders, and these figures are iffy in any case, if 10% of trans men have had bottom surgery, we're talking somewhere around 100,000 people total in all 50 states. But apparently enough of this small group works, or worked, for the NSA to be a significant part of the workforce and secure management support for a chat group on agency time using agency resources. According to the City Journal report at the link,

Activists within the agency used LGBTQ+ “employee resource groups” to turn their kinks and pathologies into official work duties. According to the current NSA employee, these groups “spent all day" recruiting activists and holding meetings with titles such as “Privilege,” “Ally Awareness,” “Pride,” and “Transgender Community Inclusion.” And they did so with the full support of NSA leadership, which declared that DEI was “not only mission critical, but mission imperative.”

Oddly enough, DOGE has surfaced a separate trans influence operation within the intelligence community, of which USAID, source of the funds in question, is a major part:

Stonewall could be forced to cut up to half of its staff after President Trump’s decision to freeze foreign aid, The Times understands.

Workers at the [UK] LGBTQ+ charity were told on Thursday that restructuring would take place, and that only roles with dedicated funding would be safe.

. . . Sources said they believed up to half of the workforce could be made redundant in the move, which they were told would “secure the future of Stonewall for the long term as a significant LGBTQ+ organisation able to deliver impactful campaigns and legislative change across the UK and further afield”.

Insiders believed the announcement was linked to decisions made by Trump over the provision of foreign aid.

But isn't this just a different way of saying a key UK trans influence operation was astroturf funded by the US deep state? And the US deep state, judging from the NSA chats, has been working on behalf of a tiny minority within a tiny minority, viz, trans men who have had bottom surgery -- or at least claim to have had it. I question how much of the talk in the chats was pure moonshine. At the City Journal link,

Last January, chatroom members discussed their practice of polyamory, or “ethical non-monogamy.” “[A] polycule is a polyamorous group,” one employee explained. “A is my [girlfriend], and B-G are her partners. . . . then B&C are dating but not C&D, nor E, F, or G with any of the others, though there are several MWB (metas-with-benefits) connections.” Another employee claimed to be part of a nine-member “polycule,” adding that “some of our friends are practically poly-mers, with all the connected compounds.”

A lot of this must be simple baloney, tall tales on taxpayer time. On one hand, this is money going down a black hole, but on the other, the story raises legitimate concerns, especially if this is mostly just guys reinforcing each other's fantasies:

These NSA chat logs suggest the presence of at least hundreds of gender activists within the intelligence services who cannot distinguish between male and female, and who believe that discussing castration, polyamory, and “gangbangs” is an appropriate use of public resources. For psychological and ideological reasons, these kinds of people will not be easily sidelined.

Well, as Musk put it, at least we know what they did last week. And for that matter, how many of these people "work from home"? If Musk's tactics of creative destruction are effective in getting rid of them, so much the better.

What Is It About Trans That Triggers Supporters So Badly?

Last week's conflict between President Trump and Maine Gov Janet Mills over allowing biologically male athletes to compete in women's sports brought up a puzzling issue: supporters of trans people quickly become hysterical and profane in their arguments, even in violation of ordinary decorum. For instance,

The governor of Maine’s chief of staff publicly melted down and cursed at a White House official on Saturday over the state’s dispute with the White House on men in women’s sports, a senior White House official told The Daily Wire on Saturday.

The incident allegedly occurred as Alex Meyer, the White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs, spoke with a group of gubernatorial chiefs of staff on Saturday morning in Washington, D.C., the senior White House official said. When Meyer told Jeremy Kennedy, the chief of staff for Maine Governor Janet Mills, that the state must follow the law and protect women’s sports, Kennedy allegedly responded, “F*** you, you a**hole,” before storming out of the room.

A spokesman for the governor denied this to The Daily Wire on Saturday morning, saying: “Jeremy did not say those words. He did not engage in profanity.” The governor’s office did not immediately respond to further requests for comment about the altercation and did not deny that Kennedy was upset and stormed out of the room.

A second incident took place within the same few days last week:

The Justice Department accused a judge Friday of “hostile and egregious misconduct” in her handling of a high profile case dealing with President Donald Trump’s executive order on trans-identifying troops in the military.

DOJ Chief of Staff Chad Mizelle informed Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan on Friday that United States District Court Judge Ana C. Reyes engaged in such conduct toward DOJ’s attorneys, suggesting bias and disrespect toward the DOJ’s position and imperiling a fair weighing of the case.

. . . “While Judge Reyes was not sure exactly how many sexes there were, she hypothesized that could be ‘anywhere near about 30 different intersex examples,'” the DOJ letter states. “It was during these lines of questioning that Judge Reyes engaged in the unacceptable misconduct at issue in this complaint, questioning a Department of Justice attorney regarding his religious beliefs and then using him unwillingly as a physical prop in her courtroom theatrics.”

. . . “What do you think Jesus would say to telling a group of people that they are so worthless, so worthless that we’re not going to allow them into homeless shelters?” she allegedly asked. “Do you think Jesus would be, ‘Sounds right to me’? Or do you think Jesus would say, ‘WTF? Of course, let them in?”

“This line of questioning is deeply problematic for several reasons,” the DOJ letter said. “First, the question has no relevance to the legal analysis of military policy. Second, it placed DOJ counsel in an untenable position of either appearing unresponsive or speculating about how an incoherent hypothetical aligns with Judge Reyes’ personal religious beliefs.”

. . . The DOJ also took issue with Reyes’ use of the phrase “WTF,” meaning, “what the f***,” as she questioned an attorney on his religious beliefs, saying that it “sheds light on the severity of the judge’s lack of professional decorum.”

. . . The DOJ said that Reyes told its counsel: “I made a change to my standing order when I was in the back. My new standing order says that no one who has graduated from UVA Law School can appear before me. So, I need you to sit down, please. I need you to sit down.”

“When counsel complied with this directive, the judge continued her hypothetical about UVA law graduates being banned from her courtroom because ‘they’re all liars and lack integrity,'” the letter continued. “Only after Judge Reyes used counsel as a physical prop did she instruct him to come back up to continue the proceedings.

The most effective argument in favor of transsexualism and related issues like biological male athletes competing as women is that gender dysphoria is a medical condition, and those who suffer from it are entitled to scientifically based medical treatment. But if these are scientific and medical issues, why are those who argue for transsexuals so easily triggered into intemperate behavior, profanity, and violation of decorum? But this is clearly a pollitical, not a medical or scientific issue.

Vocal Trump opponent Stephen King came out in support of Gov Mills:

Author Stephen King on X, formerly Twitter, wrote: "Governor Janet Mills to Trump: 'See you in court.' Makes me proud to be a Maine man. Thank you, Governor, for standing up to the bully."

But in general, this isn't an issue to which the majority can rally. Newsweek quoted an opponent from the Gay Men's Network, a UK organization that opposes the use of measures like puberty blockers:

If I had told you in the 1980s that you would cheer on men depriving women of sporting glory, dignity in their changing rooms or the right to fair play on school fields, you would have thought me mad. The bully here is you and your governor. Your victims are girls playing sport.

What politicians like Mills seem to assume is that the trans issue embraces a whole LGBTQ+ spectrum, when the more conventionally same-sex attracted aren't fully on board with the more radical pansexualists. Lesbians in particular haven't been with the program:

Wild guess, but I’m going to say it has something to do with the way that so many [trans males] barge their way into women’s spaces and then complain that women are being mean, or bigots, or TERFs, or whatever, when they push back and assert their right to their own spaces, many of which they need to feel safe, and most of which they fought hard to achieve in the first place.

It might also have something to do with the fact that these men LARPing as women have massive institutional power behind them, making them feel empowered to throw their weight around (sometimes literally) and bully and threaten anyone who says they have no right to claim things reserved for women.

Somehow the politicians who wield this institutional power, like Maine Gov Janet Mills, see the same-sex attracted as part of a cohesive group of pansexualists, and championing the rights of trans biologiocal males, the smallest and most extreme specialty interest, will gain them the support of all the others. Thus we see Gov Mills cavorting at a drag performance:

Whoa!

This is the governor of Maine, Janet Mills

What a freak!

For some of these people the LGBTQ agenda is a perverse sort of sacrament.

No wonder she’s willing to lose federal funding for the whole state, rather than stop with the perversion. pic.twitter.com/SyudwC4ISN

— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) February 23, 2025

This is a major misreading of the public mood. The public hysteria by supporters of men competing in women's sports isn't a winning strategy.