The Trump Nobody Seems To Notice

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 Court on Friday upheld ordinances in a southwest Oregon city that prohibit people who are homeless from using blankets, pillows, or cardboard boxes for protection from the elements while sleeping within the city limits. By a vote of 6-3, the justices agreed with the city, Grants Pass, that the ordinances simply bar camping on public property by everyone and do not violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

. . . In his opinion for the court, [Justice Neil] Gorsuch stressed that the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment has generally applied only to methods of punishment, rather than to whether the government can criminalize particular conduct. And the fines and jail sentences at issue in this case do not, he insisted, “qualify as cruel and unusual.”

Instead, he continued, the challengers point to the Supreme Court’s 1962 decision in Robinson v. California, holding that the Eighth Amendment bars a state from making it a crime simply to be a drug addict. But the kinds of public camping ordinances at issue in this case bear no resemblance to the state law in Robinson, Gorsuch wrote, because they criminalize camping on public property rather than a person’s status.

The intent of Trump's executive order is to redirect federal grants and homeless programs to incentivize local governments to get homeless encampments off the streets and move people into treatment. According to thr White House,

• The overwhelming majority of these individuals are addicted to drugs, have a mental health disorder, or both.
• Federal and state governments have spent tens of billions of dollars on failed programs that address homelessness but not its root causes, leaving other citizens vulnerable to public safety threats.
• Shifting these individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment is the most proven way to restore public order.

This is typical Trump 2.0 strategy. Like his approach to the Ivies, which I noted during the battle with Harvard last April, he aims to knock multiple legs from the stool on which a particular problem sits. The homeless problem exists in part because poorly reasoned court decisions have enabled it, but also because an immnensely lucrative network of policies, grants, and NGOs subsicizes it in its current form.

Los Angeles is a good example.

A federal judge issued a blistering ruling Tuesday, finding Los Angeles officials failed in multiple ways to follow a settlement agreement to create more shelter for unhoused people.

Judge David O. Carter also ordered stronger oversight by a court-appointed monitor to “ask the hard questions on behalf of Angelenos,” as well as quarterly hearings to oversee compliance with the city’s commitments to create nearly 13,000 new shelter and housing beds.

. . . He pointed to the difficulty faced by court-appointed reviewers, and LAist, in getting data from the L.A. Homeless Services Authority — known as LAHSA — about how much was being spent for more than 2,000 housing subsidies the city was taking credit for to show compliance.

. . . After LAHSA officials criticized LAist’s reporting of concerns about the data, Carter ordered the city to turn over addresses for each housing site. The city then acknowledged that the data was inflating the true number: 130 subsidies were being wrongfully counted twice.

This money is almost certainly going to members of the urban Democrat machine. But the "housing" such programs provide is little more than hotel rooms; there is no treatment for drug addiction or mental health issues. What Trump-is doing is setting up a multifaceted response to the homeless problem that will, on one hand, enable local authorities actually to clean up encampments, and on the other, restore the ability to place those with serious problems in custodial treatment, while reducing the overall incentive toward vagrancy.

What strikes me here is that this is part of an agenda. The media has been focused on Epstein for the past several weeks, but Trump doesn't appear to have spent much time with it, other than to send his Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to meet with Ghislaine Maxwell in prison. Insread, he's just continuing to sign executive orders.

And then there's the somewhat puzzling trip to Scotland.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt this week said the trip was intended as a "working visit that will include a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Starmer to refine the historic U.S.-U.K. trade deal."

It also seems to involve ribbon-cutting at another Trump facility, as well as continuing attempts to have the British Open take place at a Trump golf course. But the big thing it suggests to me is that Trump has an agenda, it's something he appears to have settled on during his period out of office, and he's been pursuing it singlemindedly since his return. So far, the Epstein business isn't even a minor distraction. My guess is we don't know mich of anything about what Trump actually means to do in Scotland, but Trump himself has a very good idea, and we'lll learn what it was in due time.

"Name The Person And The Crime"

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 important is the visit then-National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers paid to Trump within days of the November 2016 election to inform him that Trump Tower wasn't secure, that it was subject to electronic surveillance. According to Wikipedia,

The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and processing of information and data for global intelligence and counterintelligence purposes, specializing in a discipline known as signals intelligence (SIGINT).

Rogers, in other words, knew who was bugging whom, and he knew someone was bugging Trump's transition office in Trump Tower who shouldn't have, so he told Trump, and as a result -- quite possibly after consulting Rogers and likely his own corporate security people -- Trump moved his transition office to his Bedminster facility. Intriguingly, I noted a key event in Devin Nunes's tenure as Chair of the House Intelligence Committe in yesterday's post:

In late March 2017, Nunes canceled a public hearing in which former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, former National Security Agency Director James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan were to testify, saying he wanted to hear FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers in a classified setting first. Democrats criticized Nunes's decision and said he was trying to protect the White House from damaging revelations.

Ranking Democrat Adam Schiff was apparently able to stop this classified meeting, and within weeks, Nunes was forced to recuse himself from the Russia probe entirely. Clearly what he would have asked Comey and Rogers would have been so explosive, the whole avenue of inquiry had to be closed off. My sense is that it had to have involved what Rogers knew of surveilance on the Trump transition, and that would also have included surveillance of calls that were alleged to have taken place between Michael Flynn and Sergey Kislyak that past December.

On one hand, as I've discussed here, Flynn now claims that any transcript of him discussing sanctions with Kislyak was fabricated, something I can't rule out. But a bigger question is how that surveillance was authorized, and I've been wondering if Devin Nunes had come a little too close to the answer in March 2017 and had to be taken off the scent. Let's move to a press release dated April 15, 2020 from Sen Chuck Grassley:

Despite multiple reports in 2017 warning that claims in an anti-Trump dossier were “false” and “part of a Russian disinformation campaign,” the FBI continued to rely on the Democrat-funded opposition research to spy on a Trump campaign aide. The once-classified details contained in footnotes of the Justice Department Inspector General’s postmortem of the FBI’s flawed spying operation were unmasked at the repeated urging of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).

. . . The dossier, compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele for political opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which was hired by the Clinton campaign and Democratic party, was “central and essential” to the FBI’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) application to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page. However, the IG report noted that the application contained numerous errors and omission. The newly-declassified footnotes show that the FBI was aware of significant problems with dossier’s sources while seeking or renewing the spying authority, yet they continued to push forward, failing to update the FISA court with the critical exculpatory information.

Although controversies at the time focused on Carter Page, the question inevitably arises of what other surveillance may have been authorized under the same FISA justification. This could include the surveillance of Michael Flynn, but much more important would be the surveillance on the rest of the Trump transition team. Exactly what was authorized and how has never been clear:

On September 19, 2017 CNN reported that the FBI wiretapped Paul Manafort before and after the presidential election, extending into early 2017, although the report did not make clear whether Manafort was monitored during his tenure with the Trump campaign from March through August 2016.

. . . On November 7, 2016, conspiracy theorist Louise Mensch reported in the right-leaning Heat Street, that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had twice sought Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants in connection with its investigation of the myriad links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies. According to Mensch, the first request for a warrant which "named Trump" was denied in June 2016 and, a second, more "narrowly drawn" request was granted in October 2016. Mensch wrote that this warrant gave "counter-intelligence permission to examine the activities of 'U.S. persons' in Donald Trump's campaign with ties to Russia", and to "look at the full content of emails and other related documents that may concern US persons". Mensch further claimed that the October warrant was granted in "connection with the investigation of suspected activity between the server [in Trump Tower] and two banks, SVB Bank and Alfa Bank", and that "it is thought in the intelligence community that the warrant covers any 'US person' connected to this investigation, and thus covers Donald Trump and at least three further men".

. . . On March 3, Breitbart News, a far-right website known to publish conspiracy theories, ran an article by Joel Pollak headlined "Mark Levin to Congress: Investigate Obama's 'Silent Coup' vs. Trump." On the previous day, right-wing radio personality Mark Levin alleged that Obama and his allies were conducting a "silent coup" against Trump, and asked: "How many phone calls of Donald Trump, if any, have been intercepted by the administration and recorded by the Obama administration?" . . . Citing Mensch's November article, Breitbart claimed the existence of a June FISA request "to monitor communications involving Donald Trump and several advisers", and of an October FISA warrant "focused on a computer server in Trump Tower".

Yet again, there's nothing especially new in the allegations Director Gabbard is making -- but efforts to substantiate or discredit them have been thwarted since they were first raised. Exactly who was surveilled, and under what authority? We just don't know.

But here's how I might try to answer the question Mark Halperin posed to Sean Spicer (whom Trump fired early in 2017 and who seems nice but generally obtuse): it appears that the discredited "pee dossier" was used to secure FISA warrants to surveil unknown members of the Trump transition team, including possibly Trump himself. If the Obama operatives knew the dossier was false, this could be a problem. Certainly the mere fact that Mike Rogers apparently went to Trump to warn him something hinky was afoot would indicate things weren't right.

Just what crime this would represent is now up to the DOJ "strike team". The names of likely persons would certainly include Comey, Clapper, Brennan and others, such as Sally Yates. Mark Halperin posed a good question, but Sean Spicer isn't the guy to answer it.

Trump And Devin Nunes Have Gamed This Out Since 2022

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 up. Nunes resigned from Congress to take that job with Trump. I never thought Trump just wanted him to run Truth Social.

Instead, Trump hired him to keep him nearby during his time out of office, but on the day of his second inauguration, Trump named him Chair of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board. According to Wikipedia,

Most of the board's work is classified, but one public investigation involved the loss of U.S. nuclear secrets to China from the Los Alamos National Laboratory during the 1990s.

In fact, it sounds as if the Board does pretty much exactly what the president tells it to do. I would not be the least bit surprised to hear that Nunes is currently working closely with Director Gabbard. But let's look a little more at what Nunes may have known during the first days of Trump's first term. According to Wikipedia,

On March 22, 2017, during the House Intelligence Committee's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, Nunes held a press conference to announce that he had received information that the communications of "some members of Trump's transition team, including potentially the president himself" had been "incidentally collected" by the intelligence community and "widely disseminated" throughout the intelligence community. He added that it was legal FISA surveillance, and unrelated to Russia. It was later revealed that it involved Russia and the Trump transition team. The surveillance was of multiple phone conversations between Michael Flynn, a member of the transition team, and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, which occurred after Flynn sought advice from the Trump transition team at Mar-a-Lago[.]

This surveillance led to Michael Flynn's resignation as National Security Adviser on February 13, 2017. CNN outlines the circumstances:

Three days after Trump officially takes office, US officials say investigators are scrutinizing several calls between Flynn and Russia’s ambassador. Spicer, now the White House Press Secretary, reiterates that Flynn told him sanctions were not discussed in the calls.

At some point in January, the Justice Department warns the Trump administration that Flynn misled administration officials regarding his communications with Kislyak and is potentially vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The message is delivered by Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who is fired on January 30 for refusing to enforce Trump’s controversial travel ban barring citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US.

By Febuary 10, public allegations emerged that Flynn did in fact discuss sanctions with Kislyak, and by February 13,

As the reports emerge, Trump’s counselor Kellyanne Conway tells MSNBC that Flynn “does enjoy the full confidence of the president,” but around an hour later, Spicer says Trump is “evaluating the situation.”

Flynn resigns a few hours later, admitting he had “inadvertently briefed the Vice President-elect and others with incomplete information” regarding the phone calls with Kislyak and apologizes.

Over the following weeks, a conflict ensued between Nunes, the House Intelligence Committee Chair, and then-Rep Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat, that appears to have involved the nature of the surveillance that led to Flynn's resignation. The full details have never been made public, but they appear to be connected with the current criminal referrals of Comey, Clapper, and Brennan. At the Nunes Wikipedia link above,

In late March 2017, Nunes canceled a public hearing in which former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, former National Security Agency Director James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan were to testify, saying he wanted to hear FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers in a classified setting first. Democrats criticized Nunes's decision and said he was trying to protect the White House from damaging revelations.

According to the Atlantic link just above,

About an hour later, Schiff held his own press conference, calling Nunes’s announcement a “serious mistake” and accusing him of bowing to White House pressure.

. . . The dueling press conferences cap an astonishing week in the Russia investigation. On Monday, the committee held hearings with Rogers and Comey, in which Comey confirmed for the first time that the FBI is investigating potential collusion between Trump campaign officials and Russia to interfere in the election.

On Wednesday, Nunes made a strange announcement in which he said he had obtained documents about surveillance of Trump team officials. But Nunes’s revelation was extremely vague. . .

Since much of this controversy seems to have involved whatever led to Michael Flynn's resignation, it's intriguing that Flynn himself has been chiming in,

At 3:18 in the clip embedded above, he says,

What Devin Nunes did in the March/April timeframe of 2017, was he came forward to the White House and said, "Hey, this is all fake. This is all fake." And Devin was then sidelined by Speaker Ryan from the House Select Committee on Intelligence, he was the chairman at the time. So there's some GOP dirt here that has got to be looked at, because the American people have lost so much trust in all of the institutions of government.

In a duifferent interview, he gives more details on the circumstances that led to his resignation:

Sally Yates and Mary McCord, who was head of the National Security Division for the Department of Justice—Sally Yates was the acting Attorney General—went over to the White House like two or three days prior to me having to be resigned and me being fired on the 13th of February. I think it was the date.

So Mike Pence, Reince Priebus are in the Situation Room in the White House, and Mary McCord, Andy McCabe is the other name, and Sally Yates was the third name that came and briefed Mike Pence on a document. And Mike Pence—he had Reince Priebus call me up while they were all together. And he said, “I just reviewed this document. The document shows that you talked about sanctions”—something I never talked about, ever.

I never talked to Mike Pence about them. I never talked about them with anybody. Never talked to the Russian ambassador about sanctions. Mike Pence told me that he just saw a document where I discussed sanctions. So that document is either—that’s either a lie, or Mike Pence was lying. Somebody, somewhere in between.

What I believe is that Mike Pence—I believe that part of their effort was to try to figure out a way, because later on, we now know from other cases that came out, as well as mine, that there was a 25th Amendment that was going to be put on the table further down the road. So this is an effort to get rid of Donald J. Trump.

Well, under the 25th Amendment, the vice president coordinates any effort to declare the president unfit. All we know right now is that Sally Yates, Mary McCord, and Andy McCabe seem to have been behind an effort that now may look hinky to push Michael Flynn out as Trump's National Security Adviser using transcripts of surveillance that may have been illegal or may have been faked. Devin Nunes at the time appears to have had questions about this very issue, but pressure from Democrats forced him to recuse himself from investigating, and there the matter stayed.

Except that Nunes is now involved in whatever is happening behind the scenes. By the way, all of a sudden now-Sen Schiff has got problems with mortgage fraud. You can't tell me Trump and Nunes haven't gamed this out over a period of years.

AI Declares Trump The Most Successful Since Roosevelt

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. To get to his current level of success, he had to get control of the Republican Party during his interregnum.

The only real help he got from Mitch McConnell during his first term was confirmation of his three Supreme Court nominations, which he could finally exploit during his second term. And his second-term cleanup of several Cabinet departments was undertaken using his Article II executive authority, no Congressional action needed.

Most prominently, he's gone a good way to cleaning out the State, Homeland Security, Justice, and Defense Departments, although these efforts are continuing. If anything, Newsweek is damning Trump with faint praise. It's a little like Tucker Carlson focusing on one accomplishment, getting men out of women's sports, and calling it an "appetizer", as though he hadn't done much else. But Trump isn't stopping at six months.

It looks like he's taken up a new agenda item in the last few weeks, the Federal Reserve. It looks like he wants to force the Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, out before his term expires nezt year. For now, it seems likely that Trump and his allies can force him out based on scandals connected with the Fed's headquarters remodeling:

I am criminally referring Jerome Powell to the DOJ to investigate perjury regarding his crazy $2.5BN building.

— Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (@RepLuna) July 17, 2025

But that will be just the start:

.@SecScottBessent: "What we need to do is examine the entire Federal Reserve institution and whether they have been successful... All of these Ph.D.s over there, I don't know what they do... This is like Universal Basic Income for academic economists." pic.twitter.com/ITzSwQKpjS

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 21, 2025

In a longer post on X, Bessent went into detail:

While I have no knowledge or opinion on the legal basis for the massive building renovations being undertaken on Constitution Avenue, a review of the decision to undertake such a project by an institution reporting operating losses of more than $100 billion per year should be conducted.

The Fed does regular reviews of its monetary policy framework. I would urge Fed leadership to similarly undertake, publish and implement a comprehensive institutional review across its entire mission to buttress its credibility. It will go a long way towards strengthening the Fed’s credibility with the American people on its core mission of guiding our nation’s monetary policy.

Inevitably,

Mohamed El-Erian on Tuesday called for Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to voluntarily relinquish his position in order to ensure the central bank’s independence, making the chief economic advisor at Allianz one of the first prominent economists to publicly take such a position.

“If Chair Powell’s objective is to safeguard the Fed’s operational autonomy (which I deem vital), then he should resign,” El-Erian said in a morning post on X.

This is a polite way of telling him he'll be fired if he doesn't resign. In effect, Trump is holding the Fed's independence hostage; if he has to fire Powell, it will set a bad precedent, but Powell has to go. And he almost certainly will.

Then there's the whole question of the criminal referrals for Comey, Clapper, Brennan, Rice, and even Obama himself for an allegedly "treasonous" coup attempt against Trump in 2016-17. The thing to keep in mind is that Trump is proving himself not to be a creature of empty bombast. As I've been noting over the past several days, Trump seems to have been fully aware of what was going on as it happened over his 2016-17 transition period, and any allegations that emerge from these referrals have almost certainly been throroughly substantiated. This is also a serious agenda item, and it's a mistake to minimize or discount it.

And then we have the California agenda. As we saw with the stunt Sen Padilla tried to pull, charging Secretary Noem without wearing his Senate ID, it seems as if he was trying to provoke her security into an overreaction that he could use to make some kind of point. Trump appears to be aware of threats from California politicians and is clearly working to forestall them, most recently Sen Adam Schiff:

Adam Schiff said that his primary residence was in MARYLAND to get a cheaper mortgage and rip off America, when he must LIVE in CALIFORNIA because he was a Congressman from CALIFORNIA. I always knew Adam Schiff was a Crook. The FRAUD began with the refinance of his Maryland property on February 6, 2009, and continued through multiple transactions until the Maryland property was correctly designated as a second home on October 13, 2020.

Trump's strategy appears to be to provoke California politicians like Schiff, Padilla, Newsom, and Bass into various forms of overt aggression or resistance, at which point he either retaliates with federal law enforcement or cuts another form of federal aid to the state, as he recently did with funding for its high speed rail program. In many cases, he'll invoke the Supremacy Clause in Article VI, Paragraph 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which establishes that federal laws and treaties are the supreme law of the land.

His overall objective will be to destroy the California urban Democrat machine. It's a major miscalculation to underestimate Trump or characterize him as ego-driven or narcissistic. He has a big agenda, but he's working very hard on it, and he's so far been remarkably successful.

James Comey Is In Hot Water, So He Does The Worst Possible Things

A little over a week ago,

Former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey are under criminal investigation for potential wrongdoing related to the Trump–Russia probe, including allegedly making false statements to Congress, Justice Department sources told Fox News Digital.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe referred evidence of wrongdoing by Brennan to FBI Director Kash Patel for potential prosecution, DOJ sources told Fox News Digital.

. . . As for Comey, DOJ sources told Fox News Digital that an investigation into the former director is underway, but could not share details of what specifically is being probed.

This past Friday,

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard detailed "striking" findings from declassified documents released Friday, claiming to showcase "overwhelming evidence" that an Obama-era cabal laid the groundwork for what would be the years-long Trump-Russia collusion probe after the 2016 election.

. . . Evidence released by Gabbard's office implicated then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey and former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, among others, in addition to the former president.

Gabbard confirmed her intent to send all the uncovered documents to the Department of Justice and the FBI for a criminal referral.

I asked the web, "I'm under federal criminal investigation. What should I do?" The federal criminal defense law firm Perlman Defense provided, in part, the following helpful advice:

The sooner you speak with a federal criminal defense attorney, the better your chance of building a strong defense and avoiding mistakes. A lawyer with experience in federal criminal cases can help you understand the investigation, guide your decisions, and deal with federal agencies on your behalf.

. . . Never post about the investigation, the agents, or your legal concerns on social media. Avoid sharing any details or even vague comments online. Federal law enforcement and the U.S. Attorney’s Office can use your posts against you in court.

Sharing the wrong thing online can seriously damage your legal defense and complicate your criminal case.

. . . If you talk to anyone other than your lawyer about the investigation, you risk those people being questioned by the federal authorities or subpoenaed by the grand jury, in which case whatever you told them could end up being used against you.

You could even face obstruction of justice or witness tampering charges if the things you said can be twisted around to make it seem like you were attempting to influence the investigation.

. . . Destroying documents pertaining to a federal investigation is a crime, and you could end up facing additional charges under 18 U.S.C. § 1519 if you alter or destroy documents, records, or other evidence.

. . . Agents may collect evidence, speak with witnesses, and review your financial records or digital communications before deciding to indict. If you suspect you're under a federal criminal investigation, do not wait. Contact a defense attorney right away, even if no formal charges have been filed yet.

Comey is a former Assistant US Attorney, a former US Attorney, a former Deputy Attorney General, and a former FBI Director. He of all people should know how federal criminal investigations work and the things potential defendants should avoid. He should certainly have known by this past May that he probably was under some type of surveillance, since Trump was back in office, and every indication is that Trump and his team were fully aware of his activities in detail before Trump fired him in 2017.

So it seems to me that he should have hired someone like Abbe Lowell, who was Hunter Biden's defense attorney, almost as soon as Trump was inaugurated, if not earlier. And even if he didn't want to do that, he should have known what any competent defense attorney -- or even a wise non-arttorney friend -- would tell him: keep a low profile, and for pity's sake, stay off social media. Instead, last May, he posted the 8647 note on Instagram, and then, just to be cute, he deleted it.

Federal law enforcement officials said on May 15 that they are investigating an Instagram post Comey made depicting an image reading “8647.”

. . . A federal law enforcement official told USA TODAY on the condition of anonymity that the Secret Service was sending agents to question Comey about his post.

Do you suppose Comey had the good sense to have an attorney with him as he met with those agents? I kinda doubt it. But if he didn't have agents on his case before he made that post, he sure as shootin' did afterward, and you would have to suppose, given his broad experience in the federal legal system, he would have understood this and modified his behavior. But last evening, in the wake of announcements of one ongoing investigation and referral for another, he made a video on Substack. He went on at length about the firing of his daughter Maurene and concluded,

Trump and the hacks who lead the Department of Justice are hammering at the dam [of the DOJ's credibility] day after day, trying to turn it into just another gold-leaf-covered Trump subsidiary.

Our best hope is that good people will stay and do what Maurene asked—have the courage to do the right thing, always. You may get fired for acting that way, but there’s honor in that—and nothing but disgrace for those who don’t stand up.

But this brings Maurene into the picture. On one hand, his remarks can be interpreted as trying to influence Maurene's former colleagues not to cooperate with any DOJ investigation or prosecution of Comey himself, which can be a problem for him. But also, Miranda Devine at the New York Post broadly hints what I've also surmised, that Maurene was the one with access to the Trump-Epstein letter and leaked it to the Wall Street Journal:

One of [Epstein's 2019 fededral] prosecutors was none other than Maurene Comey, the daughter of notorious FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump had sacked two years earlier. James Comey is now in the crosshairs of the FBI, along with former CIA Director John Brennan, after current CIA Director John Ratcliffe referred them for criminal investigation two weeks ago over freshly declassified evidence that highlights their roles in the Russia collusion hoax.

Maurene Comey was fired Wednesday, one day before the WSJ story was published, and one day after the White House was alerted to the story. She told colleagues in an email that her ouster was “unexpected” and unexplained.

Comey was also the lead prosecutor of Maxwell in 2021 over her role in Epstein’s sex trafficking. According to the WSJ, the “birthday book” Maxwell compiled was in the files examined by the DOJ during the investigations of Epstein and Maxwell.

There is no federal father-daughter privilege. Both James Comey and his daughter must be aware of this. It sounds to me like both may have discussed the case at great length, if indeed they both didn't come up with the idea of leaking the Trump-Epstein letter to the WSJ. That leak could make Maurene eligible for criminal contempt charges, obstruction of justice charges under 18 U.S.C. § 1503, or theft of government property charges under 18 U.S.C. § 641.

Given the timing of the leak and Maurene's firing, the DOJ must have had a pretty good idea who was responsible. If Maurene discussed it with dad James, that could bring him into this episode as well. So let's see:

• Comey posted the 8647 image on Instagram and then deleted it, giving the impression he knew of his guilty intention, but also making him liable for obstruction of justice charges
• If he's hired a federal criminal defense attorney, which he clearly should do, he doesn't seem to be following any advice he'd be given
• Although federal agents have already met with him, there's no indication that he had an attorney with him then
• He's gone on social media making wide-ranging vague comments that could be used against him
• He's almost certainly talked to his daughter about his potential case, when she isn't his attorney, and the discussions aren't subject to any privilege
• He and his daughter may well be involved in the leak of grand jury material to the Wall Street Journal.

So far, this guy is looking like his own worst enemy.

Six Ways From Sunday

Flashback to January 3, 2017:

New Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday that President-elect Donald Trump is “being really dumb” by taking on the intelligence community and its assessments on Russia’s cyber activities.

“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.

“So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this.”

Trump said Tuesday evening that an intelligence briefing on Russia’s cyber activities “was delayed until Friday” and suggested that intelligence agencies weren’t prepared. NBC News reported, however, that the briefing was always planned for Friday.

“The ‘Intelligence’ briefing on so-called ‘Russian hacking’ was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!” the president-elect wrote on Twitter.

Intelligence officials have reportedly determined that Russia tried to interfere in the U.S. presidential election to help Trump win the White House.

More than eight years later, we're finally learning what was behimd Trump's tweet and Schumer's implicit threat:

The Obama administration "manufactured and politicized intelligence" to create the narrative that Russia was attempting to influence the 2016 presidential election, despite information from the intelligence community stating otherwise, Fox News Digital has learned.

On Friday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified documents revealing "overwhelming evidence" that demonstrates how, after President Donald Trump won the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton, then-President Barack Obama and his national security team laid the groundwork for what would be the years-long Trump–Russia collusion probe.

Documents revealed that in the months leading up to the November 2016 election, the intelligence community consistently assessed that Russia was "probably not trying…to influence the election by using cyber means."

. . . Fox News Digital obtained declassified, but redacted, communications from the FBI on the Presidential Daily Brief, stating that it "should not go forward until the FBI" had shared its "concerns."

Those communications revealed that the FBI drafted a "dissent" to the original Presidential Daily Brief.

The communications revealed that the brief was expected to be published Dec. 9, 2016, the following day, but later communications revealed that Office of the Director of National Intelligence, "based on some new guidance" decided to "push back publication" of the Presidential Daily Brief.

. . . Later, Obama officials "leaked false statements to media outlets" claiming that "Russia has attempted through cyber means to interfere in, if not actively influence, the outcome of an election."

By Jan. 6, 2017, a new Intelligence Community Assessment was released that, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, "directly contradicted the IC assessments that were made throughout the previous six months."

This sounds like Trump knew what was happening as it was taking place, and his tweets were completely correct, which must have been making the deep state at least mildly uncomfortable. But now let's move to a 2019 account by Josh Campbell, by then a CNN analyst, but in 2016-17 a special assistant to James Comey, then FBI Director:

It was January 6, 2017, two weeks before Donald J. Trump would take the oath of office and assume the role of commander in chief, responsible for protecting the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Comey had flown to New York to join his counterparts in the national security community to brief the president-elect and his transition team on their findings on actions the Kremlin had taken to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election.

. . . For months, a series of memos had been privately circulating among members of the media and across government that contained unverified but explosive charges against then candidate Trump. . . . the “Steele dossier,” as it would become known, also included tawdry alleged details of Trump’s sexual proclivities and illicit acts conducted while in Moscow. At one point, Steele thought the information so potentially damning that he approached the FBI and provided it with his reporting.

. . . Conscious of the personal embarrassment this sensitive brief might cause the president-elect, the FBI director opted to discuss it with Trump separately at the end of the larger briefing on Russian interference.

. . . When Comey got to the tawdry details contained in the dossier, Trump became defensive, cutting him off and denying the allegations. “Do I look like the kind of guy who needs prostitutes?” Trump asked. . . . Comey indicated that the intelligence community was aware that the claims in the dossier were unsubstantiated, but that he nevertheless wanted Trump to be aware the information was circulating through government and media circles. Trump thanked Comey for the information, signaling the end of the short one-on-one meeting.

Campbell reports reading Comey's laptop notes on "a meeting that would spell the beginning of the end of his career, and one that would mark the start of a veritable hurricane—a torrent of attacks on the rule of law that would risk threatening the viability of our national institutions of justice." How little he knew. My surmise is that Trump already knew what the meeting with Comey would bring up, as he clearly knew the workings within the deep state that would generate the false assessments of Russian interference in the election.

Let's keep in mind that within days of the election, National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers met with Trump to inform him that Trump Tower wasn't secure, and as a consequence, Trump moved his transition headquarters to his Bedminster, NJ golf club. He seems to have had well-placed informants within the deep state from the start, but the specific reason or reasons he fired Comey as FBI Director have never been made clear. They may eventually surface now.

Cats can eventually lose all nine of their lives, and it looks like the deep state is running out of the six ways from Sunday it had to get back at Trump. Matt Taibbi said, "All week, Washington buzzed with rumors about imminent document releases," but he meant the releases of the Russiagate documents Tulsi Gabbard declassified, when the real rumors that buzzed all week were about the upcoming Wall Street Journal story that turned out just to cover pube doodles. If anything, this was a sign that the deep state had used up all six ways from Sunday.

One thing we're learning is that the grapevine is always a few days ahead of what's happening. Just before DNI Gabbard released the declassified documents and the report,

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Friday bashed Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

“Tulsi Gabbard is not competent to be the director of national intelligence,” he told moderator Peter Baker at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. “I believe she is trying to politicize the workforce and work product, and that makes America less safe.”

But also in the days leading up to Gabbard's action, the Justice Department fired, of all people, James Comey's daughter Maurene.

Ms. Comey was told of her firing Wednesday in a letter from a Justice Department official in Washington who cited Article II of the Constitution, which broadly describes the powers of the president, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. She said in her email that the letter did not give a reason for her termination.

Nor do we know the specific reason for James Comey's own termination in 2017, but the history we're beginning to revisit suggests Trump was then, and is now, much better informed than we give him credit for. I suspect that Comey's daughter was in fact a means of communication that continued between Comey and the deep state, it's now been eliminated, and the timing is no coincidence. And as I've said, there's good reason to think she was the source of the pube doodles letter, too. It's one more indication they've used up their six ways from Sunday.

The Deep State Jumped The Shark!

Michael Lebron, a legal analyst, sometime conspiracy theorist, and standup comic who posts as Lionel on his YouTube channel, had been off the Trump train for a few weeks, convinced Bondi and Bongino were covering something up. No longer, at the post embedded above:

We are hitting a Twilight Zone level of disconnect that I never even thought was possible. . . . I mean, if you'd have told me that we'd be talking about pube doodles, I'd think you were out of your mind. What is this story? What is it? What does it have to do with anything? He wrote, if you believe it, Trump wrote, a birthday note, jotted something, typewritten, I guess, to Jeffrey Epstein, and it's this weird kind of a cryptic -- he's writing this down, and he does doodle by the way. You know, Trump does doodle. . . . We're actually breaking down the word "enigma", whether he's used it or not, I mean, it's the most ridiculous thing in the world, and they said that in the outline of this thing, he writes in the name Donald in pubic hair, but nobody's seen this picture? So show us the picture! Is this even important?

Here's another Trump-Epstein skeptic doing a 180 on the story:

Ten days ago, I wrote “Yes, President Trump, We Are Still Talking About The Creep, Epstein”. Ten days later, I have flip flopped on my position and I no longer give a flying fig about anything Epstein related. Last night, the Wall Street Journal posted “Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump.”. Stop the presses. For his 50th birthday, Ghislaine Maxwell curated a leather notebook filled with bawdy cards, including one birthday doodle from Donald Trump. Get me some freaking pearls to clutch.

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse is of the same mind:

There are some who have speculated the recent tone and response by President Trump to those who requested release of the “Epstein files” may have been a proactive decision by Trump who knew the WSJ story was being assembled. However, the entire thing seems so over-the-top ridiculous it’s likely fake news or manufactured foolishness; akin to the Chris [Steele] claims of “tapes” showing President Trump standing on a bed in Moscow peeing on prostitutes (completely untrue and stupid).

Even David Brooks on the PBS News Hour is taking this line:

This is crazy to me. It's like — and I have to take account of Candace Owens, the people who — like, seriously, the people who invented the QAnon theory?

Somehow, all political conversation revolves around them? As far as I can understand — and this has been looked into — there seems to be no evidence so far that anybody can find that there is an Epstein list. There are a lot of people — and the fact that Donald Trump knew Jeffrey Epstein back in the day is the least surprising fact in American life. They're two rich guys with a little Playboy tendencies.

But like a lot of people, Donald Trump had a fight with Epstein, apparently in 2004, over real estate. And they broke. And Epstein was then arrested and indicted a couple years after that. So a lot of people knew Jeffrey Epstein in those days, and a lot of people broke with him, Bill Clinton, Les Wexner.

So the whole story seems to have disappeared almost immediately, and CBS's cancellation of Stephen Colbert turns out to have been much more consequential news. So I don't seem to need to spend much time debunking the WSJ story. But there are still puzzling aspects that I think are going to come back to bite the Journal.

First, the implications of the original WSJ story are that the leatherbound volume of birthday greetings to Epstein was one-of-a-kind; there was a single copy, and it's now in the possession of the Justice Department.

Maxwell collected letters from Trump and dozens of Epstein’s other associates for a 2003 birthday album, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Pages from the leather-bound album—assembled before Epstein was first arrested in 2006—are among the documents examined by Justice Department officials who investigated Epstein and Maxwell years ago, according to people who have reviewed the pages.

As best anyone can tell, this single leatherbound album remains in the possession of the Justice Department, as implied in this X post by Karoline Leavitt:

The Wall Street Journal published a hatchet job article with a FAKE “birthday letter” that is supposedly from 2003.

This is like the Steele Dossier that kickstarted “the Russia, Russia, Russia” Hoax all over again.

The WSJ refused to show us the letter and conceded they don’t…

— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) July 18, 2025

She says, "The WSJ refused to show us the letter and conceded they don’t even have it in their possession when we asked them to verify the alleged document they’re basing their ENTIRE fake story on."

So esactly what did the WSJ reporters see, and how did they learn about it? Where exactly was this album physically located, and who had access to it? As best I can surmise, someone at the Justice Department, probably in New York or Washington, had access to what must have been very restricted Epstein evidence and saw fit to call the WSJ writers and tell them about it. However, the album was probably in an evidence room, it certainly couldn't be easily removed, maybe not even taken to a copy machine.

I would almost think the Trump note wasn't even copied on a copy machine and then faxed. I would guess whoever was talking to the WSJ went into the evidence room, pulled the album out, took a photo of the Trump note on their phone, and e-mailed it to the WSJ. That's what the writers were working with. And if they showed the White House the photo, given the capabilities of the NSA to search all e-mail, from everyone, everywhere, they'd identify who'd sent the photo immediately.

But this also makes me think whatever copy the WSJ was working with was pretty low quality. According to the story:

It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.

. . . It isn’t clear how the letter with Trump’s signature was prepared.

If in fact the album is still in the Justice Department's possession, located in a closely conrolled evidence room, then it's likely the WSJ writers have never seen the real thing at all, much less had an opportunity to examine it closely. At best, they've seen some e-mailed photos of Trump's note and a few selected others, supported by unsubstantiated second-hand accounts of what else is in it.

And the writers will be highly reluctant to answer any questions about the album, as they would almost immediately lead to the identity of the source who had access to it, which must be among a very limited number of people at a high level with a reason to see it. (You want my bet? Maurene Comey, who led the Epstein prosecution in 2019.) This is a big reason the media is suddenly deciding this isn't much of a story after all.

This story is going to turn out to have been a big mistake by the deep state remnants within the Justice Department. The Trump team just this week fired Maurene Comey, and I wouldn't rule out the WSJ piece as part of the reason; I suspect they knew about the story well in advance, as Sundance suggests above, and had already followed up. But a good many people are also now asking, "Is that all they have? This is ridiculous." They may once have had six ways from Sunday to try to get Trump, but it almost seems like they've come to the end of their ammunition.