Drunk Rhode Island Prosecutor Put On Unpaid Leave

Via Fox News:

The Rhode Island assistant attorney general whose arrest went viral earlier this week after she seemingly tried to use her position to evade arrest, telling officers they'd "regret" putting her behind bars, will be placed on unpaid leave.

Special Assistant Attorney General Devon Flanagan, who was arrested for trespassing, was placed on paid leave after the incident while the Rhode Island Attorney General's office reviewed the matter. Starting Monday, Flanagan will go on unpaid leave, the office told Fox News Digital.

It is unclear how long Flanagan will remain on unpaid leave until a final determination is made on her employment. The attorney general's office did not respond to additional questions about its ongoing review of the matter or when it might make a final decision.

The orignal video from last weekend \went viral as a paradigmatic exemplar of entitlement, with more than a little whif of DEI. I worked for a utility where each category of putative victim had its own promotional silo. Women, African-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asians, and gays each had their own career ladder, and it was understood that every time there was a plum job opening, a member of one of those groups would be selected, an an implicit rotation.

Among those who were already climbing this ladder, the sense of entitlement was tangible. It seems as though some part of the population who saw this news clip came to an instinctive appreciation of what those two ladies represented: they were making their way up the DEI promotional silo, and the obligation of the world was to get out of their way.

Inevitably, the Rhode Island Attorney General, Flanagan's boss, found hinself on the hot seat, precisely because this was the impression everyone had of the episode. He hemmed and hawed:

In a subsequent radio interview after Flanagan's arrest, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha called it "inexcusable behavior" that will likely result in "strong, strong sanction[s]."

Strong, strong sanctions indeed. More likely not even a slap on the wrist. Half the office, at least, probably stood and applauded when she came in (late, of course) Monday morning. But there were peculiar undertones in the interview:

"I've got 110 lawyers. She embarrassed all of them. . . . It's just really hard to find and keep capable lawyers, and so I just have to think really carefully about this one. But no question there will be a strong, strong sanction here."

110 lawyers?? It isn't entirely clear what her job is; one story says she argues cases in front of the state supreme court. But the picture I get is a rabbit warren of office cubes, something like 110 of them, where the 80-20 rule applies, 20% of the people do 80% of the work, and Devon Flanagan is somewhere at the bottom of the 80% who spend the day goofing around.

Attorney General Neronha is thought to hold a safe Democrat seat, so his job isn't threatened no matter what he does in Flanagan's case. A reddit thread probably best sums up general reaction:

I really feel sorry for their husbands. I loved how they were just standing there and let all of this happen.

I have to imagine how the two dudes went to a bar after that show, drank a few beers and then after one or two maybe three hours got up like "well I guess we should get them from the police station now"

Someone replied,

I'm guessing it not the first time the husbands have been through this.

The consensus of the reddit thread seems to be that she'll spend some time on unpaid leave and come back after a week or two. A few commenters thought she looked awfully old for 34. That may be the biggest insight anyone has had. So it goes.

What Is The Point Of John Bolton?

I've mentioned here that for part of my adolescence, I lived with my family in Bethesda, which is one of the wealthiest places in the US, with a median household income in recent years about $190,000. In comparison, the median household income for Beverly Hills is about $127,000; the median household income for Greenwich, CT is about $136,000. The news photos of yesterday morning's FBI raid on John Bolton's home in Bethesda really took me back: that could have been my street and my neighborhood.

I went to Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, whose team is the Barons. (This wasn't the monogram when I went there; at that time, it was more like the mustachioed Monopoly man, but the point is the same.)

Bethesda has its own entry in the Urban Dictionary:

Person from Bethesda: Hi, I'm from Bethesda.

Person Not from Bethesda: Hi, you must be a rich snobby [redacted].

PFB: Well yeah kind of, but at least I'm not from Potomac where it's illegal to wear clothes that cost less than $500 per square inch of fabric.

PNFB: Fair point. Wanna go spend an absurd amount of money on movie tickets?

PFB: Sure, but only if we go to the Row since UA/Lowes is sure to be overpopulated by 10-year-old hookers.

PNFB: Good call.

At some point, I came to a recognition that I really wasn't from Bethesda, even though I went to high school there. But looking at the news photos of John Bolton's house, it suddenly hit me that John Bolton is from Bethesda. What does that mean? Via Wikipedia,

Bolton was born on November 20, 1948, in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Virginia Clara "Ginny" (née Godfrey), a housewife, and Edward Jackson "Jack" Bolton, a Baltimore fireman.   He grew up in the working-class neighborhood of Yale Heights, and won a scholarship to the McDonogh School in Owings Mills, Maryland[.]

So he was raised in a working-class family, but he somehow won the lottery. Via Wikipedia:

McDonogh is regarded as one of the Baltimore region's most prestigious preparatory schools and has been called a "Power School" by Baltimore magazine. The school's students frequently matriculate to Ivy League and other top-ranked colleges and universities.

And his destiny was established. Via the Bolton Wikipedia entry:

Bolton attended Yale College, earning a Bachelor of Arts and graduating summa cum laude in 1970. . . . He attended Yale Law School from 1971 to 1974, where he shared classes and student housing with his friend Clarence Thomas, earning a Juris Doctor in 1974.

In 1972, Bolton was a summer intern for Vice President Spiro Agnew.

Frankly, it's hard for me to avoid thinking the guy was becoming famous for being well-known, or something along that line. He seems to have transitioned easily into a white-shoe law firm career:

From 1974 to 1981, Bolton was an associate at the Washington, D.C. office of Covington & Burling; he returned to the firm again from 1983 to 1985. Bolton was also a partner in the law firm of Lerner, Reed, Bolton & McManus, from 1993 to 1999. He was of counsel in the Washington, D.C. office of Kirkland & Ellis from 2008 until his appointment as National Security Advisor in 2018. In September 2015, Freedom Capital Investment Management appointed Bolton as a senior advisor.

He appears to have bought his current home, shown in yesterday's news reports, in 1986. It is 6500 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 5 baths, worth upward of $2 million. Ah, Bethesda! But I keep asking, what's the point? What does he actually do to live that well? In addition to his work at highly prestigious law firms, he held a series of government positions, including stints at USAID, during the Reagan and George H W Bush administrations. Under Dubya, he became Under Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005, Ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006, but he left that position when the Senate wouldn't confirm him for a longer term. It appears that he'd become highly controversial.

The best I can conclude is that he was an Ivy Leaguer, a Yale Law grad, and a Republican with contacts who happened to be around when the patronage was handed out, but he also seems to have had a knack for making enemies. Nevertheless, with Trump's election in 2016, he was short-listed for various key positions, including Secretary of State, but he never quite got them.

Several Trump associates claim Bolton was not chosen, in part, due to Trump's disdain for Bolton's signature mustache.

Whatever the source of Trump's instincts, it should be acknowledged that they're often spot on. Nevertheless,

The New York Times reported on March 22, 2018, that John Bolton would replace National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster, which was confirmed by Trump in a tweet later that day.

. . . By May 2019, Trump had undercut some of Bolton's major hard line positions, stating he was not seeking regime change in Iran and contradicting Bolton's assertion that North Korea had recently violated United Nations resolutions by testing new short-range missiles.

. . . On September 10, 2019, President Trump claimed on Twitter that he had told Bolton on September 9 his "services are no longer needed" given "many" disagreements with Trump, thus Bolton gave his resignation on September 10.

But what does Bolton do now to support his Bethesda lifestyle? Sundance at Conservative Treehouse offers some insight:

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton is a well-documented neocon, who operates inside the business model of selling U.S. foreign policy influence for personal gain. His activity mirrors that of former Senator John McCain in many regards.

John Bolton sold his access, contacts and ability to influence policy to the highest bidder. In DC parlance they call that a “consultant.” When the consulting is contracted for a specific national interest, the title shifts to “lobbyist.” That was his job, and all of Washington DC knows it.

Washington DC operates on this business model; the entire system will be soft to criticize Bolton and many will likely defend him.

The FBI raid on his residence and office has led to a considerable amount of speculation. However, as some background details start to come out, it appears CIA Director John Ratcliffe provided FBI Director Kash Patel with specifics on the international travels and efforts of Bolton.

That CIA referral has led to an FBI investigation under the auspices of potential violations of the espionage act, where Bolton would have leveraged current or prior classified intelligence information as part of his influence business.

The implication seems to be that Bolton made money by in effect trading on secret information, but the practice was more widespread than just Bolton, and others are also under investigation. Well, it's Bethesda. More here:

🚨💣 THREAD: John Bolton: The Man Who Never Saw a War He Didn’t Like 💣🚨

John Bolton got his start as Reagan's assistant administrator of USAID -- a time when USAID was dramatically re-transformed from Nixon-era "New Directions" third-world assistance to being contingent on… pic.twitter.com/oALm8gquGf

— DataRepublican (small r) (@DataRepublican) August 22, 2025

The Mortgage Fraud Cases

With Wednesday's news of President Trump calling on Federal Reserve Bank Governor Lisa Cook to resign following a criminal referral to the Justice Department for mortgage fraud, there are now three high-level figures accused of the same crime, declaring two separate homes their primary residence to get favorable interest, tax, and insurance rates. On Fox News, Kennedy interviewed legal commentator Horace Cooper specifically on Sen Schiff's predicament, but his comments in the clip embedded above apply just as much to the other two:

This type of fraud is fairly common, and it is frequently prosecuted. In fact, the real challenge here is how will the senator find an easy way out. 18 US 1001 says that you can't lie, in writing or in your application, and 1014 says that you can't lie on your application. Once you've actually done that, and there's a five-year statute of limitations, unless that is extended by ongoing carrying-out activities to promote the original crime, that means he's still under the statute of limitations, and the defenses are fairly limited. It's actually time to hire a really good lawyer to negotiate some sort of plea agreement. It's gonna be very hard to get out of this.

It does appear that Schiff, at least, has recognized his situation is serious, although he has additional legal problems as well:

California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff, a longtime adversary of President Donald Trump, has formed a legal defense fund, amid the Justice Department probe into his finances.

. . . Trump specifically alleges that Schiff illicitly claimed his primary residence was Maryland for financial benefit, and his administration has tapped Ed Martin — now pardon attorney and director of DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group — to oversee the matter.

. . . FBI Director Kash Patel, who was once a House Intelligence Committee staffer working to undermine the investigation into election interference, has also released materials that suggests the California Democrat supported leaking information during his time on the House Intelligence Committee to damage the president’s reputation.

However, his new counsel, Preet Bharara, former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, has so far only complained that the action represents “the very definition of weaponization of the justice process.” The question remains how to find his client an easy way out.

New York Attorney General Letitia James faces similar allegations:

[Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte] alleges James may have falsified her residence status at a home in Norfolk, Virginia, to get a better mortgage rate.

According to Pulte, in 2023 James granted Shamice Thompson-Hairston power of attorney to make the Norfolk property, purchased in August of that year, her "principal residence," despite James actually living and serving as attorney general in New York at the time.

"At the time of the 2023 Norfolk, VA property purchase and mortgage, Ms. James was the sitting Attorney General of New York and is required by law to have her primary residence in the state of New York — even though her mortgage applications list her intent to have the Norfolk, VA property as her primary home," Pulte wrote.

According to Pulte, in 2023 James granted Shamice Thompson-Hairston power of attorney to make the Norfolk property, purchased in August of that year, her "principal residence," despite James actually living and serving as attorney general in New York at the time.

"At the time of the 2023 Norfolk, VA property purchase and mortgage, Ms. James was the sitting Attorney General of New York and is required by law to have her primary residence in the state of New York — even though her mortgage applications list her intent to have the Norfolk, VA property as her primary home," Pulte wrote.

. . . Pulte also alleges James bought a five-family property in Brooklyn in 2001 with a loan that is only available for homes with four units or less.

. . . It's also alleged James and her father signed mortgage documents in 1983 stating they were husband and wife.

If James is still receiving financial benefits from these transactions, the statute of limitations would not apply. It's worth noting that via the New York state machine, James is expecting to have her legal expenses paid out of the state budget:

Albany Democrats are expected to sign off on a provision allowing certain officials to tap into a $10 million fund to cover “any reasonable attorneys’ fees and expenses incurred” — even as part of probes not directly related to their state employment.

The language is being slipped into New York’s operations budget bill — one of several expected to be made public and voted on starting Wednesday as the Legislature moves to pass next year’s fiscal plan.

Multiple sources told The Post that the specific language in the bill would apply to James’ looming legal fight.

She has already hired Abbe Lowell as her defense counsel, best known lately for last year's losing battles on behalf of Hunter Biden.

The most recent case stems from a letter of referral FHFA Director William Pulte sent to the Justice Department over Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook:

He said Cook had designated a condo in Atlanta as her primary residence after taking a loan on her home in Michigan, which she also declared as a primary residence.

. . . Cook’s federally filed financial disclosure documents show three mortgages taken out in 2021, including a 15-year 2.5% loan on an investment property and two loans for personal residences, including a 30-year 3.25% mortgage and a 15-year 2.875% mortgage.

The weekly average rate for 30-year loans during 2021 ranged between 2.9% and 3.3%, Mortgage Bankers Association data shows.

The immediate question for Cook isn't criminal prosecution, but whether she should remain in her position as Fed governor. The Kansas City Fed president seems to be suggesting it's OK, because the application was too complicated for her to fill out correctly:

What a weird response pic.twitter.com/YNIEcWKvYM

— Pulte (@pulte) August 21, 2025

However, as of this morning, Trump has warned that

"I'll fire her if she doesn't resign," Trump told reporters on Friday. "What she did was bad, so I'll fire her if she doesn't resign."

. . . On Wednesday afternoon, Cook said in a statement, "I have no intention of being bullied to step down from my position because of some questions raised in a tweet. I do intend to take any questions about my financial history seriously as a member of the Federal Reserve and so I am gathering the accurate information to answer any legitimate questions and provide the facts.”

She'll need to do this quickly if she wants to keep her job. Still, whether Trump can fire her is a new question:

The only way for Trump to fire a Fed governor is “for cause,” according to a 1935 law. That standard has generally been interpreted to mean dereliction of duty or malfeasance. The Supreme Court suggested in May that Federal Reserve employees were protected under the law. In that ruling, the court said the Fed was different from other agencies because it “is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity,” suggesting that Fed officials lie beyond Trump’s reach.

Columbia University law professor Lev Menand said it isn’t clear whether any alleged malfeasance that happened before an official takes office would be a legally sufficient reason to fire Cook. “I think prior private misconduct would be a stretch,” he said.

However, it seems to me that if she's continuing to benefit from that misconduct by getting lower interest, tax, and insurance rates on both properties, ths isn't just a question of past misjudgment.

It does look like the seriousness of her situation is dawning on Cook only very slowly -- she seems to assume that she can bargain for an indefinite amount of time to gather accurate information that could acquit her, but in reality, as both Schiff and James have already done, she needs to hire an experienced defense attorney who can address these problems on her behalf. Being fired or suspended is only the first part of her problem.

Bishop Barron And AI

Bishop Robert Barron posted yesterday on something I've noticed for a while on YouTube: phony videos that represent themselves as being on a particular topic, putatively generated by AI. I spent a career in tech, mostly before the "AI" quasi-phenomenon, but I've always been skeptical of what's now being represented as AI. Certainly it's the case that there are YouTube videos that represent themselves as being about Bp Barron, C S Lewis, and Abp Fulton Sheen, which quickly turn out to be vapid fakes -- but are they in fact AI-generated?

In the video above, Bp Barron notes,

One that just came out recently had me giving recommendations about how to remove demons from your toilet. So my point, everybody, is this is all ridiculous. And I think if you spend just a moment, you can tell the difference between an authentic video from me and one of these fakes.

This is exactly right. What I see in the news over and over is that "they" are gonna have to build new nuclear power plants to feed the massive infrastructure AI computer centers are gonna need, blah blah-- and all of it to generate fake videos of Bp Barron telling us how to remove demons from our toilets? How is this intelligence at all, much less artificial? Bp Barron is correct: this isn't intelligence at all, it's dumb.

Lately I've seen some authentic videos on how certain wild animals like possums can in some cases make satisfying pets, although this certainly requires patience, commitment, appropriate veterinary care, and obedience to applicable state and local laws. The problem is that there seem to be dozens of phony videos on every possibility, with heartwarming stories of lynxes (for instance) adopted by lonely seniors, whose lives are thereby changed.

The problem is that an awful lot of hand work seems to go into these phony videos. The videos need images, and you need to find pictures of lynxes that can be credibly merged into pictures of seniors happily cuddling them or whatever, and somewhere you have to find seniors willing to model for these scenes, which often require others to pose as grandchildren, game wardens, angry neighbors, or whatever to suit the needs of the story. I can't imagine that this is computer generated; it would be too expensive for this sort of marginal stuff.

Next, the writing, while generally grammatical and idiomatic, has all the earmarks of being written by hacks -- human hacks. "Smiling graciously, Liddy scratched the lynx's furry head with her wrinkled hands." If this is AI-generated, someone is spending big bucks to get a cheapo product. You could hire a hack for a lot less.

Isn't this the dilemma of AI? I asked the web, "Can I get AI to write me a Henry James short story?" and got this answer from "AI":

Yes, you can use AI tools to generate a short story in the style of Henry James, but with some key caveats.

. . . AI can analyze and mimic patterns: AI writing tools are trained on vast datasets of existing text, enabling them to identify and replicate stylistic patterns like sentence structure, vocabulary, tone, and common phrases associated with specific authors.

. . . Lack of true creativity and originality: While AI can imitate style, it doesn't possess the same level of human creativity, emotional depth, or understanding of the nuances of human experience that characterized authors like Henry James. It can mimic, but not truly innovate in the way James did.

Risk of superficial imitation: AI might capture the superficial markers of James's style (long sentences, certain vocabulary) without fully grasping their deeper purpose or meaning. The resulting story might feel like a stylistic imitation rather than a genuine work of art.

In other words, whatever AI tries to do in any sort of creative realm, something's going to be missing. But there's nothing new here. I had a dorm neighbor as an undergraduate who was a computer science major working on a project trying to get the computer to write music like Bach. It got as far as producing scores that looked like music, but there was always something missing --and this was 60 years ago.

So on one hand, AI itself gave me an insightful answer to my question, but we're still back to the other question -- I can hire a hack writer for far less than minimum wage. Why spend money to get AI to write uninspired prose? I asked the web, "Why should i spend money getting AI to do work when I can hire a mediocre person to do the same thing for a lot less?" The answer was very different:

There's a prevailing notion that hiring a human for a lower cost might seem like a more budget-friendly approach than investing in AI, especially for tasks perceived as "mediocre". However, a closer look at the actual benefits and long-term implications reveals a more complex picture.

AI can significantly boost productivity, reduce errors, and handle repetitive tasks with greater efficiency than humans. AI agents can conduct research, create websites, write content, and cross-reference information across databases, automating entire services and replacing the need for full-time employees in some instances.

Except the "AI" that answered my first question said if you ask AI to be creative, you're just going to get a blah result that anyone can tell isn't creative. The "AI" that answered my second question said well, AI will free up your mediocre employee to be more than mediocre, or something like that, or maybe you won't even need a mediocre employee, except you've spent a lot more money. Which is no answer at all.

Bp Barron concludes,

To those who've been following me for, you know, 25 years, use your common sense, too. When you see these goofy images that are obviously generated by a computer, and you hear me talking about some wild thing, I hope you have the sense to know, look, that's not really Bishop Barron speaking.

But this is just another way of saying AI is overrated, particularly in any area that requires genuine insight or creativity. Just a little bit of common sense can burst that bubble.

Bp Barron also points out that the people who put out the phony AI Barron videos are doing it for ad revenue -- but if they're actually using AI, they can't be making much money at it. That's the real dilimma.

More On Comey And His Substack

It turns out that James Comey's strange video on Taylor Swift is just the tip of an iceberg. Julie Kelly has looked at all his Substack posts. These began in May.

Clad in business attire and wearing some sort of white make up to conceal a persistent puffy-eye problem, Comey gives scripted performances in a cloying uptalk cadence to answer his critics in a carefree way to sound like he isn’t worried about potential legal consequences for what he did. He talks a lot about “love” and “laughter” and finding “peace” in the second era of Trump—quickly leading the viewer to believe Comey actually has very little love, laughter, or peace in his life. (A well-earned miserable existence if that’s indeed the case.)

One big question is how he has the time to do this stuff -- making videos is actually time-consuming work. Keep in mind that he started as an associate at a white-shoe law firm and went on to climb the ranks as an associate US Attorney, a US Attorney, Deputy Attorney General, and then, following some high-level corporate jobs, FBI Director. But Trump fired him at age 56, and since then, it really looks like he's been strolling the beach. No prestigious law firms, and apparently no corporate boards, have picked him up since his firing. Why not?

Getting fired by Trump, Comey insists, was the best thing that happened to him because now he can do yoga and play with chalk (and shells apparently) and “love deeply.” This segment alone should prompt an immediate investigation into every case Comey ever handled—or at least a psych evaluation.

. . . Democrats, despite a brief rendezvous with him during the first Trump term, still blame Comey for Hillary Clinton’s loss. He appears to have few defenders in former fed circles including those recently fired by Attorney General Pam Bondi; his name rarely comes up.

. . . Despite his best attempts to appear humorous, fearless, and cool, Comey instead comes across as a deeply disturbed individual who has bought into his own visions of grandeur for so long that he doesn’t really know what he is.

All I can think is people who know him even a little better than the general public does have also decided he's a deeply disturbed individual. But what did Barack Obama see in him? I can imagine that his resume as a Bush Republican would make Obama seem non-partisan and statesmanlike, but his handling of the Clinton e-mails is an indication that he was unstable and untrustworthy.

But add to it that in the January 6, 2017 meeting in Trump Tower, Comey seems to have thought it would be a good idea quietly to let Trump know he had the pee dossier. Think about this. Comey had to have a pretty good idea, if he didn't understand it outright, that the pee dossier was false. Trump would have understood completely that it was false -- as various people have said, Trump is a germophobe, he wouldn't get remotely close to anything like that.

I can only think Trump's immediate reaction had to have been along the line of, "What's with this guy? He's bonkers! How is he the FBI Director?" This, if nothing else, had to have set Trump to wondering what he'd gotten himself into and what he needed to do about it. But this also goes to what Obama saw in Comey: the guy was bonkers, completely unreliable, not even a truthtelling loose cannon, just untrustworthy at heart. How could Obama ever have found him useful?

But again, think of that January 6, 2017 Trump Tower meeting: Clapper and Brennan were trusting Comey to be the one guy who'd continue to execute their agenda within the government after Obama left office in two weeks. What were they missing? It makes me wonder if they were just as bonkers.

This brings up the question of why Trump actually fired Comey. According to Wikipedia,

The White House initially stated the firing was on the recommendation of United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, to both of whom Comey reported. Rosenstein had sent a memorandum to Sessions, forwarded to Trump, in which Rosenstein listed objections to Comey's conduct in the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails. . . . On May 10, Trump told reporters he had fired Comey because Comey "wasn't doing a good job".

By May 11, however, in a direct contradiction of the earlier statements by the White House, Vice President Mike Pence, and the contents of the dismissal letter itself, President Trump stated to Lester Holt in an NBC News interview that Comey's dismissal was in fact "my decision" and "I was going to fire [Comey] regardless of recommendation [by Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein]." Trump later said of the dismissal "when I decided to just do it [fire Comey], I said to myself, I said 'You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.'" In the same televised interview, Trump labelled Comey "a showboat" and "grandstander".

On May 19, The New York Times published excerpts of an official White House document summarizing Trump's private meeting, the day after the firing, with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, in the Oval Office. Trump told Kislyak and Lavrov that he "just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job".

It's hard for me to avoid noting that after Trump fired Comey, nobody in the respectable legal, corporate, or academic world seems to have wanted to touch the guy, even though being a Trump victim should have made him attractive, even as just a figurehead. It looks to me as if Trump had real insight into Comey's case, which the elite movers and shakers seem to have recognized as well, however reluctant they were to admit it.

The question that keeps coming back for me is why Brennan, Clapper, and Obama missed this.

Reading Between The Lines

🚨 BREAKING: Pam Bondi and Kash Patel have just appointed Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey as CO-DEPUTY DIRECTOR of the FBI, alongside Dan Bongino, per Fox. pic.twitter.com/XkIdqM8hf5

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) August 18, 2025

A couple of intriguing stories come from the FBI this morning. First is the move of Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey to become something called a "Co-Deputy Director" of the FBI, alongside the up-to-now not-Co-Deputy Director Dan Bongino. The replies to the X post are predictable; this is either a sign that Bongino is on his way out or a sign that Bondi and Patel need someone with prosecutorial experience who can lead a complex investigation. There is no reason both can't be true.

My view all along has been that Bongino bought his ticket back home when he walked off the job last month over Pam Bondi's handling of the "Epstein files". Since then, William Barr has echoed Ghislaine Maxwell in saying there's nothing in them that hurts Trump:

“He said that he had never seen anything that would implicate President Trump in any of this, and that he believed if there had been anything pertaining to President Trump with respect to the Epstein list, that he felt like the Biden administration would probably have leaked it out,” [Oversight Committee Chair James] Comer told reporters while Bill Barr was still behind close doors testifying.

Bongino caused a completely unnecessary crisis when the kerfuffle created an implicit suggestion that things might be otherwise. This confirmed my own suspicion that the guy is a grandstander and a lightweight; Trump had to waste whatever time it took to calm the guy down and get him to come back to work, at least temporarily. But the guy is clearly untrustworthy and unstable, and they can't keep him where he is long term, especially if they can put someone who's actually qualified into that job.

Another story gives glimpses of what must be going on behind the scenes at the Bureau:

Michael Feinberg, who was recently the assistant special agent in charge at the FBI’s Norfolk field office in Virginia, left the FBI at the end of May after he claims his direct superior told him that FBI deputy director Dan Bongino was scrutinizing his longtime friendship with [Peter] Strzok, the disgraced FBI special agent who played a key role in the Trump-Russia investigation[.}

. . . Rather than take a polygraph test about his relationship with Strzok, Feinberg says he quit the FBI instead of risking the possible demotion he says he was facing in place of the big promotion to FBI headquarters which he had been expecting.

The FBI’s website says that “although we have used polygraphs to screen new employees for many years, since the 2001 Robert Hanssen spy case, we have also been requiring regular polygraph examinations of FBI employees with access to sensitive compartmented information.”

Feinberg's resignation in May came before the more publicized ouster of Brian Driscoll on August 7. Driscoll had briefly been Acting FBI Director immediately after Trump's second inauguration in January:

On January 31, 2025, as part of a planned mass termination of federal law enforcement officials under the second Trump administration, the FBI under Driscoll was ordered to fire eight senior executives and compile a list of potentially thousands of other employees involved in investigations stemming from the January 6 United States Capitol attack. Driscoll said that the list of such employees included himself and acting deputy director Kissane.] The order came from Emil Bove, a former criminal defense attorney for Trump who became the Trump administration's acting Deputy Attorney General. Driscoll refused to endorse the effort to purge agents as part of a political retribution and pushed back. He was fired by President Trump on August 7, 2025.

Along with Driscoll, two other FBI figures were fired the same day:

Former acting director Brian Driscoll, Assistant Director in Charge of the Washington Field Office Steven Jensen, and Washington-based Special Agent Walter Giardina were informed they are being fired, according to the two people, who were not authorized to discuss the matter. Formal paperwork is expected to be issued Friday.

. . . After Trump returned to office in January, some officials who worked on or supervised aspects of the Jan. 6 probe were allowed to stay in their posts or even promoted, but pressure from MAGA activists eventually led to many of those agents being dismissed.

That appeared to be the case with Jensen, who was installed by Director Kash Patel as head of the FBI’s critical Washington Field Office just four months ago.

. . . Jensen had been expected to attend a press conference Thursday with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for Washington. But Jensen did not show up. Pirro was flanked instead by FBI official Reid Davis, the special-agent-in-charge in Washington for criminal matters.

. . . Giardina worked on aspects of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia. He was also involved in the arrest of Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro for refusing to testify before the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 riot. Navarro’s lawyers and a federal judge called the arrest unnecessary and questioned why he was not simply allowed to turn himself in. Navarro himself branded Giardina and the other agent involved in the arrest as “kind Nazis.”

The length of time between Driscoll's brief stint as Acting Director in January and his eventual firing in August suggests there was extensive investigation and some sort of deliberation that took place in his case, and likely the cases of Jensen and Giardina as well. Feinberg's dilemma over being polygraphed suggests this could also have been a factor in the August 7 firings. As of this past April,

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said on Monday it has started using polygraph tests to aid investigations aimed at identifying the source of leaks emanating from within the law enforcement agency.

“We can confirm the FBI has begun administering polygraph tests to identify the source of information leaks within the bureau,” the bureau’s public affairs office told Reuters in a statement.

. . . Donald Trump’s administration has been cracking down on people who leak information to journalists since he returned to office in January.

The effort to eliminate leakers and potential deep state moles from the FBI also suggests the Bureau is making serious moves in its investigations. It doesn't seem like too big a step to infer that Feinberg, Driscoll, Jensen, and Giardino were all fingered as potential leakers who could compromise investigations, and apparently like Feinberg, they may have been given the choice of taking a polygraph or leaving.

The A&E show Lie Detector: Truth or Deception features George Olivo, a retired FBI polygrapher. In a recent interview, he said he did a lot of counterintelligence work with the Bureau, but he wasn't more spectiic than that. He did say,

I love to interview people. And FBI investigations are very long. They can be two-to-four year investigations. And you don’t interview the main subjects until the end of the investigation. Usually it’s months of collecting information.

But the polygraph goes hand-in-hand with interviewing people every day.

. . . It can’t be stressed enough that what you see on TV or in the movies—that’s not the real polygraph. The whole protocol that’s used is different. The pre-test interview before the test is usually 45 minutes to an hour. You talk to the person, get their side of the story, construct questions in a way that’s fair to that person. We don’t use ‘gotcha’ questions; every question is scoped.

All I can think is that something like this is going on in the FBI now.

Comey's Incongruity

So the weekend's big news is that James Comey has outed hinself as a Swiftie, which is to say a fan of Taylor Swift. I just haven't been following this phenomenon, and I did some quick research to bring myself up to date. Accoreding to Wikipedia,

Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. Her autobiographical songwriting and artistic reinventions have made her a cultural icon of the 21st century. She is the highest-grossing live music artist, the wealthiest female musician, and one of the best-selling music artists of all time.

I watched a couple of her routines on YouTube, and on one hand, they seem like something recycled from the last century, maybe Joni Mitchell meets Madonna, but on the other, although she's 35, an age when the musical greats of my generation were already dead, her persona is more like an angry, disillusioned 14-year-old. This incongruity seems to be the key to why James Comey is a Swiftie, he's from an older age group affecting the attitudes of people much younger.

James Comey, born December 14, 1960, is a baby boomer, a generation usually defined as born in the years between 1946 and 1964. If you check the Taylor Swift demographics chart at the top of this post (click on the image for a larger copy), baby boomers are onlyh 23% of Swift's audience. Heck, if you grew up with Janis Joplin, Cass Elliot, or Grace Slick, Taylor Swift is going to look like a borrowed AI creation of some sort. So that's anotherr incongruity with Comey.

Another incongruity is household income. We don't know much about Comey's current net worth, but according to Wikipedia,

In August 2005, it was announced that Comey would enter the private sector, becoming the general counsel and senior vice president for Lockheed Martin, the U.S. Department of Defense's largest contractor. Comey's tenure took effect on October 1, 2005, serving in that capacity until June 2, 2010, when he announced he would leave Lockheed Martin to join the senior management committee at Bridgewater Associates, a Connecticut-based investment management firm. Comey received a three million dollar payout from Bridgewater. His net worth was estimated at 14 million dollars in 2013.

As FBI Director after 2013, he appears to have earned something between $180,000 and $199,000 per year, less than he would have earned at Lockheed Martin or Bridgewater, but still well into the $100,000+ bracket, which makes up only 25% of Swiftie demographics. In other categories, though, he's a good Swiftie: Democrat, white, and apparently suburban, living in northern Virginia.

The really odd thing is that he's all dressed up in yesterday's video, suit and tie, recent haircut, clean-shaven -- and although he complains about "our elderly, makeup-covered President", it's hard to avoid thinking Comey's wearing makeup for this appearance as well. And his expression is strangely glib.

This is yet another incongruity: he's dressed as a fully responsible and mature adult, presumably addressing a like-minded audience, but he's using an eight-year-old's vocabularty:

Like a lot of you, I struggle with how to stand up to bullies without letting their meanness infect me and change me. . . . There are far more decent, honest, kind people in America than there are mean jerks.

. . . Don’t get me wrong—we have our jerks, millions of them, you may have noticed. In particular, there’s a stunning coarseness and ugliness in the Republican Party today.

. . . Of course, we need to stand up to jerks and defend what matters.

. . . Taylor Swift . . . sang a song about this topic, asking: Why you gotta be so mean? And she spoke directly to the nasty people: I bet you got pushed around. Somebody made you cold. But the cycle ends right now, because you can’t lead me down that road.

If he's gonna talk down to us this way, he should be wearing a sweater like Mister Rogers, not wearing a serious daddy suit. His chief objection to Trump is apparently he's gotta be so mean. Mean to whom? Well, apparently to James Comey, who informed observers suggest should be preparing himself to be indicted. But that means he should be talking full time to other guys in serious daddy suits who would be telling him to stay off social media, keep a low profile, and ponder his defense strategy.

This suggests to me that Comey lacks any situational awareness. It reminds me in many ways of true crime shows like Court Cam, where people appear before the judge wearing T-shirts with cuss words on them, and the exasperated judge admonishes them that they have to be conscious of where they are. Something basic is missing here.

There's also the peculiar attitude of entitlement that seems to appear in Taylor Swift as well, the teeny-bopper who suddenly realizes that not all the boys are sincere, and she's over-the-top angry that they aren't -- except it's a 35-year-old woman who's actually making these shrieks of rage. Again, something's missing.

Comey in his serious daddy suit should be in serious daddy meetings in serious daddy meeting rooms at serious daddy law firms right now, and instead he's coming out as a Swiftie like a disillusioned 14-year-old. This doesn't bode well.