My read on Eli Lake’s story about Susan Rice ‘unmasking’ Trump transition officials is that it’s a rather elaborate attempt to make a scandal out of something that isn’t scandalous at all. Given what we know just about Mike Flynn’s activities in November and December of 2016 alone, Rice’s alleged actions don’t seem that surprising at all. National security experts seem to agree.
But here’s something in the story that got my attention.
Read this paragraph, the third graf down in the story.
We’re seeing a slow but now steady stream of stories suggesting that Trumpcare may not be dead after all. They’re working on it in the background, making progress, getting ready for even more winning.
Put me down as quite skeptical.
Professor Amr Amr will join us in the Hive for a chat about archeology and his latest project, The Day After, which works to cut down on looting of ancient artifacts in Syria. Feel free to drop questions at any time or join us on Wednesday at 2 p.m. If you’d like to participate but don’t have TPM Prime, sign up here.
President Trump’s dismal poll numbers continue to be one of the few sources of joy and mirth in the bleak political hellscape his presidency has created. From a low of 35% a week ago in the daily Gallup Approval tracking poll, his approval number perked back up to 40%, only to fall back this weekend to 38%. Sad!, as they say.
Trumpers looking for ways to sideline intelligence community and gain access to raw intel as they monitor Trump/Russia probe.
I mentioned in my post below that there’s a very tight timeline or chain of events tying Trump’s claims of Obama wire-tapping and the various doings of Ezra Cohen-Watnick. Let’s walk through it.
Just a thought. But as I survey the whole horizon, it has occurred to me more than once that the geopolitical dimension of the Trump/Russia scandal, questions of collusion, coordination, potential blackmail … these may end up being dwarfed by the related story of President Trump’s vast and overlapping ties to the post-Soviet criminal underworld.
Obviously, these two stories are far from distinct.
Mike Flynn’s offer to testify in exchange for immunity and the apparent lack of anyone willing to take him up on his offer raises more questions than it answers. In fact, I’m not sure it answers any questions at all. There are various relatively minor offenses for which Flynn could plausibly be prosecuted – failure to file under FARA for his lobbying on behalf of the Turkish government, failure to file proper paperwork with the Pentagon for his paid speech in Russia, possibly untruthful answers to the FBI about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Kislyak. These charges in themselves would be thin gruel in terms of matters of any true public concern. But any competent lawyer would still insist on immunity before letting his client testify on anything related to these possible bad acts. Flynn’s lawyer states rather grandly that his client “has a story to tell and … very much wants to tell it.” But Alex Whiting of Harvard Law School argues pretty convincingly that what we learned last night likely means either that Flynn doesn’t have a story prosecutors are willing to barter for or isn’t yet willing to tell it.
So who knows what the immunity request means? Far more interesting to me is how Flynn ties in to the latest revelation in the unfolding Nunes debacle.
Let’s walk through this.
Mike Flynn tells the FBI he’s willing to talk, but only for immunity. But you only get immunity if you deliver someone else higher up the ladder. And there’s only one person higher up the ladder.