I want to continue the discussion that Josh began with his recent post on Trump’s demotion of Stephen Bannon from the “Principals Group.” The question to ask is whether after a month of unmitigated political disaster, Donald Trump has finally learned something. There are hints, but only bare hints, in this and other moves that he may have.
Devin Nunes to “step away temporarily” from running House Russia probe.
They do not appear to be using the word “recuse”, but that sounds like the gist of what we’re hearing … This appears to be driven by a new Ethics probe into Nunes action.
More after the jump …
Picking up on my argument from last night about how campaign era figures like Bannon, Flynn et al. (likely Russia scandal compromised figures, mind you) are being nudged to the side in favor of figures like McMaster, McGahn, Mattis, etc, (national security bureaucrats and party regulars) here’s a related point.
There’s no subtle insight required to note that Steven Bannon’s removal from the National Security Council’s principals’ committee may be a significant development. White House officials claim Bannon’s role had primarily been to monitor the activities of former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn. Bannon himself said in a statement: “Susan Rice operationalized the NSC during the last administration. I was put on to ensure that it was de-operationalized.” These explanations barely rise to the level of preposterous and seem to employ big words to make up whatever gap remains. But this dramatic step comes in the midst of other developments which we cannot know are explicitly connected but together look like a qualitative sea-change in the evolution of this still quite new administration.
“I guess the thrill is gone,” J says to me. J owns a small landscaping business. He drives a pickup truck. He is in his fifties with long hair. He is prone to conspiracy theories. He used to recommend these suspect websites to me. I was surprised last winter when he admired my “Bernie for President” sign. He liked Bernie. But his candidate was Donald Trump, and he voted for him last November. Now he was telling me that the thrill was gone.
We seem to be on a clear path toward a showdown not only over the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch but over the abolition of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations. Aside from the pros and cons of Gorsuch’s nomination and the strategic wisdom of the Democrats’ decision to mount a filibuster, it is worth noting something that is being ignored: In practice, Republicans abolished the Supreme Court filibuster in 2005.
This may be seem odd since you not have heard about this. But it’s true.
Yesterday evening I pointed out that a little discussed sentence in Eli Lake’s ‘un-masking’ story was key to understanding what actually happened in this ‘un-masking’ mystery. With a bit of informed speculation I suggested that what likely happened is that Mike Flynn protege Ezra Cohen-Watnick was freelancing and started his own ‘review’ of surveillance intercepts of the Trump transition, took his findings to the White House Counsel’s office only to get told to stop since lawyers would have seen the dangerous (to the White House) business he was up to. Shut down by the Counsel’s office, he decided to do an end-run around his bosses and go to Devin Nunes.
This story out from the AP seems to confirm this is pretty much exactly what happened.
Interesting exchange a few minutes ago with Intelligence Committee member, Rep. Joaquin Castro, talking about eventual results of the Trump/Russia probe …
REP JOAQUIN CASTRO (D-TX): I guess I would say this, that my impression is after all of this is said and done that some people end up in jail.
WOLF BLITZER: Really? And how high does that go and in your suspicion? That’s all we can call it right now.
CASTRO: Well, that’s yet to be determined.
Former National Security Advisor Susan Rice’s interview with Andrea Mitchell is still on-going. But the gist of the interview confirms what national security experts are saying, which is that what Rice is alleged to have done is entirely normal. But I would say the buried lede in this interview is that during the transition period the Intelligence Community was sending top national security intelligence consumers an increasing volume of reports of surveillance of foreign persons in which top Trump advisors kept coming up, either as the subjects of discussion or actually talking to the people in question. It’s quite unlikely that courtesy calls or general discussions of policy priorities would be included in those reports.
Let’s say this is not helpful news for the Trump team.
What to make of the latest revelation – that Blackwater founder Erik Prince, a major funder to the Trump campaign, buddy of Stephen Bannon, and brother of Education Secretary and Trump donor Betsy DeVos met secretly in the Seychelles Island with a Russian representative apparently to arrange a backchannel between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin? It would be a mistake to file it immediately under Trumputingate. It’s more interesting than that.