Mark Penn Wants To Tell You Who Upended Our Election Process, Fanned Partisan Political Fames, Distorted Our Foreign Policy By Isolating Us From Russia, And Abused The Powers Of Their Office

Yesterday's big NY Times book review was Dwight Garner's look at The Threat by Andrew McCabe. Fox News has a very different perspective on the book and we'll get to that in a moment. Garner points to McCabe's first sentence-- "Between the world of chaos and the world of order stands the rule of law"-- and suggests that it demands to be read in the voice of Jack Webb from Dragnet. It may not be Dostoevsky but Garner is a fan: "McCabe is, of course, the former deputy director of the F.B.I. who was fired last March, just 26 hours before his scheduled retirement. He was briefly the F.B.I.’s acting director, after the dismissal of James B. Comey. The president hooted on Twitter: 'Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the F.B.I.-- A great day for Democracy.' This lawman, a registered Republican for the entirety of his adult life, may have been driven out of Dodge. But he has dusted off his white hat and returned with a memoir that’s better than any book typed this quickly has a right to be."

The Threat is a concise yet substantive account of how the F.B.I. works, at a moment when its procedures and impartiality are under attack. It’s an unambiguous indictment of Trump’s moral behavior. “Let me state the proposition openly,” McCabe writes. “The work of the F.B.I. is being undermined by the current president.”

It’s a rapid-fire G-man memoir, moving from the author’s training in Quantico (shades of The Silence of the Lambs) through his experiences chasing the Russian mob, the Boston Marathon bombers and others. The book is patriotic and oddly stirring. It has moments of opacity, where you feel he is holding back at crucial moments, but it is filled with disturbingly piquant details.

...McCabe’s accounts of his baffled interactions with Jeff Sessions, the former attorney general, would be high comedy if they were not so dire. They are a highlight, or a lowlight, of this book. We see a Sessions who is openly racist. “Back in the old days,” he says to the author about the F.B.I., “you all only hired Irishmen. They were drunks, but they could be trusted.”

Sessions seemed not to read his daily briefings. He had “trouble focusing” and “seemed to lack basic knowledge about the jurisdictions of various arms of federal law enforcement.”

Sessions concentrated almost solely on the immigration aspect of any issue, McCabe writes, even when there was no immigration aspect. Similarly, “Sessions spent a lot of time yelling at us about the death penalty, despite the fact that the F.B.I. plays no role of any kind in whether to seek the death penalty.”

The portrait of Sessions is of a man for whom merely ordering lunch seems to be above the timberline of his intellect and curiosity.

...Mueller is, in this book, the Mueller we have come to know: punctual, determined, the antithesis of casual, with a special loathing for people who speak when they don’t know what they are talking about.

“Ball-busting is his way of expressing affection,” McCabe writes. “If he said, Where does a person even find a tie like that? I knew things were fine: He never went out of his way to insult anyone he didn’t actually like.”

McCabe’s memoir joins a roster of recent and alarming books by high-ranking members of the United States’ justice and intelligence communities, each pushing back sharply against the president’s war on facts and competence.

These books include Comey’s A Higher Loyalty as well as  The Assault on Intelligence, by Michael V. Hayden, the former director of the National Security Agency, and Facts and Fears, by James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence, written with Trey Brown.

Each is its own Paul Revere ride of warning. Each is a reminder that we will be reading about Trump and his administration for the rest of our lives, for the exact opposite reason that we will also be reading about Lincoln and his for the rest of our lives.

There’s much more in McCabe’s book. He’s good on things like what it’s like to take a polygraph test, and the fastest way to take off a seatbelt.

He wades back through the big muddy of the Benghazi hearings. He writes of his fears about the increasing use of encryption.

He spends a good deal of time talking about Hillary Clinton and her email server. He argues that Comey, whom he admires, made crucial mistakes in how he handled the matter. “As a matter of policy, the F.B.I. does everything possible not to influence elections. In 2016, it seems we did.”

He recounts the attacks on his credibility, by Trump and others, after his wife, Jill, ran for Virginia’s State Senate as a Democrat in 2015. He hurt his own credibility, according to the F.B.I. inspector general, by making false statements about his contacts with the media.

The Trump-bashing texts between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, his F.B.I. subordinates, did something worse: They cast doubts about the impartiality of the agency. McCabe rushes past this material too swiftly. Yet if McCabe has made mistakes, his basic decency shines through in this memoir.

He adds to our understanding of how deeply Trump remains under Vladimir Putin’s sway. After a North Korean ballistic missile test, Trump told an F.B.I. briefer that reports of the test were a hoax. McCabe writes, incredulously: “He said he knew this because Vladimir Putin had told him so.”

About Trump, the author asks, “What more could a person do to erode the credibility of the presidency?” He watches this moral limbo dancer go lower and lower. Yet he sees the president as a symptom as much as a disease.

“When is the right time,” he asks, “to give up on people’s general ability to understand any slightly complicated statement that they don’t agree with?”

So many Trump books... which one(s) to actually sit down and read? Fox News knows its audience well enough to be certain the answer, for them, is "none of them." The Threat-- How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump is not going to be on many nightstands of Fox viewers. Sunday Fox published two commentaries on McCabe's book. The first was an OpEd by one of the most odious of creatures inhabiting the swampy fringes of American politics, Mr. Repulsive, Mr. Problem Solvers himself. In fact, his Fox OpEd, shows exactly from where the Problem Solvers world view emanates. "The most egregious anti-democratic actions ever taken by the what can now fairly be called the Deep State are confirmed with the publication of fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s new book detailing how the FBI and Justice Department plotted to remove President Trump from office for firing FBI Director James Comey." Pure Trump defense from the phony-center. I wonder if Josh Gottheimer, Penn's contemptible little lap doggie inside the House Democratic caucus, would agree. This is exactly what Fox wants to reinforce in the lizard brains of its viewers:

Justice Department and FBI officials spied on U.S. citizens with false warrants, gave a pass to one presidential campaign with a predetermined investigation, investigated another political campaign on the basis of no verified evidence, and illegally leaked information on investigations. They discussed wiretapping and using the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to remove President Trump, and appointed a special counsel as a retaliatory move for Comey’s firing.

It is now crystal clear that the highest echelons of the Justice Department and FBI had morphed from the world’s most professional law enforcement organization into a Third World rump group. They had the hubris to believe that they-- not the American people or their duly elected representatives-- should decide who governs and how.

They upended our election process, fanned partisan political flames, distorted our foreign policy by isolating us from Russia, and abused the powers of their office.

Remember that McCabe, Comey and the intelligence community heads all publicly testified to Congress even after the Comey-Trump meetings and memos that no investigation had been tampered with in any way. None.

Yet upon President Trump’s firing of Comey, the remaining officials didn’t wait for the proper appointment of a new FBI head. Instead, they worked themselves up into an unfounded hysteria and acted to create an independent counsel over obstruction that never happened – and was never happening.

...[T]he FBI and Justice Department officials acted to keep the investigation they created under their supervision and with their friends whom they would appoint. And so rather than allow the new incoming head of the FBI to make these decisions, they acted to empower their buddy Robert Mueller as a special counsel.

Mueller, in turn, hired only Democrats, including a lawyer for the Clintons, and the “insurance policy” was launched and ensconced in power. So a counterintelligence investigation that was formed without probable cause now became the largest criminal investigation in history of a campaign and a presidency, dragging on since May 2017.

Adding to the intrigue is that Comey, McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein all disagree with each other in material ways.

McCabe believes he never lied to investigators and had permission from Comey to leak to the press. Comey says McCabe acted on his own.

McCabe and others say Rosenstein was deadly serious when he discussed invoking the 25th Amendment and wiretapping against President Trump in an effort to remove the president from office. Rosenstein says he was just joking around.

Newly confirmed Attorney General William Barr needs to crack all this wide open. The secret charge to Mueller needs to be released. The FISA warrants need to be declassified.

A grand jury must be empaneled to investigate all this and get testimony from officials under oath, and the certification of the warrants used to wiretap the Trump campaign needs to be fully investigated. Dossier author and former British spy Christopher Steele and Glen Simpson-- founder of opposition research firm Fusion GPS-- need to be called to the grand jury.

Operating a year past his commitment to the president’s lawyers, Mueller needs to finish his investigation, shut down his office, and distribute any remaining cases back to the Justice Department that now has a fully empowered attorney general.

If Mueller wants to continue instead, he should be required to balance his team with Democrats and Republicans, removing any former Clinton lawyers.

Rosenstein, who never should have been allowed to run this investigation because he was a fact witness who wrote a memo justifying firing Comey, will be leaving shortly.

McCabe and Comey appear on TV, write books, and have become nakedly partisan, revealing political attitudes no different from Strzok and Page. They readily believed unsubstantiated information and then took power into their own hands.

Every Democrat, Republican and independent should stop angling for partisan advantage and agree, regardless of who is helped or hurt, that these officials acted without proper authority and are responsible for unprecedented damage to our democracy and our political system.

By the way-- a bonus-- this is as good a time as any to let you know which freshmen Democrats have joined Penn's purposefully misnamed "Problem Solvers Caucus." Don't expect any surprises:

• Max Rose (Blue Dog-NY)
• Jeff Van Drew (Blue Dog-NJ)
• Dean Phillips (New Dem-MN)
• Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog-SC)
• Abigail Spanberger (Blue Dog-VA)
• Susie Lee (New Dem-NV)
• Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY)

And now, another Fox OpEd willfully trying to distort McCabe's book, this time by deranged conspiracy theorist and Islamophobe Andrew McCarthy. (His latest is that Jamal Khashoggi was a Muslim Brotherhood operative and that that's why it was a good thing that Trump and the Saudis had him murdered.) His "review" of The Threat is just a dull regurgitation of the currently circulating far right trope that the FBI and CIA have been plotting a coup against Trump. As self-aware as any Trumpist, McCarthy, a lawyer, starts by asking his readers of they "ever wonder why people hate lawyers." Other than that, his review asserts that "There are really no new revelations in this week’s breathless reporting. The story is a retread, trotted out again because CBS is hoping to generate ratings for its 60 Minutes interview of McCabe on Sunday night, the launch of the McCabe book tour." His main point is that Trump is not unfit.

Trump-- What Are We Going To Do Without Him?

What would Saturday Night Live have done for the last two years without Señor Trumpanzee? The media appears to need him. But what's scary to me is that in some sick way, we all seem to have needed him. How much time do you spend talking about him with friends and family? How are we going to get back to normal? I wonder if Bernie has a plan. I should ask. I'm going to.

Oh, yeah... and Trump certainly, absolutely needs the media too: the Other, the scapegoat, the easy target. Trump's tweets this morning were better ads for the show than anything could have bought. On top of that, his bonehead fans have something to hate-- just the way we do, in this perverse, unhealthy symbiotic relationship.

With Butthead In The White House, EVERYTHING Is Connected

On KABC this morning, Ann Coulter addressed the massive morning drive audience about her former hero, Donald Trump, urging them to "Forget the fact that he's digging his own grave. The only national emergency is that our president is an idiot." We don't all agree why, but I think that a good 70% of the country would agree. So much has happened since she wrote In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome! in 2016. Earlier this morning someone asked Trump how much influence she's had over his policy decisions. "Ann Coulter," he babbled, "I don’t know her. I hardly know her. I haven’t spoken to her in way over a year. But the press loves saying, 'Ann Coulter.' Probably if I did speak to her, she’d be very nice. I just don’t have the time to speak to her. I would speak to her. I have nothing against her. In fact, I like her for one reason. When they asked her right at the beginning, 'Who’s going to win the election?' she said, 'Donald Trump.' And the two people that asked her that question smiled. They said, 'You’re kidding, aren’t you?' Nope. Donald Trump. So I like her. But she’s off the reservation. But anybody that knows her understands that. But I haven’t spoken to her. I don’t follow her. I don’t talk to her."

Defeating Trump is the most important priority for the majority of American voters for 2020. But it shouldn't be the only priority. Replacing him with some status quo ante corporatist like Biden or Bloomberg or Gillibrand will simply predict what no one thinks is possible: another Trump down the road. Let's opt for a great president instead of just someone who can beat Trump. They can probably all beat Trump. Think about what will happen after they beat Trump. In the famous words of Chris Hayes: "Who will they fight for? What will they fight for? Who can be trusted to do what they say?" I'd happily vote for Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley or Marianne Williamson. Yesterday Bernie sent a note to his supporters that reminded me why he's on the top of my list.

Let me be very clear. We cannot allow this country to become an oligarchy in which a handful of billionaires control our economic and political life.

At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, when the three richest people own more wealth than the bottom half of the country and when 46% of all new income goes to the top 1%, we need a progressive tax system which demands that the very wealthy and large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes.

That is what I want, and that is what poll after poll shows the American people want.

We will no longer tolerate huge tax breaks for the one percent while children in this country go hungry.

We will no longer tolerate massive tax loopholes which allow profitable corporations to stash billions in profits in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens, while veterans sleep out on the street.

We will no longer tolerate a disastrous trade policy which allows major corporations to shut down here, send our jobs overseas and then line up for lucrative government contracts.

We will no longer tolerate CEOs of major corporations earning 350 times what their average employee makes.

The insatiable greed of the billionaire class must end. They cannot get it all.

We need an economy and tax system that benefits all of us, not just the few, and we can do that by creating a fair and progressive tax system that demands that wealthy individuals and profitable corporations begin paying their fair share of taxes.

There is a lot of debate in Congress on this issue, but among the people we represent, there is none. Democrats, Republicans and Independents, people of all backgrounds and from all communities believe that it is time for the wealthiest Americans to start paying their fair share.

...Instead of repealing the estate tax and giving a massive tax cut to the richest two-tenths of one percent, as Trump wants, we must substantially increase this tax on multi-millionaires and billionaires to reduce wealth inequality and preserve democracy in America.

Instead of companies like Amazon, that made $16.8 billion in profits over the past two years but have paid ZERO in federal income taxes-- and in fact received a $269 million tax refund-- it’s time to demand corporations pay their fair share in taxes so we can rebuild the disappearing middle class.

Instead of encouraging and rewarding Wall Street speculators who gamble trillions of dollars of others people’s money, it’s time for Congress to pass a financial speculation tax and use the money to ensure kids who study hard and do well in school can go to college, regardless of the income of their family.

Instead of giving $1 trillion in tax breaks to some of the richest people and corporations in the history of the world, Congress should be raising the minimum wage to a living wage for working people, $15 an hour, and nothing less.

Today in America, we have a rigged economy that is held in place by a corrupt campaign finance system-- one that amounts to legalized bribery.

But the good news is that the American people are with us on all of these issues, and have been for some time. They know that at a time of massive wealth and income inequality, the very rich must pay their fair share of taxes.

And much like we have moved the needle on issues like Medicare for All, college for all, jobs for all, and fighting climate change, we can do the same on this issue as well.

Bernie concluded by asking if people agree that instead of cutting taxes for corporations and some of the richest people in the history of the the world, it’s time for a progressive tax system that benefits all of us, not just those at the top. Maybe he slanted the results by adding "The greed of the billionaire class has got to end. And if Congress won’t do it, then we must."

Yeah, what we must do is present Congress with apathy to follow. Since we first published the list of co-sponsors of Pramila Jayapal's Medicare-For-All act the first week of February tons of more members have rushed to sign on as co-sponsors. No doubt many of them are true believers, like Hank Johnson (D-GA) and Katie Porter (D-CA), but pressure from their constituents may have had more than a little to do with some of the New Dems like Ed Perlmutter(CO) and Katie Hill (CA), as well as Blue Dog Vicente Gonzalez (TX). There's been at least a new co-sponsor per day, every day including weekends!

Timothy Faust did a definitive Guide to Medicare-For-All that should be a must-read for everyone who talks or writes about healthcare. He agrees that Pramila Jayapal's new Medicare-For-All bill-- probably unveiled in another couple of weeks-- "is astonishingly strong, and should become the baseline for federal legislation toward single-payer healthcare." (Democrats have 8 other healthcare bills floating around, some decent, some horrible. Faust's answer: "The relatively simple problems of health finance have been made very complicated by people who make money off of healthcare. So what are all of the issues being discussed and what do they mean? What’s really 'Medicare for All' and what’s not? How do existing bills stack up? And why does this matter?

The problem of American health finance-- not care, but finance-- can be expressed in two complementary points:

• It is extremely profitable to charge a sick person as much as possible, so long as someone is footing the bill.
• It is not profitable to insure people who are sick or who are likely to become sick.

This is the way things work now. Hospitals, manufacturers, and their various middlemen jack up costs, while insurance companies demand massive public subsidies to keep them from jettisoning people who most need insurance. If insurers can’t get those subsidies, they increase your costs of purchasing and using your insurance plan to compensate for the jacked-up costs.

Staring down these problems are the corporate dorks and the feckless policy dweebs whose policy prescriptions, whose wildest visions, continually place corporations in charge of our healthcare, and ensure that American public money subsidizes them for failing at it. If you hear 2020 candidates talk about the rot of American healthcare, look out if they float a “pragmatic policy solution” or talk about plans named something like “Medicare Extra As A Service... For You!” (If they’re polite, perhaps they will at least say they support “Medicare for All” before announcing they’d be open to keeping the feet of private insurance companies on our throats).

These pathetic programs, which usually revolve around a “public option,” are what happens when politicians understand the need for a massive change but lack the moral imagination to do anything but genuflect to existing structures. They are, in reality, corporate bailout packages which do very little for you, but quite a bit for the Aetnas and the Sacklers and the Joe Manchins.

On the other hand, you have federal single-payer, often called “Medicare for All.” Healthcare plans in the single-payer mold pool all the money currently spent on healthcare to insure every person in America. By pooling this buying power into one giant public insurer (the single payer), “Medicare for All” has much more leverage to determine prices through negotiation. It can say, “oh, we’re only going to pay $200 for an MRI instead of $1,000"; or, “our data shows that a knee replacement costs $15,000 to perform even though you bill five times that amount; take it or leave it,” and since it’s the only insurer in town, the hospital has to take it. This isn’t radical-- virtually every other country with universal coverage has a form of aggressive rate-setting. (And it lets the hospital spend a lot less money on massive towers of billing staff.)

You'll have to read his whole long, powerful piece to understand why he believes that Jayapal's bill-- and only Jayapal's bill-- "appears to meet all of the criteria for a proper single-payer plan. It includes long-term care with a preference toward home health. It sets guidelines for care but lets doctors overrule them. It is, by all accounts, the first actual robust single-payer bill of the post-ACA era. If you are looking for a bill to call 'Medicare for All,' this is the one. It must not be permitted to be weakened."

All that said, do not forget-- and I know you won't-- Every Day Is a New Low in Trump's White House. That's also the name of the piece The Atlantic just published by former FBI Director and Trump enemy Andrew McCabe. When someone told Trump about it, he started whining on Twitter as is his wont.

The Atlantic piece is an adaptation from McCabe's soon-to-be-published book, The Threat. McCabe makes you feel you are there as history is being made.

On Wednesday, May 10, 2017, my first full day on the job as acting director of the FBI, I sat down with senior staff involved in the Russia case—the investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. As the meeting began, my secretary relayed a message that the White House was calling. The president himself was on the line. I had spoken with him the night before, in the Oval Office, when he told me he had fired James Comey.

A call like this was highly unusual. Presidents do not, typically, call FBI directors. There should be no direct contact between the president and the director, except for national-security purposes. The reason is simple. Investigations and prosecutions need to be pursued without a hint of suspicion that someone who wields power has put a thumb on the scale.

The Russia team was in my office. I took the call on an unclassified line. That was another strange thing-- the president was calling on a phone that was not secure. The voice on the other end said, It’s Don Trump calling. I said, Hello, Mr. President, how are you? Apart from my surprise that he was calling at all, I was surprised that he referred to himself as “Don.”

The president said, I’m good. You know-- boy, it’s incredible, it’s such a great thing, people are really happy about the fact that the director’s gone, and it’s just remarkable what people are saying. Have you seen that? Are you seeing that, too?

He went on: I received hundreds of messages from FBI people-- how happy they are that I fired him. There are people saying things on the media, have you seen that? What’s it like there in the building?

This is what it was like: You could go to any floor and you would see small groups gathering in hallways, some people even crying. The overwhelming majority liked and admired Director Comey-- his personal style, the integrity of his conduct. Now we were laboring under the same dank, gray shadow that had been creeping over Washington during the few months Donald Trump had been in office.

I didn’t feel like I could say any of that to the president on the phone. I’m not sure I would have wanted to say it to him in person, either-- or that he would have cared. I told him that people here were very surprised, but that we were trying to get back to work.

The president said he thought most people in the FBI voted for him-- he thought 80 percent. He asked me again, as he had in his office, if I knew that Comey had told him three times that he was not under investigation. Then he got to the reason for his call. He said, I really want to come over there. I want to come to the FBI. I want to show all my FBI people how much I love them, so I think maybe it would be good for me to come over and speak to everybody, like tomorrow or the next day.

That sounded to me like one of the worst possible things that could happen. He was the boss, and had every right to come, but I hoped the idea would dissipate on its own. He said, Why don’t you come down here and talk to me about that later?

After we agreed on a time to meet, the president began to talk about how upset he was that Comey had flown home on his government plane from Los Angeles-- Comey had been giving a speech there when he learned he was fired. The president wanted to know how that had happened.

I told him that bureau lawyers had assured me there was no legal issue with Comey coming home on the plane. I decided that he should do so. The existing threat assessment indicated he was still at risk, so he needed a protection detail. Since the members of the protection detail would all be coming home, it made sense to bring everybody back on the same plane they had used to fly out there. It was coming back anyway. The president flew off the handle: That’s not right! I don’t approve of that! That’s wrong! He reiterated his point five or seven times.

I said, I’m sorry that you disagree, sir. But it was my decision, and that’s how I decided. The president said, I want you to look into that! I thought to myself: What am I going to look into? I just told you I made that decision.

The ranting against Comey spiraled. I waited until he had talked himself out.

Toward the end of the conversation, the president brought up the subject of my wife. Jill had run unsuccessfully for the Virginia state Senate back in 2015, and the president had said false and malicious things about her during his campaign in order to tarnish the FBI. He said, How is your wife? I said, She’s fine. He said, When she lost her election, that must have been very tough to lose. How did she handle losing? Is it tough to lose?

I replied, I guess it’s tough to lose anything. But she’s rededicated herself to her career and her job and taking care of kids in the emergency room. That’s what she does.

He replied in a tone that sounded like a sneer. He said, “Yeah, that must’ve been really tough. To lose. To be a loser.”

I wrote a memo about this conversation that very day. I wrote memos about my interactions with President Trump for the same reason that Comey did: to have a contemporaneous record of conversations with a person who cannot be trusted.

People do not appreciate how far we have fallen from normal standards of presidential accountability. Today we have a president who is willing not only to comment prejudicially on criminal prosecutions but to comment on ones that potentially affect him. He does both of these things almost daily. He is not just sounding a dog whistle. He is lobbying for a result. The president has stepped over bright ethical and moral lines wherever he has encountered them. Every day brings a new low, with the president exposing himself as a deliberate liar who will say whatever he pleases to get whatever he wants. If he were “on the box” at Quantico, he would break the machine.

After Comey’s firing, the core of my concern had to do with what might happen to the Russia case if I were to be removed. I convened a series of meetings about that investigation-- including the one interrupted by the call from the president-- in which I directed an overall review of every aspect. Was the work on solid ground? Were there individuals on whom we should consider opening new cases? I wanted to protect the Russia investigation in such a way that whoever came after me could not just make it go away.

As requested, I went back to the White House that afternoon. The scene was almost identical to the one I had walked into the previous night. Trump was behind the Resolute desk. He lifted one arm and jutted it out, fingers splayed, directing me to take a seat in one of the little wooden chairs in front of him. Reince Priebus, then the chief of staff, and Don McGahn, then the White House counsel, were in the other chairs.

The president launched back into his speech about what a great decision it was to fire Jim Comey, how wonderful it was that the director was gone, because so many people did not like Comey, even hated him-- the president actually used the word hate.

Eventually he changed the subject. He said that he wanted to come to FBI headquarters to see people and excite them and show them how much he loves the FBI. He pressed me to answer whether I thought it was a good idea. I said it was always a good idea to visit. I was trying to take some of the immediacy out of his proposal-- to communicate that the door was always open, so that he wouldn’t feel he had to crash through it right away. I knew what a disaster it could turn out to be if he came to the Hoover Building in the near future. He pressed further, asking specifically, Do you think it would be a good idea for me to come down now? I said, Sure.

He looked at Don McGahn. The president said, Don, what do you think? Do you think I should go down to the FBI and speak to the people?

McGahn was sitting in one of the wooden chairs to my right. Making eye contact with Trump, he said, in a very pat and very prepared way, If the acting director of the FBI is telling you he thinks it is a good idea for you to come visit the FBI, then you should do it.

Then McGahn turned and looked at me. And Trump looked at me and asked, Is that what you’re telling me? Do you think it is a good idea?

It was a bizarre performance. I said it would be fine. I had no real choice. This was not worth the ultimate sacrifice.

In this moment, I felt the way I’d felt in 1998, in a case involving the Russian Mafia, when I sent a man I’ll call Big Felix in to meet with a Mafia boss named Dimitri Gufield. The same kind of thing was happening here, in the Oval Office. Dimitri had wanted Felix to endorse his protection scheme. This is a dangerous business, and it’s a bad neighborhood, and you know, if you want, I can protect you from that. If you want my protection. I can protect you. Do you want my protection? The president and his men were trying to work me the way a criminal brigade would operate.

For whatever reason, the visit to the FBI never happened.

One of the regularly scheduled meetings with the attorney general, deputy attorney general, and some of their staff came two days later, on Friday, May 12. After the meeting, I asked the deputy, Rod Rosenstein, if he could stay behind. In part I wanted to talk with him about ground rules governing the separate investigations of the Russia case by the FBI and the Senate Intelligence Committee. Rosenstein had oversight because the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had had to recuse himself owing to his own interactions with Russians during the campaign. But my main message was this: I need you to protect the process.

After speaking to these points, Rod shifted his gaze. His eyes were focused on a point in space a few yards beyond and behind, toward the door. He started talking about the firing of Jim Comey. He was obviously upset. He said he was shocked that the White House was making it look as if Jim’s firing had been his idea. He was grasping for a way to describe the nature of his situation. One remark stands out. He said, There’s no one that I can talk to about this. There’s no one here that I can trust.

He asked for my thoughts about whether we needed a special counsel to oversee the Russia case. I said I thought it would help the investigation’s credibility. Later that day, I went to see Rosenstein again. This is the gist of what I said: I feel strongly that the investigation would be best served by having a special counsel. I’ve been thinking about the Clinton email case and how we got twisted in knots over how to announce a result that did not include bringing charges against anyone. Had we appointed a special counsel in the Clinton case, we might not be in the present situation. Unless or until you make the decision to appoint a special counsel, the FBI will be subjected to withering criticism that could destroy the credibility of both the Justice Department and the FBI.

Rosenstein was very engaged. He was not yet convinced. I brought the matter up with him again after the weekend. On Wednesday, we would be briefing the Hill. As I saw it, by informing Congress of the bureau’s actions, we would be drawing an indelible line around the cases we had opened—the four cases known publicly and any others that may have gone forward. The four known publicly were those of Carter Page, a foreign-policy adviser to the Trump campaign and a man with many Russian ties; George Papadopoulos, another foreign-policy adviser, who had told a foreign diplomat that the Russians had offered to help Trump’s campaign by providing information on Hillary Clinton; Michael Flynn, for a brief period the president’s national security adviser, who had pursued multiple high-level contacts with the Russian government; and Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, who had shady business dealings with Ukrainians and Russians.

On the afternoon of May 17, Rosenstein and I sat at the end of a long conference table in a secure room in the basement of the Capitol. We were there to brief the so-called Gang of Eight-- the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate and the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. Rosenstein had, I knew, made a decision to appoint a special counsel in the Russia case. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic senator from New York, was to our right. Mitch McConnell, the Republican senator from Kentucky and the Senate majority leader, was to our left. The mood in the room was sober.

After reminding the committee of how the investigation began, I told them of additional steps we had taken. Then Rod took over and announced that he had appointed a special counsel to pursue the Russia investigation, and that the special counsel was Robert Mueller. The Gang of Eight had questions. What was the scope of the inquiry? Who would oversee the special counsel? How could the special counsel get fired? Rod answered every question. Then it was over.

When I came out of the Capitol, it felt like crossing a finish line. If I got nothing else done as acting director, I had done the one thing I needed to do.

How Many More GOP Seats Did Trump Lose With His Vile Tweet About Andy McCabe?

Neither my old friend Cynthia in L.A. nor my even older friend Helen in Westchester is a rambunctious kid, at least not any more. Helen is pushing 70 and Cynthia passed that goal post some time ago. Every day, Cynthia says things about Señor Trumpanzee that I hope and pray the Secret Service isn't hearing. And Helen... she hates Trump even more than Cynthia does. I've been worrying about Helen because she tells me she stays up nights tossing and turning and fretting about what he's doing to the country. I know these two gracious ladies aren't the only Americans in this exact frame of mind-- from from it.

Take legal scholar Jeffrey Tubin, for example. "If you wanted to tell the story of an entire Presidency in a single tweet, you could try the one that President Trump posted after Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired Andrew McCabe, the deputy director of the F.B.I., on Friday night. Every sentence is a lie. Every sentence violates norms established by Presidents of both parties. Every sentence displays the pettiness and the vindictiveness of a man unsuited to the job he holds."

In his statement, McCabe spoke with bracing directness. “Here is the reality: I am being singled out and treated this way because of the role I played, the actions I took, and the events I witnessed in the aftermath of the firing of James Comey,” he said. In other words, McCabe was fired because he is a crucial witness in the investigation led by Robert Mueller, the special counsel. The firing of Comey is the central pillar of a possible obstruction-of-justice case against the President, either in a criminal prosecution or in an impeachment proceeding. By firing McCabe, Trump (through Sessions) has attempted to neuter an important witness; if and when McCabe testifies against Trump, he will now be dismissed by the President’s supporters as an ex-employee embittered by his firing. How this kind of attack on McCabe plays out in a courtroom, or just in the court of public opinion, remains to be seen.

What’s clear, though, is the depth of the President’s determination to prevent Mueller from taking his inquiries to their conclusion, as his personal attorney, John Dowd, made clear. In an interview with the Daily Beast, Dowd said, “I pray that Acting Attorney General Rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and bring an end to alleged Russia Collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe’s boss James Comey based upon a fraudulent and corrupt Dossier.” Of course, notwithstanding Dowd’s caveat that he was speaking only for himself, Rosenstein is on notice that his failure to fire Mueller might lead to his own departure. And Sessions, too, must know that his craven act in firing McCabe will guarantee him nothing. Trump believes that loyalty goes only one way; the Attorney General may still be fired at any moment.

Former CIA Director John Brennan tried to send his message in the language Trumpanzee understand: Tweetese: "When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America... America will triumph over you."

Barry McCaffrey is one of the most highly decorated 4-star generals in America. Trump isn't fit to wipe his ass. I suspect it wasn't easy for him to tweet Friday "Reluctantly I have concluded that President Trump is a serious threat to US national security. He is refusing to protect vital US interests from active Russian attacks. It is apparent that he is for some unknown reason under the sway of Mr Putin."

Unlike most sane Americans, former FBI Director Jim Comey never refers to Trumpanzee as a pile of dung or something along those lines, and he still addresses him with the inappropriate monicker "Mr. President," as in "Mr. President, the American people will hear my story very soon. And they can judge for themselves who is honorable and who is not."

Sen. Mark Warner is a very conservative Democrat from Virginia. I rarely find myself agreeing with him on much--but this tweet is important: "Every member of Congress, Republican and Democrat, needs to speak up in defense of the Special Counsel. Now." Unfortunately, the Republicans are utterly devoid of any semblance of moral leadership. The only Republicans who are speaking up are the ones who have already announced their voluntary retirements-- like Charlie Dent (R-PA), who went on CNN Saturday morning and "harshly criticized the Trump administration’s decision to fire former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, adding that he doesn’t think it bodes well for his party. 'Candidly, it looks like retribution and a bit vindictive,' Dent said. 'And I think it’s unfortunate. The man said he’s resigning, and on a Friday night before his 50th birthday, he’s fired to take away his pension? I don’t like the optics of this. I really don’t.' Dent said he thinks the attorney general made the decision under pressure from President Trump. Trump has repeatedly publicly demanded that Sessions fire McCabe, who is potentially a key witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the president for possible obstruction of justice."

The best realistic outcome we can hope for at this point is that something like 100 House Republicans-- some of the ones not speaking up (especially Paul Ryan)-- lose their seats in November. Sounds far-fetched? Not nearly as far-fetched as a candidate as mediocre as Conor Lamb in a district as red as PA-18 (R+11) could have beat Trump, Pence and Ryan's $10 million. Now, that's far-fetched! Don't listen to the media. They have no clue what's going on with electoral politics until the day after the election-- if then. Instead, be proactive: speak to friends-- persuade someone who wouldn't otherwise vote that his or her country needs them-- or volunteer on a campaign or contribute to a solid progressive candidate who is going to be vigilant against Trumpist tyranny and kakistocracy in general. (If you want to contribute... that's what that thermometer on the right is for. Click on it and give what you can-- even if you've never done so before.)

Friday night, by the way, I tweeted as well... in response to NBC host Andrea Mitchell:

By early Saturday morning congressmen Mark Pocan (D-WI) and Jamie Raskin (D-MD) + Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) had already offered to hire Andrew McCabe in their congressional offices. We need more like them in Congress... and fewer like Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy. Joe Walsh is a hate talk radio host and a former far right-- far, far right-- congressman from Chicagoland. The way his former colleagues are enabling Trump is even too much for him! Today he fulminated that "Republicans have no freaking clue about what is going to hit them in November. They're in denial."

NY Daily News sports commentator Mike Lupica, hit the nail on the head for a lot of us yesterday: "People keep saying that Trump will never fire Mueller, because that would touch off a constitutional crisis the likes of which we haven’t seen since Richard Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre in the heat of Watergate, when Nixon fired independent prosecutor Archibald Cox, which led to the resignations of his own attorney general and deputy attorney general. But every time you read or hear that, you have the same thought: What, we’re not having a constitutional crisis already?" And mainstream conservatives are losing their shit-- like Nicolle Wallace, former Communications Director for the George W. Bush White House and then a senior strategist for McCain.

Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm Shits On Andrew McCabe For Trump

In case you missed Chris Hayes' jaw-dropping interview with double (or triple) agent Felix Sater Friday night, MSNBC has actually posted it in embeddable form. That's it above. Sater is the kind of instinctual career criminal who will work for the Mob one day, the FBI or CIA the next day and the Russians the day after-- at the time, of course-- working for no one but Felix Sater. They don't come lower. But they do come as low. Remember Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm? Like Sater, he likes to immunize himself from criticism by screaming how he served in the military. But, like Sater, Grimm has flitted from one thuggish outfit after another, betraying each in turn and always looking out for Number One.

And, like Sater, Grimm is currently out of prison and trying to rehabilitate his image-- except he's going about it by running for his old Staten Island/South Brooklyn congressional seat-- the most Mafia-oriented House seat in the country. Staten Island is the last redoubt of the Italian Mafia and south Brooklyn is America's top Russian Mafia territory. Both areas voted for Trump in 2016. The district as a whole gave Trump 53.6% of the vote to Hillary's 43.8%. The current congressman, Dan Donovan is a conventional mainstream conservative, a Republican whose voting record is pretty much identical to what Grimm's was like before he got hauled away to prison. He's a former district attorney, fighting for his political life in a district that is evenly split between the cops and robbers.

Grimm was Steve Bannon's first House recruit, just before Bannon was unceremoniously banished from Trumpville-- his project to destroy the Republican Party establishment shelved. Grimm, who spent a couple months with his head up Bannon's ass, now routinely denounces him. Long before Grimm ever imagined he would run for Congress, he was an undercover agent for the FBI. And an undercover agent for the Mafia-- a double agent. I started following Mikey Suits before he got into politics, when he was just the lowlife bag man who took the Duke Cunningham long-disappeared and unaccounted for $400,000 bribe from Thomas Kontogiannis to George W. Bush. Funny how Grimm, Cunningham and Kontogiannis all went to prison but the "missing" $400K has never been recovered. So much water under the bridge in the last decade and a half!

And last night, while many of us were watching slime bucket Felix Sater spinning his lies on MSNBC, Grimm-- remember, an ex-FBI agent-- released a statement about Andrew McCabe's firing.

"The firing of Andrew McCabe is the first time I've seen true justice on the federal level since the corrupt witch hunt I personally endured. Don't be shocked when Peter Strzok, Loretta Lynch and James Comey are the next to be revealed for the corrupt partisans that they are. As a former FBI agent that was investigated and fully exonerated by Office of Professional Responsibility and the Office of the Inspector General, I can attest to the integrity of that team of watchdogs. The FBI and DOJ's highest echelon of political appointees needs to be cleaned out and this was a necessary step in preserving the faith we all have in the nation's premier law enforcement agency and its brave rank and file."

Interesting perspective from the former Gambino Crime family operative! During the Romney campaign, when Grimm was already in Congress, enough Mikey Suits dirty laundry started leaking out that Romney staffers made the Staten Island congressman a persona non-grata and removed him from his campaign position and took his name off the official Romney website. The specific impetus was when Grimm snuck off from the the GOP frat party at the Sea of Galilee to visit some organized crime connections in Cyprus. The FBI was in hot pursuit and one of Grimm's Cyprus connections, Panayiotis "Peter" Papanicolaou, currently in prison. At the time, both the NY Times and the NY Post ran stories they'd been working on for a very long time... about Grimm's connection to the Mafia here at home, specifically he Gambino connection. Ironically, Grimm's first conversation with then Speaker John Boehner was to demand that Members of Congress be allowed to pack heat on the House floor. Instead Boehner had him banned from his office. The Post got excited about Grimm's Gambino connection.

Staten Island Rep. Michael Grimm investigated the Gambino crime family as an FBI agent-- before opening a restaurant with a business partner so close to one of the mob clan’s capos, he considers him an “uncle,” according to sources and court documents.

The first-term Republican’s ex-business partner, Bennett Orfaly, regularly travels to the federal lockup in Fort Dix, NJ, to visit his pal Anthony "Fat Tony" Morelli, Brooklyn federal prosecutors said.

Morelli’s mob assignments included overseeing the family’s investments in pornography, labor racketeering and illegal dumping, law-enforcement sources said.

Late Gambino boss John Gotti put him in charge of the family’s Florida rackets, one source said.

Morelli, who is serving time on several convictions, is “like an uncle” to Orfaly, another source said.

Asked about his Gambino connections, Orfaly declined to comment. Grimm is under investigation for alleged fund-raising irregularities in his 2010 campaign.

As an FBI agent, Grimm was responsible for keeping tabs on John Gotti’s brother Peter. He also worked undercover on a case that resulted in the arrest of Gambino soldier Greg DePalma.

...An Israeli named Ofer Biton, who until recently was jailed on an a charge of immigration fraud.

He was released to house arrest on a $1.5 million bond after Orfaly posted his stake in several restaurants co-owned with Biton, according to court papers.

Biton’s lawyer, John Meringolo, says the feds are threatening his client with more serious charges unless he testifies against Grimm in the fund-raising probe.

...Before his election to Congress in 2010, Grimm and Orfaly had been partners in an Upper East Side eatery, Healthalicious.

McGinley [Grimm's lawyer] says that prior to making his run, Grimm sold his share of that business to Orfaly.

But three sources familiar with the ongoing probe, told The Post the purchaser was Biton. Either way, Biton now owns Healthalicious outright, sources said-- and he is partners with Orfaly in several Manhattan pita restaurants.

As far as Biton goes, prosecutors claim that a decade ago, he was a member of an ecstasy ring in California and was wiretapped talking to a senior Israeli organized-crime associate. Biton was never charged with any drug crime.

In addition to his problems with the feds, Grimm also faces a civil lawsuit by Healthalicious workers, alleging wage violations when he was part-owner.

A lawyer for the workers, Michael Faillace, said they settled with Orfaly, but Grimm asked that an agreement with him be postponed until after the election.

Now keep in mind that before Grimm ran for Congress, he had been kicked out of the FBI, mostly for taking payoffs from Kontogiannis. Kontogiannis' story would be the biggest political blockbuster of our lifetimes. He's been told he'd be found dead in his cell if he ever tries to tell it though-- and it involves Saudis, Greeks, a $400,000 cash bribe to George Bush and... Grimm. In August, 2013, Grimm's fundraiser Ofer Biton plead guilty in a sweet deal that saved Grimm a lot of trouble.

A former fund-raiser for Representative Michael G. Grimm, whose campaign finances are under investigation by federal prosecutors, pleaded guilty on Friday to visa fraud.

The former fund-raiser, Ofer Biton, an Israeli immigrant who helped direct hundreds of thousands of dollars from supporters of a revered rabbi to Mr. Grimm’s campaign before his election to Congress in 2010, was arrested last August and charged with lying on his visa application.

Followers of the rabbi, Yoshiyahu Pinto, have said in interviews that Mr. Grimm or Mr. Biton told them that the campaign would find a way to accept donations that were over the legal limit, were given in cash or were given by foreigners who did not have permanent resident status.

Is it any wonder Grimm hates the FBI today. Too bad they don't talk about what he was up to when he was a double agent. It would make the Bureau look too bad.