We All Want Mueller To Prove Trump Is A Criminal Fast-- But More Important, We All Want Mueller To Prove Trump Is A Criminal Indisputably

I've been binge-watching Billions and I'm finishing up Season 3. There's is certainly some inspiration there from the activities of Preet Bharara, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York is his office's battle against Steve Cohen (S.A.C. Capital Advisors) and John Gutfreund (Salomon Brothers). I've learned a lot about the workings of the U.S. Attorney's office-- at least the storied South and Eastern districts' U.S. Attorney's offices. So I was especially interested in a report by Chris Strohm yesterday that Mueller has tapped more prosecutors to help with the growing Trumpanzee probe.

"Growing," huh? That should flip Trump out by itself. "As Mueller pursues his probe," wrote Strohm, "he’s making more use of career prosecutors from the offices of U.S. attorneys and from Justice Department headquarters, as well as FBI agents-- a sign that he may be laying the groundwork to hand off parts of his investigation eventually, several current and former U.S. officials said." If you're a Billions fan, think Bryan Connerty, Chief of the Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force for the Southern District. Mueller has 17 federal prosecutors now. Team Trumpanzee-- including, incongruously, Trey Gowdy, who led the Benghazi "investigation" (4 years, no indictments)-- is screaming that the investigation is going on too long and costing too much. This while Trumpists file more and more court challenges-- some frivolous-- meant to slow down and bog down the investigation.

Investigators in New York; Alexandria, Virginia; Pittsburgh and elsewhere have been tapped to supplement the work of Mueller’s team, the officials said. Mueller has already handed off one major investigation-- into Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen-- to the Southern District of New York.

“Whatever you got, finish it the hell up because this country is being torn apart,” Republican Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina told Rosenstein during a June 28 hearing. Rosenstein said Mueller knows he must move expeditiously.

A heavy investigative load for Mueller had been anticipated from the start, the officials said. The special counsel has already issued 20 indictments and secured guilty pleas from five individuals, and some of the defendants are mounting stiffer-than-expected battles in court.

“I don’t think he’s getting in over his head,” said Solomon Wisenberg, who served as deputy independent counsel investigating President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. “These things have a tendency to balloon. Yes, it may be taxing on them. No, it’s not that unusual.”

Nor is it unusual for Mueller to turn to U.S. attorneys or to Justice Department headquarters, said Wisenberg, who’s now a partner at the law firm Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP.

Mueller is dealing with the legal battles as he considers whether to subpoena Trump for an interview and as he accelerates his investigation into potential collusion.

The first-- and perhaps biggest-- court case for Mueller is over his indictment of Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, for an array of financial crimes. Manafort is fighting the indictment in two federal courthouses, and he expanded his case last week to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Both sides are now gearing up for a trial to begin later this month.

“It’s going to be all hands on deck when they go to the Manafort trial," Wisenberg said.

Other court fights may have come as a surprise.

Mueller indicted 13 Russian individuals and three entities in February on charges of violating criminal laws with the intent to interfere with the U.S. election through the manipulation of social media.

None of the targets are in the U.S., but one of them, the Internet Research Agency, has forced Mueller into another legal fight in federal court. The two sides have been sparring most recently over how to protect sensitive investigative materials from disclosure. Mueller has enlisted prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington to handle the case.

Another surprise came last week when Andrew Miller, a former aide to Trump adviser Roger Stone, filed a sealed motion to fight one of Mueller’s grand jury subpoenas.

Mueller also plans to move eventually to sentencing for Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and former foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, both of whom pleaded guilty to lying to investigators.

“He’s a busy guy,” said Jeffrey Cramer, a former federal prosecutor.

“There’s certainly multiple fronts going on right now,” said Cramer, who’s now managing director of the international investigation firm Berkeley Research Group LLC. “Some of them are more active than others.”

Cramer doesn’t think Mueller’s in over his head but says he might be taking timing into consideration when it comes to making additional moves.

“You don’t have unlimited resources in a sense that you’ve got an unlimited cadre of prosecutors and agents,” Cramer said. “There does come a time where they can only do so much.”

Mueller has already shown that in some situations he will hand off cases, such as with the Cohen investigation. Additionally, Mueller is getting help from Rosenstein, who is fielding congressional demands for documents and testimony.

In the end, though, Mueller knew what he was signing up for.

“While there’s a lot on the plate, they’re not all going on all at once," Cramer said. “His office is doing their job. He’s doing what he’s supposed to be doing.”

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Trey Gowdy is an intellectual lightweight. Unfortunately, so is his audience. So, whatever the jive-ass hypocritical idiocy that spews from his piehole, that audience eats it right up. They do so with glee, if only because Gowdy's verbal droppings are easy to add to the rest of the shit that packs the space between their ears. The big bonus is that they can just take in whatever he says and easily repeat it. They don't have to wrap their diseased little minds around it. No need for them to think for themselves. They can just reach into what they use for brains and regurgitate it out verbatim. No confusing pre-thought. No messy afterthought. It gets even easier for them when they sit before their FOX TV Oracle to watch an uber-buffoon like Sean Hannity or shrieking asylum escapee Jeanine Pirro so they can get that same shit re-fried and filtered through a source they would still trust even if Hannity or Pirro could have aimed a gun at the studio camera and shot them as the sat on their couches with their dinner of beer and bags of Cheetos.

When I see Gowdy on TV, I am instantly reminded of 1950s variety TV shows that would frequently feature a circus act that consisted of a few monkeys or chimpanzees all dressed up in human suits, ties, and diapers. They would run around tossing balls in the air, beating drums and hitting cymbals out of time, smiling all the way while their masters showed their approval by giving them treats. That's congress in general, but, clearly Gowdy is a lead knuckle-dragger.

So I had to laugh last week when, Gowdy, a pompous teabagger from South Carolina (that certainly ads some perspective) milked his camera time by grilling Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a fellow Republican, and, regarding the much-feared Mueller Investigation, told him to "finish if the hell up." He took the tack that the investigation was producing nothing when, in fact, in just 13 months, it has produced what tonight's meme lists and, with updates, more (It's now 22 indictments). That list compares more than favorably to say the least, to what his party's and his own Benghazi investigations produced in terms of indictments, sentencing, etc. Of course, what his Benghazi conspiracy mongering did produce was an increase in suspicions about Hillary Clinton, so, to Republicans it was money well spent.

Still, it's interesting to watch Republicans running around beating drums and tossing things up in the air but, something else is in the air, something that has them in a frenzied state of near panic.

And here's a punchline: Some of Gowdy's fellow Repugs see him as Supreme Court material. Given how low the quality of the court has sunk in the last several years, they may be right. Gowdy would give Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito some serious competition in the race to the bottom. Our pro-fascist Supreme Court already inflicted George W. Bush on this country. You know that regardless of Gowdy or whomever Trump picks, they are more than dishonorable enough to keep Trump in the White House at all costs to the rule of law, what's left of our democracy, and the future of every form of life on Earth.

(Noah's Note: There was no intention to insult or degrade any monkeys or chimpanzees in tonight's post by comparing them to members of Congress. It can be argued that monkeys and chimpanzees are living up to the full potential of their species and that is commendable. Humans, as a whole, often fail to live up to their potential but many non-members of Congress have often lived up to the potential of our species. Unfortunately, the latter are outnumbered at the voting booths. Thus, we are lead by monkeys and chimps.)

Trump Was High Of Adderall, Suffering From Amphetamine Psychosis, When He Made Up "Spy-Gate"

The idea of of South Carolina pinhead is being used as the arbiter of FBI fairness is pretty scary, but with Trey Gowdy, still chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, getting ready for his last few months in Congress, it appears he's been gradually shedding his extreme partisan coat. After the Nunes' circus at the Justice Department over Trump's manufactured ridiculous Spy-Gate "scandal," Gowdy left the briefing to declare that the FBI acted properly by deploying an informant to gather information from the Kremlin operatives-- Carter Page and George Papadopoulos-- inside Señor Trumpanzee’s campaign.

He went on Fox and said exactly what Trump wouldn't want him to say, not that it will influence any of the low-IQ Trump-bots who still support him: "I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got." Gowdy reminded the Fox audience that "It looks to me like the FBI was doing what President Trump said: 'I want you to do, find it out.'" In the now infamous Comey memo Trump has tried a little gaslighting: "If anyone connected with my campaign was working with Russia, I want you to investigate it," causing Gowdy to say, "Sounds to me like that was exactly what the FBI did."

Very different from Trump's bleating at his Nashville rally about Democrats in the FBI infiltrating his campaign, part of his effort to undercut law enforcement in the eyes of the morons who still haven't figured out what Trump is.

Even crackpot wing nut Andrew Napolitano, Trump-promoted Fox New "expert" said late Tuesday there is “no evidence” to support Señor Trumpanzee’s “Spygate” malarkey that the FBI planted spies during his 2016 presidential campaign.

Napolitano, the news network's senior judicial analyst, said on "The Story With Martha MacCallum" that Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is making a “baseless” claim.

“The allegations by Mayor Giuliani over the weekend, which would lead to us believe that the Trump people think that the FBI had an undercover agent who inveigled his way into the campaign and was there as a spy on the campaign, seem to be baseless,” Napolitano said.

There is no evidence for that whatsoever, he added.

Giuliani suggested on Sunday that former President Obama and his top intelligence officials “knew” that the FBI had used a top-secret informant to allegedly spy on Trump’s campaign.

The FBI did use an informant, identified in media reports as American professor Stefan Halper, who met with three Trump campaign advisers in 2016-- George Papadopoulos, Carter Page and Sam Clovis.

No evidence has emerged, however, that the informant was used to spy on the campaign for political purposes.

Napolitano said Tuesday that the use of an informant is “standard operating procedure” in intelligence gathering and during criminal investigations.

The only one buying Trump's Spy-Gate tactic is, of course, Nunes, who has taken up residence up Trump's ass, something that the intelligence community should be looking into.

Texas Republican Blake Farenthold Suddenly Quits Congress-- And No One Knows Why (Yet)

In his interview with Vice (above) Trey Gowdy explains why “you won’t see me running for political office again. I’m surprised he’s even sticking it out for the rest of his term. He’s counting down the days--“19 more drives to the airport,” he said. And he admitted that the only goal of today’s Republican Party is to win elections. (I have some sad news for you, Trey-- it’s the only goal of today’s Democratic Party too.)

Meanwhile everyone thought far right sex-predator Blake Farenthold was going to stick it out ‘till the end of his term too-- until Friday evening. Todd Gillman at the Dallas News broke the story that Farentold suddenly resigned. So what happened to make him change his mind yesterday? Believe me, it wasn’t anything as philosophical as Trey Gowdy’s reasons. Gillman wrote that “he made no mention on Friday of any of the allegations that ended his congressional career, and made no apologies for using $84,000 in taxpayer funds to settle a sexual harassment suit” (Money he still hasn’t paid back, despite having publicly promised to do so.

The former conservative radio host and four-term lawmaker said in December that he had "no idea how to run a congressional office" when he got elected and as a result, "I allowed a workplace culture to take root in my office that was too permissive and decidedly unprofessional. It accommodated destructive gossip, offhand comments, off-color jokes and behavior that in general was less than professional."

House Speaker Paul Ryan reportedly had prodded Farenthold to give up his re-election plan.

Farenthold, 56, won his seat in 2010 as part of the nationwide tea party wave, defeating a 28-year Democratic incumbent by a few hundred votes. He spent weeks last fall trying to survive the scandal, even as a wave of housecleaning hit politicians, media moguls and celebrities facing allegations of harassment or even assault.

Farenthold acknowledged that he had engaged in lewd conversations with staff, and tolerated such talk among aides. He maintained his innocence in the claim that led to a settlement, insisting that accuser Lauren Greene had been fired for poor performance.

But pressure built fast for him to give up his seat after the size of the settlement, and the use of taxpayer funds, became public.

Last month, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) pressed Ryan to hold Farenthold to his promise to repay the settlement. On Friday, the head of the House Republicans' campaign arm also called on the Texan to uphold the promise.

...A Farenthold spokeswoman did not respond to messages seeking an explanation for Farenthold's failure to repay the funds as promised.

Farenthold's Twitter account was deleted Friday afternoon. His office provided no explanation.

Rice University political scientist Mark Jones noted that under state law, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott would have to set an emergency election to prevent the seat from remaining vacant until January, when the winner of the November election is sworn in.

The resignation took effect at 5 p.m. on Friday-- just over an hour after Farenthold announced the move.

Republicans will pick a nominee in a primary runoff on May 22. Bech Bruun, the former Texas Water Board Commission chairman, narrowly edged former Victoria County GOP Chairman Michael Cloud in a six-way primary.

Democrat Roy Barrera, a federal court security guard, took 41 percent in a four-way March primary. In the runoff, he faces a former congressional aide, Eric Holguin, who drew 23 percent.

The impact of the resignation wasn't immediately clear. If Abbott calls a special election, the winner could have an edge in November. But that could be risky for Republicans, given the hasty exit by Farenthold.

The Democrats are vastly outgunned on campaign cash. Bruun raised $272,000 through mid-February, four times Cloud's haul. Barrera reported no campaign donations, while Holguin brought in $28,000.

TX-27 is one of Texas’ most gerrymandered districts-- a Tom Delay special-- to create a safe GOP seat in a Hispanic area. The district is thought of as the Corpus Christie seat but it heads north into the suburbs southwest of Houston and way north and west into the suburbs east of Austin. In 2016 Trump beat Hillary 60.1% to 36.5%. Delay managed to create a district with an R+13 PVI, virtually impossible for a Democrat to win… except in a massive wave election. Republican officials are still whining about Farenthold-- a multimillionaire-- not replaying the taxpayer money. Ryan’s spokesperson: “Mr. Farenthold made a commitment that he would reimburse taxpayers for the settlement. He reiterated his commitment to the speaker and the speaker expects him to follow through. Steve Stivers, chairman of the NRCC: “I hope Blake is true to his word and pays back the $84,000 of taxpayer money he used as a settlement. As I have said repeatedly, Congress must hold ourselves to a higher standard and regain the trust of the American people.” I guess no one expects Farenthold to pay for the special election he just triggered.

Midnight Meme Of The Day

-by Noah

Well, this is the week when they all return to Washington; all those $enators and Congre$$cretins. The Hou$e and $enate freeloader class is back in session, ready to continue living off our hard-earned tax dollars and envelopes of cash from the K Street Bribery Squads. The August recess is over and the Washington prostitutes of all kinds are ready to go back, full time, to doing what they do best.

Today's meme has three of the most repellant humanoids you would ever want to meet, and, yeah, I'd love to meet them... in a dark alley, one at a time or all three at once, it wouldn't matter... believe me. I may be old, but they are slow and have dulled senses. I'm good for the 90 seconds it would take. Besides, the crowbar is one of the most useful and versatile tools humankind has ever come up with. Hell, I might even show up with a power drill.

Gowdy spent all that money on Benghazi theatrics and ended up admitting that nothing could have saved the victims. One of his seconds even admitted the investigations were really all about discrediting Hillary Clinton and lowering her approval ratings. To republicans, it was well worth the expenditure of our money so they could get their boy Trump elected.

Cruz is so obnoxious and evil that even his fellow politicians can't stand the sight or stench of him. Roll that one around in your brain for a while. You don't even have to think about him pleading for $$$ for Hurricane Harvey recovery after being against the same for victims of Superstorm Sandy.

And Turtle Boy, well, he comes from the state where the ACA has arguably worked the best and he just couldn't stand that now, could he? What a slithering sack of shit he is. I swear, the last time I saw him on my television, Dung Beetles were crawling out of his nose and ears.

Yeah, I know, most people would cross to the other side of the street if they saw any of these three vermin walking down the street. Why should I bother? What would you do, given half a chance?

The Far Right Has A New Villain: Trey Gowdy

Wednesday Ken delved into the costly and meaningless farce of the Benghazi! report from the failed Trey Gowdy witch-hunt. Gowdy doesn't want to give away any of the suspense so he just answers any questions with a request that people read the 800 pages of drivel. At a press conference he admitted he doesn't wear a "Hillary Clinton Lied, People Died" tee-shirt. "And you've never seen that bumpersticker," he added, "on any of my vehicles." This absolutely incensed everyone who plans to Trump-- AKA, conspiracy nuts.

Yesterday, MSNBC's Steve Benen looked at how the right-wing crackpots are now cannibalizing their former icon from an especially backward part of South Carolina. His committee failed to jail Hillary and now the Hate Talk Radio morons who had their psychotic hopes stoked for over a year, are fuming. I wonder if Trump will get tee shirts and bumperstickers made up to sell at his performances.

Just yesterday, I predicted that some conservatives would turn on Gowdy, in whom they’d invested so much hope. The far-right South Carolinian was supposed to bury, not exonerate, Hillary Clinton, I wrote, and his inability to deliver a useful campaign weapon will likely be seen as both a failure and a betrayal.

A few hours later, far-right radio personality Michael Savage told his audience, “Trey Gowdy should be impeached for wasting my time! He promised us a lot! Remember?” (Members of Congress can be expelled, but not impeached, under the U.S. Constitution.)

Of course, Savage isn’t alone. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank explained today that “conspiracy-minded” conservatives are blaming Gowdy “for failing to deliver the goods.” There was a meeting yesterday of the “Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi,” where members agreed the far-right South Carolinian let them down by failing to confirm their beliefs.

A woman in the crowd floated a new Benghazi conspiracy. “Has someone in the GOP leadership gotten their fingers involved in watering down some of this to benefit Secretary Clinton?” she asked. Nobody rebutted this idea.

Herein lies a lesson for Republicans who are perpetually trying to appease the far right: It’s a fool’s errand. They went to the tea party-- and now they’re taking Donald Trump to the prom. Likewise, then-House Speaker John Boehner named the Benghazi committee because activists were dissatisfied that seven previous congressional investigations had failed to uncover major scandal material. Now an eighth has produced more of the same-- and the agitators are as agitated as ever.

There’s a certain twisted logic to this. The unhinged right starts with the ideologically satisfying answer-- President Obama and Hillary Clinton are guilty of horrible Benghazi-related wrongdoing-- and then works backwards, looking for “proof” that matches the conclusion. When their ostensible allies fail to tell these activists what they want to hear, they could reevaluate their bogus assumptions, but it’s vastly easier to believe Republicans have let them down.

Wait, it gets worse.

As Milbank reported, a former Ted Cruz adviser complained yesterday that Gowdy “did not draw a connection between the dots.” And why not? According to retired Gen. Thomas McInerney, the Benghazi Committee chairman “had his reasons-- political” for holding back.

McInerney “speculated that congressional leadership had approved ‘black operations’ to run weapons from Benghazi to Islamic State forces in Syria.”

This is what it’s come to: Benghazi conspiracy theorists are so creative, and so unmoved by evidence or reason, that they can convince themselves that congressional Republicans are in on the conspiracy.

As Donald Trump and his allies try to incorporate ridiculous Benghazi rhetoric into their 2016 platform, keep in mind who his unhinged allies are.

The House Defective Committee on Benghazi!Benghazi!Benghazi! upchucks its "report," and Ambassador Chris Stevens's sister isn't impressed

Jeff Danziger [click to enlarge]

"It would be much more useful for Congress to focus on providing resources for security for all State Department facilities around the world—for increasing personnel, language capabilities, for increasing staff to build relationships, particularly in North Africa and the Middle East. I would love to hear they are drastically increasing the budget. . . .

"The only questions that I have are not answerable by anyone investigated or questioned by the committee. My questions are about why the militiamen attacked the compound in the first place. What were their intentions? It’d be interesting to know that. . . ."

-- Dr. Anne Stevens, sister of Ambassador Chris
Stevens, responding to the new House "report"

by Ken

Yes, there's plenty of blame for Democrats in the fine mess our government has devolved into, but the notion that there's anything like equal or equivalent blame with the Republicans -- who did it and they're proud -- seems to me dangerous nonsense, and nonsense that an understandably seething electorate may easily fall for. I doubt, for example, that there's going to be widespread understanding of the the Republican chickens that came home to roost this week.

I want to write about the Supreme Court and the two highly surprising "big" decisions it delivered in the rush to vamoose from this strange odd-man-down term, and the stark relief in which we can see the decades of legal rape and pillage performed by the judicial perverts stuffed onto the federal bench by anti-constitutional Republican presidents and Senate advisers-and-consenters. But that'll have to wait till Friday, so we can present this urgent bulletin regarding the finally disgorged "report" of the House Defective Committiee on Benghazi!Benghazi!Benghazi!, chaired by that imbecile and thug Trey Gowdy.

For starters, it would be nice if the Republicans on the Defective Committee were to into their pockets and put together some cash to reimburse us taxpayers for the mindless boondoggle they've perpetrated. This "report," after all, could have been written -- in fact, more or less was written without any of the "work" the committee pretended to do at taxpayer expense. It's the same farrago of innuendo and nonsense they were spouting chorally before the "hearings" began, which they tried to stick in the mouths of anyone who'd go along, with singular lack of success. But acknowledging this would have dragged them into the realm of facts and actual knowledge, a realm that makes them extremely uncomfortable, and where they consequently spend as little time as possible.

Second . . . well, what's the point? This is, after all, a Defective Committee that was out for blood for the horrible failure to protect our diplomats but that never troubled to ask the role of these very same Republican America-haters who quite consciously and systematically put those diplomats all over the world at increasing risk by failing to provide funds to protect them. You'd think that some of them, ill-fortuned enough to have a shred of conscience, would be falling on their swords, but if you think that, you don't know much about patriotism of the right-wing variety.

As regards the "work" of the Defective Committee, The New Yorker's Robin Wright found an excellent source in Anne Stevens, sister of the murdered ambassador, Chris Stevens. She notes that Dr. Stevens, who's chief of pediatric rheumatology at Seattle Children's Hospital, "has served as a family spokesperson" since her brother's death. They spoke, Robin writes in a post she put up yesterday ("Chris Stevens's Family: Don't Blame Hillary Clinton for Benghazi"), "twice in the past three days, including shortly after the House Select Committee report was issued."

Dr. Stevens recalled that her brother had been fascinated by the Middle East since childhood, when he dressed up as Lawrence of Arabia, with a towel and a pot atop his head. He served in the Peace Corps, in Morocco, before joining the Foreign Service, and he served twice in Libya before his final posting there, as well as in Damascus, Cairo, Jerusalem, and Riyadh.

Chris Stevens's brother Tom and sister Anne at a memorial
for the ambassador in San Francisco in October 2012

It may not come as a great surprise that Dr. Stevens doesn't think much of the committee's inquiry, or of the way cynical politicians have tried to hijack her brother's death.

Whom do you fault for the lack of security that resulted in the death of your brother, in Benghazi?

It is clear, in hindsight, that the facility was not sufficiently protected by the State Department and the Defense Department. But what was the underlying cause? Perhaps if Congress had provided a budget to increase security for all missions around the world, then some of the requests for more security in Libya would have been granted. Certainly the State Department is underbudgeted.

I do not blame Hillary Clinton or Leon Panetta. They were balancing security efforts at embassies and missions around the world. And their staffs were doing their best to provide what they could with the resources they had. The Benghazi Mission was understaffed. We know that now. But, again, Chris knew that. It wasn’t a secret to him. He decided to take the risk to go there. It is not something they did to him. It is something he took on himself.

What did you learn from the two new reports by House Republicans and Democrats?

It doesn’t look like anything new. They concluded that the U.S. compound in Benghazi was not secure. We knew that.

What did you think of Secretary Clinton’s conduct on Benghazi?

She has taken full responsibility, being head of the State Department, for what occurred. She took measures to respond to the review board’s recommendations. She established programs for a better security system. But it is never going to be perfect. Part of being a diplomat is being out in the community. We all recognize that there’s a risk in serving in a dangerous environment. Chris thought that was very important, and he probably would have done it again. I don’t see any usefulness in continuing to criticize her. It is very unjust.

After years of congressional investigations, do you feel that your brother’s death has been politicized in Washington?

Yes! Definitely politicized. Every report I read that mentions him specifically has a political bent, an accusatory bent. One point that seems to be brought up again and again is the accusation that the attack was a response to the video. I could understand why that conclusion would be made, because it was right after the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Egypt. But, frankly, it doesn’t matter that that was the thinking, that night, about why the attack occurred. It’s irrelevant to bring that up again and again. It is done purely for political reasons.

It would be much more useful for Congress to focus on providing resources for security for all State Department facilities around the world—for increasing personnel, language capabilities, for increasing staff to build relationships, particularly in North Africa and the Middle East. I would love to hear they are drastically increasing the budget.

Did your brother ever talk about the risks in Libya?

Even before we had an Embassy in Tripoli, he fell in love with the land, the people, and the rich, rich history. He sent pictures. He saw the potential of Libya. When the revolution occurred, he was very optimistic about the future. He was happy to be involved, to be our special envoy in Benghazi for a year. He wanted to be part of this exciting prospect of a free Libya.

He did tell us about the dangers then. He told us about a car bomb that had shaken the hotel where he had offices in Benghazi. But, when he talked about incidents like that, he never showed any fear or reluctance to continue the work. He took danger in stride.

It was so important to have a U.S. presence in Benghazi and to show support for the American center being set up and other programs, such as the Benghazi Medical Center. We were helping them establish their new society. I don’t think we’ll ever know why he made the decision to take the risk of going to Benghazi, knowing there were multiple attacks. It was clearly a bad decision.

Did he ever talk about not having enough security?

He talked about his knowledge of the militias and the huge number of arms loose in Libya. That was one of his concerns and challenges. But he did not talk about that as a worry of his own security, which doesn’t mean he wasn’t concerned.

Are there any questions left in your mind about what happened, why the U.S. didn’t respond faster, why Washington didn’t do more?

The only questions that I have are not answerable by anyone investigated or questioned by the committee. My questions are about why the militiamen attacked the compound in the first place. What were their intentions? It’d be interesting to know that—and to hear what their views are and what they were thinking. It has nothing to do with what the State Department or the Defense Department was supposed to do that night. I think everyone did their very best in response to this event.

Do you think it’s fair to make Benghazi an election issue?

With the many issues in the current election, to use that incident—and to use Chris’s death as a political point—is not appropriate.

How would Chris have felt about this election?

I know he had a lot of respect for Secretary Clinton. He admired her ability to intensely read the issues and understand the whole picture.

[Robin Wright notes that her interview with Dr. Anne Stevens "has been condensed and edited for clarity."]

#

The Case For Electability-- Or Do You Just Not Care That Much If Trump Becomes President?

Endorsements from Trey Gowdy and Nikki Haley didn't save Marco Rubio in the GOP's crucial South Carolina primary. Trump won the multi-candidate contest comfortably and beat Rubio by ten points. He won all 50 delegates to the Republican Party convention. In fact, in Greenville and Spartanburg counties-- Gowdy's district-- Rubio came in a miserable third. Friday, on Meet The Press Daily, Gowdy, the failed Benghazi Committee extremist, petulantly endorsed Trump. "I was a Rubio guy and Marco lost, but I will enthusiastically support the Republican nominee." That's because Gowdy puts his crackpot party before his country. Gowdy didn't go as far as the unemployed/unemployable Rick Perry-- who once diagnosed Trump as "a cancer on conservatism"-- and is now openly sucking around to be Trump's running mate. Why would anyone want to be the Chief Mate on the Titanic?

Well, it isn't so clear that Trump is going down as some anti-Trumpists predict. In fact, polling shows him generally in a decent position to win in November if the Democrats are stupid enough to nominate a candidate disliked and distrusted by so much of the electorate. Trump is gaining on Hillary. The Washington Post/ABC News poll released this morning reports that "Never in the history of the Post-ABC poll have the two major party nominees been viewed as harshly as Clinton and Trump. Nearly 6 in 10 registered voters say they have negative impressions of both major candidates. Overall, Clinton’s net negative rating among registered voters is minus-16, while Trump’s is minus-17, though Trump’s numbers have improved since March." Overall, Trump is beating her 46-44%. This morning Bernie told George Stephanopoulos that "We need a campaign, an election, coming up which does not have two candidates who are really very, very strongly disliked. I don't want to see the American people voting for the lesser of two evil. I want the American people to be voting for a vision of economic justice, of social justice, of environmental justice, of racial justice." Hillary-campers claim that once the primary is over and the Bernie backers coalesce around the nominee, everything will be fine. I wonder what they're smoking? Bernie's movement isn't a beauty contest about who has a better personality. The issues he raised during the campaign preclude large segments of his coalition from voting for Hillary or Trump. I'm sure many will get hoodwinked into voting for Hillary as "the lesser of two evils," but I suspect many will stay home and many will vote for Jill Stein. I ran this unscientific little twitter poll Friday and Saturday:

Those same Hillary-campers who insist-- don't worry-- everything is going to be fine when Bernie gets out of the primary, don't seem to comprehend the degree of disdain his supporters have for everything Hillary stands for. Sorry, it's not Obama vs Clinton 2008 again. This one's about values.

Saturday, Bernie's campaign released a polling memo from Tulchin Research, one I'm sure Bernie hopes the super-delegates will consider seriously before they nominate a candidate who is so weak that she can be beaten by Trump.

Democrats seeking a presidential nominee to lead their party to victory in November should take notice of the overwhelming preponderance of data demonstrating that Bernie Sanders is the strongest Democratic candidate to defeat Donald Trump. For months, public polling has found Sanders running consistently better than Hillary Clinton against Trump both nationally and in key swing states across the country and that trend remains very much in tact today.

The most recent Real Clear Politics (RCP) polling averages over the past month find Sanders leading Trump by a 11.2 percentage point margin (50.6%-39.4%)-- more than three times the size of Clinton’s 3.3-point average lead (45.8%-42.5%). Here we present some of the most recent national polls which all find Sanders running stronger than Clinton against Trump.

That Sanders runs better than Clinton against Trump is largely due to Sanders’s superior standing with independents as well as his strong base of support among younger voters, who back him in greater numbers against Trump than they do Clinton.

Also driving Sanders’s stronger showing against Trump is that he is by far the most popular candidate for president remaining in the race. According to the most recent CBS News/New York Times poll, Sanders is viewed favorably by voters with 41% favorable to 33% unfavorable for an 8-point margin. This positive profile stands in stark contrast to both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, who are both deeply unpopular. Clinton’s favorables are 31% to 52% unfavorable (-21) while Trump is slightly more unpopular (26% favorable to 55% unfavorable, -29).

Additionally, Sanders runs markedly better than Clinton against Trump in many key battleground states. In fact, Sanders leads Trump by wider margins than Clinton in all of the public polling that has been conducted in swing states over the past few months.

Krugman's cute Sanders dead-enders phraseology couldn't have been more effective to guarantee there would be inadequate post-convention unity than if Trump invented the term himself. But as everyone knows now, poor ole Paul has deluded himself into believing that Obama has ended inequality and Wall Street excess with (ever so slightly) higher tax rates, (an inadequate, compromised) Dodd-Frank Act and the (fraction of a loaf) Affordable Care Act. He should get out more and, you know... meet real people. Like Krystal Ball who, although she once worked for MSNBC, apparently is listening and hearing and understands that hand-wringing over party unity misses the point; no one cares about your precious parties.

As Hillary Clinton joylessly stumbles her way to the Democratic nomination, calls have increased for Bernie Sanders to either drop out of the race altogether or, at least, to stop fighting so darn hard. We’re told that Bernie should drop out for the good of the party. Bernie should drop out so that Hillary can make her general election “pivot” (which presumably means she can be free of the burden of pretending to be a liberal). Bernie should drop out so that Hillary can focus on Trump. According to this logic, Bernie and his band of loyalists need to get pragmatic, face the music, have a reality check. Hogwash. Doesn’t anyone see what I see? Bernie Sanders is our best chance to beat Donald Trump and to prove to the young voters backing him that the Democratic party actually stands for something.

Hillary dead-enders-- from Biden, Reid, Feinstein and Debbie Wasserman Schultz down the food chain to the corporate media shills at MSNBC-- want you to believe it's all over. It isn't. It never will be. Because of us.

On It's Second Anniversary Of Disgraceful Waste, Do Hillary Clinton Supporters Know Patrick Murphy Voted To Establish The Benghazi Committee?

2 of Congress' biggest idiots give conservatism a bad name-- Gowdy and Murphy

Conservatives always try to portray themselves-- falsely-- as serious stewards of the pubic purse. One of the biggest boondoggles in recent times, the Benghazi Committee, was authorized by the votes of 225 conservative Republicans and 7 of the most conservative Democrats to serve in Congress in the last 5 decades. Conceived as a hyper-partisan witch-hunt to damage the reputation of Hillary Clinton in the run-up to the 2016 election, every single Republican voted for it. Of the 7 right-wing Democrats who went along, 3-- Arizona Blue Dog Ron Barber, Georgia Blue Dog John Barrow and West Virginia Blue Dog Nick Rahall-- were immediately defeated by their constituents and one-- North Carolina Blue Dog Mike McIntyre, seeing he had no chance at reelection-- quickly announced his retirement. 3 of the treacherous Democrats are still serving in Congress, still working against the interests of their own party and against the interests of the working families in their own districts:

• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)

Sinema is being groomed by K Street whore Steny Hoyer for a congressional leadership position. The DCCC shores up the unpopular Peterson with massive campaign spending, $4 million in 2014 along. And Murphy is being pushed for an open Florida Senate seat by Chuck Schumer and the Wall Street banksters who like the cut of his jib. And people wonder why there is so little party discipline?

Anyway, yesterday was the second anniversary of the establishment of the Benghazi Committee and these conservatives have wasted at least twenty million tax pay dollars on their partisan endeavor, a partisan endeavor that may have made brainwashed Hate Talk Radio and Fox News fans surer than ever that Hillary Clinton is the greater-of-two-evils in any race against any Republican, but, if anything, it has only made normal people more sympathetic to what she's forced by deranged right-wing extremists to go through.

At best, a fishing expedition that led nowhere near any wrong-doing involving Benghazi, the Committee was a big-- and costly-- waste of time and effort that has backfired on many of the conservatives-- remember how it put a giant boulder in Kevin McCarthy's career track, for example and has made Trey Gowdy's name into a stand-up comedy punch line-- who backed it. Even Trump made fun of Gowdy as a loser:

One more thing about Murphy-- who rarely gets asked by the paid off Florida press about the Benghazi Committee vote, was embarrassed when the Tampa Bay Times finally did. The Times reported that Murphy's campaign spokesman denied Murphy was trying to help the Republicans embarrass Hillary with his vote to authorize the Benghazi committee. Joshua Karp: "When Patrick voted for the Benghazi committee, he was 100 percent confident it would vindicate Hillary Clinton, and he warned the committee must not be 'used as a way to politicize this tragedy and the deaths of four Americans.'" If Murphy really imagined the Benghazi committee was going to vindicate Hillary, he's the only Democrat who did-- and he didn't pay attention to the warnings of the House Democratic leadership.

Or maybe he's the stupidest person in Congress, which also explains why Wall Street has been spending so much money to help get him in his primary against Alan Grayson. If you'd like to help Grayson win the Democratic Senate nomination, by the way, just click on the thermometer:

Herr Trumpf's Barrage Against Trey Gowdy Isn't Really About Rubio Being A Threat

Will Herr Trumpf schlong the Republican Party?

Herr Trumpf fired a warning shot-- a heavy calibre one-- over the bow of congressional Republicans. So far not a single member of the House or Senate has endorsed him. And some-- like Bob Dold (IL), David Jolly (FL) and Carlos Curbelo (FL)-- have actually said they won't vote for him if he's the party nominee. His opponents, however all have congressmen and senators coming out for them. Herr takes those endorsements as rebukes. Previously Trumpf didn't seem to care that much. He didn't even react to Curbelo pointing out that he's a "fraud," "an opportunist," a "farce, "a clown," a "liar," and "an embarrassment to our country" followed by a statement that if he were the GOP nominee, he wouldn't support him. But he flipped out this morning when he found out that the Rubio campaign had announced that Trey Gowdy (R-SC) is endorsing Rubio and coming to Iowa to campaign with him.

The funny thing is, Trumpf should be happy Gowdy, who he once touted as someone he could see as his Attorney General, endorsed Rubio and not the real threat to his candidacy: Ted Cruz. The most recent CBS poll of likely GOP caucus participants doesn't paint Rubio, who has virtually no organization in Iowa, as a serious contender:

• Cruz- 40%
• Herr Trumpf- 31%
• Rubio- 12%
• Dr. Ben- 6%

All the other candidates are rutting around within the margin of error... and Dr. Ben has been sinking like a stone and will be down there with the Jebs and Christies and Fiorinas and Huckabees momentarily. Yet this was the Trumpish twitter tirade about the endorsement Sunday morning:

It really wasn't about Trey Gowdy or Marco Rubio. It was about other Republican congressmen and senators getting ready to unload on Herr Trumpf. He's signaling them that he-- and his ragtag army of angry miscreants-- will not let it go unavenged. Conventional-conservative journalist Byron York may be wringing his hands over the Trumpf reaction and the reaction of the lo-info Trumpf fans-- but Herr is really trying to do here is prevent a waterfall of endorsements by trusted Republican elected officials for his opponents.

Trumpf would do well to take under advisement what Pennsylvania Democrat Matt Cartwright has said about politician to politician endorsements. (Keep in mind, virtually the entire Democratic establishment endorsed Cartwright's Blue Dog opponent, Tim Holden, when Cartwright, an outspoken progressive, primaried him. Cartwright won-- in a landslide.) "What matters is your message," Cartwright told us, "and making sure you have the means to get it out there. Those kinds of endorsements worked 40 or 50 or 100 years ago; I think we are at a point now where a candidate's collecting endorsements of other politicians at best is a waste of time, and at worst is actually counterproductive. It's definitely a waste of time, because nowadays in high-profile races information on candidates is so readily and directly available that voters don't depend on party bosses and ward-heelers to tell them who to vote for. It can even be counterproductive, because the politicians bestowing their endorsements may in fact be individually or collectively despised. In my own experience with a hotly contested primary contest, I was a complete political neophyte in my first election; my opponent was a 20-year incumbent congressman. You could count my endorsements from elected officials and local party committees on one hand; my opponent's list of endorsements was gargantuan. I just focused on raising enough money to get my message out. Since I was able to do that, I did get my message out. Since the voters liked my message more than the other guy's, nobody paid any attention to all those other politicians' endorsements, and I won... by a lot."

Does anyone really care what Trey Gowdy has to say? Aside from media windbags, no... probably not even in Greenville, Spartanburg and Cowpens in his little corner of northwest South Carolina. And, again, Herr Trumpf's rival in South Carolina is not Rubio; it's Cruz. Again, both the most recent polls of South Carolina Republicans show a Trumpf-Cruz contest with Rubio a very distant third. The CBS poll has Herr at 38%, Cruz at 23% and Rubio at 12% (with no one else in contention) and the Augusta Chronicle poll has Trumpf at 28% with Cruz nipping at his heals with 21% and Rubio at just 12%, still having to contend with Jeb and Dr. Ben at 10% each. Gowdy is actually doing Trumpf a favor by endorsing a not-Cruz candidate!

All that stuff about Gowdy being "widely admired as a principled conservative fighter" is a bunch of hogwash, especially among Trumpf fan boys. When Gowdy proclaims that "Marco is a rock solid conservative and a strong leader we can trust," it just sounds like total irrelevant politician-speak that will sway exactly no voters anywhere. And when he adds that "I look forward to campaigning in Iowa with him and introducing my good friend across the state," who gives a damn anywhere?

By attacking Gowdy, though, Trumpf has served notice on other GOP congressmen and senators that there may be a price to pay if they butt in. There are 42 Republican congressmembers representing swing districts who could, potentially, lose their seats if Trumpf supporters stayed home on election day. That's a lot of seats. And if Trumpf decided to really go for the jugular in states with Senate elections like Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, possibly even Iowa and Kentucky, he could absolutely kill the Republicans' chances not just of holding onto the Senate-- but of even any chance to win it back in 2018. Trumpf senses he has an even bigger problem with the GOP establishment now, as they move to prevent his supporters from being able to vote in primaries. Minutes ago he was tweeting about unfair treatment by the Virginia Republican Party... and, ominously, blaming the RNC.

Neocon comedy

Trey Gowdy And Paul Ryan-- What A Team!

Yesterday it was Trey Gowdy-- South Carolina's walking advertisement for extreme botox malpractice-- who nominated Paul Ryan to be speaker. For those who have short memories, Michigan Democratic congressional candidate, Paul Clements, reminded his supporters that Ryan, more than anything else, represents "an extremist vision of American domestic policy. The Path to Prosperity outlined by his budget proposal seeks to do many things, like...

• Dismantling Medicare
• Repealing the 2010 Affordable Health Care Act
• Dramatic cuts to food aid for the impoverished (remember his comment about the "culture of dependency?")
• Cut education funding by $145 billion
• Charge students interest on their student loans while still in college

Yesterday when Ryan said "our party has lost its vision and we’re going to replace that vision," that's what he was talking about. The guy is no moderate-- nor even mainstream. He got 200 votes to be the Republican Party nominee for Speaker; Taliban Dan only 43. Today the full House elected him Speaker. Gowdy will need powerful friends, like Speaker Ryan, as his ethics case-- using taxpayer money to unfairly try to influence the presidential election-- wends through the system. This week, Alan Grayson the Florida congressman who issued the formal complaint against Gowdy and Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy-- Ryan's not going to hold him over, is he?-- sent supplemental information, new evidence, to the Chief Counsel of the Office of Congressional Ethics.

The basis of Grayson's charges against Gowdy and McCarthy are that they violated "federal law and House rules by using official funds appropriated to the Select Committee on Benghazi to pay political or campaign related expenses."

On October 10, 2015, the New York Times reported that a former investigator for the Republican staff of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, Bradley F. Podliska, planned to file a lawsuitt in federal court challenging his termination on the basis that he was fired in retaliation for refusing to abandon his efforts to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the 2012 Benghazi attack and instead focus primarily on investigating Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The following day, the New York Times reported that, according to senior Republican officials, Speaker Boehner had a longstanding interest in the Benghazi attack and that the Select Committee's focus on "Mrs. Clinton's emails gave him a way to keep the issue alive and cause political problems for her campaign." In addition, on October 14, 2015, Representative Richard Hanna told Utica radio station WIBX (950 AM) in a live interview that, "I think that there was a big part of this investigation that was designed to go after people, and an individual, Hillary Clinton."

Accordingly, it now appears to be virtually beyond dispute that funds appropriated to the Select Committee on Benghazi have been diverted, in violation of federal law and House rules, to the purpose of opposing the presidential campaign Hillary Clinton. The House Ethics Manual has long proscribed specifically such a gross misuse of appropriated funds.

I trust that the Office of Congressional Ethics will conduct a thorough and diligent investigation of this egregious violation of federal law and House rules, including interviewing all those named in this letter who have knowledge of the extent to which appropriated funds were misused for political purposes.

Someone's got to hold these extremists' feet to the fire. Thank goodness we have someone like Alan Grayson in Congress. No one else has done this.

Someone Should Find Something Useful For Trey Gowdy To Investigate

Today, while Trey Gawdy's absurd and failing witch-hunt was playing out on TV-- all eleven gruesome hours of it-- Alan Grayson sent out a message to his supporters that says, in part

"I’m on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. I’ve read every classified document regarding Benghazi. Take it from me: Hillary Clinton did nothing wrong. This is the 'scandal' that never was. So it must be utterly mortifying to her to see the Republicans wasting taxpayer money to conduct this political vendetta against her.

"But there are some people who do deserve a heaping helping of blame. Like the three Democrats in the House today (among 188 of us) who voted for the Benghazi Committee show trial. Trey Gowdy referred to them in his opening statement today, pointing out that they had voted for his anti-Hillary witch-hunt.

"One of those three is my Senate Democratic primary in Florida, Patrick Murphy.

"He ignored warnings at the time, from everyone from Nancy Pelosi on down. He voted with the Republicans to authorize this evil farce. Because that’s what he really is: a Republican.

"And listen to Patrick Murphy’s incredible post hoc rationalization: He was sure that the Benghazi Committee-- run by a former GOP prosecutor-- would exonerate Hillary Clinton."

I don't think anyone who watched the televised hearings can possibly think anyone could be either so stupid or so naive as to think Try Gowdy had any intention of "exonerating" Hillary Clinton. The fact the Murphy-- along with the two other corrupt Blue Dogs who voted to authorize the witch hunt (Kyrsten Sinema and Collin Peterson)-- consistently voted with the Republicans and are always there so that right-wingers like Gowdy can  say, "but it was bipartisan," says a lot more about Murphy's motivations than his claims about vindication and exoneration.

If Congress needs a serious topic to investigate, rather than Gowdy's disgraceful partisan show trial, they should look into how the NSA skirts U.S. law-- the ones that prohibit U.S. intelligence agencies from spying on American citizens-- by paying the British-- the U.K.'s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), their version of "our" NSA-- to do it. This is from Michael Gurnow's book, The Edward Snowden Affair: Exposing the Politics and Media Behind the NSA Scandal:

The day Snowden was granted asylum, The Guardian celebrated with another exclusive: "NSA pays £100m in secret funding for GCHQ." It proudly proclaims “Secret payments revealed in leaks by Edward Snowden.” The article answers the question left from the June 21 Tempora report of which intelligence agency calls the shots.

Largely because Britain’s comparatively lax surveillance laws are a "selling point," the U.S. government started financially supporting many of GCHQ’s intelligence stations and programs after GCHQ suffered substantial domestic budget cuts. One such British spy project hopes to ultimately "exploit any phone, anywhere, any time." Having poured over 100 million pounds into contracted British intelligence services from 2010-2013, the NSA is allowed to prioritize surveillance affairs at some of Britain’s spy stations. Half the cost of GCHQ’s Cyprus station is paid by U.S. taxpayers. But Washington is not always happy with what it gets for its citizens’ money. Internal, classified documents comment, "GCHQ must pull its weight and be seen to pull its weight" because the U.S. government had "raised a number of issues with regards to meeting NSA’s minimum expectations." This is perhaps because 60 percent of Britain’s filtered data still comes from American intelligence. It is obvious a portion of the nine-figure paycheck, revealed in GCHQ’s "investment portfolios," was for foreign surveillance of U.S. citizens and subsequent data-swapping services. One classified review brags of how GCHQ made "unique contributions" to the NSA investigation of the American citizen behind the failed 2010 Times Square car bomb attack. The plot by Faizal Shahzad was foiled by a T-shirt vendor who noticed that a suspiciously parked car happened to be smoking.

A companion article titled,"GCHQ: inside the top secret world of Britain’s biggest spy agency," appeared the same day. Its focus is largely on the daily life within GCHQ, its history, but also its plans. The report admits, "Of all the highly classified documents about GCHQ revealed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, this has to be one of the least sensitive." The exposé discusses the nuances of working inside the world’s largest surveillance facility whose annual budget is one billion pounds. (The NSA’s yearly allotment is 17 times greater.) Employees have bake sales, annual in-house sporting events, team vacations and chat using an internal networking site sardonically named "SpySpace," a titular mockup of Facebook’s predecessor, MySpace.

But the article moves to more substantial matters by grabbing the loose thread of cellular phone surveillance that its bookend report left dangling. The British intelligence agency seeks to "[collect] voice and SMS and geo-locating phone" data and "intelligence from all the extra functionality that iPhones and BlackBerrys offer." A classified document recognizes the technological climate and sets the agenda: "Google Apps already has over 30 million users. This is good news. It allows us to exploit the mobile advantage." As with telecommunications providers’ government compliance, on February 8, 2011, it was noted that "Legal assurances [by cell phone manufacturers were] now believed to be good."

In its conclusion-- a review of GCHQ’s contribution to American intelligence-- the report states that the British intelligence agency "had given the NSA 36% of all the raw information the British had intercepted from computers the agency was monitoring. A confidential document declares new technological advances permit the British to "interchange 100% of GCHQ End Point Projects with NSA." Also on August 1, NGB expanded on British communication providers’ roles in government surveillance. It was another joint feature with Süddeutsche Zeitung, which would release "Snowden revealed names of spying telecom companies" the next day.

Together the news sources report that not two but seven major domestic telecoms, alongside their respective code names, provided GCHQ with access to their fiber-optic cables in 2010: Verizon Business ("Dacron"), British Telecommunications ("Remedy"), Vodafone Cable ("Gerontic"), Global Crossing ("Pinnage"), Level 3 ("Little"), Viatel ("Vitreous") and Interoute ("Streetcar"). The British spy agency used Tempora to hack the various data backbones across Europe. GCHQ has 102 "points of presence" over Europe, 15 of which are in Germany.

The British communication companies’ involvement with GCHQ is of particular interest to Germany, because Level 3 owns data centers in Berlin, Hamburg, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt and Munich. Global Crossing and Interoute are also major German communication distributors. For readers familiar with the American surveillance story, Viatel’s response was predictable as well as somewhat laughable: "We do not cooperate with the GCHQ or grant access to our infrastructure or customer data." The company representative continues, "Like all telecommunications providers in Europe, we are obliged to comply with European and national laws including those regarding privacy and data retention. From time to time, we receive inquiries from authorities, [which are] checked by our legal and security departments, and if they are legal, [they] will be processed accordingly." The reports also reveal that the Five Eyes, whose acronym is revealed as "FVEY," operate a "ring of satellite monitoring systems around the globe." The group project is code-named "Echelon."

How about if Sherlock Gowdy turn his investigative talents in that direction instead? And, please, take your little Florida pal, Patrick Murphy, along for the ride. As for keeping Murphy out of the U.S. Senate and sending him back to work with Daddy Murphy and Trump... you can do that right here on the Alan Grayson for Senate contribution page.