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Go ahead and read the whole piece for a study in how Ingraham represents this long-dead journalistic tradition

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Go ahead and read the whole piece for a study in how Ingraham represents this long-dead journalistic tradition

Ya think she's up fer one a them NOBLE prizes fer jernilism?

No bull, please.

NOBLE prizes fer jernilism?

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No bull, please.

my irony button is broke

Newly released documents about the origins of the criminal case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn show that FBI officials feared that the new Trump White House might view the bureau as “playing games” if it sought to interview him without disclosing exactly what it was up to.

The four pages of records provided to Flynn’s defense attorneys last week and unsealed on Wednesday by a federal judge reflect internal brainstorming at the FBI in January 2017 about how to approach the politically explosive investigation into Flynn’s contacts with the Russian ambassador weeks earlier, during the presidential transition.

Flynn's lawyers and supporters said the notes and emails were “smoking gun” evidence that he was railroaded by FBI officials intent on bringing him down. But defenders of the FBI’s handling of the investigation said the records showed thorough and thoughtful deliberation about how to handle an exquisitely sensitive inquiry into the president’s top national security aide just days into a new administration.


One page of handwritten notes dated the same day Flynn was interviewed, Jan. 24, 2017, appears to show a debate about how forthcoming to be with him or others at the White House about the nature of the FBI investigation.
“If we’re seen as playing games, WH will be furious,” the notes say. “Protect our institution by not playing games.”

The notes also reflect deliberation about whether confronting Flynn with a lie in real time would be helpful to their investigation.

“What is our goal? Truth/admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?” the notes read.

The public court filings that led to U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan’s order on Wednesday unsealing the records do not indicate who authored the handwritten notes.

However, they appear to bear the initials of E.W. “Bill“ Priestap, the head of the FBI‘s counterintelligence division at the time, and relate to a meeting with the bureau‘s then-deputy director, Andrew McCabe. McCabe was the one who ultimately called Flynn that day to ask him to meet with two FBI agents, Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka.

One issue that FBI officials considered was whether to show Flynn that they already knew details of his conversations with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the U.S. at the time. That knowledge came from court-ordered intercepts of the ambassador’s communications, but those details are redacted from the records that were released on Wednesday.

“We regularly show subjects evidence, with the goal of getting them to admit their wrongdoing,” the notes add. “I don’t see how getting someone to admit their wrongdoing is going easy on him.”

However, the notes also reflect seesawing positions on the matter: “I agreed yesterday that we shouldn’t show Flynn [redacted] if he didn’t admit,” they began.

According to the FBI’s official reports on the interview, the bureau’s agents never confronted Flynn with the intercepts during the session, although the then-national security adviser indicated that the FBI probably knew what had transpired. Nevertheless, Flynn denied discussing U.S. sanctions against Russia with Kislyak.

Acting Attorney General Sally Yates did go to White House counsel Don McGahn a few days later and tell him that Flynn was vulnerable to blackmail because of a tension between his denials and evidence about what Flynn actually discussed with Kislyak. President Donald Trump later fired Flynn, saying he’d lied to Vice President Mike Pence and the FBI.

Flynn’s comments in that interview were at the heart of his decision to plead guilty in December 2017 to a felony false-statement charge brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. Flynn now insists he never lied, and he is trying to back out of that plea.

The newly disclosed notes show that FBI officials even appear to have considered Trump’s political worldview as they assessed whether maintaining cordial relations with the White House might help the bureau win support for its work aimed at combating the influence of foreign-government actors in the U.S.

“Admin’s economic emphasis could be good for our CI [counterintelligence] efforts,” a sentence scrawled at the top margin of the handwritten page says.
Though the notes appear to reflect an unsettled deliberation, Trump allies quickly insisted on Wednesday that they amounted to irrefutable proof that the Flynn interview was a setup.

“Flynn doesn’t need to be pardoned, he did nothing wrong, he needs to be fully exonerated with all charges dropped immediately!” Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, wrote on Twitter.

The president himself tweeted out a Fox News story about the development.
Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, tweeted: “Clear now that General Flynn was set up by dirty cops at the highest levels of our government.”

In a court filing last week, Flynn’s lead lawyer, Sidney Powell, called the documents “stunning” and said the new evidence “proves Mr. Flynn’s allegations of having been deliberately set up and framed by corrupt agents at the top of the FBI.

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.

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Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.

Possibly. I honestly hope so.

It could also be "do as I say, not as I do".

But it is nice to think in some small way they're beginning to get it. If there is a second wave, though, I'd like them to have more than body bags in the bank.

I think the notes show the agents brainstorming on how to approach both Flynn and the new administration.

So the body bags are probably more help in deterring risk behavior than all the stuff about ventilators, masks, etc. that just stimulate people to worry less about risk, the same way they worry less about driving risk because of things like seat belts, air bags, crumple zones, abs, and all the other safety features that are supposed to protect us from our deadly driving but ultimately don't.

Tucker Carlson: ‘Shocking’ How FBI Was Determined To Prosecute Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn

Emails and handwritten notes appear to show how the senior leadership of the FBI were determined to prosecute Flynn — even if it meant they had to entrap him into lying. Prosecutors said in January that the former United States Army lieutenant-general should spend up to six months in prison.

Before interviewing Flynn, FBI agents assessed their objective as whether to seek the truth or to maneuver the then-senior Trump administration official to lie and thereby “prosecute him and get him fired.”

Ya think she's up fer one a them NOBLE prizes fer jernilism?

Oh sure. And the Mark Twain prize for chemistry.

Keep America Miserable: CBS Scoffs at Thought of Economy Improving

This wasn’t the first time Jiang had demanded Americans remain miserable in this crisis. On April 6, she decried the President’s suggestion there was “light at the end of the tunnel.” “President Trump insisted that all 50 governors are happy with his administration's response and said again there is ‘light at the end of the tunnel.’ But some of his own health experts say we're not even in the tunnel,” she chided at the time.

Americans should have hope during these dark times. It helps people cope. Or at least to tick off the liberal media.